Talents, Incorporated by Murray Leinster (best sales books of all time TXT) 📕

or something similar.... If he'd known that, he'd never have dreamed of accepting it. He'd have flatly dismissed the ship-arrival prediction!

But, if he hadn't trusted the information enough to check on it, why, the small space-fleet of Kandar would vanish in atomic flame when it tried to take off to fight. With it would vanish Bors, and his uncle, and the king and many resolute haters of Mekin.

Gwenlyn said, "You're perfectly right, Captain."

"What's that?" asked Bors, numbly.

"It is stark-raving lunacy," said Gwenlyn pleasantly. "Just like it would have seemed stark-raving lunacy, once upon a time, to think of people talking to each other when they were a thousand miles apart. Like it seemed insane to talk about flying machines. And again when they said there could be a space-drive in which the reaction would be at a right angle to the action, and especially when somebody said that a way would be found to drive ships faster than light. It's lunacy, just like those things!"

"Y-yes," agreed Bors, his thoughts crowding one another. "It's all of that!"

Morgan nodded his head rapidly.

"I felt that way about it," he observed, "when I first got[33] the idea of finding and organizing Talents for practical purposes. But I said to myself, 'Lots of great fortunes have been made by people assuming that other people are idiots.' In some ways they are, you know. And then I said to myself, 'Possibly a fortune can be made by somebody assuming that he is an idiot.' So I assumed it was idiotic to doubt something that visibly happened, merely because I couldn't understand it. And Talents, Incorporated was born. It's done quite well."

Bors shook his head as if to clear it.

"It seems to have worked," he admitted. "But if I'd known—" He spread out his hands. "I'll play along! What more can you do for us?"

"I've no idea," said Morgan placidly. "Such things have to work themselves out, with a little prodding, of course. But one of my Talents says the lightning-calculator Talent is the one who'll do you the most good soonest. I'd suggest—"

There was a murmur of voices from the cabinet room. The door opened and King Humphrey came out. He looked baffled, which was not unusual. But he looked enraged, which was.

"Bors!" he said thickly. "I've always thought I was a practical man! But if being practical means what some members of my cabinet think, I would rather be a poet! Bors, do something before my cabinet dethrones me and tricks the fleet into disbanding!"

He stumbled across the room, not noticing Morgan or Gwenlyn. Bors came to attention.

"Majesty," he said, not knowing whether he spoke in irony or bewilderment, "I take that as an order."

The king did not answer. When the door on the other side of the room closed behind his unregal figure, Bors turned to Morgan.

"I think I've been given authority," he said in a sort of baffled calm. "Suppose we go, Mr. Morgan, and find out what your lightning calculator can do in the way of mental arithmetic, to change the situation of the kingdom?"

"Fine!" said Morgan cheerfully. "D'you know, Captain Bors,[34] he can solve a three-body problem in his head? He hasn't the least idea how he does it, but the answer always comes out right!" Then he said exuberantly, "He'll tell you something useful, though! That's Talents, Incorporated information!"

Chapter 3

There was a fleet on the way to Kandar. It could not be said to be traveling in space, of course. If there had been an observer somewhere, he could not conceivably have detected the ships. There would be no occultations of stars; no blotting out of any of the hundreds and thousands of millions of bright specks which filled all the firmament. There would be no drive-radiation which even the most sensitive of instruments could pick up. The fleet might be at one place to an observer's right—where it was imperceptible—and then it might be at a place to the observer's left—where it was undetectable—and nobody could have told the difference.

Actually, each ship of the Mekinese fleet was in overdrive, which meant that each had stressed the space immediately around it so that it was like a cocoon of other-space; as if it were out of this cosmos altogether and in another. In sober fact, of course, nothing of the sort had happened. An overdrive field changed the physical constants of space. The capacity of a condenser in an overdrive field was different from that of a condenser out of it. The self-induction of a coil in an overdrive field was not the same as in normal space. Magnetic and gravitational fields also did not follow the same laws in stressed space as in unstressed extension. The speed of light was different. Inertia was different. In short, a ship could drive at many hundreds of times the velocity of light and the laws of Einstein did not apply, because his laws referred to space that men had not tampered with.

But though ships in overdrive had to be considered as in[35] motion, and though their speed had to be considered as beyond the astronomical, there were such incredible distances to be covered that time piled up. Aside from double stars, there were no suns yet discovered which were less than light-years apart. The time required for travel between inhabited planets was still comparable to the time needed for surface-travel between continents on a world. So the fleet of Mekin, journeying faster than the mind could imagine, nevertheless drove and drove and drove in the blackness and darkness and isolation of each ship's overdrive field. They had so driven for days. They would continue to do so for days to come.

When Captain Bors burned the documents in the Ministry for Diplomatic Affairs, the enemy fleet might have been said to be at one place. When a submerged space-cruiser, planning assassination, was itself blown to bits with no chance to strike back, the Mekinese fleet was approximately somewhere else. When a cabinet meeting disheartened King Humphrey, the fleet was much nearer to Kandar. But days of highly-tedious eventlessness were still ahead of the war-fleet.

So Bors and Gwenlyn and Morgan got a ground-car and were driven to Kandar's commercial spaceport. There they found the Sylva. It was far larger than the usual space-yachts. There were commercial space-craft which were no larger. But it was a workmanlike sort of ship, at that. It had two lifeboat blisters, and there were emergency rockets for landings where no landing-grids existed. The armored bands of overdrive-coil shielding were massive. The Sylva, in fact, looked more like a service ship than either a commercial vessel or a yacht. It was obviously unarmed, but it had the look of a craft that could go very nearly anywhere.

"You'll find the Talents a bit odd," said Gwenlyn, as they drove up under the hull's wide bulge. "When they meet new people they like to show off. Most of them were pretty well frustrated before Father found a use for them. But they're quite pleasant people if you don't treat them like freaks. They're not, you know."

Bors had nothing to say. Until he was fifteen he'd lived on[36] Tralee, which was then a quiet, pacific world, as Kandar had been. As the nephew of a monarch at least as resolutely constitutional as King Humphrey, he'd been raised in a very matter-of-fact fashion. The atmosphere had been that of a comfortable, realistic adjustment to facts. He was taught a great respect for certain facts without being made fanatically opposed to anything else. He'd been trained to require reasonable evidence without demanding that all proofs come out of test tubes and electronic apparatus. He was specifically taught that arithmetic cannot be proved by experimental evidence, but that sound experimental evidence agrees with arithmetic. So he was probably better qualified than most to deal with something like Talents, Incorporated. But it was not easy for him.

The ground-car stopped. An exit-port in the space yacht opened and an extension-stair came down. The three of them mounted it. The inner lock-door opened and they entered the Sylva.

An incredibly fat woman regarded Bors with warm and sentimental eyes. A man no older than Bors, but with prematurely gray hair, nodded at him. A man in a chair lifted a hand in highly dignified greeting. Everyone seemed to know who he was. There was a blonde woman who might be in her late thirties, a short, scowling man with several jewelled rings on his fingers, and a gangling, skinny adolescent. There were still others.

Morgan addressed them with enthusiasm. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said. "I present Captain Bors! He's come to arrange to use your talents in the gravest of all possible situations for his world!"

There were nods. There were bows. The dignified man in the chair said confidently, "The ship was where I specified."

"Exactly!" said Morgan, beaming. "Exactly! A magnificent piece of work! Which is what I expected of you!"

He made individual introductions all around. Bors did not begin to catch the names. This was so-and-so, said Morgan, "our Telepath." Still another, "our ship-arrival Precognizer—he[37] predicted the coming of the liner, you remember." He came to the scowling man with rings. "Captain Bors, this is our Talent for Predicting Dirty Tricks. You've reason to thank him for disclosing that Mekinese cruiser underwater."

Bors followed the lead given him.

"There are many of us," he said, "with reason to thank you for a most satisfying operation. We smashed that cruiser!"

The scowling man nodded portentously. The introductions went on. The skinny adolescent was "our Talent for Locating Individuals." The enormously fat woman: "our Talent for Propaganda."

Bors was confused. He had to steel himself not to decide flatly that all this was nonsense. Morgan and Gwenlyn took him away from what appeared like a sort of social hall for these externally commonplace persons.

They arrived at a smaller compartment. It was a much more personal sort of place. Morgan waved his hand.

"Gwenlyn and I live here," he observed. "Our cabins are yonder and you might call this our family room. Gwenlyn finds the undiluted society of Talents a bit wearing. Of course, handling them is my profession, though I have some plans for retirement. We'll see our Mathematics Talent in a minute or two. He knows it's expected that he'll be the most useful of all our Talents at the moment. He will make an entrance."

Gwenlyn sat down. She regarded Bors with amusement.

"I think the Captain's halfway unconvinced again, Father."

"I'm not unconvinced," said Bors grimly. "I'm desperate. It's not easy either to ignore what's happened or to believe that it will continue. And I—well—if the Mekinese fleet does arrive, I don't want to miss going with our fleet to meet it."

"You won't miss anything, Captain," said Morgan happily. "Have a cigar. Gwenlyn, do you think I should—"

"Let me," said Gwenlyn. "I know how the Captain feels. I'm an outsider, too. I haven't any talent—fortunately! Sit down, Captain."

Bors seated himself. Morgan offered a cigar. He seemed too impatient and much too pleased to be able to sit down[38] himself. Bors lighted the cigar; at the first puff he removed it and looked at it respectfully. Such cigars were not easy to come by.

"I think," said Gwenlyn amiably, "that Father himself has a talent, which makes him not too easy to get along with. But it has had some good results. I hope it will have more here. The whole business is unbelievable, though, unless you think of some very special facts."

Bors nodded. He puffed again and waited.

"He told you some of it," said Gwenlyn. "About the ship arrival Talent and the dowser. There've always been such people with gifts that nobody's ever understood, but that are real. Only they've always been considered freaks. They feel that they're remarkable—and they are—and they want people to recognize this. But they've never had a function in society. They've been denied all function. Take the Mathematical Talent! He can do any sort of mathematics in his head. Any sort! He used to hire out to work computers, and he always got discharged because he did the computations in his head instead of using the machines. He was always right, and he was proud of his ability. He wanted to use it! But nobody'd let him. He was a miserable misfit until Father found him and hired him."

Bors nodded again, but his forehead wrinkled.

"Talents, Incorporated is merely an organization, created by my father, to make use of people who can do things ordinarily impossible, and probably unexplainable, but which exist nevertheless. There are more talents than Father has gathered, of course. But what good are their gifts to them? No good at all! They're considered freaks. So Father gathered them together as he found them. First, of course, he needed capital. So he used them to make money. Then he began to do useful things with them, since nobody else did. Now he's brought them here to help."

Bors said painfully, "They don't all have the same gift."

"No,"