The Lost Perception (3 page)

Nodding in her direction, the director observed, “Not a few ‘know what the Screamies are’ after they’re released from sedation: mankind’s evil catching up with him; the Second Coming; bugs imported from Lunar or Mars Base before we recalled those establishments; monstrous shadows out of space eating into our brain.”

Still muttering, the woman drew up numbly before a window at the end of the hall.

At the entrance to the morgue, Radcliff paused. “What you’re about to see is the body of a would-be assassin. Two days ago he made an attempt on the life of the provisional President of Italy, who is also a member of the Security Bureau’s Advisory Council. Our assassin was shot down trying to escape. Skin along with him was a Sicilian.”

They went inside and drew up at the nearest tagged drawer in one of many tiers that reared to the ceiling.

“The assassin was killed outright,” Radcliff resumed. “But we were able to question the Sicilian a bit before he died. Most of what he said, however, seemed almost incoherent—until we examined the assassin’s body.” He pulled open the drawer.

Reluctantly, Gregson looked down at the pale, rigid features of a middle-aged man whose head was almost bald. The nose was thin and long. The lips, small and compressed, seemed to soften the sharpness of a tapering chin. His complexion was olive, grayed somewhat by the pallor of death.

“Here’s another exhibit.” Radcliff reached into the drawer and displayed four false fingernails.

Then he brought the agents around to the side of the drawer and pointed to the man’s hand. There were no nails—only a crescent-shaped incision on the upper surface of each finger. And it was apparent that the artificial nails could be inserted into the surgical slots.

“Good Lord!” Wellford exclaimed.

“This,” Radcliff went on, “calls itself a ‘Valorian’—according to the Sicilian who was with him. But the Sicilian died before we could get very much more than that out of him.

“On the basis of experiences, however, we may reasonably entertain a number of conclusions. The first is that there must be quite a few Valorians among us. Another was killed yesterday in the attack on our generating station at Tehran. One was shot down two weeks ago trying to intercept a supply craft.”

“Sounds like a rather broad base of action,” Wellford observed.

The director agreed. “And it appears humans are involved in all instances.”

“You mean there are people who would conspire with—these?” Gregson said, pointing at the body.

“You have just led us to another conclusion. The Valorians must be quite persuasive. We don’t know how, but they evidently have means, forcible or otherwise, of insuring our cooperation. The Sicilian, for instance, believed he was helping the Valorians ‘save humanity.’”

“From what?”

Radcliff shrugged. “Variously from ‘itself,’ from ‘the Screamies’—even, at one point, from ‘the Security Bureau.’”

Wellford turned finally from the corpse to stare at the director. “But what
are
the Valorians trying to accomplish here?”

“Learning the answer to that question is going to be the primary mission of all special SecBu agents.”

“Seems to me,” the Englishman suggested, “that our immediate necessity is a Valorian we can question.”

The director’s eyebrows arched alertly. “Yes. But that is where we face our severest limitations. We know that the Valorians are overwhelmingly persuasive. So, above all else, we’ll have to be on guard against being deluded—as so many other people in Valorian-human cells have apparently been.”

Gregson looked up. “This all undercover?”

“Naturally. We don’t want to say anything publicly until we are in position to say something reassuring. I’ll want you two to work together out of New York for the present. If this whole thing is a challenge against world authority, it’ll eventually take some form of action against Security Bureau Headquarters there.”

From the corridor came the sound of breaking glass and a frantic scream that fell off in the distance. Gregson reached the hallway first. Before the shattered window he found an orderly staring blankly toward the ground below.

“She kept saying she knew what the Screamies were,” he murmured disconsolately.

“Then I saw she was going to take the suicide route. But I couldn’t stop her.”

From his office in the old United Nations Secretariat Building, Gregson stared out into the clear autumn morning. Under its perpetual mantle of flitting hoppers, Manhattan had always impressed him as a vast field of erect corpses with carrion flies buzzing about their heads. But now there were no hoppers, just as there was little traffic in the post-Nuclear Exchange streets.

Somewhere below another spent hypodermic’s siren sent its frantic wail out in search of the nearest Screamer Pickup Squad.

Wellford strode loose-jointedly into the office and leaned back against the desk. “So we sit on our hands in our plush quarters and wait—but for what?”

Security Bureau Headquarters were, Gregson conceded, indeed plush. Gutted by the swiping force of the blast that had demolished Yonkers and created a new Hudson River bay, the top several floors of the Secretariat Building had had to be condemned. But the rest of the structure, having responded to reconditioning, now served admirably as administrative center for the coordinated world-wide reconstruction effort and the struggle against the Screamie plague.

“I said,” Wellford repeated, “what are we waiting for?”

“If Radcliff’s hunch is right, you’ll get action sooner or later.”

“I should prefer it sooner—less anxiety that way.”

“At least the bureau isn’t drawing a complete blank.”

“That affair in the Pyrenees last week? It was next to nothing. Not very much satisfaction in smashing an
evacuated
base, then letting the plane that led you there get away.”

Gregson bent forward for a better view of First Avenue below. His attention was somehow drawn to an ancient car passing slowly in front of the Secretariat Building. It pulled almost to a stop, then moved off, turning left on Forty-Fourth.

Wellford went over to the window. “The entire matter strikes me as being somewhat ridiculous—an aggressive culture that’s conquered interstellar space and has designs on Earth, yet chooses to sneak in through the back door and do nothing more than snip at our heels,”

“Maybe you can’t apply human logic to Valorian strategy.” Gregson stared more intently into the street.

“Seems to me all logical systems must be equivalent I say—what has got your attention down there?”

“That car. What do you notice about it?”

“Seems to be chugging along on nothing but guts and low-grade petrol. And it appears rather interested in the Secretariat Building.”

“‘Rather’ is right. That’s its third or fourth time around. There it goes—back out Forty-Fourth.”

“Well, then,” the Englishman said. “Supposing we have a closer look when it completes the fifth lap.”

Outside, Gregson and Wellford pushed past the cordon of blue-uniformed International Guardsmen. They crossed the lawn, skirting the access driveway—at the same moment that the Security Bureau director’s limousine pulled in from the street.

Wellford stared at the car while it braked to a stop. “That chap with the director—he looks familiar.”

“Ought to. He’s Frederick Armister, Governor of New York.”

“Oh, but of course. Remarkable character, I understand. An ex-Screamer, isn’t he?”

Gregson nodded, remembering last year’s campaign. Armister’s pitch had been a memorable one: “You can’t afford
not
to have an ex-Screamer as your governor. My candidacy is the only one that guarantees administrative continuity, unbroken by consignment of the chief executive to an isolation institute.”

But, then, that same argument had won political office for many another candidate who had successfully surmounted the Screamie barrier. In the same manner, corporations seeking to stabilize their top managerial echelons had long since begun elevating ex-Screamers to executive positions.

Alighting from the limousine, the director held the door open for Armister—a somewhat nondescript little man with a sallowish complexion and pinched cheeks.

In the next instant, though, Radcliff blanched and shoved the governor back into the car, diving in after him.

Simultaneously, the inquisitive automobile heaved back into sight. It leaped the sidewalk and veered across the lawn, an obsolete automatic rifle thrust through its right window.

Gregson brought Wellford down out of the line of fire with a crushing body block.

The rifle discharged an entire clip. But Radcliff had managed to close the limousine’s door and the slugs only ricocheted off armor-plated panels.

The attacking car completed its sweeping turn and headed back into the street—just as a half dozen laser weapons sliced the air in its wake.

One of the Guardsmen succeeded in beaming the left rear tire and the vehicle caromed into a truck at the next intersection. Its two occupants scurried away under the van, escaping out Forty-Third.

With the Englishman only a step behind, Gregson lunged off in pursuit, spurred by realization that the driver of the car bore features almost identical to those of the Valorian corpse in Rome—olive complexion, a thin face with compressed lips and tapering chin, and only a fringe of hair.

Charging into Forty-Third, he immediately spotted the pair. Halfway down the block, they were sprinting along a sidewalk just beginning to fill with the tide of noonday office workers.

Apparently incapable of maintaining the pace set by his obviously human accomplice, the Valorian faltered in stride. At the corner of Second Avenue, he broke off impulsively to the right, leaving the other to continue his flight along Forty-Third.

Reaching the intersection first, Gregson saw that the alien had not quite succeeded in losing himself in the crowd on Second Avenue.

He lunged off in pursuit of the Valorian, indicating that Wellford should continue on after the other fugitive.

A moment later the alien floundered into a shopper, bounced off and collided with another before falling against a building. But he saw his pursuer closing in on him and stumbled off again. At the intersection of Second and Forty-Fourth, however, he missed the curb and dropped to a knee.

Recovering his footing, he glanced frantically over his shoulder, then pushed on across the street, turning right on Forty-Fourth and heading toward the river.

Finding even the thinning sidewalk crowd too much to buck, he plunged back into the street, staggering across the traffic lanes. He barely missed being struck by one car, came up sharply against the fender of another that had screeched to a stop, them made his way clumsily to the opposite sidewalk.

Scarcely a hundred feet behind the Valorian now, Gregson put on a burst of speed and wedged through several pedestrians to close
in
on his quarry.

The slight man clung desperately to a wall, his chest heaving, eyes casting frantically about for an avenue of escape. Then he deliberately jammed his hand into a coat pocket and at once seemed to generate a second wind.

A moment later he was racing ahead, no longer appearing either injured or exhausted.

He deftly avoided oncoming pedestrians, took to the roadway, nimbly side-stepped cars, and continued his flight down the other sidewalk.

Now it was Gregson who found himself becoming winded and lagging in pursuit Up ahead, an automobile careened across the traffic lanes and smashed into another and its driver hung out the window and began shouting his lungs out. Even as Gregson raced by, somebody was administering a hypodermic to the new Screamer.

Then Gregson caught sight of the fugitive once again—just as the Valorian plunged into an alley. But pursuit was further complicated by two persons who had gone Screamie within moments of each other and had fallen writhing to the sidewalk.

He leaped over the second and, charging into the alley, saw that the Valorian had come to bay against an insurmountable mound of still uncleared rubble.

More deliberately now, Gregson started forward, caution slowing his pace almost to a stalk. Behind him, a trio of hypodermic sirens was filling the canyon of Forty-Fourth Street with shrill, baleful cries.

The Valorian, fright heightening the severity of his features, sidled off into a recess between two buildings on bis right.

Then Gregson fell abruptly to bis knees and clutched his face.

Oh, God!
he thought
Not now! Not a Screamie seizure—now!

But all the malevolent, roaring light ever spawned in a hateful universe, over billions of years of existence, was searing his brain. Only, it wasn’t radiance at all, but something uncanny, terrifying, agonizing. It was as though a flimsy barrier had been viciously torn aside to expose him to the brutal onslaught.

Sagging to his knees, fighting desperately to ward off the attack, he realized at last that he was shrieking out his anguish. And he was remotely aware of his own hands fumbling at the flap of his self-injection kit. Somehow he managed to withdraw the bulky hypodermic syringe.

But he almost dropped the instrument as a new wave of fire washed over bis senses, almost obscuring his consciousness, sending great rivers of lava coursing in angry, gushing torrents through his brain.

But he
couldn’t
go Screamie! He
had
to hang on. For if he surrendered to the attack, he felt certain, it would be bis very last act of volition.

Slowly, the fires abated. Then, as though he had somehow found means of restoring the barrier between himself and torturous insanity, the seizure was over and he sat in the dirt of the alley, uncontrollably sobbing off the final effects of the attack.

Briefly, he hid his despair behind the glowing hope that perhaps the Screamies
could
be rejected, could be resisted by the sheer strength of indomitable will power. Could he continue to hold out—indefinitely?

Then, remembering the Valorian, he rose and started forward on legs almost incapable of bearing his weight.

To the right of the mound of debris, off in the darkened, narrow recess between the two buildings, he found the cringing Valorian. But he drew up warily.

What tactics would he encounter? What racially-evolved faculties of attack and defense? How could there be any way of anticipating the alien’s assault potential, his limitations? How did you go about challenging someone whose strength, prowess and reflexes you couldn’t begin to evaluate?

Momentarily, they stared uncertainly at each other while Gregson berated himself for having been caught unarmed in such a predicament. Then he remembered the hypodermic syringe that was still in his hand. But would the injection be effective on a Valorian?

Impulsively, he charged, wielding the needle like a rapier.

But the Valorian stepped nimbly aside and the hypodermic slipped harmlessly past his shoulder.

Gregson recovered his balance, drew back again and drove the needle forward once more. But, again, the alien was entirely prepared for the thrust and readily eluded it.

Annoyance finally overcoming caution, Gregson hurled himself upon the alien and caught his head in the grip of an arm.

As though having foreseen the move, however, the latter fleeted out of what would have been a viselike headlock. At the same time his hand came up to seize Gregson’s other arm and impel it on in the swinging arc it had already begun.

That motion was originally to have jabbed the needle into the Valorian’s neck. The man’s head being no longer in his grip, however, Gregson winced as the syringe pierced his own left biceps instead.

The siren went off instantly and the alien stepped back to let Gregson sag forward into unconsciousness.

As though from the infinite reaches of space came Manuel’s resonant but soundless voice. Trembling in their incoherence, the words strove to convey strange, compelling concepts. But they were concepts that could not be put into words. Thus, the flow was not one of unspoken language at all, but rather of inchoate ideas, terrifying in the very emptiness of their meaning.

It was not the first time Arthur Gregson had experienced an ephemeral flash of empathy—with his twin. There had been the
Nina’s
trial run to Pluto before her cosmic transmitter was installed. The ionic accelerators had slipped out of phase. In that moment of impending disaster, he had somehow
known
of Manuel’s peril.

This time, Gregson sensed, it was a different kind of emotion Manuel was undergoing—something so utterly alien that it could not be categorized in the framework of human experience. Indescribable reflections of the other’s sensations came as though from a Screamer’s agonized mind.

Yet, Manuel seemed to be telling him not to be afraid, for the shadow of isolated ignorance was crumbling before the searing light of truth and soon all the strangenesses would be familiar. And again and again, as though with shouted impact, came the word symbols
zylph
and
rault.
But they were concepts utterly without meaning, provocative, shards of semantic nothingness.

An almost unfamiliar calm settled over Gregson’s threshing thoughts and he convinced himself that the parapsychological contact with Manuel had all been a fantasy.

Or had it? The bridge of empathy that he had occasionally experienced—could it span billions of miles? Or was it possible that his brother was somewhere on Earth, perhaps the captive of a creature such as the one he had just confronted in the deserted alleyway?

Recollection of the victorious Valorian brought his head abruptly off the pillow and he stared up into Wellford’s face just as the latter’s concerned expression was being supplanted by a grin.

“Welcome back to the ranks of the pre-Screamers,” the Englishman greeted. “Although we had a deuce of a time convincing the Pickup Squad that you were the victim of some sort of skulduggery. You came fairly close to winding up in an isolation institute, you know.”

Gregson saw that he was in the Secretariat Building’s infirmary. “What happened?”

“I rather hoped you’d be able to tell us that.”

“I… I had him. But somehow he made me inject myself.”

“We surmised as much. Crafty affair, this human-Valorian thing.”