Mission: Earth "The Enemy Within" (23 page)

I tried to tie the identoplate to my foot but my back got tired bending over to change the sheets. I toyed with the idea of going out and finding a blind beggar to do the stamping—but they whine so and I had had my fill of whining lately.

It was ten o'clock in the evening when I finished. I got a dolly and pushed the papers down the tunnel from my office and into the hangar. A couple of hangar men loaded them into the ship.

Bolz had a terrible hangover, fortunately, and there was no social chitchat. He had encased Too-Too in irons and locked him into a strongroom to which there was only one key. He had made sure the cartoned balls of opium were lashed down, the heroin bags wouldn't leak or roll about and that the cases upon cases of I. G. Barben speed wouldn't crush at high acceleration. He gave me a wincing farewell—I shook his hand too hard (I was so glad to see him go)—and went to his flight deck. The trundle dolly rolled. The airlocks clanged shut. The Blixo lifted its skinny, battered length up through the mountaintop illusion and was gone into the dark night. Six weeks from now it would, I hope, land uneventfully on Voltar and my main troubles would be solved.

Exhausted from my stamping labors, I went back to bed and slept the sleep of the cunning and the just.

It was almost ten o'clock the next morning when I got around, much refreshed. I lolled over breakfast in my room, and when the waiter had gone, I decided to take a turn in the yard.

I was expecting nothing. My mood was optimistic. As I looked up from the patio at the open sky above, I could see that it was a fine autumn day.

The door from the patio to the yard was shut. It had a small port in it—the Romans were cautious people. More from habit than from fear, I glanced through the small port before I opened the yard door.

I froze!

Sitting on the grass! Sitting on the grass, tossing an object into the air and catching it! Sitting on the grass was GUNSALMO SILVA!

I flinched back!

My world went topsy-turvy!

What was HE doing there? HE was supposed to be DEAD!

I peeked cautiously. He had not seen me. He was

just sitting there tossing whatever it was. But what was it? It was about fourteen inches long, it was narrow, it was black.

A sawed-off shotgun! I think they are called a "leopard" by U.S. gangsters. They saw off the barrel and they saw off the stock and it leaves a sort of pistol. But what an awful pistol! A double-barrelled, twelve-gauge smoothbore! It could blow a hole in a man a dog could jump through and do it twice!

What was he doing here?

Only one conclusion could be reached. He knew I had put the finger on him and he had come here to kill me!

I abandoned all thought of going for a walk!

Silently I withdrew to my room.

I closed and double-barred my bedroom door.

I opened the passage to Faht's office and went tearing down it as fast as I could run.

Somewhat out of breath, I burst in upon Faht.

"There's a man in my front yard!" I said without preamble.

Faht Bey was going over some accounts. He looked up tiredly. "Probably it's part of this mess with the American consul." He saw I didn't understand. "The shooting," he explained. "The one you got the alibi for. Things were very calm here before you arrived."

"What American consul?" I shouted at him.

"Don't you know about American consuls? They got two main duties. One of them is to claim the bodies of dead Americans. The other is to protect live Americans from justice and make sure they get thrown in any foreign jail that's handy. And of course, there's the other secret duty of running the CIA."

"What's going on?" I screamed at him.

"There's no use to pretend you don't know," he said.

"Couple of days ago, there was a shooting in a local rooming house. A guy named Jimmy 'The Gutter' Tavilnasty went into a room and got shot to pieces. A man named Gunsalmo Silva was arrested. He's been on our lines, Gris. He came in on the Blixo and you know it. You ordered us to deliver him to that rooming house and we did. And he killed this Tavilnasty."

"What happened?" I pleaded.

"The police arrested this Silva and threw him in the jug. The American consul from Ankara came in here to claim the body and ship it home and Silva heard there was an American consul in town and he insisted on seeing him, claiming to be an American citizen. We got scared they would take Silva and maybe interrogate him but that didn't happen. The American consul verified Silva was an American citizen, so of course they demanded the court put him in prison on bread and water. But the local police said it was self-defense and they let Silva go. They don't like foreign interference. The consul was awfully mad at the lack of international cooperation but he left on the morning plane with the body of Tavilnasty. Now do you understand?" He didn't really want to know. "If the man on your front lawn is squat, very muscular, black hair, black eyes, swarthy complexion, then that's Gunsalmo Silva. But it's all handled." He fixed a beady eye on me. "How is it there always seems to be trouble where you've been and how come you always show up later when everything is handled?"

Handled? "My Gods, what do you mean, handled? He's sitting on my front lawn with a sawed-off shotgun!"

"Oh, well," said Faht Bey. "Details, details."

I saw I wasn't going to get any help there. I turned to leave and I swear I heard Faht Bey mutter, "And good luck to him." But I was shaking too hard to take it up at that moment.

Going back through the long, long tunnel, I regained my room.

A thousand plans began to race through my head and tangle with each other.

I half-loaded a ten-gauge shotgun and then left it. I couldn't splatter Silva all over the front lawn. It would leave evidence. And besides, if I stuck my head out that yard door, he might shoot first!

I could not cower here in my room for weeks. I had to work this out!

Sitting down, I took a piece of paper and a pen. I began to write down everything I knew about Gunsalmo Silva. It is a last-ditch sort of exercise. Out of it can come a masterstroke.

The first thing that hit me was that I didn't have to pay Tavilnasty any commissions. That was on the good side of the ledger.

The next thing was that Gunsalmo Silva was sitting on my front lawn. That was not on the good side of the ledger.

What did I really know about this gangster? He had been "Holy Joe" Corleone's bodyguard but had acted as the triggerman in wasting him. He had had some trifling information that the Spiteos interrogator had gotten out of him about senators in the pay of organized crime. Ah. And he didn't have very good sense: he had called for an American consul.

But there was something else. It was eluding me. Then I had it. He was now hypnotrained in Apparatus techniques! A graduate of that school! Yikes! He was deadly!

I cursed Bawtch for having delayed his execution order to be stamped. Leave it to Bawtch to mess things up. But then, Bawtch was cared for.

That was all I could come up with. I paced. I went back and forth. There wasn't much space to pace in and I barked my shins.

Hypnotraining! That was it! I knew I could come up with something masterly!

Right there in that very room were sixteen hypnohelmets. If I could get some guards to shoot a paralysis dart into him from a distance, I could get a helmet on him and untrain him!

Now, let's see. What did I know about hypnosis? Actually, I had never studied it very much. I wanted to be very sure of what I was doing.

I got out my Earth psychology textbooks. I looked the subject up. Psychologists on Earth use hypnotism all the time. They are the masters.

It said that hypnotism was known to most primitive races and that it was used by priests in ancient times, which proved religion was no good—psychologists don't like religion, it is a threat to their racket.

But hypnotism, it continued, was of great use to the psychologist. You could use it to seduce girls. As that was its primary use, it got me off on another track. It opened some new vistas. Thoughts of Utanc were never far away and I began to wonder if maybe I couldn't hypnotize Utanc and make her be sensible, which is to say, get into my bed.

Then my attention fell upon something awful. The text said that hypnotism was of very limited use because only about 22 percent of the people were potential hypnotic subjects and the rest couldn't be hypnotized. And as the psychologist had as his goal the mastery and puppetizing of ALL the people, the tool was in disrepute.

It was a sad blow. Even if I mastered spinning spirals in front of Utanc's face or got her to look at a swinging bright object, she might be one of the 78 percent. And I doubted I could make her stand still that long.

But wait! Hypnohelmets! Hadn't I seen some literature? I opened the vault. I fished around in the box of the one I'd used on Too-Too. When I had made the strip, I had just done what I had seen Krak do. There was probably more to this.

Aha! A little manual! I opened it.

Hypnotism, it said, was a tool applicable in the reenforcement or eradication of memory, or the substitution of false memories for actual ones. Now we were getting somewhere!

It said any emotion could be suppressed or heightened. Aha! I could order Utanc to love me!

Then it said that primitive hypnotism only worked on about 18 percent of the subjects. This was a discrepancy and it bothered me. Earth psychologists never lie. At least not about statistics.

However, the manual plunged on. It seemed that the mind had several wavelengths. The helmet approximated two of these. First was the sleep wave, and by parallelling this, one could produce a trance state. The second wave the helmet employed was the thought wave. Anything carried along on this wave—from a recorded strip or direct speech to the helmeted subject—was accepted by the subject as his own thought and was retained. Thus, hypnotism became effective on 100 percent of the subjects. Subjects were at the total effect of the helmet. You could do anything with the helmet that could be done in any hypnotism. However, its primary use was speed-training. Any skill or language... I had learned my languages with such a helmet under Krak....

Suddenly, with a wave of horror, I recalled the terrible experience I had had after Krak had put a helmet on me and told me I would feel sick if I harmed Heller! What agony!

I dropped the manual as though it were spouting fire!

These helmets were DANGEROUS!

I had ordered Krak to arrive.

Supposing she put another helmet on me!

The thought was so awful that I almost ran out of the room to get away from the helmets.

I checked myself in time. I must not go out on that lawn!

I made myself sit down on the other side of the room from the helmets. I had to think.

Maybe I should destroy them. I could get a disintegrator from the hangar shops.... No, wait! These helmets were valuable. I could use them to seduce any girl I wanted. I could get the staff to bow and slaver whenever I appeared. I could make Utanc love me and that was the important thing.

Oh, yes. And I could untrain Gunsalmo Silva and make him get the idea he was needed at the North Pole. Under the ice.

No, I mustn't destroy these helmets. Maybe I'd never get out of this room unless I used them. Gunsalmo had gotten Tavilnasty. Apparatus trained, maybe he'd get me no matter what I did.

Obviously, the right answer was to hit him with a paralysis dart, get a helmet on him and send him off to burrow in the ice.

Good.

But under no circumstances did I want to take any chance of MY getting a helmet put on me by Krak or anybody else!

I got nerve enough to examine a helmet again. There was a little light in front that showed it was on.

Wait! That light was not part of the mind-wave circuit.

INSPIRATION!

I would be able to get out of this room through the yard, seduce all the girls I wanted, make people bow to me and make Utanc love me with devotion!

With no risk to myself!

Using the communicator system to the hangar, I sent for the technician who had installed the new emergency-alarm system. He soon came in through the hangar tunnel.

He was a cocky, self-confident type, a little runt named Flip, product of Wiggo, one of the Voltar planets. Nobody had ever persuaded him to comb his hair Earth style: it stood up in two spirals, like twin antennae.

"Alarm system don't work?" he said.

I sat him down. I handed him the hypnohelmet and the box it came in. "There is a grave emergency," I said. "These just came in on the Blixo. They work on everybody."

He looked the hypnohelmet over. Count on a technician. They never look on the outside of anything. He instantly began to look inside and open up the guts. Then he paused. "If they work, what am I doing fixing it?"

"You don't understand," I said patiently. "I've got sixteen of these. I want them fixed so that they only work when I want them to work. I want them fixed so that on some people, they appear to be working when they are not working at all."

He probed around in it. "Well, that's easy. The light on the front that shows the operator it is working isn't part of the main circuit. It can go on independently. So we just put a switch on it and it goes on but the main circuit doesn't."

"It's more complicated than that," I said. "I want the operator to turn the helmet on and think that it is working but on some people it works and some it doesn't. Now, I thought if you could put some kind of a secret switch inside the helmet that only the one it is put on can turn off, it would solve the problem."

"Oh, you mean the guy inside the helmet should be able to turn it off while the operator thinks it is still on. Right?"

"Right. Now, I was thinking that very few people can wiggle their ears. I can wiggle my ears. It is a talent I have. So if the operator put a helmet on me and I wiggled my ears—let's say three times—the helmet would be off when the operator thought it was still on."