The Fenris Device (11 page)

“But Charlot has no superiors,” she said.

“Exactly. But do they know that? What do they know about Charlot? Nothing. Or next to nothing. What can they find out about him? Without violating status, next to nothing. They know he's a big man in the Library. Obviously, they want to contact the top man in the Library. But they don't know the difference between New Alexandria and the tinpot data collation agency on Pallant. They send the message to Ferrier—one of the most absurd cases of mistaken identity on record, but given the Gallacellan methods, quite plausible. Ferrier, of course, thinks it's a joke. He reads it out to his office staff. There's some phrase about destroying moons—maybe the message isn't so very good English—and Ferrier shows off how erudite and witty he is by making that crack about the Fenris device. But Maslax is eavesdropping, and he doesn't see the joke. Minutes later, the joke turns sour. And here we are. Dead meat, the lot of us. All because of a bloody silly mistake.”

“I wasn't eavesdropping,” said Maslax.

“No,” I said, with tired sarcasm, “you were reading the letter through Ferrier's eyes by sheer power of mind. Great stuff. But if you read my mind now you'll find that I've had just about enough. Why don't you give me the gun and the bomb-trigger and let's all pack it in and go home?”

He wasn't impressed. He was still determined to send the entire population of Pallant to keep Ferrier and his girlfriend company in the fires of Hell.

“Mr. Grainger,” said Ecdyon, interrupting. “There's a ship trying to contact us.”

“The
Cicindel
?”

“I think it's the ship from Pallant. The
Gray Goose
.”

“You'd better...,” I began. But all this going over Maslax's head seemed to have upset him a little.

“I'll talk to them,” he said. “You just keep quiet. Grainger, if you open your mouth I'll blast you. Now just keep quiet. You—let's hear what they want to say.”

Ecdyon fiddled with the controls, and then stepped back. As he moved, he staggered slightly.

There was a moment's silence. Then we heard the man on the
Gray Goose
begin a standard call signal. He addressed us as “the ship out of Leucifer V” and reeled off his identification codes. Then he paused and waited. I heard a muffled sound as he said something to one of his fellows—he was probably wondering if we could hear him.

“Can you hear me?” said Maslax, tentatively.

“Hello?” said the other. “Hello? Are you aboard the vessel from Leucifer V? Please identify yourself.”

“This is Maslax,” said Maslax. He had a keen sense of melodrama but no sense of propriety.

“Who is in command of this vessel?” asked the policeman.

“I'm in command,” said Maslax. “This vessel is under my orders.” He sounded oddly calm and proud. He knew that only his voice was reaching the police ship. They couldn't see him. They had only his voice and what he said by which to judge him. If his voice was calm and strong and proud, then so was he as his voice went out on the circuit into space. This was his moment, and he knew it.

“What ship are you?” asked the policeman. “Identify yourself.”

“This is the
Varsovien
,” said Maslax. The statement had a majestic simplicity that authorized identification procedure seems to lack.

“You are ordered to surrender yourself and your ship,” said the other, after a brief pause for a whispered consultation. “You are under arrest. We intend to board you.”

Just at that moment, the deep note of the
Varsovien
's drive changed. It was a very subtle change, and only a pilot would have noticed it. I did. Eve did. We exchanged a glance. We were building up to tachyonic transfer. We were going to go transcee.

“If you come any closer,” said Maslax, who was still relishing his role as Captain Blood, “then we shall open fire and destroy you.”

There was another muttered consultation aboard the
Gray Goose
.

“What do you intend to do?” asked the policeman. I had been hoping that he wouldn't ask that. He wasn't going to like the answer.

“The
Varsovien
is bound for Pallant,” said Maslax, which was a blatant lie, because we didn't even know which direction we were headed. “We intend to annihilate all human life on the planet.”

The whispered conversation seemed to get heated.

They had to make a decision on the spur of the moment. It was a tough decision. I hoped against hope that they weren't going to be silly, but I was hoping against the odds. Cops are cops.

“Our instruments show that you will make transfer in about one and a half minutes,” said the policeman. “We'll give you just one minute. If you don't slow down within that time and acknowledge that we may board you, then we will fire on you.”

Maslax looked at Ecdyon.

“Destroy that ship,” he ordered.

“No,” said Ecdyon.

“I order you to fire on that ship,” Maslax repeated, tight-tipped. He was still playing his role.

“No,” said Ecdyon.

“He's a Gallacellan, Maslax,” I said. “He could no more fire on that ship than you could destroy it by spitting at it. It's just not in him to do it.”

Seconds were ticking by.

Maslax turned his attention to me, but he pointed the gun at Eve.

“Then you do it,” he said.

“I don't know how,” I told him.

“The alien will tell you how. You will fire on that ship.”

I shook my head. “No I won't,” I said.

“You'll fire,” he repeated. “Quickly. If you don't, I'll kill the woman.”

I just kept shaking my head. “I'm not going to do it,” I said. “You have the gun, you've had it all along the line. You've always been able to shoot. You still can. But it won't do you any good at all. I'm not going to fire on....”

We heard—but did not feel—the impact of a missile somewhere in the bowels of the ship. I heard the distant sound of bells, and the muffled grating of machinery coming into operation. The note of the drive changed again. The automatics had changed their mind about transfer. We were decelerating again.

“...that ship,” I finished.

We all looked around a little furtively, as if unsure that we had a right to be still alive. But of course we were still alive. The
Gray Goose
was an ant and we were a whale. We hardly felt the bite. It was a nuisance, an inconvenience, but it wasn't going to do any substantial damage.

“I don't think they should have done that,” I remarked.

Meanwhile, aboard the
Gray Goose
, they had noticed our deceleration. They took it as a sign of our capitulation.

“Calling
Varsovien
,” said the voice. “We are approaching. Don't try anything or we'll blast you again. We intend to board you and we advise you to surrender.”

“Shut it off,” said Maslax to Ecdyon. The Gallacellan made no move, and Maslax repeated the command, his voice getting nastier. Ecdyon complied.

The dwarf returned his attention to me. “Destroy that ship,” he said, yet again.

“No,” I said, patiently and firmly.

“If you don't destroy the
Gray Goose
,” he said, “then I'm going to destroy the
Hooded Swan
. He raised his left arm. The half-empty gauntlet on the end dangled its fingers in the most absurd manner.

I'd known, of course, that it had to come to this eventually. I'd already made up my mind what to do—not that there was any real question about it. There was no threat in the world could make me fire on the
Gray Goose
or anyone else.

“Maslax,” I said levelly, “you have already destroyed the
Hooded Swan
. When you activated this ship and lifted from Mormyr, you destroyed the
Hooded Swan
as surely as if you had triggered that bomb. There's only you and us, Maslax, that's all. You have the gun. But I'm not going to fire on that ship, nor is Eve, nor is Ecdyon. Nor are we going to tell you how. Any destruction you have thoughts of carrying out is going to take place right here in this room. No one is going to shoot down the
Gray Goose
, much less is anyone going to fire a shot at Pallant. There's nothing you can do, Maslax. Nothing at all. Except shoot the three of us, with that one little gun. And even then, you might not get us all. You've nothing left, Maslax, nothing at all.”

I almost wished for a moment that he could really read minds. Because then he'd know that I meant it.

Maslax hesitated.

“We're changing course,” said Ecdyon, anxious to take some of the tension out of the showdown.

“Why?” I asked, keen to help him. Maslax was still wavering.

“I think we're turning away from the groove that the
Gray Goose
is coming in on,” he said.

Presumably we were programmed to take evasive action after having been fired upon.

“Better hear what the
Gray Goose
thinks about that,” I said. Ecdyon turned the call circuit back on.

We just had time to hear them threatening to fire before Maslax howled “No!” and hurled himself on Ecdyon. Ecdyon towered above the tiny man, but the impetus of Maslax's leap knocked him sideways against the panel and obviously brought a wave of pain from his wound. Ecdyon crumpled up and Maslax ran his hand randomly over the switches. The policeman's voice cut out abruptly.

I went to help Ecdyon, while Maslax leaned against the instruments, uncertain where to point the gun, uncertain whether to shoot and who to shoot at if he did. He was angry, and frustrated, but be was scared as well. He had lost control of the situation, his fantasies of a colossal revenge had been dissolved. He was helpless, despite the fact that he still had the gun and the bomb. He just didn't know what to do. There wasn't anything he could do, except take, it out on us. He wasn't going to do that, because we were all the audience he had. We were all the people there were who had seen that Maslax wasn't just a crawling insect, wasn't just a butt for everyone's laughter, a repository for all their spare hatred. We were the only people who could testify to his real power and his real existence.

I knew he wouldn't kill us then. Not all of us at once. He needed company more than he needed corpses. When it came to the last act—the final corner—well, that was a different matter. Then he'd shoot. He'd shoot, and he'd keep on shooting till they got him. But not yet. We had time, if nothing else.

There was the dull sound of another impact, and I guessed that the
Gray Goose
had opened fire again. If in doubt, shoot it out. Stupid bastard cops, I thought. I helped Ecdyon rise to his feet again. He was weak; I had to take a lot of his weight. He was hurt badly. The lips of his foremouth were writhing helplessly, and I could see the rows of teeth inside—grinding teeth, not sharp, cutting teeth.

There were long minutes when he didn't look at the instruments, when Maslax came away from the wall and backed up toward the door as Eve moved in to see if she could help. For those few moments, Ecdyon was occupied solely with himself.

When he looked back again at the panel where he'd been attending to the call circuit and following the course of events he made a sudden, sharp noise like a cat coughing, and then a sibilant whisper that sounded like a groan. I thought it was his injuries, but I was wrong.

“The...ship...,” he said painfully.

We waited.

“The...other ship,” he said. “It's gone.”

“What do you mean—gone?” I asked him, though I knew very well what “gone” meant.

“It's not there,” he said. “There's not even the dust. Not an atom. Gone completely, disintegrated. There's a sphere surrounding the ship. A sphere in which nothing exists. Its radius is nearly five hundred thousand miles. We're still moving. Even the dust—it's just disappearing.

“The Fenris device...it's on.”

“The switches,” said Eve. “When he hit the switches with his fist and the caller cut out. He must have switched it on then.”

“No,” said Ecdyon. “There is no such switch. Not there. All he did was switch off the call circuit. The sphere had nothing to do with that.”

“It must have come on automatically,” I said. “When the second missile hit us. The first teed it up. The second set it off. It's independently programmed, just like everything else aboard this damned ship.”

Maslax was only just coming around to realizing what had happened.

“The
Gray Goose
,” he said. “It's dead?”

“Not an atom left,” I said, feeling quite sick at the thought.

“I did it,” he said. “I did it. I killed them. I showed them what I can do, didn't I? They'll be sorry they ever....”

“They'll be sorry, all right,” I cut him off. “But there's nothing left of them to show it. You didn't do it, you stupid little bastard. It was the ship.”

It was risky, I suppose, calling him names like that. But I felt like it.

“I did it,” said Maslax.

“If he wants to think he did it,” Eve said to me, “you'd better let him think he did it. No point in provoking him.”

“He didn't have anything against them,” I said. “What did they ever do to him?”

“They shot at us,” said. Eve.

“Honi soit qui mal y pense,”
I quoted, with savage sarcasm. I still remembered what happened to the last ships that shot at me. Their own missiles had set in process a reaction which destroyed them. I hadn't been sorry then—not in the least. But this didn't seem quite the same, somehow. Just an ant stinging a whale.

“I cannot tell,” said Ecdyon, “but I think that there is nothing in our path, and we are traveling quite slowly.”

“We aren't going to swallow any moons, then?” I asked.

“No moons,” he said. Then: “Wait. The
Cicindel
—the other ship—it is behind us, coming on—they do not know—they cannot be aware....”

He reached out for the switches that operated the call circuits, but Maslax jumped forward across the room and brought the butt of his gun hard down on the stretching fingers.

Ecdyon yelped, and I sagged under his weight as he swayed and transferred it from the console to my shoulder.

“No!” said Maslax. “Let them come!”

“Those are Gallacellans,” I said. “That's the
Cicindel
—the ship which brought the message that sent you off on this crazy stunt. That's not a ship out of Pallant—the men on board it aren't even human. They're Gallacellans, damn it! You can't possibly have anything against them. They never hated you. They couldn't hate you. Your crazy ideas have nothing to do with them. You can't want them to be killed.”

“Leave those switches alone,” said Maslax.

“We have to warn that ship,” I said. “They don't know what happened. They must think we fired on the
Gray Goose
. They're coming to investigate. They must know that this ship isn't in Gallacellan hands. They didn't want it brought up from Mormyr in the first place. You must let us tell them not to come any closer.”

“No,” he said. “You wouldn't blow up the
Gray Goose
for me. I won't save the
Cicindel
for you.”

“I'm going to do it,” I said. “You can shoot me if you like.” I reached for the switches, realizing as I did so that I didn't know what to do, and turning my head toward Ecdyon, who had swayed back against the wall by now. While my head was turned, Maslax slammed the gun-butt down on my fingers just as he had on Ecdyon's.

It hurt. Had the console been flat and smooth he might have split the fingers, but as it was the panel sloped considerably and my fingers slipped between the switches. Nothing was broken and the skin was not cut. But I am inordinately sensitive about my fingers. I'm a pilot, and a pilot's life is in his fingertips. Even a bruise can mean the difference between life and death in a delicate balance in distorted space. I really wanted to clench my fist and knock Maslax across the room. I am not by nature a violent man but at that moment I felt close to murder. Self control intervened, however, and I listened, instead, to what Maslax was saying.

“Touch those switches again,” he threatened, “and I'll burn your hand off.”

“How long?” Eve asked the Gallacellan.

“If neither ship changes speed,” said Ecdyon, consulting the screens and the dials and calculating in his head, “I think about twenty minutes.”

We had just twenty minutes to take Maslax, by force, by stealth, or by persuasion. Just twenty minutes, because I was determined that the
Cicindel
shouldn't follow the police boat to oblivion.

Come on, I said to the wind, think of something, damn you!

You're bigger, you're faster, said the wind.

Not that way, I said. Not while he can press that trigger. There has to be another way. An easier way.

There's only one other way.

Tell me.

He's got a weak mind. He's mad. Break him.

I looked hard at the ugly, malevolent face of the little man. He was looking right back at me, and he was waiting—waiting with the gun, because he knew I was going to try something and he wanted to kill me. I could read it in his face—I didn't need telepathy. He actually wanted to give himself the pleasure of shooting me, and he was just waiting for me to give him the reason.

“What am I thinking, Maslax?” I rapped out. “Come on, tell me. Show me this mind reading talent of yours. Tell me what I'm thinking.”

“Hate and fear,” he said tautly. “Hate and fear.”

I shook my head, and made every effort to sneer at him. “Wrong,” I said. “That's wrong. I'm not afraid of you. I don't even hate you. Try again, Maslax. Tell me what I'm thinking. Give me the words. Come on, you read the words, don't you? There are words, up here, inside my head. Tell me what they are, Maslax. You can't read minds at all, can you? And you know it. I can take you Maslax, can't I? I can take you because you can't read my mind. You don't know what I'm going to do.”

“I can read your mind,” he said. But there was an edge in his voice. I was beginning to shake him. I'd picked out his weak spot. I was attacking his fantasies.

“Show me,” I invited. “Give me the words. Come on, tell me. What are the words?”

“Cripple!” he said.

“Wrong.”

“Hate—loathing—foul!”

“Wrong.”

“Animal—insect—spider!”

“Wrong.”

He screamed. “You're lying!”

“I'm not lying,” I told him, keeping my voice level. “I'm not lying. You have the words wrong, Maslax. You can't read. But I don't want you to take my word for it. I'm going to prove it to you. I'm going to prove beyond every last vestige of doubt that you're wrong, and then you'll have to see it. Do you know how I'm going to do it? You should, if you can read my mind. You should know exactly how I'm going to do it. Come on, Maslax, tell me. How am I going to prove you wrong? What am I going to do?”

I took a step forward, and he took a step back. He was frightened—really saturated with fear. I was astonished. Words, only words, but I had him moving backward. I had him retreating. The gun didn't matter. I had the weapon that mattered now—the only weapon that mattered. I took one more step forward and the stark terror in his eyes was a joy to behold.

“Come on,” I said, my voice still quiet, but taking on a tone of calculated menace, “tell me. What am I going to do? I'm going to prove you wrong, aren't I? I'm going to prove to you that you can't read minds. And you know I'm going to prove it because you don't know what I'm going to do. Isn't that right? You know, don't you? You know I'm going to prove it.”

I knew exactly what he was going to say and I was ready for him.

“You're not!” he squealed in anguish. “You're not because you can't. There's no way. There's nothing you can do. Nothing!”

“Nothing?” I said. “Nothing? Is that what I'm going to do? Nothing—because there's nothing I can do? Well, how about this, Maslax?”

And I took from the pocket of my jacket a pack of playing cards. I don't have many personal effects—I don't even wear a watch—but I do like to carry a pack of cards. Sometimes, I just turn them over, playing patience. It calms me after a flight. Sometimes, I seek out a game—a gambling game—because that soothes my nerves as well. Ever since Johnny took up gambling to pass away dead time on New Alexandria I'd been carrying this pack so that I could relieve him of a little of his pay now and again. With owing Charlot so much, I was always a little starved for cash.

Maslax looked at the pack of cards as if it were a rattlesnake about to bite him. He raised his gun and pointed it—not at me, but at the cards in my hand. He was afraid of those cards. He was afraid because he hadn't known they were there, and he was afraid because he knew what I was going to do with them.

“What's the matter, Maslax?” I asked him. “You can't be afraid of a little test of skill, now can you? You can read my mind, remember? There's nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all. Here, I'll show you what we're going to do. I'll explain this little game we're going to play. I'm going to hold the pack in my hand, like this, so I can see the bottom card. I'm going to look at it hard, and concentrate on it. And then you're going to tell me what it is.”

I riffled the cards once, and then held them up so that the card at the bottom was facing me. It was the seven of diamonds. I was just about to start, when it suddenly occurred to me that maybe—just maybe—I was wrong. Or maybe—just maybe—he would accidentally call the right card. It would only take once, just the first time, for the whole campaign to fall down. I riffled again, left fifty-one cards in my left hand, held between two fingers, and palmed one in my right hand. The one I palmed was the seven of diamonds—the facing card in the pack was now the jack of spades. It didn't matter now what card he called—I had one with which to prove him wrong.

“Call it,” I said, holding the pack up in front of my face. “Call the card.”

His mouth was open; he was staring. He was trying to speak, trying to force words out, but they wouldn't come. They wouldn't come because he was afraid.

“Come on, Maslax,” I taunted. “You can do it. You can read my mind. Just tell me what the card is.”

He went back one pace more, and would have gone two, but the wall stopped him; he was backed right up against it. He stammered, and he looked at the pack of cards the way people had been looking at him for years—or so he thought.

He finally got it out. “It's the jack,” he said. “The jack of spades.”

For a moment, my heart almost stopped beating.

I pretended to pull the card out, and produced the red seven from my right hand. I threw it at him, and he watched it flutter as if he were mesmerized by it. While he was watching it I shuffled the pack again and palmed another card—the three of diamonds—ready for a repeat performance. The seven settled face-up.

“There's your jack of spades,” I said, loading all the mockery I could muster into my voice. “What's the next one? Come on, Maslax, really show us what you can do.”

The new card facing me in the pack was the ten of hearts.

Maslax was breaking apart. “The jack,” he said again. “It's the jack of spades.”

I plucked the ten out of the pack and I let it fall, exposing it as I did.

“The next one, Maslax,” I said. “Call the next one. Read my mind.”

He moaned, and called the jack of spades for the third time. I turned the pack in my hand, still holding them. The bottom card was the six of clubs.

“Well,” I said. “You don't seem to be able to read my mind after all.”

He howled, and I threw the pack at the ceiling.

He fired, and the cards cascaded into a cloud of fire.

I dived forward, grabbed his left arm, and rammed the elbow back into the wall. I groped for the empty gauntlet, and felt the hard lump of the trigger device free of his nerveless, paralyzed fingers. Ecdyon, who had uncoiled into a long dive the moment I was out of the way, was grappling with the dwarf's gun hand, but it was no longer necessary. Maslax had crumpled up, and dropped the gun as if his right hand were as deadened as his left.

Eve picked it up.

We let him go, and turned back to the console where the screens still shone and the tape outlets ticked quietly away, dropping slow streamers onto the floor. A couple of smoldering cards clung to the console; the rest had fallen to the floor. I stamped out the remaining flames. There was a long dark scar on the ceiling where the beam had burned the plastic.

I felt weak. It was all I could do to stop my knees shaking. I'd piloted ships through the worst conditions imaginable, and I'd felt afterward as if I were fit to die. But I'd never felt quite like I felt then. It was only then that I realized that Maslax's naked fear had escalated at the same rate as my own deeply buried panic. When he called that first card correctly I had felt a wash of pure horror, but I had simply not recognized it. It suddenly struck me that I would never know whether Maslax had read my mind or not. I would never know whether I might not have beaten him by simply feeding him my own fear.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Call that ship,” I said. “Warn them off.”

I continued absorbing my state of tension, getting my self back into a state of calm, not paying any attention to what was going on around me now that all was well again. It was some moments before I realized that all was not well.

While those moments were wandering by, Eve was staring at me, and her realization that I wasn't aware was just as slow. Eventually she said, “Grainger,” in a very low voice.