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

you’ll do just as you’re told, because if anything goes wrong we’ll have nothing at all to lose by shooting you.” Dalgetty rapped out his orders.

Bancroft looked at Elena and there was more than physical hurt in his eyes. “Why did you do it?”

“F.B.I.,” she said.

He shook his head, still stunned, and shuffled over to the desk visiphone and called the hangar. “I’ve got to get to the mainland in a hurry. Have the speedster ready in ten minutes. No, just the regular pilot, nobody else. I’ll have Dalgetty with me but it’s okay. He’s on our side now.”

They went out the door. Elena cradled her tommy-gun under one arm. “You can go back to the barracks, boys,” said Bancroft wearily to the men outside. “It’s all been settled.”

A quarter hour later Bancroft’s private jet was in the air. Five minutes after that he and the pilot were bound and locked in a rear compartment. Michael Tighe took the controls. “This boat has legs,” he said. “Nothing can catch us between here and California.”

“All right.” Dalgetty’s tones were flat with exhaustion. “I’m going back to rest, Dad.” Briefly his hand rested on the older man’s shoulder. “It’s good to have you back,” he said.

“Thank you, son,” said Michael Tighe. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be free again.”

IX

Dalgetty found a reclining seat and eased himself into it. One by one he began releasing the controls over himself⁠—sensitivities, nerve blocs, glandular stimulation. Fatigue and pain mounted within him. He looked out at the stars and listened to the dark whistle of air with merely human senses.

Elena Casimir came to sit beside him and he realized that his job wasn’t done. He studied the strong lines of her face. She could be a hard foe but just as stubborn a friend.

“What do you have in mind for Bancroft?” he asked.

“Kidnapping charges for him and that whole gang,” she said. “He won’t wriggle out of it, I can guarantee you.” Her eyes rested on him, unsure, a little frightened. “Federal prison psychiatrists have Institute training,” she murmured. “You’ll see that his personality is reshaped your way, won’t you?”

“As far as possible,” Simon said. “Though it doesn’t matter much. Bancroft is finished as a factor to be reckoned with. There’s still Bertrand Meade himself, of course. Even if Bancroft made a full confession I doubt that we could touch him. But the Institute has now learned to take precautions against extralegal methods⁠—and within the framework of the law we can give him cards and spades and still defeat him.”

“With some help from my department,” Elena said. There was a touch of steel in her voice. “But the whole story of this rescue will have to be played down. It wouldn’t do to have too many ideas floating around in the public mind, would it?”

“That’s right,” he admitted. His head felt heavy, he wanted to rest it on her shoulder and sleep for a century. “It’s up to you really. If you submit the right kind of report to your superiors it can all be worked out. Everything else will just be detail. But otherwise you’ll ruin everything.”

“I don’t know.” She looked at him for a long while. “I don’t know if I should or not. You may be correct about the Institute and the justice of its aims and methods. But how can I be sure, when I don’t know what’s behind it? How do I know there wasn’t more truth than fiction in that Tau Ceti story, that you aren’t really the agent of some nonhuman power quietly taking over all our race?”

At another time Dalgetty might have argued, tried to veil it from her, tried to trick her once again. But now he was too weary. There was a great surrender in him. “I’ll tell you if you wish,” he said, “and after that it’s in your hands. You can make us or break us.”

“Go on then.” Her tone withdrew into wariness.

“I’m human,” he said. “I’m as human as you are. Only I’ve had rather special training, that’s all. It’s another discovery of the Institute for which we don’t feel the world is ready. It’d be too big a temptation for too many people, to create followers like me.” He looked away, into the windy dark. “The scientist is also a member of society and has a responsibility toward it. This⁠—restraint⁠—of ours is one way in which we meet that obligation.”

She didn’t speak, but suddenly one hand reached over and rested on his. The impulsive gesture brought warmth flooding through him.

“Dad’s work was mostly in mass-action psych,” he said, making his tone try to cover what he felt, “but he has plenty of associates trying to understand the individual human being as a functioning mechanism. A lot’s been learned since Freud, both from the psychiatric and the neurological angle. Ultimately, those two are interchangeable.

“Some thirty years ago one of the teams which founded the Institute learned enough about the relationship between the conscious, subconscious and involuntary minds to begin practical tests. Along with a few others I was a guinea pig. And their theories worked.

“I needn’t go into the details of my training. It involved physical exercises, mental practice, some hypnotism, diet and so on. It went considerably beyond the important Synthesis education which is the most advanced thing known to the general public. But its aim⁠—only partially realized as yet⁠—its aim was simply to produce the completely integrated human being.”

Dalgetty paused. The wind flowed and muttered beyond the wall.

“There is no sharp division between conscious and subconscious or even between those and the centers controlling involuntary functions,” he said. “The brain is a continuous structure. Suppose, for instance, that you become aware of a runaway car bearing down on you.

“Your heartbeat speeds up, your adrenalin output increases, your sight sharpens, your sensitivity to pain drops⁠—it’s all preparation for fight or flight. Even without obvious physical necessity the same thing can happen on a