Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (36 page)

Sitting on a lump of emerald bark three feet thick, he smiled to himself as if at a secret joke. A multi-talented sample of mutational posterity. No such individual had ever been discovered though humanity kept constant watch on three worlds for such a one. Genetically there was excellent reason to believe that no such a person ever would be found or could exist as a viable strain.

For reasons peculiarly her own, Nature had long ordained that the children of mixed mutant unions inherited only the dominant talent if any at all. The subordinate aptitude invariably disappeared. Often the dominant one would skip a generation, in which case the skipped generation consisted of mere pawns.

The notion of a super-telepathic super-levitator was patently absurd—but the opposition would swallow the absurdity when it came along in the guise of a self-evident fact. There would be considerable boosting of blood pressure in the hidden Venusian hierarchy when they learned that the first act of Earth’s new chess piece was to abolish a natural law. They would want him badly and quickly, before he started playing hob with other man-made laws esteemed for making cash profits or personal power.

The thought of this gratified him. To date he had achieved nothing spectacular by the standards of the day and age. That was good because it was highly undesirable to be too spectacular. Such was the gist of Leina’s case against interfering, the basis of her disapproval of the part he’d chosen to play: that at all times one should be unobtrusive, unnoticed and not be tempted to interfere.

But at least he’d created considerable uneasiness in the ranks of the formerly over-confident enemy. Indeed, if they had bolted this multi-talent mutant notion and speculated on the dire possibility of still more formidable types yet to come, they would have every reason to feel afraid. And their fears would divert them from the truth, the truth they must never know lest others pick it out of their minds.

It was a pity they could not be told the truth—but there are facts of life not told to the immature.

No natural laws had been or could be abolished.

A supernatural phenomenon is one that accords with laws not yet known or identified.

There were no multi-talented humans.

There were only bright-eyed moths that swoop and soar through endless reaches of the eternal dark.

He sent out a powerful, tight-beamed mind-call far above the normal telepathic band. “Charles!”

“Yes, David?” It came back promptly, showing that the other had been expecting the summons. The incoming mental impulses impinged on twin receiving centers and proved slightly out of phase.

Raven turned to face the sender’s direction as instinctively as one pawn would turn to look at another.

“I dived out of the ship. Doubt whether it was necessary but thought I’d play safe.”

“Yes, I know,” gave back the distant mind. “Mavis got a call from Leina. As usual they gabbled an hour about personal matters before Leina remembered she’d come through to tell us you were in the
Fantôme.
It seems she’d sooner you had kept to your proper job.”

“Females remain females throughout the whole of eternity,” Raven offered.

“So I went to the spaceport,” continued Charles, “and I’m outside it right now. Can’t get in because it’s barred to the public and heavily guarded. Frustrated pawns who’ve come to meet the passengers are hanging around in clusters, biting their nails and swapping baseless rumors. The ship is down and a lot of bellicose officials are behaving as if someone’s just swiped their pay checks.”

“’Fraid I’m to blame for that.”

“Why come on a ship, anyway?” asked Charles. “If for some mysterious reason you had to do it the slow way couldn’t you have inflated a small balloon and drifted here?”

“Occasionally there are considerations more important than speed,” answered Raven, seeing nothing nonsensical in the question. “For instance, I’m wearing a body.”

“It’s precisely your body they’ll be hunting. It’s a giveaway.”

“Perhaps so, but it’s what I want them to seek. Hunting for a nice human-looking body will stop them getting other ideas.”

“You know best,” Charles conceded. “You’re coming to our place I take it?”

“Of course. I called to make sure you’d be there.”

“We will. See you shortly, eh?”

“I’m starting right now.”

Forthwith he set off through the shadowy glades toward the plain, striding swiftly along and keeping watch more with his mind than with his eyes. It was always possible to hear things lurking unseen. They could not spy on him without radiating even their rudimentary thoughts. Such as that pair of screech owls glowering in a dark hole two hundred feet up a tremendous tree trunk.

“Man-thing below!
Aaaargsh!”

At the fringe of the trees came first evidence of the hunt. He stood in the darkness close by a mighty bole while a copter floated over the green umbrella of top branches. It was a big machine held up by four multi-bladed rotors and bearing a crew of ten. Their minds could be counted as they tried to probe the maze beneath.

There were a half a dozen telepaths listening, listening, eager to catch any stray mental impulse he might be careless enough to let go loose. Also one insectivocal cuddling a cage of flying tiger-ants to be tipped over any likely spot indicated by a telepath.

The relief pilot was a nocturnal content to do nothing but wait his turn should the search continue after dark. The remaining pair consisted of a hypno steadily cursing Raven for taking him away from a profitable game of jimbo-jimbo, and a flap-eared supersonic straining to catch the thin whistle of the radium chronometer which the quarry was wrongly assumed to possess.

The menagerie of mutants passed right above and zigzagged onward unaware of his existence immediately under them. A similarly composed outfit was scouring a wide path on a roughly parallel course two miles to the south, and yet another two miles northward.

He let them get well behind him before he stepped into the open, followed the outskirts of the trees until he struck a broad dirt road. Once upon the highway he behaved less warily.

These flying search parties might be made up of exceptionally gifted humans far above pawn standard, but they still tended to fall into pawn errors. They took it for granted that anyone boldly strolling in plain sight, along a road, could have nothing to hide. In any event, if one of them did see fit to display excess of zeal and swoop over him for a pry into his cranium, he’d give them a boring selection of dunderhead pawn thoughts. What’s for dinner? If I’m given fried slime-fish again I’ll go crazy!

There remained the risk, albeit a slight one, that a clear pictorial record of his features might be in circulation and a hunter might drop low enough to identify him visually.

But nobody showed above-average curiosity until he came within short distance of Plain City. At that point a copter drifted overhead and he felt four minds spiking simultaneously into his own. For their pains he rewarded them with pictures of a sordid domestic wrangle in a squalid home. He could almost hear them snort with contempt as they withdrew their mental probes, whirled their rotors faster and sped toward the rain forest.

At the city’s edge he stepped off the road and made way for a ponderous tractor dragging a steel-barred trailer. Two hypnos and one teleport were in charge of this belated addition to the chase, chief feature of which consisted of a score of drooling tree-cats in the trailer. These could follow a spoor one week old and literally sprint up the trunk of any forest giant not smothered in spikes.

As became a pawn he chewed a piece of purplish grass and stared with dull-eyed curiosity as this lot creaked and rumbled past. The minds of the whole bunch were like open books. One of the hypnos was nursing a
tambar
hangover, the other missing a night’s sleep and frequently pinching himself to keep alert.

Strangely enough, the teleport was worried lest they catch their prey and he be saddled with the blame should Terran authority get to hear of it. In the days of his youth he had been well and truly kicked in the pants for obeying orders and he was determined to resent it to his dying day.

Even the tree-cats broadcast their own feline desires and schemings. Ten glared longingly at Raven from behind their bars, dripped saliva, and promised that one fine day they would sample the flesh of the master race. Six more were weighing their chances of escaping into the forests and remaining beyond reach of mankind for keeps. The other four had decided exactly what they would do should glorious fate ordain that the hunted man’s trail be crossed by that of a female tree-cat. Evidently this quartet’s notion of private enterprise was to mix business with pleasure.

On they clanked and rattled down the road, a futile cavalcade made doubly absurd by the mock-dopey watch of its very quarry. Probably by fall of dark they would catch and tear to bloody shreds a rare jungle hobo or an illicit
tambar
distiller and return flushed with success.

Continuing into the city, Raven found his way to a small granite house with brilliant orchids behind its windowpanes. He had no trouble in the finding although this was his first visit to Plain City. He made his way straight to his destination as if it were clearly visible from the beginning, or as one heads through encompassing darkness toward a distant light. And when he reached the door he did not have to knock. Those waiting within had measured his every step and
knew
the moment of arrival.

Mavis, petite, blonde and blue-eyed, curled herself in a deep chair and observed him with the same deep penetration that his own eyes often showed to the considerable discomfort of others. It was as if she had to look right into him to see his real self behind a concealing mask of flesh.

The other one, Charles, was a plump and rather pompous little man blessed with the lackluster optics of a low-grade pawn. Any talented human would take one look at Charles and unhesitatingly classify him as a fat nitwit. A veneer of matching nitwittery lay over his brain and served to confirm the first impressions of any other mind that might choose to probe. More by good luck than good management Charles was an entity exceptionally well concealed and therefore much to be envied.

“Naturally we’re pleased to see you,” said Mavis, speaking vocally for the pleasure of feeling her tongue wag. “But what has happened to the rule that one stays on one’s appointed ball of dirt?”

“Circumstances alter cases,” Raven said. “Anyway, Leina is still there. She can handle anything.”

“Except being alone, entirely alone,” retorted Mavis, taking Leina’s part. “No person can handle that!”

“You’re right, of course. But nobody remains isolated forever. In the end there’s always a reunion.” He chuckled with queer humor, added, “If only in the sweet by-and-by.”

“Your theology is showing,” commented Charles. He took a pneumaseat beside Mavis, squatting comfortably with his pudgy legs stretched out, his paunch supported in linked hands. “According to Leina, you are busily sticking your fingers into other people’s affairs. Is that right?”

“About half right. You’ve not had the full story. Someone on this planet—aided by unknown co-operators on Mars—is having a good time pulling Terra’s hair. They are like mischievous children playing with a gun, neither knowing nor caring that it might be loaded. They are out to gain complete independence by a form of coercion amounting to new style war.”

“War?” Charles was doubtful.

“That’s what I said. The trouble is that wars have a habit of getting hopelessly out of hand. Those who start one usually find themselves quite unable to stop it. If it can be done, this one must be prevented from starting in real earnest, by which I mean becoming bloodier.”

“Ugh!” Charles rubbed a pair of smooth chins. “We know there’s a strong nationalist movement on this planet but we’ve ignored it as being of no especial interest from our viewpoint. Even if they go so far as to swap bombs and bullets with Terra, and murder each other wholesale, what does it matter to us? It’s all to the merry, isn’t it? Their loss is our gain.”

“In one way but not in another.”

“Why?”

“The Terrans are badly in need of unity because they are heading toward the Denebs.”

“They’re heading—?” Charles’ voice trailed off. For a moment his dull eyes shone with formerly hidden fires. “Are you telling me that Terran authorities actually
know
about the Denebs? How the deuce
can
they know?”

“Because,” Raven told him, “they are now at development stage four. A lot is going on that the general public doesn’t suspect, much less those here or on Mars. The Terrans have built a better drive and already tried it out. They’re about to test it farther and are unable to forecast its limits. For matter-bound folk they’re doing pretty well.”

“Evidently,” endorsed Charles.

“I’ve not yet been able to discover exactly how far they have gone or what data has been brought back by test pilots, but I know they’ve found enough to arouse suspicions that sooner or later they may collide with some other unnamed, undescribed life-form. You and I know that can only be the Denebs.” He wagged an emphatic finger. “We also know that the Denebs have long been milling around like a pack of hounds with five hundred trails to follow. They don’t know which way to go for the best, but their general trend is in this direction.”

“That is true,” put in Mavis. “But the last prognosis gave them a minimum of two centuries in which to discover this solar system.”

“A reasonable conclusion based on the data then available,” answered Raven. “Now we have a new and weighty item to include in our computations, namely, that Homer Saps will soon be rushing out to meet them. The flag is being hoisted, the smoke fires lit and everything is being done to attract attention to this neck of the cosmos. That kind of caper is going to cut down the time before the Denebs are in a hurry to look over what is here.”

“Have you reported this?” demanded Charles, fidgeting.

“Most certainly.”