Power, The (23 page)

Authors: Frank M. Robinson

BOOK: Power, The

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Tanner stared at the body and watched the water run down the dead man’s face and soak the clothes and collect in a puddle by the feet where the asphalt was a little lower. It still looked a little like Arthur Nordlund but the body was heavier and broader and the face was … handsome. The features were smooth and even, the mouth full and pouting. Somebody you would look at twice, somebody you would remember. Heterosis, Scott had written. Where two people of diverse racial stocks have children and the offspring retain all of the superior qualities of the parents and are superior to either.

Adam Hart.

The handsome gypsy boy from Brockton.

The man with the Power.

Dead. As dead as if he had been run over by a truck or knifed by thieves. Dead and all his dreams dead with him. But you couldn’t judge him like you would anybody else, Tanner thought. It wouldn’t be fair. He hadn’t been human.

Then he wondered how long it had been since he and Adam had stood there and faced each other. Five minutes? Ten? The police would be arriving at any minute. Then they would ask him why he had shot Nordlund. He would tell them a monster had been killed and they would stare at him coldly and somebody would say,
“He’s Commander Arthur Nordlund, Professor. I liked him a lot. I thought he was a very decent sort of human being.”

That’s what they all would say, that’s what … . But nobody would recognize the body on the ground as being Arthur Nordlund. Nobody would … .

No more running through the streets. No more hiding. The man with the Power was dead.

Dead.

Somebody was crying and he looked up. Marge stood a short distance away, sobbing softly. When she looked up at him the expression on her face was a curious mixture of loathing and repulsion and desire and awe.

Then he remembered
all
that had happened.

The committee meeting, so long ago. Somebody had moved the little paper umbrella. But if Hart had been the cautious type, would he have betrayed himself, even though Olson had thought he would? No. So somebody else must have moved it. He had gone all around the room. If somebody had had the Power and hadn’t known it, they would have moved it then.

He had asked everybody to try but he hadn’t tried it himself. Not until, to satisfy Olson, he had asked them all to try together. And then he himself had joined in and the little paper umbrella had obligingly moved.

He glanced back at the fun house. There was a small light bulb over the entrance and a loose, plastic shade on top. He stared at it and it moved slowly, then picked up speed.

Power, power, who had the Power?

He had.

And hadn’t known it.

Hart must have known immediately who and what he was then. And Hart had tried to kill him. But he had survived. That should have been the tipoff. For two whole weeks, despite everything that Hart could do. Three times Hart had tried to kill him. And had failed each time.

And the last time Hart’s pressure had finally primed the pump, had finally brought his own talents out into the open. Hart had probably been desperately afraid of that, but he had had to take the chance.

And there had been the clue of heterosis. The gypsy boy from Brockton, the far-superior offspring of mixed parentage. The one case where two and two had made five. And his own parents. The Santuccis on his mother’s side and the Tanners on his father’s. English and Italian. And his mother had been a sometime fortune teller and his father had foreseen the future when he had predicted his own death. They had had wild talents, talents they had passed on to him.

There had been other clues. The photographs for one. Hart had never taken a good photograph. And neither had he. The papers had never run one when he had been wanted for murder. They had never been able to find one that would have reproduced. And the photograph in the frame in Marge’s room. Hart had used her but Hart had never given her a picture.

But he had.

The blank sheet of photographic paper in the frame had been a picture of himself.

Why had Hart tried so desperately to kill him?

He thought about it for a minute, and then he knew. Hart hadn’t given a damn whether his own race procreated and grew and eventually replaced homo sapiens. He hadn’t cared whether his own children had lived or died. He had gotten on the committee for the sole purpose of eliminating others like himself.

So he, Tanner, had had to die. And the others on the committee had been slated for death because they had discovered that a man like Adam Hart existed—and they could have spread the information. And who was to say that if there were others like Adam Hart, they might not have tried to kill Adam for the same reason Adam would have tried to kill them?

In Hart’s mind, there had been room enough in the world for only one man with the Power.

It was funny, Tanner thought. Human beings, when they thought of the superman, invariably gifted him with a superhuman morality—the lust for personal power was not supposed to be one of his vices. But it hadn’t applied to Adam Hart.

And it didn’t apply to him.

He stood there in the darkness and shed his human identity like a snake shed its skin. He glanced at the animal that was crying a few feet away from him, then turned on his heel and strode towards the entrance, ignoring the wind and the rain and the exhaustion that had, after all, been only a
human
exhaustion.

Outside was the sleeping city, the lights glowing dimly in the shiny blackness. The lights that marched out from Chicago, down the highways and across the continents until they spanned the whole vast globe itself.

The thought occurred to him then, as it must have to Adam Hart years before.

It was going to be fun to play God.

You remind me of a man.
What man?
The man with the power.
What power?
The power of hoo-doo.
Who do?
You do!
Do what?
Remind me of a man.
What man?
The man with the power …

Also by Frank M. Robinson
from Tom Doherty Associates

The Dark Beyond the Stars
Death of a Marionette
Waiting

PRAISE FOR FRANK M. ROBINSON’S LAST NOVEL,
WAITING

“A Top-10 Book for the Summer”—NPR’s “All Things Considered”

“
Waiting
can be best described as an anthropological thriller … with nice action sequences and fine writing.
Waiting
is not a simple rewrite of
The Power.
It’s a different spin that offers loyal readers a glimpse of the author’s intelligence and wit.”

—
Mystery News

“
Waiting
is a thriller with smarts, and it is a pleasure to recommend. Characters are richly detailed, and the plot twists are fascinating as well as credible in this very fine novel. Robinson creates terror in everyday settings—there is no safe harbor.
Waiting
is a novel of suspense that makes you think about the larger questions of illusion and reality. What happens to your sense of self and its place in the world when you learn that someone you’ve known all your life is nothing like you knew? … Read
Waiting
with all the lights on and all the doors and windows locked, not that mere locks and lights will save you.”

—
Bay Area Reporter

“Robinson’s
Waiting
is not a sequel to the book that put him on the science fiction map,
The Power
, although it does connect to the earlier novel. Many readers regard
The Power
as the best book yet written about what a true superhuman being would be like, walking like an invisible god among men … . While this novel may not have the impact of
The Power,
it’s a very good book and, the two together provide an unusual example of an interesting science fiction theme looked at from two different perspectives.”

—
The Orlando Sentinel

“A spellbinding novel by acclaimed master of suspense Frank Robinson.”

—Playboy

“Jolting murders and mind-boggling speculations on the fate of homo sapiens coexist in this excellent book.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle
“Bay City Best”

“Suppose another species of human beings has been hiding on the planet for 35,000 years, waiting to take over. That’s the intriguing premise behind the latest thriller by Frank M. Robinson … a compelling tale.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“A truly frightening and plausible story about another species of human beings, in hiding for 35,000 years and now ready to take control of the planet … Robinson grips his readers by combining visceral fear with intellectual inquiry. This creepily credible tale will have his readers looking more closely at their so-called friends.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE POWER

The quotation “You remind me of a man …” on page 7 is from a routine which first appeared in the motion picture
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
, produced in 1947 by RKO Radio Pictures. Producer Dore Schary, screenplay by Sidney Sheldon. Used by permission.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Book design by Lynn Newmark

eISBN 9781466819535

First eBook Edition : April 2012

First Tor Edition: March 2000