CHAPTER 15

Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.

Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.

Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.

Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.

"Shut up!" Reich cried.

Eight, sir; Seven, sir; Six, sir; Five, Sir; "For G.o.d's sake! Shut up!"

Four, Sir; Three, sir; Two, sir; One!

"You've got to think. Why don't you think? What's happened to you? Why don't you think?"

Tension, apprehension and--- "He was lying. You know he was lying. You were right the first time. A giant b.o.o.by-trap. WWHG. Refusal. Refusal. But why did he lie? How is that going to help him?"

---dissension have begun.

"The Man with No Face. Breen could have told him. Gus Tate could have told him. Think!"

Tension--- "There is no Man With No Face. It's just a dream. A nightmare!"

Apprehension--- "But the b.o.o.by-traps? What about the b.o.o.by-traps? He had me cold in his house. Why didn't he pull the switch? Telling me I'm free. What's he up to? Think!"

Dissension--- A hand touched his shoulder.

"Mr. Reich?"

"What?"

"Mr. Reich!"

"What? Who's that?"

Reich's eyes focussed. He became aware that it was raining heavily. He was lying on his side, knees drawn up, arms folded, his cheek buried in mud. He was drenched, shivering with cold. He was in the esplanade of Bomb Inlet. Around him were sighing, sodden trees. A figure was bending over him.

"Who are you?"

"Galen Chervil, Mr. Reich."

"What?"

"Galen Chervil, sir. From Maria Beaumont's party. Can I do you that favor, Mr. Reich?"

"Don't peep me!" Reich cried.

"I'm not, Mr. Reich. We don't usually---" Young Chervil caught himself. "I didn't know you knew I was a peeper. You'd better get up, sir."

He took Reich's arm and pulled. Reich groaned and yanked his arm free. Young Chervil took him under the shoulders and raised him, staring at Reich's frightful appearance.

"Were you mugged, Mr. Reich?"

"What? No. No..."

"Accident, sir?"

"No. No, I... Oh, for G.o.d's sake," Reich burst out, "get the h.e.l.l away from me!"

"Certainly, sir. I thought you needed help and I owe you a favor, but---"

"Wait," Reich interrupted. "Come back." He rasped the bole of a tree and leaned against it, panting hoa.r.s.ely. Finally he thrust himself erect and glared at Chervil with bloodshot eyes. "You mean that about the favor?"

"Of course, Mr. Reich."

"No questions asked. No tales told?"

"Certainly not, Mr. Reich."

"My problem's murder, Chervil. I want to find out who's trying to kill me. Will you do me that favor? Will you peep someone for me?"

"I should imagine the police would be able to---"

"The police?" Reich laughed hysterically, then clutched himself in agony as the broken rib caught "I want you to peep a cop for me. Chervil. A big cop. The Commissioner of cops. D'you understand?" He let go of the tree and lurched to Chervil. "I want to visit my friend the Commissioner and ask him a few questions. I want you to be there to tell me the truth. Will you come to Crabbe's office and peep him for me? Will you just do it and forget about it? Will you?"

"Yes, Mr. Reich...I will."

"What? An honest peeper! How about that? Come on. Let's jet."

Reich stumbled out of the esplanade with a horrible gait. Chervil followed, overwhelmed by the fury in the man that drove him through injury, through fever, through agony to police headquarters. There, Reich hulled and roared past clerks and guards until the mud-streaked blood-smeared figure burst into Commissioner Crabbe's elaborate ebony and silver office.

"My G.o.d, Reich!" Crabbe was aghast. "It is you, isn't it? Ben Reich?"

"Sit down, Chervil," Reich said. He turned to Crabbe. "It's me. Get a full perspective. I'm half a corpse, Crabbe. The red stuff is blood. The rest is slime. I've had a great day... a glorious day... and I want to know where the h.e.l.l the police have been? Where's your G.o.d Almighty Prefect Powell? Where's your---"

"Half a corpse? What are you telling me, Ben?"

"I'm telling you that I was almost murdered three times today. This boy..." Reich pointed to Chervil. "This boy just found me in the Inlet Esplanade more dead than alive. Look at me, for Christ's sake. Look at me!"

"Murdered!" Crabbe thumped his desk emphatically. "Of course. That Powell is a fool. I should never have listened to him. The man who killed D'Courtney is trying to kill you."

Behind his back, Reich motioned savagely to Chervil.

"I told Powell you were innocent. He wouldn't listen to me," Crabbe said. "Even when that infernal adding machine in the District Attorney's office told him you were innocent, he wouldn't listen."

"The machine said I was innocent?"

"Of course it did. There's no case against you. There never was a case against you. And by the sacred Bill of Rights, you'll have the protection from the murderer that any honest law-abiding citizen deserves. I'll see to that at once," Crabbe strode to the door. "And I think this is all I'll need to settle Mr. Powell's hash for good! Don't go, Ben. I want to talk to you about your support for the Solar Senatorship..."

The door opened and slammed. Reich reeled and fought his way back to the world. He looked at three Chervils. "Well?" he muttered. "Well?"

"He's telling the truth, Mr. Reich."

"About me? About Powell?"

"Well..." Chervil paused judiciously, weighing the truth.

"Jet, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Reich groaned. "How long do you think I can keep my fuses from blowing."

"He's telling the truth about you," Chervil said quickly. "The Prosecution Computer has declined to authorize any action against you for the D'Courtney murder. Mr. Powell has been forced to abandon the case and... well... his career is very much in jeopardy."

"Is that true!" Reich staggered to the boy and seized his shoulders. "Is that true, Chervil? I've been cleared? I can go about my business? No one's going to bother me?"

"You've been dropped, Mr. Reich. You can go about your business. No one's going to bother you."

Reich burst into a roar of triumphant laughter. The pain of his bruised and broken body made him groan as he laughed, and his eyes smarted with tears. He pulled himself up, brushed past Chervil and left the Commissioner's office. He was more a Neanderthal vestige as he paraded down headquarters' corridors streaked with blood and mud, laughing and groaning, bearing himself with limping arrogance. He needed a stag's carca.s.s on his shoulders or a cave bear borne in triumph behind him to complete the picture.

"I'll complete the picture with Powell's head," he told himself. "Stuffed and mounted on my wall. I'll complete the picture with the D'Courtney Cartel stuffed into my pockets. By G.o.d give me time I'll complete a picture with the Galaxy inside the frame!"

He pa.s.sed through the steel portals of headquarters and stood for a moment on the steps gazing at the rain-swept streets... at the amus.e.m.e.nt center across the square, block after block blazing under a single mutual transparent dome... at the open shops lining the upper footways, all bustle and brilliance as the city's night shopping began... the towering office buildings in the background great two-hundred story cubes... the lace tracery of skyways linking them together... the twinkling running lights of Jumpers bobbing up and down like a plague of crimson-eyed gra.s.shoppers in a field...

"And I'll own you!" he shouted, raising his arms to engulf the universe. "I'll own you all! Bodies, pa.s.sions, and souls!"

Then his eye caught the tall, ominous, familiar figure crossing the square, watching him covertly over its shoulder. A figure of black shadows sparkling with raindrop jewels... looking looming, silent, horrible... A Man With No Face.

There was a strangled cry. The fuses blew. Like a blighted tree, Reich fell to the ground.

At one minute to nine, ten of the fifteen members of the Esper Guild Council a.s.sembled in President T'sung's office. Emergency business required their attention. At one minute after nine, the meeting was adjoumed with the business completed. Within those one hundred and twenty Esper seconds, the following took place: A gavel pounding A clock face Hour hand at 9 Minute hand at 59 Second hand at 60 EMERGENCY MEETING To examine a request for Ma.s.s Cathexis with Lincoln Powell as the human ca.n.a.l for the Capitalized energy.

(Consternation) T'sung: You can't be serious, Powell. How can you make such a request? What can possibly require such an extraordinary and dangerous measure?

Powell: An astonishing development in the D'Courtney Case which I would like you all to examine.

(Examination) Powell: You all know that Reich is our most dangerous enemy. He is supporting the Anti-Esper smear campaign. Unless that is blocked we may suffer the usual history of minority groups.

@kins: True enough.

Powell: He is also supporting the League of Esper Patriots. Unless that organization is blocked we may be plunged into a civil war and be lost forever in a mora.s.s of internal chaos.

Franion: That's true too.

Powell: But there is an additional development which you have all examined. Reich is about to become a Galactic focal point... A crucial link between the positive past and the probable future. He is on the verge of a powerful reorganization at this moment. Time is of the essence. If Reich can readjust and reorient before I can reach him, he will become immune to our reality, invulnerable to our attack, and the deadly enemy of Galactic reason and reality.

(Alarm) @kins: Surely, you're exaggerating, Powell.

Powell: Am I? Inspect the picture with me. Look at Reich's position in time and s.p.a.ce. Will not his beliefs become the world's belief? Will not his reality become the world's reality? Is he not, in his critical position of power, energy, and intellect, a sure road to utter destruction?

(Conviction) T'sung: That's true. Nevertheless I'm reluctant to authorize the Ma.s.s Cathexis Measure. You will recall that the MCM has invariably destroyed the human energy ca.n.a.l in past attempts. You're too valuable to be destroyed, Powell.

Powell: I must be permitted to run the risk, Reich is one of the rare Universe-shakers... a child as yet, but about to mature. And all reality... Espers, Normals, Life, the earth, the solar system, the universe itself... all reality hangs precarlously on his awakening. He cannot be permitted to awake to the wrong reality. I call the question.

Franion: You're asking us to vote your death.

Powell: It's my death against the eventual death of everything we know. I call the question.

@kins: Let Reich awaken as he will. We have the time and the warning to attack him at another crossroad.

Powell: Question! I call the question!

(Request granted) Meeting adjourned Clock face Hour hand at 9 Minute hand at 01 Second hand at Demolition Powell arrived home an hour later. He had made his will, paid his bills, signed his papers, arranged everything. There had been dismay at the Guild. There was dismay when he came home. Mary Noyes read what he had done the instant he entered.

"Linc---"

"No fuss. It's got to be done."

"But---"

"There's a chance it won't kill me. Oh... One reminder. Lab wants a brain autopsy as soon as I'm dead... if I die. I've signed all the papers, but I wish you'd help in case there's trouble. They'd like to have the body before rigor. If they can't get the corpse they'll settle for the head. See to it, will you?"

"Linc!"

"Sorry. Now you'd better pack and take the baby up to KingstonHospital. She won't be safe here."

"She isn't a baby any more. She---"

Mary turned and ran upstairs, trailing the familiar sensory impact: Snow / mint / tulips / taffeta... and now mixed with terror and tears. Powell sighed, then smiled as a highly poised teen-ager appeared at the head of the stairs and came down with grand insouciance. She was wearing a dress and an expression of rehea.r.s.ed surprise. She paused halfway down to let him take in the dress and the manner.

"Why! It's Mr. Powell, is it not?"

"It is. Good morning, Barbara."

"And what brings you to our little domain this morning?" She came down the rest of the stairs with her fingertips brushing the bannister and tripped on the bottom step. "Oh Pip!" she squawked.

Powell caught her. "Pop," he said.

"Bim."

"Bam."

She looked up at him. "You stand right here. I'm going to come down those stairs again and I bet I do it perfect."