Assignment In Eternity ( Collected Stories) Part 24

"I don't want to reach beat.i.tude; I want to do old Brinckley in."

"Come along, then. Let's make some speed."

They were south of the Tehachapi by now and rapidly approaching Los Angeles. They flitted over the Sierra Madre range, shot across San Fernando Valley, clipped the top of Mount Hollywood, and landed on the lawn of the President's Residence at Western University. Brinckley saw, or felt, them coming and tried to run for it, but Phil grappled with him.

He shot one thought to Joan.-"You stay out of this, kid, unless I yell for help."

Brinckley did not give up easily. His mind reached out and tried to engulf Phil's. Huxley felt himself slipping, giving way before the evil onslaught. It seemed as though he were being dragged down, drowned, in filthy quicksand.

But he steadied himself and fought back.

When Phil had finished that which was immediately necessary with Brinckley, he stood up and wiped his hands, as if to cleanse himself of the spiritual slime he had embraced. "Let's get going," he said to Joan, "we're pushed for time."

"What did you do to him, Phil?" She stared with fascinated disgust at the thing on the ground.

"Little enough. I placed him in stasis. I've got to save him for use- for a time. Up you go, girl. Out of here-before we're noticed."

Up they shot, with Brinckley's body swept along behind by tight telel-kinetic bond. They stopped above the clouds. Brinckley floated beside them, starfished eyes popping, mouth loose, his smooth pink face expressionless. -"Ben!" Huxley was sending, "Ephraim Howe! Ambrose! To me! To me! Hurry!"

"Coming, Phil!" came Coburn's answer.

"I hear.' The strong calm thought held the quality of the Senior. "What is it, son? Tell me."

"No time!" snapped Phil. "Yourself, Senior, and all others that can. Rendezvous! Hurry!"

"We come." The thought was still calm, unhurried. But there were two ragged holes in the roof of Moulton's tent. Moulton and Howe were already out of sight of Camp Mark Twain.

Slas.h.i.+ng, slicing through the air they came, the handful of adepts who guarded the fire. From five hundred miles to the north they came, racing pigeons hurrying home. Camp councilors, two-thirds of the small group of camp matrons, some few from scattered points on the continent, they came in response to Huxley's call for help and the Senior's unprecedented tocsin. A housewife turned out the fire in the oven and disappeared into the sky. A taxi driver stopped his car and left his fares without a word. Research groups on Shasta broke their tight rapport, abandoned their beloved work, and came- fast!

"And now, Philip?" Howe spoke orally as he arrested his trajectory and hung beside Huxley. Huxley flung a hand toward Brinckley. "He has what we need to know to strike now! Where's Master Ling?

"He and Mrs. Draper guard the Camp." "I need him. Can she do it alone?" Clear and mellow, her voice rang in his head from half a state away. -"I can!"

* "The tortoise flies." The second thought held the quality of deathless merriment which was the unmistakable characteristic of the ancient Chinese.

Joan felt a soft touch at her mind, then Master Ling was among them, seated carefully tailor-fas.h.i.+on on nothingness. "I attend; my body follows," he announced. "Can we not proceed?"

Whereupon Joan realized that he had borrowed the faculties of her mind to project himself into their presence more quickly than he could levitate the distance. She felt unreasonably flattered by the attention.

Huxley commenced at once. "Through his mind-" He indicated Brinckley, "I have learned of many others with whom there can be no truce. We must search them out, deal with them at once, before they can rally from what has happened to him. But I need help. Master, will you extend the present and examine him?"

Ling had tutored them in discrimination of time and perception of the present, taught them to stand off and perceive duration from eternity. But he was incredibly more able than his pupils. He could split the beat of a fly's wing into a thousand discrete instants, or grasp a millenium as a single flash of experience. His discrimination of time and s.p.a.ce was bound neither by his metabolic rate nor by his molar dimensions.

Now he poked gingerly at Brinckley's brain like one who seeks a lost jewel in garbage. He felt out the man's memory patterns and viewed his life as one picture. Joan, with amazement, saw his ever-present smile give way to a frown of distaste. His mind had been left open to any who cared to watch. She peered through his mind, then cut off. If there were that many truly vicious spirits in the world she preferred to encounter them one at a time, as necessary, not experience them all at once.

Master Ling's body joined the group, melted into his projection.

Huxley, Howe, Moulton, and Bierce followed the Chinese's delicate work with close attention. Howe's face was bleakly impa.s.sive; Moulton's face, aged to androgynous sensitivity, moved from side to side while he clucked disapproval of such wickedness. Bierce looked more like Mark Twain than ever. Twain in an implacable, lowering rage. Master Ling looked up. "Yes, yes," said Moulton, "I suppose we must act, Ephraim."

"We have no choice," Huxley stated, with a completely unconscious disregard of precedent. "Will you a.s.sign the tasks. Senior?"

Howe glanced sharply at him. "No, Philip. No. Go ahead. Carry on."

Huxley checked himself in surprise for the briefest instant, then took his cue. "You'll help me. Master Ling. Ben!" "Waiting!' He meshed mind to mind, had Ling show him his opponent and the data he needed. -"Got it? Need any help?"

"Grandfather Stonebender is enough."

"Okay. Nip off and attend to it."

"Chalk it up.' He was gone, a rush of air in his wake.

"This one is yours. Senator Moulton"'

"I know." And Moulton was gone. By ones and twos he gave them their a.s.signments, and off they went to do that which must be done.

There was no argument. Many of them had been aware long before Huxley was that a day of action must inevitably come to pa.s.s, but they had waited with quiet serenity, busy with the work at hand, till time should incubate the seed.

In a windowless study of a mansion on Long Island, soundproofed, cleverly locked and guarded, ornately furnished, a group of five was met-three men, one woman, and a thing in a wheel chair. It glared at the other four in black fury, glared without eyes, for its forehead dropped unbroken to its cheekbones, a smooth sallow expanse.

A lap robe, tucked loosely across the chair masked, but did not hide, the fact that the creature had no legs.

It gripped the arms of the chair. "Must I do all the thinking for you fools?" it asked in a sweet gentle voice. "You, Arthurson-you let Moulton slip that Shasta Bill past the Senate. Moron." The epithet was uttered caressingly.

Arthurson s.h.i.+fted in his chair. "I examined his mind. The bill was harmless. It was a swap on the Missouri Valley deal. I told you."

"You examined his mind, eh? Hmm-he led you on a personally conducted tour, you fool. A Shasta bill! When will you mindless idiots learn that no good ever came out of Shasta?" It smiled approvingly.

"Well, how was I to know? I thought a camp near the mountain might confuse . . . them.

Mindless idiot. The time will come when I will find you dispensable. The thing did not wait for the threat to sink in, but continued, Enough of that now. We must move to repair the damage. They are on the offensive now. Agnes- Yes. The woman answered.

Your preaching has got to pick up- I've done my best. Not good enough. I've got to have a wave of religious hysteria that will wash out the Bill of Right before the Shasta camp breaks up for the summer. We will have to act fast before that time and we can't be hampered by a lot of legalisms.

It can't be done.

Shut up. It can be done. Your temple will receive endowments this week which you are to use for countrywide television hookups. At the proper time you will discover a new messiah.

Who?

Brother Artemis.

That cornbelt pipsqueak? Where do I come in on this?

You'll get yours. But you can't head this movement; the country won't take a woman in the top spot. The two of you will lead a march on Was.h.i.+ngton and take over. The Sons of '76 will fill out your ranks and do the street fighting. Weems, that's your job.

The man addressed demurred. It will take three, maybe four months to indoctrinate them.

You have three weeks. It would be well not to fail.

The last of the three men broke his silence. What's the hurry. Chief? Seems to me that you are getting yourself in a panic over a few kids.

I'll be the judge. Now you are to time an epidemic of strikes to tie the country up tight at the time of the march on Was.h.i.+ngton.

I'll need some incidents.

You'll get them. You worry about the unions; I'll take care of the Merchants' and Commerce League myself. You give me one small strike tomorrow. Get your pickets out and I will have four or five of them shot. The publicity will be ready. Agnes, you preach a sermon about it.

Slanted which way?

It rolled its non-existent eyes up to the ceiling.

Must I think of everything? It's elementary. Use your minds.

The last man to speak laid down his cigar carefully and said, What's the real rush, Chief? I've told you.

No, you haven't. You've kept your mind closed and haven't let us read your thoughts once. You've known about the Shasta camp for months. Why this sudden excitement? You aren't slipping, are you? Come on, spill it. You can't expect us to follow if you are slipping.

The eyeless one looked him over carefully. Hanson, he said, in still sweeter tones, you have been feeling your size for months. Would you care to match your strength with mine?

The other looked at his cigar. I don't mind if I do. You will. But not tonight. I haven't time to select and train new lieutenants. Therefore I will tell you what the urgency is. I can't raise Brinckley. He's fallen out of communication. There is no time- You are correct, said a new voice. There is no time.

The five jerked puppetlike to face its source. Standing side by side in the study were Ephraim Howe and Joan Freeman.

Howe looked at the thing. I've waited for this meeting, he said cheerfully, and I've saved you for myself.

The creature got out of its wheelchair and moved through the air at Howe. Its height and position gave an unpleasant sensation that it walked on invisible legs. Howe signalled to Joan- It starts. Can you hold the others, my dear?

I think so.

Now! Howe brought to bear everything he had learned in one hundred and thirty busy years, concentrated on the single problem of telekinetic control. He avoided, refused contact with the mind of the evil thing before him and turned his attention to destroying its physical envelope.

The thing stopped.

Slowly, slowly, like a deepsea diver caught in an implosion, like an orange in a squeezer, the spatial limits in which it existed were reduced. A spherical locus in s.p.a.ce enclosed it, diminished.

The thing was drawn in and in. The ungrown stumps of its legs folded against its thick torso. The head ducked down against the chest to escape the unrelenting pressure. For a single instant it gathered its enormous perverted power and fought back. Joan was disconcerted, momentarily nauseated, by the backwash of evil.

But Howe withstood it without change of expression; the sphere shrank again. The eyeless skull split. At once, the sphere shrank to the least possible dimension. A twenty-inch ball hung in the air, a ball whose repulsive superficial details did not invite examination.

Howe held the harmless, disgusting mess in place with a fraction of his mind, and inquired- Are you all right, my dear?

Yes, Senior. Master Ling helped me once when I needed it.