Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (53 page)

“What if I show that during my youth I self-consciously suppressed my powers, knowing that I was a freak? What if I show that the alleged coincidence of four similar freaks in a bunch is attributable to no more than that like clings to like?”

“It may suffice or it may not,” Lomax evaded. “We shall hear pretty soon.” His face suddenly squirmed from some inner torment and beads of perspiration popped out on his forehead. He pulled himself together, displaying an iron will. “If you’ve anything more to offer now’s the time.”

Looking around the room Raven
saw
the scanner lens, the recorder leads buried deep in the wall, the tiny pin in the floor near Lomax’s right foot, the connections running from it to a machine in the cellars. Without any difficulty whatever he could examine the machine and estimate the efficiency of the lethal ray it was designed to produce.

He and Leina had become aware of all these features at the very first. It would have been easy to detach various leads by remote operation, teleportatively, without moving from the pneumaseat. It would have been easy to jam the pin or break the power supply to the concealed executioner below. Despite Lomax’s belief to the contrary, the way out lay wide open and had been from the start—unfortunately a successful break would have been a complete giveaway.

The present situation showed too much had been revealed. At whatever cost suspicions must be lulled in manner carefully calculated to create false conclusions and, at the same time, the sources of forbidden information must be removed, plausibly and forever. The shadowy figures at the other end of the recorder system must be fed soothing data on which they could compute and get the wrong answer every time.

Concealment was the paramount issue. No fragment of truth must lurk in any biped mind lest someday it be extracted by others. Humans lived in protective ignorance and should continue to do so at whatever cost. A little knowledge could be a highly dangerous thing. They must be denied it for ever and ever and ever.

As for the freedom beckoning beyond the armorplate door, it was only a poor, restricted, third-rate kind of liberty. The freedom of a child to play in the street. The freedom of a babe to wet its triangle and shake its rattle, the freedom of a caterpillar to crawl to mock safety around the underside of a leaf.

Casually his hand touched Leina’s, making them of one accord. There were scanners to watch what was about to occur, they would require care. Then there was only the blind, idiot recording system, the little pin, the lethal projector.

“There are and always have been unknown mutants in addition to known ones,” he said, making it pleadingly persuasive. “It is a fact that makes ancestral data inadequate and misleading. For example, if my maternal grandfather, being an unmitigated scoundrel, took great care to conceal his hypnotic powers which he preserved solely for illegal purposes, it stands to sense that—”

He broke off while Lomax had another spasm of internal agony that bent him forward. Before Lomax could recover, Leina obligingly contributed a startled yelp of, “Oh, David, look!” and right on top of it shouted,
“What’s the matter, Lomax?” 
At the same moment both minds thrust with irresistible strength through the other’s mental shield. Lomax had no time to inquire what the devil they were talking about, no time to deny that anything was the matter, not even a split-second to recover and wipe the brief pain from his face. He heard Leina’s exclamation and Raven’s following question, both uttered in tones of shocked surprise, then came the fierce stab at his brain. He faltered farther forward. The reactive circuit sprang into instantaneous operation. Automatically his foot rammed down on the hidden pin.

For a fragmentary moment his mind shrieked aloud, “I’ve done it! Heavens above, I’ve—!”

Then the cry cut off.

There followed a period of soul-searing chaos and absolute bewilderment. Lomax did not know, could not tell whether it was long or short, a matter of seconds or eons. He did not not know whether it was now light or dark, cold or warm, whether he was standing up or lying down, moving or still.

What had occurred when he pressed that pin? Had some new and awful device been tested on himself and the other two guinea pigs? Had it hurled him into the past, the future, or some other dimension? Or worse still, oh, infinitely worse, had it added a mutilated mind to his mutilated body?

Then it struck him that he could no longer sense the throbbing agony that had made his life a personal hell these last two years. Sheer surprise and an overwhelming flood of relief stopped his mind’s mad whirling. He began to coordinate slowly, uncertainly, like a little child.

It now seemed that he was floating either up or down amid a mighty host of brilliant bubbles, large and small. All around him they drifted lazily along shining in superbly glowing colors while among them pale wisps of smoke wreathed and curled. He was, he thought, like a tiny, rudderless boat on a wide, iridescent and bubbly river.

The pain had gone, unbelievably gone, and now there was only this sleepy, dreamy swaying along the mainstream of blues and greens, crimson and gold, starry sparklings of purest white, fitful gleams of silver, momentary flashings of little rainbows, on, on into the infinitude of peace. He was slumbersome and content to slumber for ever and ever, for as long as time goes on.

But then his mind stirred as a sense became active and prodded it into reluctant attention. It now seemed that with the palely coiling wreaths of smoke amid the bubbles came an immense multitude of voices that somehow were not really voices but could be heard or sensed or understood and all speaking one tongue.

Some talked in quick, staccato phrases from places tremendously afar. Others were nearer and more leisurely. It was strange that while each had a sort of mental audibility he could also tell—somehow, he did not know how—the precise direction from which each one came and the exact distance of its source relative to the others. A few were near him, very near, voicing mysterious things among the curls of smoke, the spheres and the colors.

“Stay with him!”

“He may have no reason to be vengeful but stay with him—we want no more dangerous impulses like Steen’s.”

“Said he was ready for this so he should be quicker to adapt.”

“It’s never easy no matter how ready one may be.”

“He must learn that no man can be an enemy.”

“The flower cannot hate its own seeds nor the bird its eggs.”

More senses sprang into operation even while he wondered whether this was the delirium of mental mutilation. In a confused, out-of-focus way he became conscious that the entities he had known as Raven and Leina were still present, sharing his dream environment. They were holding him without actually touching him, drifting with him through the mists and the bubbles. They were not the same yet he knew who they were beyond all doubt. It was as if he could now see what was to be seen if one looked right into them.

All at once this hazy sense of perception that was not sight cleared itself, adjusted, swung into full and complete functioning. The myriad bubbles fled away as if blown by a mighty breath and took up new positions at enormous distances. They were suns and planets, glowing and spinning within the great spaces of eternal dark.

His new vision was non-stereoscopic, devoid of perspective, but had in lieu an automatic and extremely accurate estimation of relative distances. He
knew
merely by looking which bubbles were near, which far, and exactly how much farther.

Still with the other two in attendance, he heard one cry, “Charles! Charles!” and a reply eerily vibrating from far away, “Coming, David!” The names used were not those names but he thought of them as those names because he could not grasp the new ones—though somehow he knew to whom they referred. This phenomenon did not arouse his curiosity or stimulate his mind to speculation, for he was concentrating on the vision of the bubble-filled cosmos and overcome by its incomparable wonder.

The surfaces of many spheres could be “seen” in splendid detail. On a lot of them strange creatures lived and swarmed, hoppers, creepers, crawlers, flutterers, flame-things, wave-form entities, beings of infinite variety and most of them low in the scale of life.

But one widespread form was high. It had a long, thin, sinuous body covered in dark gray hide, a well developed and efficient brain, many dexterous limbs and e.s.p. organs. It enjoyed telepathic power confined to its own special band. Its individuals could compute as individuals or combine mentally to compute as a mass-mind.

These things roamed far and wide in slender, pencil-shaped, jet black space vessels, exploring other worlds, patroling the gulfs and chasms between, mapping, charting, reporting to numerous bases and always ceaselessly searching, searching.

The Denebs!

In their own esteem these were the lords of creation. Absorbing data being fed to him from he knew not where, Lomax understood a lot about the Denebs. They stood right at the top of the life-scale of bubble-bound creatures, had great tolerance of all other life-forms considered lower than themselves. To these they did no harm, regarding them as satisfactory targets for patronizing superiority. But the Denebs had one great shortcoming—they could not abide the notion of sharing the cosmos with a life-form equal to themselves—or higher.

And there was one still higher!

So for countless centuries the Denebs had been feverishly seeking the home world or worlds whence came unbearable competition. They would destroy rivalry at its source—if the source could be found. Their black ships prowled and poked and probed and searched amid the endless multitude of bubbles, disturbing but not destroying the hoppers, creepers, crawlers, and sometimes nosing around the colonies of little white grublike bipeds established on many widely separated spheres.

Lomax felt a peculiarly intense interest in this last type of creature. Poor little grubs, squirming and wriggling around, building or trying to build or hoping ultimately to build rudimentary, ramshackle rocketships that never would touch more than a fringe of creation. Mournful grubs, sorrowing ones, ecstatic ones, ambitious ones, even petty dictator-grubs.

In all probability there were individuals among them slightly better endowed, talented above the grub-norm. These would think themselves superior merely because they could exercise a minute, fragmentary portion of powers entirely normal but said to be supernormal. Some could, perhaps, read other grub-minds to the pitiful limit of a bubble’s horizon. Some could, perhaps, fascinate another grub, creating fear of themselves by compelling obedience.

Doubtless every colony of them had developed a grub-culture, a grub-philosophy, a grub-theology. Being unable to conceive anything infinitely higher, some might go so far as to think of themselves as made in the image of a mighty super-grub.

Now and again one more daring than the rest might have sneaked from the hiding place of its own grub-conditioning and peered furtively into the dark and seen a great, bright-eyed moth like a nocturnal butterfly beating gloriously through the endless night. And it would cower down, sorely afraid, totally unable to recognize—itself!

An enormous surge of life filled Lomax’s being as the data filed itself and became estimated. The grubs! The nestlings! Alive with tremendous power, he saw Raven and Leina, Charles and Mavis as he had never seen anyone before. They were with him still, helping him, watching him, urging him to adapt to the environment.

The little two-legged grubs, he was crying. Ours! Our nestlings waiting their natural metamorphosis! If the Denebs—long unable to recognize them for what they are—should now learn the truth from one discerning mind in one colony they will systematically destroy the lot. If one grub learns too much, all may be slaughtered from one end of the heavens to the other.

“Never!” assured the one he had known as Raven. “It will never be known to any of them. There are two watchers in every nest, each living inside a grub-body taken with permission of its former owner exactly as I took the body of David Raven with his permission. They are guardians. They enter in pairs. It needs one to watch, but two to break earthbound solitude.”

“The place we left,
you
left?”

“Two more already have gone in.”

They began to leave him, moving silently into the immense deeps that were their natural playfields. The Denebs were highest of the bubble-bound, but
these, 
the higher ones, were bound to nothing once their childhood’s grub-existence had ended. They went like wide-eyed, supersensitive, multi-talented creatures of the great spaces.

Those pale, weak two-legged things, wondered Lomax, what had they called themselves? Oh, yes, Homo Sapiens. Some among them were precocious and hence regarded themselves as Homo Superior. It was pitiful in a way. It was pathetic.

As instinctively as a baby moves feet it is not consciously aware of possessing, or a kitten similarly puts forth claws, so did he spread huge, shining, fan-shaped fields of force and swoop in the wake of his fellows.

He was alive as he’d never been alive before. And filled with a fierce exultation.

For he knew what he had become and what the little white grubs had yet to be.

Homo In Excelsis!

Call Him Dead, (Three to Conquer)
is a thriller; there’s no way around that. It doesn’t have a lot of the underlying themes present in much of Russell’s other work, and the authorities, once roused, are (almost uniquely for Russell) competent. On the other hand, it’s one of the great examples of the pure paranoia-inducing tale and in many ways it’s kin to
Sinister Barrier
in its theme (only, in this case, “we are property” becomes “we might
become
property.”) It’s also one heck of a good read.

The novel is very much in line with an entire school of alien takeover tales, ranging from Campbell’s classic “Who Goes There?” through the contemporaneous
Puppet Masters
of Heinlein to the body snatchers of Jack Finney. In one sense, it goes back to the earliest paranoid fears of demonic possession.