That Sweet Little Old Lady Part 27

Malone hesitated. "She has a close fix on the spy, sir," he said slowly, "but she doesn't seem able to identify him right away."

"What else does she want?" Burris said. "We've made her Queen and given her a full retinue in costume; we've let her play roulette and poker with Government money. Does she want to hold a ma.s.s execution? If she does, I can supply some congressmen, Malone. I'm sure it could be arranged." He looked at the agent narrowly. "I might even be able to supply an FBI man or two," he added.

Malone swallowed hard. "I'm trying the best I can, sir," he said. "What about the others?"

Burris looked even unhappier than usual. "Come along," he said. "I'll show you."

When they got back to the car, Dr. Gamble was talking spiritedly with Her Majesty about Roger Bacon. "Before my time, of course," the Queen was saying, "but I'm sure he was a most interesting man. Now when dear old Marlowe wrote his 'Faust,' he and I had several long discussions about such matters. Alchemy--"

Burris interrupted with: "I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but we must get on. Perhaps you'll be able to continue your ... ah ... audience later." He turned to Boyd. "Sir Thomas," he said with an effort, "drive directly to the Westinghouse buildings. Over that way." He pointed. "Dr.

Gamble will ride with you, and the rest of us will follow in the second car. Let's move."

He stepped back as the project head got into the car, and watched it roar off. Then he and Malone went to the second car, another FBI Lincoln. Two agents were sitting in the back seat, with a still figure between them.

With a shock, Malone recognized William Logan and the agents he'd detailed to watch the telepath. Logan's face did not seem to have changed expression since Malone had seen it last, and he wondered wildly if perhaps it had to be dusted once a week.

He got in behind the wheel and Burris slid in next to him.

"Westinghouse." Burris said. "And let's get there in a hurry."

"Right," Malone said, and started the car.

"We just haven't had a single lead," Burris said. "I was hoping you'd come up with something. Your telegram detailed the fight, of course, and the rest of what's been happening--but I hoped there'd be something more."

"There isn't," Malone was forced to admit. "All we can do is try to persuade Her Majesty to tell us--"

"Oh, I know it isn't easy," Burris said. "But it seems to me--"

By the time they'd arrived at the administrative offices of Westinghouse's psionics research area, Malone found himself wis.h.i.+ng that something would happen. Possibly, he thought, lightning might strike, or an earthquake swallow everything up. He was, suddenly, profoundly tired of the entire affair.

VIII

Four days later, he was more than tired. He was exhausted. The six psychopaths--including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I--had been housed in a converted dormitory in the Westinghouse area, together with four highly nervous and even more highly trained and investigated psychiatrists from St. Elizabeths in Was.h.i.+ngton. The Convention of Nuts, as Malone called it privately, was in full swing. And it was every bit as strange as he'd thought it was going to be. Unfortunately, five of the six--Her Majesty being the only exception--were completely out of contact with the world. The psychiatrists referred to them in worried tones as "unavailable for therapy," and spent most of their time brooding over possible ways of bringing them back into the real world for a while.

Malone stayed away from the five who were completely psychotic. The weird babblings of fifty-year-old Barry Miles disconcerted him. They sounded like little Charlie O'Neill's strange semi-connected jabber, but Westinghouse's Dr. O'Connor said that it seemed to represent another phenomenon entirely. William Logan's blank face was a memory of horror, but the constant tinkling giggles of Ardith Parker, the studied and concentrated way that Gordon Macklin wove meaningless patterns in the air with his waving fingers, and the rhythmless, melodyless humming that seemed to be all there was to the personality of Robert Ca.s.siday were simply too much for Malone. Taken singly, each was frightening and remote; all together, they wove a picture of insanity that chilled him more than he wanted to admit.

When the seventh telepath was flown in from Honolulu, Malone didn't even bother to see her. He let the psychiatrists take over directly, and simply avoided their sessions.

Queen Elizabeth I, on the other hand, he found genuinely likeable.

According to the psych boys, she had been--as both Malone and Her Majesty had theorized--heavily frustrated by being the possessor of a talent which no one else recognized. Beyond that, the impact of other minds was disturbing; there was a slight loss of ident.i.ty which seemed to be a major factor in every case of telepathic insanity. But the Queen had compensated for her frustrations in the easiest possible way; she had simply traded her ident.i.ty for another one, and had rationalized a single, over-ruling delusion: that she was Queen Elizabeth I of England, still alive and wrongfully deprived of her throne.

"It's a beautiful rationalization," one of the psychiatrists said with more than a trace of admiration in his voice. "Complete and thoroughly consistent. She's just traded ident.i.ties--and everything else she does--_everything_ else--stems logically out of her delusional premise.

Beautiful."

She might have been crazy, Malone realized. But she was a long way from stupid.

The project was in full swing. The only trouble was that they were no nearer finding the telepath than they had been three weeks before. With five completely blank human beings to work with, and the sixth Queen Elizabeth (Malone heard privately that the last telepath, the girl from Honolulu, was no better than the first five; she had apparently regressed into what one of the psychiatrists called a "non-ident.i.ty childhood syndrome." Malone didn't know what it meant, but it sounded terrible.) Malone could see why progress was their most difficult commodity.

Dr. Harry Gamble, the head of Project Isle, was losing poundage by the hour with worry. And, Malone reflected, he could ill afford it.

Burris, Malone and Boyd had set themselves up in a temporary office within the Westinghouse area. The director had left his a.s.sistant in charge in Was.h.i.+ngton. Nothing, he said over and over again, was as important as the spy in Project Isle.

Apparently Boyd had come to believe that, too. At any rate, though he was still truculent, there were no more outbursts of rebellion.

But, on the fourth day:

"What do we do now?" Burris asked.

"Shoot ourselves," Boyd said promptly.

"Now, look here--" Malone began, but he was overruled.

"Boyd," Burris said levelly, "if I hear any more of that sort of pessimism, you're going to be an exception to the beard rule. One more crack out of you, and you can go out and buy yourself a razor."

Boyd put his hand over his chin protectively, and said nothing at all.

"Wait a minute," Malone said. "Aren't there any _sane_ telepaths in the world?"

"We can't find any," Burris said. "We--"

There was a knock at the office door.

"Who's there?" Burris called.

"Dr. Gamble," said the man's surprisingly baritone voice.

Burris called: "Come in, doctor," and the door opened. Dr. Gamble's lean face looked almost haggard.

"Mr. Burris," he said, extending his arms a trifle, "can't anything be done?" Malone had seen Gamble speaking before, and had wondered if it would be possible for the man to talk with his hands tied behind his back. Apparently it wouldn't be. "We feel that we are approaching a critical stage in Project Isle," the scientist said, enclosing one fist within the other hand. "If anything more gets out to the Soviets, we might as well publish our findings"--a wide, outflung gesture of both arms--"in the newspapers."

Burris stepped back. "We're doing the best we can, Dr. Gamble," he said.

All things considered, his obvious try at radiating confidence was nearly successful. "After all," he went on, "we know a great deal more than we did four days ago. Miss Thompson has a.s.sured us that the spy is right here, within the compound of Yucca Flats Labs. We've bottled everything up in this compound, and I'm confident that no information is at present getting through to the Soviet Government. Miss Thompson agrees with me."

"Miss Thompson?" Gamble said, one hand at his bearded chin.

"The Queen," Burris said.

Gamble nodded and two fingers touched his forehead. "Ah," he said. "Of course." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "But we can't keep everybody who's here now locked up forever. Sooner or later we'll have to let them"--his left hand described the gesture of a man tossing away a wad of paper--"go." His hands fell to his sides. "We're lost, unless we can find that spy."

"We'll find him," Burris said with a show of great confidence.

"But--"