Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

Dalgetty could imagine the primitive shudder in Thomas Bancroft, instinct from ages when the night was prowling terror about a tiny circle of fire. “All right. If you’re sure he won’t⁠—”

“I’ve got him well covered.”

“I’ll send over half a dozen guards just the same. Hold it.”

The men came running from barracks, where they must have been waiting for a call to arms, and closed in. It was a ring of tight faces and wary eyes and pointing guns. They feared him and the fear made them deadly. Elena’s countenance was wholly blank.

“Let’s go,” she said.

A man walked some feet ahead of the prisoner, casting glances behind him all the time. There was one on either side, the rest were at the rear. Elena walked among them, her weapon never wavering from his back. They went down the long handsome corridor and stood on the purring escalator. Dalgetty’s eyes roved with a yearning in them⁠—how much longer, he wondered, would he be able to see anything at all?

The door to Bancroft’s study was ajar and Tighe’s voice drifted out. It was a quiet drawl, unshaken despite the blow it must have been to hear of Dalgetty’s recapture. Apparently he was continuing a conversation begun earlier:

“… science goes back a long way, actually. Francis Bacon speculated about a genuine science of man. Poole did some work along those lines as well as inventing the symbolic logic which was to be such a major tool in solving the problem.

“In the last century a number of lines of attack were developed. There was already the psychology of Freud and his successors, of course, which gave the first real notion of human semantics. There were the biological, chemical and physical approaches to man as a mechanism. Comparative historians like Spengler, Pareto and Toynbee realized that history did not merely happen but had some kind of pattern.

“Cybernetics developed such concepts as homeostasis and feedback, concepts which were applicable to individual man and to society as a whole. Games theory, the principle of least effort and Haeml’s generalized epistemology pointed toward basic laws and the analytical approach.

“The new symbologies in logic and mathematics suggested formulations⁠—for the problem was no longer one of gathering data so much as of finding a rigorous symbolism to handle them and indicate new data. A great deal of the Institute’s work has lain simply in collecting and synthesizing all these earlier findings.”

Dalgetty felt a rush of admiration. Trapped and helpless among enemies made ruthless by ambition and fear, Michael Tighe could still play with them. He must have been stalling for hours, staving off drugs and torture by revealing first one thing and then another⁠—but subtly, so that his captors probably didn’t realize he was only telling them what they could find in any library.

The party entered a large room, furnished with wealth and taste, lined with bookshelves. Dalgetty noticed an intricate Chinese chess set on the desk. So Bancroft or Meade played chess⁠—that was something they had in common, at least, on this night of murder.

Tighe looked up from the armchair. A couple of guards stood behind him, their arms folded, but he ignored them. “Hello, son,” he murmured. There was pain in his eyes. “Are you all right?”

Dalgetty nodded mutely. There was no way to signal the Englishman, no way to let him hope.

Bancroft stepped over to the door and locked it. He gestured at the guards, who spread themselves around the walls, their guns aimed inward. He was shaking ever so faintly and his eyes glittered as with fever. “Sit down,” he said. “There!”

Dalgetty took the indicated armchair. It was deep and soft. It would be hard to spring out of quickly. Elena took a seat opposite him, poised on its edge, the tommy-gun in her lap. It was suddenly very still in the room.

Bancroft went over to the desk and fumbled with a humidor. He didn’t look up. “So you caught him,” he said.

“Yes,” replied Elena. “After he caught me first.”

“How did you⁠—turn the tables?” Bancroft took out a cigar and bit the end off savagely. “What happened?”

“I was in a cave, resting,” she said tonelessly. “He rose out of the water and grabbed me. He’d been hiding underneath longer than anybody would have thought possible. He forced me out to a rock in the bay there⁠—you know it? We hid till sundown, when he opened up on your men on that beach. He killed them all.

“I’d been tied but I’d managed to rub the strips loose. It was just a piece off his shirt he tied me with. While he was shooting I grabbed a stone and clipped him behind the ear. I dragged him to shore while he was still out, took one of the guns lying there and marched him here.”

“Good work.” Bancroft inhaled raggedly. “I’ll see that you get a proper bonus for this, Elena. But what else? You said.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes.” Her gaze was steady on him. “We talked, out there in the bay. He wanted to convince me I should help him. Tom⁠—he isn’t human.”

“Eh?” Bancroft’s heavy form jerked. With an effort he steadied himself. “What do you mean?”

“That muscular strength and speed, and telepathy. He can see in the dark and hold his breath longer than any man. No, he isn’t human.”

Bancroft looked at Dalgetty’s motionless form. The prisoner’s eyes clashed with his and it was he who looked away again. “A telepath, did you say?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Do you want to prove it, Dalgetty?”

There was stillness in the room. After a moment Dalgetty spoke. “You were thinking, Bancroft, ‘All right, damn you, can you read my mind? Go ahead and try it and you’ll know what I’m thinking about you.’ The rest was obscenities.”

“A guess,” said Bancroft. There was sweat on his cheeks. “Just a good guess. Try again.”

Another pause, then, “ ‘Ten, nine, seven, A, B, M, Z, Z⁠ ⁠…’ Shall I keep on?” Dalgetty asked quietly.

“No,” muttered Bancroft. “No, that’s enough. What are you?”

“He told me,” put in Elena. “You’re going