Telzey checked in at the Morrahall Hotel in Orado City that evening, had an early dinner, and thereupon locked herself into her room. The impression she'd left at Pehanron College was that she would be spending the night with her family. Her parents, on the other hand, naturally assumed she was at the college. She'd programmed the ComWeb to have calls coming in at the college, at home, or to her car, transferred to the hotel room—if the caller, having been informed that she was busy and much preferred not to be disturbed before morning, felt there was justification enough for intruding on her privacy.
The semifinals of the annual robochess district championship series had begun, and she was still well up among the players. There should be two or three crucial games tonight, very little sleep. She wanted all the seclusion she could get.
She got into a casual outfit, settled down at the set, dialed herself into the series. Five minutes later, she was fed an opening move, an easy-looking one. She countered breezily. Six moves on, she was perspiring and trying to squirm out of an infernally ingenious trap. Out of it, though not unscathed, just ahead of deadline, she half closed a rather nasty little trap of her own.
Time passed in blissful absorption.
Then the ComWeb rang.
Telzey started, frowned, glanced at the instrument. It rang again. She pushed the Time Out button on the set, looked at her watch, switched on the ComWeb. "Yes?" she said.
"A caller requests override, Miss Amberdon," the ComWeb told her.
"Who is it?"
"The name is Wellan Dasinger."
"All right." Telzey clicked in nonvisual send, and Dasinger's lean tanned face appeared in the screen. "I'm here," she said. "Hello, Dasinger."
"Hello, Telzey. Are we private?"
"As private as we can be," she assured him. Dasinger was the head of Kyth Interstellar, a detective agency to which she'd given some assistance during the past year, and which in turn was on occasion very useful to her.
"I need information," he said. "Quite urgently—in your special study area. I'd like to come out to Pehanron and talk to you. Immediately, if possible." This was no reference to her law studies. Dasinger knew she was a psi; but neither he nor she referred to psi matters directly on a ComWeb. He added, "I realize it can't be the most convenient hour for you."
Dasinger wasn't given to overstatement. If he said a matter was quite urgent, it was as urgent as matters could get. Telzey depressed the Concede button on the robochess set, thereby taking herself out of the year's series. The set clicked off. "The hour's convenient, Dasinger," she said. "So is the location."
"Eh?"
"I'm not at the college. I took a room at the Morrahall for the night. You're at the agency?"
"I am." The Kyth offices were four city block complexes away. "Can I send someone over for you?"
"I'll be down at the desk in five minutes," Telzey told him.
She slipped into sportswear, fitted on a beret, slung her bag from her shoulder, and left the room.
There were three of them presently in Dasinger's private conference room. The third one was a Kyth operator Telzey hadn't met before, a big blond man named Corvin Wergard.
"What we want," Dasinger was saying, "is a telepath, a mind-reader—the real thing. Someone absolutely dependable. Someone who will do a fast, precise job for a high fee, and won't be too fussy about the exact legality of what he's involved in or a reasonable amount of physical risk. Can you put us in contact with somebody like that? Some acquaintance?"
Telzey said hesitantly, "I don't know. It wouldn't be an acquaintance; but I may be able to find somebody like that for you."
"We've tried the listed professionals," Wergard told her. "Along with some unlisted ones who were recommended to us. Mind-readers; people with telepathic devices. None of them would be any good here."
Telzey nodded. No one like that was likely to be much good anywhere. The good ones stayed out of sight. She said, "It might depend on exactly what you want the telepath to do, why you want him to do it. I know it won't be anything unethical, but he'll want to be told more than that."
Dasinger said, "It may concern a murder already carried out, or a murder that's still to come. If it's the last, we want to prevent it. Unfortunately, there's very little time. Would you like to see the file on the case? It's a short one."
Telzey would. It was brought to her.
The file was headed: Selk Marine Equipment. Which was a company registered on Cobril, the water world eighteen hours from Orado. The brothers Noal and Larien Selk owned the company, Larien having been involved in it for only the past six years. For the past four years, however, he alone had been active in the management. Noal, who'd founded the company, had been traveling about the Hub during that time, maintaining a casual connection with the business.
A week ago, Noal had contacted the Kyth Agency's branch on Cobril. He'd returned unexpectedly, found indications that Larien was siphoning off company funds, and apparently investing them in underworld enterprises on Orado. He wanted the agency to start tracing the money on Orado, stated he would arrive there in a few days with the evidence he'd accumulated.
He hadn't arrived. Two days ago, Hishee Selk, Larien's wife, appeared at the agency's Cobril branch. She said Larien had implied to her that Noal had tried to make trouble for him and would pay for it. From his hints, she believed Larien had arranged to have Noal kidnapped and intended to murder him. She wanted the agency to find Noal in time to save his life.
The Selk file ended there. Visual and voice recordings of the three principals were included. Telzey studied the images, listened to the voices. There wasn't much obvious physical resemblance between the brothers. Larien was young, athletically built, strikingly handsome, had an engaging smile. Noal, evidently the older by a good many years, seemed a washed-out personality—slight, stooped, colorless. Hishee was a slender blonde with slanted black eyes and a cowed look. Her voice matched the look; it was low and uncertain. Telzey went through that recording again, ignoring Hishee's words, absorbing the voice tones.
She closed the file then. "Where's the rest of it?"
"The rest of it," said Dasinger, "is officially none of the Kyth Agency's business at the moment. Hence it isn't in the agency files."
"Oh?"
"You know a place called Joca Village, near Great Alzar?"
She nodded. "I've been there."
"Larien Selk acquired an estate in the Village three months ago," Dasinger said. "It's at the northeast end, an isolated cliffside section overlooking the sea. We know Larien is there at present. And we've found out that Noal Selk was in fact kidnapped by professionals and turned over to Larien's people. The probability is that he's now in Larien's place in Joca Village. If they try to move him out of there, he'll be in our hands. But that's the only good prospect of getting him back alive we have so far. Larien has been given no reason to believe anyone is looking for his brother, or that anyone but Hishee has begun to suspect Noal is missing. That's our immediate advantage. We can't afford to give it up."
Telzey nodded, beginning to understand. Joca Village was an ultraexclusive residential area, heavily guarded. If you weren't a resident or hadn't been issued a pass by a resident, you didn't get in. Passes were carefully checked at the single entrance, had to be confirmed. Overhead screens barred an aerial approach. She said, "And you can't go to the authorities until you have him back."
"No," Dasinger said. "If we did, we'd never get him back. We might be able to pin murder on Larien Selk later, though that's by no means certain. In any case, it isn't what we're after." He hesitated, said questioningly after a moment, "Telzey?"
Telzey blinked languidly.
"Telzey—" Dasinger broke off, watching her. Wergard glanced at him. Dasinger made a quick negating motion with his hand. Wergard shifted his attention back to Telzey.
"I heard you," Telzey said some seconds later. "You have Hishee Selk here in the agency, don't you?"
Wergard looked startled. Dasinger said, "Yes, we do."
"It was her voice mainly," Telzey said. "I picked her up on that." She looked at Wergard. "Wergard can't really believe this kind of thing is real."
"I'm trying to suspend my doubts," Wergard said. "Bringing in a mind-reader wasn't my idea. But we could use one only too well here."
Dasinger said, "All right to go on now, Telzey?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "I was gone for only a moment. Now I'm making contact, and Hishee looks wide open. She's very easy!" She straightened up in her chair. "Just what do you want your mind-reader to do?"
Dasinger said to Wergard, "What Telzey means is that, having seen what Hishee Selk looks like, and having heard her voice, she gained an impression of Hishee's personality. She then sensed a similar impression around here, found a connection to the personality associated with it, and is now feeling her way into Hishee's mind. Approximately correct, Telzey?"
"Very close." For a nonpsi, Dasinger did, in fact, have a good understanding of psi processes.
"Now as to your question," he went on. "When Larien Selk bought the place in Joca Village, he had it equipped with security devices, installed by Banance Protective Systems, a very good outfit. During the past week, Banance added a few touches—mainly a Brisell pack and its handler. At the same time, the Colmer Detective Agency in Great Alzar was employed to provide round-the-clock guards, five to a shift, stationed directly at the house, behind the pack. However, we've obtained copies of the Banance security diagrams which show the setup on the grounds. And, of course, there are various ways of handling guards."
"You mean you can get into Joca Village and into the house?"
"Very likely. One of the residents is an agency client and has supplied us with Village passes. Getting in the Selk estate and into the house without alerting security presents problems, but shouldn't be too difficult. Everything is set up to do it now, two or three hours after nightfall at Joca Village. It's after we're inside the house that the matter becomes really ticklish."
Wergard said, "It's a one-shot operation. If we start it, it has to come off. We can't back away, and try again. Either Noal will be safe before his brother realizes somebody is trying to rescue him, or he'll have disappeared for good."
Telzey considered. It was easy enough to dispose of a human being instantly and tracelessly. "And you don't know Noal's in the house?" she said.
"No," Dasinger said. "There's a strong probability he's there. If we can't do better, we'll have to act on that probability tonight, because every hour of delay puts his life—if he's still alive—in greater danger. If he isn't there, Larien is the one person in the house who's sure to know where he is. But picking up Larien isn't likely to do Noal any good. He's bound to have taken precautions against that, and again Noal, wherever he is, will simply vanish, along with any evidence pointing to him. So we come back to the mind-reader—somebody who can tell us from Larien's mind exactly where Noal is and what we can do about it, before Larien knows we're in the house."
"Yes; I see," Telzey said. "But there're a number of things I don't understand here. Why does Larien—" She broke off, looked reflective a moment, nodded. "I can get that faster from Hishee now! It's all she's thinking about."
Larien Selk, legally and biologically Noal's junior by twenty-five years, was, in the actual chronology of events, the older brother. He'd been conceived first by three years. The parents were engaged in building up a business and didn't want to be burdened with progeny taxes. The Larien-to-be went to an embryonic suspense vault. When Noal was conceived, the family could more readily afford a child, and the mother decided she preferred giving natural birth to one.
So Noal was born. His parents had no real wish for a second child. They kept postponing a decision about the nameless embryo they'd stored away, and in the end seemed almost to have forgotten it. It wasn't until they'd died that Noal, going through old records, found a reference to his abandoned sibling. Somewhat shocked by his parents' indifference, he had Larien brought to term. When his brother grew old enough to understand the situation, Noal explained how he'd come to take his place.
Larien never forgave him. Noal, a shrewd enough man in other respects, remained unaware of the fact. He saw to it that Larien had the best of everything—very nearly whatever Larien wanted. When he came of age, Noal made him a partner in the company he'd founded and developed. Which put Larien in a position to begin moving against his brother.
Hishee was his first move. Hishee was to have married Noal. She was very young, but she was fond of him and a formal agreement wasn't far away. Then Larien turned his attention on Hishee, and the formal agreement was never reached. Hishee fell violently in love.
Noal accepted it. He loved them both; they were near the same age. But he found it necessary to detach himself from them. He waited until they married, then turned the effective management of the company over to Larien, and began traveling.
Larien set out casually to break Hishee. He did an unhurried thorough job of it, gradually, over the months, eroding her self-esteem and courage in a considered variety of ways. He brought her to heel, continued to reduce her. By the time Noal Selk came back to Cobril, Hishee was too afraid of Larien, too shaken in herself, to give her brother-in-law any indication of what had happened.
But Noal saw it. Larien had wanted him to see it, which was a mistake. Larien wasn't quite as well covered in his manipulation of the company's assets as he'd believed.
Noal, alerted to Larien's qualities, became also aware of that. He made a quiet investigation. It led him presently to the Kyth detective agency.
Then he disappeared.
Dasinger said dryly, "We'd put you on the Kyth payroll any time, Telzey! It took us some hours to extract half that information from Hishee. The rest of it checks. If Larien thinks it's safe, he'll see Noal broken completely before he dies. No doubt he's made ingenious arrangements for that. He's an ingenious young man. But the time we have for action remains narrowly limited."
"He doesn't know Hishee's gone?" Telzey asked.
"Not yet. We have that well covered. We had to take her out of the situation; she'd be in immediate danger now. But it's an additional reason for avoiding delay. If Larien begins to suspect she had courage enough left to try to save Noal, he'll destroy the evidence. He should be able to get away with it legally, and he knows it."
Telzey was silent a moment. There were some obscure old laws against witchcraft, left deliberately unchanged, very rarely applied. Aside from that, the Federation was officially unaware of the existence of psis; a psi's testimony was meaningless. Legally then, it was probable enough that Larien Selk could get away with the murder of his brother. She doubted he'd survive Noal long; the private agencies had their own cold rules. But, as Dasinger had said, that wasn't what they were after.
She said, "Why do you want to plant the telepath in the house? If he's good enough, he should be able to tap Larien's mind from somewhere outside Joca Village, though it probably would take a little longer."
Wergard said, "One of the Banance security devices is what's known technically as a psi-block. It covers the outer walls of the house. Larien shares some of the public superstitions about the prevalence of efficient mind-reading instruments. Presumably the block would also stop a human telepath."
She nodded. "Yes, they do."
"When he's outside one of his psi-blocked structures, he wears a mind shield," Wergard said. "A detachable type. If we'd known about this a little earlier, we might have had an opportunity to pick him up and relieve him of it. But it's too late now."
"Definitely too late," Dasinger agreed. "If you think you can find us a telepath who's more than a hit-and-miss operator, we'd take a chance on waiting another day, if necessary, to bring him in on it. But it would be taking a chance. If you can't get one, we'll select a different approach and move tonight."
Telzey said, "A telepath wouldn't be much good to you if Larien happens to be probe-immune. About one in eight people are."
"Seven to one are good odds in the circumstances," Dasinger said. "Very good odds. We'll risk that."
"They're better than seven to one," Telzey told him. "Probe-immunes usually don't know that's what they are, but they usually don't worry about having their minds read either. They feel safe." She rubbed her nose, frowning. "A Psychology Service psi could do the job for you, and I can try getting one. But I don't think they'll help. They won't lift a finger in ordinary crime cases."
Dasinger shook his head. "I can't risk becoming involved with them here anyway. Technically it's an illegal operation. The Kyth Agency won't be conducting it unless we come up with evidence that justified the illegality. I resigned yesterday, and Wergard and some others got fired. We'll be acting as private citizens. But that's also only a technicality, and the Service is unpredictable. I don't know what view they'd take of it. We might have them blocking us instead of helping. Can you find someone else?"
She nodded. "I can get you a telepath. Just one. The other psis I know won't touch it. They don't need the fee, and they don't want to reveal themselves—particularly not in something that's illegal."
"Who's the one?" Wergard asked.
"I am, of course."
They looked at her a moment. Wergard said, "That isn't what we had in mind. We want a pro who'll take his chances for the money he's getting. We needed information from you, but no more than that."
Telzey said, "It looks like it's turned into more than that."
Wergard said to Dasinger, "We can't get her involved."
"Corvin Wergard," Telzey said.
He looked back at her. "Yes?"
"I'm not reading your thoughts," she said. "I don't have to. You've been told who I am, and that I'm sixteen years old. So I'm a child. A child who comes of a very good family and has been very carefully raised. Somebody really too nice to get shot tonight, if something goes wrong, by a Colmer guard or Joca Security people, or ripped up by Brisells. Right?"
Wergard studied her a long moment. "I may have had such notions," he said then. "Perhaps I've been wrong about you."
"You've definitely been wrong about me," Telzey told him. "You didn't know enough. I've been a psi, a practicing psi, for almost a year. I can go through a human life in an hour and know more about it than the man or woman who's living it. I've gone through quite a few lives, not only human ones. I do other things that I don't talk about. I don't know what it all exactly makes me now, but I'm not a child. Of course, I am sixteen years old and haven't been that very long. But it might even be that sometimes people like you and Wellan Dasinger look a little like children to me. Do you understand?"
"I'm not sure," Wergard said. He shook his head. "I believe I'm beginning to."
"That's good. We should have an understanding of each other if we're to work together. The agency would save the fee, too," Telzey said. "I don't need it. Of course, there may come a time when I'll ask you to stick your neck out for something I'd like to have done."
Wergard asked Dasinger, "Has that been the arrangement?"
Dasinger nodded. "We exchange assistance in various matters." He added, "I still don't want you in this, Telzey. There will be risks. Not unreasonable ones; but our people are trained to look out for themselves in ways you're not. You're too valuable a person to be jeopardized on an operation of this kind."
"Then I can't help you help Noal Selk," she said. "I'd like to. But the only way I can do it is by going along with you tonight. It would take more time than you have to hunt around for somebody else."
Dasinger shook his head. "We'll use a different approach then. With a little luck, we can still save Noal. He isn't your problem."
"How do you know?" Telzey said. "He mightn't be if he were someone I'd only heard about. If I helped everybody I could help because I happen to be a psi, I'd have no time for anything else the rest of my life. There isn't a minute in the day I couldn't find someone somewhere who needs the kind of help I can give. I'd keep busy, wouldn't I? And, of course, everything I did still wouldn't make any real difference. There'd always be more people needing help."
"There would be, of course," Dasinger agreed.
She smiled. "It gave me a bad conscience for a while, but I decided I wasn't going to get caught in that. I'll do something, now and then. Now, here I've been in Hishee Selk's mind. I'm still in her mind. I know her, and Noal and Larien as she knows them—perhaps better than most people know the members of their family. So I can't say their problem isn't my problem. It wouldn't be true. I simply know them too well."
Dasinger nodded. "Yes, I see now."
"And I," said Wergard, "made a large mistake."
Dasinger looked at his watch. "Well, let's not waste time. The plan goes into operation in thirty minutes. Telzey, you're going high style—Joca Village level. Wergard, take her along, have her outfitted. Scratch Woni. We won't need her."
The only entry to the secluded Selk estate in Joca Village was a narrow road winding between sheer cliff walls. Two hundred yards along the road was a gate; and the gate was guarded by Selk employees.
Up this road came a great gleaming limousine, preceded by a cry of golden horns. It stopped near the gate, and Larien Selk's three guards moved forward, weapons in their hands, to instruct the intruders to turn back. But they came prepared to give the instruction in as courteous a manner as possible. It was unwise to offer unnecessary offense to people who went about in that kind of limousine.
Its doors had opened meanwhile; and, gaily and noisily, out came Wergard in a Space Admiral's resplendent and heavily decorated uniform; Dasinger with jeweled face mask, a Great Alzar dandy; Telzey, finally, slender and black-gowned, wearing intricate silver headgear. From the headgear blazed the breath-stopping beauty of two great star hyacinths, proclaiming her at once to be the pampered darling of one who looked on ordinary millionaires as such millionaires might look on the lowest of bondsmen.
Weapons most tactfully lowered, the guards attempted to explain to these people—still noisily good-natured, but dangerous in their vast arrogance and wealth and doubly unpredictable now because they were obviously high on something—that a mistake had been made, that, yes, of course, their passes must be honored, but this simply didn't happen to be a route to the estate of the Askab Odarch. In the midst of these respectful explanations, an odd paralysis and confusion came to the guards. They offered no objection when men stepped out from behind the limousine, gently took their weapons and led them toward the small building beside the gate, where Wergard already was studying the gate controls. The study was a brief one; the gate's energy barrier, reaching up to blend into the defense shield of Joca Village above, winked out of existence a minute later and the great steel frames slid silently back into the rock walls on either side. The instruments which normally announced the opening of the gate to scanners in the Selk house remained inactive.
The limousine drifted through and settled to the ground beside the road. The gate closed again, and the vehicle was out of sight. Joca Village security patrols would check this gate, as they did the gates of all Village residents, several times during the night, and leaving the limousine outside would have caused questions. Whether suspicions were aroused otherwise depended mainly on whether someone began to wonder why Larien Selk's three gate guards were men who hadn't been seen here before. Measures had been taken to meet that contingency, but they were measures Dasinger preferred not to bring into play at present. The goal was to get Telzey into the house quickly, find out where Noal Selk was, pick him up if he was here and get back out with him, with no more time lost than could be helped. Whether or not his brother came along would be determined by what they discovered. With luck in either case, they'd be out of Joca Village again, mission accomplished, before the next patrol reached the Selk estate.
Only Dasinger, Wergard, and Telzey had gone through with the limousine. They emerged from it quickly again, now in fitted dark coveralls, caps and gloves, difficult to make out in the nighttime half-dark of the cliff road, and with more sophisticated qualities which were of value to burglars seeking entry into a well-defended residence. They moved silently along the road in the thick-soled sound-absorbing boots which went with the coveralls, Wergard carrying a sack. The road led around a turn of the cliffs; and a hundred yards beyond the turn, Dasinger said, "You might give them the first blast from here."
They stopped. The rock wall on the left was lower at this point, continued to slope downward along the stretch of road ahead. Wergard opened the sack and took out a tube a foot long and about three inches in diameter. He lifted the tube, sighting along it to a point above the cliffs on the left, pressed a trigger button. Something flicked silently out of the mouth of the tube and vanished in the dark air. They went on fifty yards, stopped again, and Wergard repeated the performance. The next time they stopped, the cliff on the left had dwindled to a rocky embankment not much more than twelve feet high. Larien Selk's big house stood in its gardens beyond the embankment, not visible from here.
They stood listening.
"It's got them," Wergard said then, low-voiced. "If it hadn't, they'd be aware of us by now, and we'd hear them moving around."
"Might as well give them a third dose, to be sure," Dasinger remarked.
"Why not?" Wergard agreed. He took a third tube from the sack, adjusted its settings, squinting through the dusk, then discharged its contents up across the embankment. The copies of the diagrams, briefly borrowed from the files of Banance Protective Systems, had showed that beyond the fence above the embankment was the area patrolled by a dozen Brisell dogs, dependable man-killers with acute senses. The three canisters Wergard had fired into the area were designed to put them out of action. They contained a charge stunning canine olfactory centers, approximately equivalent, Telzey had gathered, to the effect which might have been achieved by combining the most violent odors obtainable in their heaviest possible concentration, and releasing the mix in a flash of time. The canine mind thus treated went into prolonged dazed shock.
"Getting anything so far?" Dasinger asked her.
She nodded. "There is a psi-blocked area around. It seems to be where the house is. If Noal and Larien are here, they're in that area."
She'd kept bringing up impressions of both Selk brothers on the way from Orado City—things she knew about them from Hishee Selk's recalls and reflections, and from the visual and auditory recordings her own senses had registered. After they'd passed through the gate, she'd been searching mentally for anything which might relate to those impressions, blocking off her awareness of Wergard and Dasinger. There'd been occasional faint washes of human mind activities hereabouts, but they carried unfamiliar patterns. She'd fastened on the most definite of those and was developing the contact when Dasinger addressed her.
She mentioned this now, added, "It's one of the Colmer guards outside the house. Nobody's expecting trouble there. I can't tell yet what he's thinking, but nothing's worrying him."
Dasinger smiled. "Good! Keep your inner ears tuned to the boy! That could be useful. Let's move on—starting from here, as ghosts."
He reached under his collar as he spoke, abruptly became a bulkier smoky figure, features distorted though still vaguely distinguishable. There was a visual dispersion effect connected with the coverall suits, increasing with distance. Wergard and Telzey joined him in apparent insubstantiality. They went around the embankment, came to the fence.
It was more than a fence. Closely spaced along the rails topping it, twenty feet above, were concealed pickup devices which registered within the house. The diagrams had listed and described them. Now reasonable caution and the equipment in the suits of the three trespassers should give the devices nothing to register.
They moved slowly along the fence, twelve feet apart, not speaking here though they carried distorters which smothered voice tones within the distance of a few feet, until Wergard, in the lead, reached a closed gate where the road they'd been following turned through the fence. His wavering contours stopped there; and Telzey and Dasinger also stopped where they were. Wergard was the burglary expert; his job was now to get them through the gate. It was locked, of course. The relays which opened the lock were in the house, and the lock itself was a death trap for anyone attempting to tamper with it. However, nobody had seemed concerned about those details, and Telzey decided not to worry either. Wergard was doing something, but she couldn't determine what. His foggy shape blurred out a quarter of the gate. Which wasn't bothering Wergard; the effect wasn't a subjective one. Telzey could see a faint haze about herself, which moved as she did. But it didn't interfere with her vision or blur her view of herself. She looked over at the house, still more than half hidden here by intervening trees.
It was a large windowless structure. A pale glow bathed the lower section of the front wall. That came from a lit area they'd have to cross. Closer to them, on this side of the trees, the ground was shadowy, heavily dotted with sizable shrubs, through which she could make out the outlines of a high hedge. This was where the Brisell pack prowled. She thought she could distinguish something moving slowly on the ground between two shrubs. It might be one of the dogs. Otherwise there was no sign of them.
A voice suddenly said something.
Telzey didn't move. She hadn't heard those words through her ears but through the ears of her contact. He was replying now, the sound of his own voice less distinct, a heavy rumble. She blinked, pushing probes out quickly into newly accessible mind areas, orienting herself. The contact was opening up nicely. . . .
A hand tapped her shoulder. She looked up at Dasinger beside her. He indicated the gate, where Wergard had stepped back and stood waiting for them. The gate was open.
The thing she'd thought she'd seen moving occasionally on the ground between two shrub clusters was one of the Brisells. He was lying on his side as they came up, and, except for jerking his hind legs slightly, he wasn't moving just then. Two other dogs, not far from him, had been out of sight behind the shrubs. One turned in slow circles, with short, staggering steps. The other sat with drooping head, tongue lolling far down, shaking himself every few seconds. They were powerful animals with thick necks, huge heads and jaws, torsos protected by flexible corselets. None of them paid the slightest attention to the human ghost shapes.
Dasinger beckoned Telzey and Wergard to him, said softly, "They'll be no good for an hour or two. But we don't know that our business here will be over in an hour or two. We'll get their handler in the shelter now. Then it should be worth a few minutes finding the rest of the pack and putting them out till tomorrow with stun charges."
Wergard nodded; and Dasinger said to Telzey, "Stay here near those three so we don't lose you."
"All right."
She watched them hold their guns briefly to the heads of the dogs. Then the blurred shapes moved soundlessly off, becoming more apparitional with each step. In moments, she couldn't see them at all. The dogs lay unmoving now; and nothing else stirred nearby. She went back to her contact. Human thought whispers which came from other minds were reaching her from time to time, but she didn't try to develop those touches. The man she'd started working on was in charge of the Colmer Agency group and stationed near the entry of the house, directly beyond the lit area. She should get the best results here by concentrating attention on him.
His superficial thoughts could be picked up readily by now. It was the thinking of a bored, not very intelligent man, but a dangerous and well-trained one. A human Brisell. He and his group were in the second hour of an eight-hour stint of guard duty. He was looking forward to being relieved. Telzey gave the vague flow of thoughts prods here and there, turning them into new directions. She got a self-identification: his name was Sommard. He and the other Colmer guards knew nothing of what went on inside the home, and weren't interested. On arrival, they'd been admonished to constant alertness by a Mr. Costian. Sommard figured Mr. Costian for a nervous nut; the place obviously was well protected without them. But that wasn't his business, and he was doing his duty, however perfunctorily. His attention never wandered far. Two other guards stood to his right and left some fifty yards away, at the corners of the house. The remaining two were at the rear of the building where there was a service entry. . . . That checked with what the Kyth Agency had established about the defense arrangements.
There was a sudden wash of mental brightness. It steadied, and Telzey was looking out of Sommard's eyes into the wide illuminated court below the house where the estate road terminated. Keeping watch on that open area, up to the fence on the far side and the locked road gate in the fence, was his immediate responsibility. If anyone not previously authorized by Mr. Costian to be there appeared in the court, there'd be no challenge. He'd give his companions and the people in the house a silent alert, and shoot the intruder. Of course, no one would appear there! He yawned.
Telzey let the view of the court go, made some preparations, reduced contact, and glanced at her watch. It had been four and a half minutes since the Kyth men left her. She began looking about for them, presently saw a haziness some twenty feet away, condensing slightly and separating into two shapes as it drew closer. A genuine pair of ghosts couldn't have moved more quietly. "The section's taken care of," Dasinger was saying then. "Anything to report?"
Telzey told them what she'd learned. Dasinger nodded. "Costian's been Larien Selk's underworld contact on Orado. It's probable that the pros delivered Noal to him." He scratched his chin. "Now what's the best way to take the agency guards out gently? We have no dispute with Colmer."
Wergard said, "Going through the gate's still possible, but it'll call for fast moving once we're through or we'd risk disturbance. The long way around past the cliffs seems safer to me."
Telzey shook her head.
"That won't be necessary," she said.
Sommard presently shut his eyes for no particular reason except that he felt like it. The road gate across the court opened slightly, stayed open a few seconds, closed quietly again. Sommard then roused himself, looked briskly about. He glanced at his two colleagues, stationed at the corners of the house on either side of him. They stood unmoving, as bored as he was. All was well. He scratched his chest, yawned again.
Thirty feet from him, invisible as far as he was concerned, Telzey settled herself on the low balustrade above the court, looked at him, reached back into his mind. She waited. Something like a minute passed. The guard at the corner to Sommard's left took two stumbling steps to the side and fell backward.
Sommard's awareness blanked out in the same instant. His knees buckled; he slid down along the wall against which he had been leaning, went over on his side and lay still.
Telzey looked around at the guard at the other house corner. He was down and out, too, and Wergard and Dasinger were now on their way along the sides of the house to take care of the two guards at the rear. She stood up and went over to Sommard. What she'd done to him was a little more complicated than using a stun gun, a good deal gentler than a stun gun's jolt. The overall effect, however, was the same. He'd go on sleeping quietly till morning.
She stayed beside him to make it easier for Dasinger to find her when he came to take her to the back of the house. There was an entry there which led to the servants' quarters below ground level. They would use that way to get into the house. There should be only three men in the servants' quarters tonight—Larien Selk's second gate guard team. They might be asleep at present. The estate's normal staff had been transferred to other properties during the past week. In the upper house were Costian, Larien Selk, probably Noal Selk, and two technicians who kept alternate watch on the instruments of the protective system. That was all.
Getting into the house wasn't likely to be much of a problem now. But the night's work might have only begun.
"I'm getting traces of Larien," Telzey said.
"And Noal?" Dasinger asked.
"I'm not sure. There was something for a moment—but—" Her voice trailed off unsteadily.
"Take your time." Dasinger, leaning against a table ten feet away, watching her in the dim glow of a ceiling light, had spoken quietly. They'd turned off the visual distorters; the ghost haze brought few advantages indoors. Wergard had found the three off-duty gate guards asleep, left them sleeping more soundly. He'd gone off again about some other matter. Telzey and Dasinger were to stay on the underground level until she'd made her contacts, established what the situation here was.
She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, sighed. There was silence then. Dasinger didn't stir. Telzey's face was pale, intent. After a while, her breathing grew ragged. Her lips twisted slowly. It might have been a laborious mouthing of words heard in her mind. Her fingers plucked fitfully at the material of the coveralls. Then she grew quiet. Wergard returned soundlessly, remained standing outside the door.
Telzey opened her eyes, looked at Dasinger and away from him, straightened up in the chair, and passed her tongue over her lips.
"It's no use," she said in a flat, drained voice.
"You couldn't contact Noal?"
She shook her head. "Perhaps I could. I don't know. You'll have to get the psi block shut off, and I'll try. He's not in the house." She began crying suddenly, stopped as suddenly. A valve had opened; had been twisted shut. "But we can't help him," she said. "He's dying."
"Where is he?"
"In the sea."
"In the sea? Go ahead."
She shrugged. "That's it! In the sea, more or less east of Joca Village. It might be a hundred miles from here, or two thousand. I don't know; nobody knows. Larien didn't want anybody to know, not even himself."
Wergard had come into the room. She looked over at him, back at Dasinger. "It's a bubble for deep water work. Something the Selks made on Cobril. Marine equipment. Larien had it brought in from Cobril. This one has no operating controls. It was just dropped off, somewhere."
An automated carrier had been dispatched, set on random course. For eight hours it moved about the sea east of the mainland; then it disintegrated and sank. At some randomly selected moment during those eight hours, relays had closed, and the bubble containing Noal Selk began drifting down through the sea.
She told them that.
Dasinger said, "You said he's dying . . ."
She nodded. "He's being eaten. Some organism—it tries to keep the animals it feeds on alive as long as it can. It's very careful . . . I don't know what it is."
"I know what it is," Dasinger said. "When was it injected?"
"Two days ago."
Dasinger looked at Wergard. Wergard shrugged, said, "You might find something still clinically alive in the bubble five days from now. If you want to save Noal Selk, you'd better do it in hours."
"It's worth trying!" Dasinger turned to Telzey. "Telzey, what arrangements has Larien made in case the thing got away from him?"
"It isn't getting away from him," she said. "The bubble's got nondetectable coating. And if somebody tried to open it, it would blow up. There's a switch in the house that will blow it up any time. Larien's sitting two feet from the switch right now. But he can't touch it."
"Why not?" Wergard asked.
Telzey glanced at him. "He can't move. He can't even think. Not till I let him again."
Dasinger said, "The destruct switch isn't good enough. Isn't there something else in the house, something material, we can use immediately as evidence of criminal purpose?"
Telzey's eyes widened. "Evidence?" For a moment, she seemed about to laugh. "Goodness, yes, Dasinger! There's all the evidence in the world. He's got Noal on screen, two-way contact. He was talking to Noal when I started to pick him up. That's why—"
"Anyone besides Costian and the two techs around?" Dasinger asked Wergard.
"No."
"Put them away somewhere," Dasinger said. "Telzey and I will be with Larien Selk."
They weren't going to find the bubble. And if some accident had revealed its location, they wouldn't have got Noal Selk out of it alive.
They hadn't given up. Dasinger was speaking to the Kyth Agency by pocket transmitter within a minute after he'd entered Larien's suite with Telzey, and the agency promptly unsheathed its claws. Operators, who'd come drifting into Joca Village during the evening, showing valid passes, converged at the entry to the Selk estate, set up some lethal equipment, and informed Village Security the section was sealed. Village Security took a long, thoughtful look at what confronted it in the gate road, and decided to wait for developments.
Dasinger remained busy with the transmitter, while Wergard recorded what Larien's two-way screen showed. Telzey, only half following the talk, spoke only when Dasinger asked questions. She reported patiently then what he wanted to know, information she drew without much difficulty from Larien's paralyzed mind—the type of nondetectable material coating the deep water device; who had applied it; the name of the Cobril firm which installed the detonating system. They were attacking the problem from every possible angle, getting the help of researchers from around the planet. On Cobril, there was related activity by now. Authorities who would be involved in a sea search here had been alerted, were prepared to act if called on. The Kyth Agency had plenty of pull and was using it.
The fact remained that Larien Selk had considered the possibilities. It had taken careful investigation, but no special knowledge. He'd wanted a nondetectable coating material and a tamper-proof self-destruct system for his deep water device. Both were available; and that was that. Larien had accomplished his final purpose. The brother who'd cheated him out of his birthright, for whom he'd been left in a vault, ignored, forgotten, incomplete, had been detached from humanity and enclosed in another vault where he was now being reduced piecemeal, and from which he would never emerge. As the minutes passed, it became increasingly clear that what Dasinger needed to change the situation was an on-the-spot scientific miracle. Nothing suggested there were miracles forthcoming. Lacking that, they could watch Noal Selk die, or, if they chose, speed his death.
Telzey bit at her lip, gaze fastened on Larien, who lay on a couch a dozen feet from her. They'd secured his hands behind his back, which wasn't necessary; she'd left her controls on him, and he was caught in unawareness which would end when she let it end. That strong, vital organism was helpless now, along with the mind that had wasted itself in calculating hatred for so many years.
There was something here she hadn't wanted to see . . .
A psi mentality needed strong shutoffs. It had them, developed them quickly, or collapsed into incoherence. The flow of energies which reached nonpsis in insignificant tricklings must be channeled, directed, employed—or sealed away. Shutoffs were necessary. But they could be misapplied. Too easily, too thoroughly, by a mind that had learned to make purposeful use of them.
There was something she'd blocked out of awareness not long ago. For a while, she'd succeeded in forgetting she'd done it. She knew now that she had done it, but it was difficult to hold her attention on the fact. Her mind drew back from such thoughts, kept sliding away, trying to distract itself, trying to blur the act in renewed forgetfulness.
She didn't want to find out what it was she'd shut away. By that, she knew it was no small matter. There was fear involved.
Of what was she afraid?
She glanced uneasily over at the screen showing the brightly lit metallic interior of the bubble. Wergard stood before it, working occasionally at his recordings. She hadn't looked at the screen for more than a few seconds since coming into the room. It could be turned to a dozen views, showing the same object from different angles and distances. The object was a human body which wasn't quite paralyzed because it sometimes stirred jerkily, and its head moved. The eyes were sometimes open, sometimes shut. It looked unevenly shrunken, partly defleshed by what seemed a random process, skin lying loosely on bone here and there, inches from the swell of muscle. However, the process wasn't a random one; the alien organism within the body patched up systematically behind itself as it made its selective harvest. Outside tubes were attached to the host. The body wouldn't die of dehydration or starvation; it was being nourished. It would die when not enough of it was left to bind life to itself, or earlier if the feeding organism misjudged what it was doing. Dasinger had said its instincts were less reliable with humans because they weren't among its natural food animals.
Or Noal Selk would die when it was decided he couldn't be saved, and somebody's hand reached for the destruct switch.
In any case, he would die. What the screen showed were the beginnings of his death, whatever turn it took in the end. There was no reason for her to watch that. Noal, lost in the dark sea, in his small bright-lit tomb unknown miles from here, was beyond her help, beyond all help now.
Her eyes shifted back to Larien. It happened, she decided, at some point after she'd moved into his mind, discovered what he had done, and, shocked, was casting about for further information, for ways to undo this atrocity. Almost now, but not quite, she could remember the line of reflections she'd followed, increasingly disturbed reflections they seemed to be. Then—then she'd been past that point. Something flashed up, some horrid awareness; instantly she'd buried it, sealed it away, sealed away that entire area of recall.
She shook her head slightly. It remained buried! She remembered doing it now, and she wouldn't forget that again. But she didn't remember what she had buried, or why. Perhaps if she began searching in Larien Selk's mind . . .
At the screen, Wergard exclaimed something. Telzey looked up quickly. Dasinger had turned away from the table where he'd been sitting, was starting toward the screen. Sounds began to come from the screen. She felt the blood drain from her face.
Something was howling in her mind—wordless expression of a terrible need. It went on for seconds, weakened abruptly and was gone. Other things remained.
She stood up, walked unsteadily to the screen. The two men glanced around as she came up. An enlarged view of Noal Selk's head filled the screen. There were indications that the feeder had been selectively at work here, too; but there wasn't much change in the features. The eyes were wide open, staring up past the pickup. The mouth was lax and trembling; only wet, shaky breathing sounds came from it now.
Wergard said, "For some moments, he seemed fully conscious. He seemed to see us. He—well, the speaking apparatus isn't essential to life, of course. Most of that may be gone. But I think he was trying to speak to us."
Telzey, standing between them, looking at the screen, said, "He saw you. He was trying to ask you to kill him. Larien let him know it could be done any time."
Dasinger said carefully, "You know he was trying to ask us to kill him?"
"Yes, I know," Telzey said. "Be quiet, Dasinger. I have to think now."
She blinked slowly at the screen. Her diaphragm made a sudden, violent contraction as a pain surge reached her. Pain shutoff went on; the feeling dimmed. Full contact here.
Her mouth twisted. She hadn't wanted it! Not after what she'd learned. That was what she hadn't allowed to come into consciousness. She'd told herself it wasn't possible to reach Noal where he was, even after they'd shut off the psi block in the walls of the house. She'd convinced herself it was impossible. But she'd made the contact, and it had developed, perhaps as much through Noal's frenzied need as through anything she'd done; and now she'd been blazingly close to his mind and body torment—
She brushed her hand slowly over her forehead. She felt clammy with sweat.
"Telzey, is something wrong with you?" Dasinger asked.
She looked up at their watchful faces.
"No, not really. Dasinger, you know you can't save him, don't you?"
His expression didn't change. "I suppose I do," he acknowledged. "I suppose we all do. But we'll have to go on trying for a while, before we simply put him to death."
She nodded, eyes absent. "There's something I can try," she told them. "I didn't think of it before."
"Something you can try?" Wergard said, astonished. His head indicated the screen. "To save him there?"
"Yes. Perhaps."
Dasinger cleared his throat. "I don't see . . . what do you have in mind?"
She shook her head. "I can't explain that. It's psi. I'll try to explain as I go along, but I probably won't be able to explain much. It may work, that's all. I've done something like it before."
"But you can't—" Wergard broke off, was silent.
Dasinger said, "You know what you're doing?"
"Yes, I know." Telzey looked up at them again. "You mustn't let anyone in here. There mustn't be any disturbance or interference, or everything might go wrong. And it will take time. I don't know how much time."
Neither of them said anything for some seconds. Then Dasinger nodded slowly.
"Whatever it is," he said, "you'll have all the time you need. Nobody will come in here. Nobody will be allowed on the estate before you've finished and give the word."
Telzey nodded. "Then this is what we'll have to do."
She had done something like this, or something nearly like this, before . . .
Here and there was a psi mind with whom one could exchange the ultimate compliment of using no mental safeguards, none whatever. It was with one of those rare, relaxing companions that she'd done almost what she'd be doing now. The notion had come up in the course of a psi practice session. One was in Orado City, one at the tip of the Southern Mainland at the time. They'd got together at the thought level, and were trying out various things, improving techniques and methods.
"I'll lend you what I see if you'll lend me what you see," one of them had said.
That was easy enough. Each looked suddenly at what the other had looked at a moment ago. It wasn't the same as tapping the sensory impressions of a controlled mind. Small sections of individual awareness, of personality, appeared to have shifted from body to body.
It went on from there. Soon each was using the other's muscles, breathing with the other's lungs, speaking with the other's voice. They'd got caught up in it, and more subtle transfers continued in a swift double flow, unchecked: likes and dislikes, acquired knowledge, emotional patterns. Memories disintegrated here, built up there; vanished, were newly complete—and now quite different memories. Only the awareness of self remained—that probably couldn't be exchanged, or could it?
Then: "Shall we?"
They'd hesitated, looking at each other, with a quarter of the globe between them, each seeing the other clearly, in their exchanged bodies, exchanged personalities. One threadlike link was left for each to sever, and each would become the other, with no connection then to what she had been.
"Of course, we can change right back—"
Yes, but could they? Could they? Something would be different, would have shifted; they would be in some other and unknown pattern—and suddenly, quickly, they were sliding past each other again, memories, senses, controls, personality particles, swirling by in a giddy two-way stream, reassembling, restoring themselves, each to what was truly hers. They were laughing, but a little breathlessly, really a little frightened now by what they'd almost done.
They'd never tried it again. They'd talked about it. They were almost certain it could be done, oh, quite safely! They'd be two telepaths still, two psis. It should be a perfectly simple matter to reverse the process at any time.
It should be. But even to those who were psis, and in psi, much more remained unknown about psi than was known. Anyone who gained any awareness at all understood there were limits beyond which one couldn't go, or didn't try to go. Limits beyond which things went oddly wrong.
The question was whether they would have passed such a limit in detaching themselves from their personality, acquiring that of another. It remained unanswered.
What she had in mind now was less drastic in one respect, seemed more so in another. She would find out whether she could do it. She didn't know what the final result would be if she couldn't.
She dissolved her contact with Noal. It would be a distraction, and she could restore it later.
Larien Selk was fastened securely to his couch. Dasinger and Wergard then fastened Telzey as securely to the armchair in which she sat. She'd told them there might be a good deal of commotion here presently, produced both by herself and by Larien. It would be a meaningless commotion, something to be ignored. They wouldn't know what they were doing. They had to be tied down so they wouldn't get hurt.
The two men asked no questions. She reached into a section of her brain, touched it with paralysis, slid to Larien Selk's mind. In his brain, too, a selected small section went numb. Then the controls she'd placed on him were flicked away.
He woke up. He had to be awake and aware for much of this, or her work would be immeasurably, perhaps impossibly, increased. But his wakefulness did result in considerable commotion, though much less than there would have been if Larien had been able to use his voice—or, by and by, Telzey's. She'd silenced both for the time being. He couldn't do more than go through the motions of screaming. Nor could he move around much, though he tried very hard.
For Larien, it was a terrifying situation. One moment, he'd been sitting before the screen, considering whether to nudge the console button which would cause a stimulant to be injected into Noal and bring him back to consciousness again for an hour or two. He enjoyed talking to Noal.
Then, with no discernible lapse in time, he sensed he was lying on his back, arms and legs stretched out, tied down. Simultaneously, however, he looked up from some point in midair at two tense-faced men who stood between him and the screen that peered into Noal's bubble.
Larien concluded he'd gone insane. In the next few minutes, he nearly did. Telzey was working rapidly. It wasn't nearly as easy work as it had been with a cooperating psi; but Larien lacked the understanding and ability to interfere with her, as a psi who wasn't cooperating would have done. There was, of course, no question of a complete personality exchange here. But point by point, sense by sense, function by function, she was detaching Larien from all conscious contacts with his body. His bewildered attempts to retain each contact brought him into a corresponding one with hers—and that particular exchange had been made.
The process was swift. It was Larien's body that struggled violently at first, tried to scream, strained against its fastenings. Telzey's remained almost quiescent. Then both twisted about. Then his, by degrees, relaxed. The other body continued to twist and tug, eyes staring, mouth working desperately.
Telzey surveyed what had been done, decided enough had been done at this level. Her personality, her consciousness, were grafted to the body of Larien Selk. His consciousness was grafted to her body. The unconscious flows had followed the conscious ones.
She sealed the access routes to memory storage in the Telzey brain. The mind retained memory without the body's help for a while. For how long a while was something she hadn't yet established.
Time for the next step. She withdrew her contact with Larien's mind, dissolved it. Then she cut her last mind links to her body. It vanished from her awareness. She lay in Larien Selk's body, breathing with its lungs. She cleared its throat, lifted the paralysis she'd placed on the use of its voice.
"Dasinger!" the voice said hoarsely. "Wergard!"
Footsteps came hurrying over.
"Yes, he's over there. I'm here . . . for now. I wanted you to understand so you wouldn't worry too much."
They didn't say anything, but their faces didn't look reassured. Telzey added, "I've got his—its voice cut off. Over there, I mean."
What else should she tell them? She couldn't think of anything; and she had a driving impatience now to get on with this horrid business, to get it done, if she could get it done. To be able to tell herself it was over.
"It'll be a while before I can talk to you again," Larien Selk's voice told Wergard and Dasinger.
Then they vanished from her sight. Larien's eyes—no longer in use—closed. Telzey had gone back to work. Clearing the traces of Larien's memories and reaction patterns from his brain took time because she was very thorough and careful about it. She wanted none of that left; neither did she want to damage the brain. The marks of occupancy faded gradually, cleaned out, erased, delicately annihilated; and presently she'd finished. She sent out a search thought then to recontact the mind of Noal Selk in the brightly lit hell of his bubble, picked up the pattern almost at once, and moved over into his mind.
He was unconscious, but something else here was conscious in a dim and limited way. Telzey turned her attention briefly to the organism which had been implanted in Noal. A psi creature, as she'd thought. The ability to differentiate so precisely between what was and was not immediately fatal to a creature not ordinarily its prey had implied the use of psi. The organism wasn't cruel; it had no concept of cruelty. It was making a thrifty use of the food supply available to it, following its life purpose.
She eased into the body awareness from which Noal had withdrawn, dimming the pain sensations which flared up in her. It was immediately obvious that very extensive damage had been done. But a kind of functional balance lingered in what was left. The body lived as a body.
And the mind still lived as a mind, sustaining itself by turning away from the terrible realities about it as often as Noal could escape from pain into unconsciousness. She considered that mind, shifting about it and through it, knowing she was confronting the difficulty she'd expected. Noal wouldn't cling to this body; in intention, he already was detached from it. But that was the problem. He was trying, in effect, to become disembodied and remain that way.
He had a strong motivation. She should be able to modify it, nullify it eventually; but it seemed dangerous to tamper with Noal any more than she could help. There wasn't enough left of him, physically or mentally, for that. He had to want to attach himself fully and consciously to a body again, or this wasn't going to work. She could arouse him, bring him awake . . .
He would resist it, she thought.
But she might give him something he wouldn't resist.
Noal dreamed.
It was a relaxed dream, universes away from pain, fear, savage treachery. He remembered nothing of Larien. He was on Cobril, walking along with a firm, quick stride in warm sunlight. He was agreeably aware of the strength and health of his body.
Something tugged at him.
Vision blurred startlingly. Sound faded. The knowledge came that the thing that tugged at him was trying to drag him wholly away from his senses, out of himself, into unfeeling nothingness.
Terrified, he fought to retain sight and sound, to cling to his body.
Telzey kept plucking him away, taking his place progressively in the still functional wreckage left by the organism, barring him more and more from it. But simultaneously she made corresponding physical anchorages available for him elsewhere; and Noal, still dreaming, not knowing the difference, clung to each point gained with frantic determination. She had all the cooperation she could use. The transfer seemed accomplished in moments.
She told him soothingly then to go on sleeping, go on dreaming pleasantly. Presently, agitations subsiding, he was doing it.
And Telzey opened Noal Selk's gummily inflamed and bloodshot eyes with difficulty, looked out into the metallic glittering of the bubble, closed the eyes again. She was very much here—too much so. Her pain shutoffs were operating as far as she could allow them to operate without hampering other activities, but it wasn't enough. A sudden fresh set of twinges gave her a thought then; and she put the busy psi organism to sleep. At least, that part of it shouldn't get any worse.
But she'd have to stay here a while. In this body's brain was the physical storehouse of Noal's memories, the basis of his personality. It was a vast mass of material; getting it all transferred in exact detail to the brain she'd cleared out to receive it was out of the question. It probably could be done, but it would take hours. She didn't have hours to spare.
The essentials, however, that which made Noal what he was, should be transplanted in exact detail. She started doing it. It wasn't difficult work. She'd doctored memories before this, and it was essentially the same process.
It was simply a question of how much she could get done before she had to stop. The physical discomforts that kept filtering into her awareness weren't too serious a distraction. But there was something else that frightened her—an occasional sense of vagueness about herself, a feeling as if she might be growing flimsy, shadowy. It always passed quickly, but it seemed a warning that too much time was passing, perhaps already had passed, since she'd cut herself off from her own brain and body and the physical basis of memory and personality.
She paused finally. It should do. It would have to do. Her mind could absorb the remaining pertinent contents of this body's brain in a few minutes, retain it until she had an opportunity to feed back to Noal whatever else he might need. It would be secondhand memory, neither exact nor complete. But he wouldn't be aware of the difference, and no one who had known him would be able to tell there was a difference. She couldn't risk further delay. There was a sense of something that had been in balance beginning to shift dangerously, though she didn't yet know what it was.
She began the absorption process. Completed it. Went drifting slowly off, then through nothing, through nowhere. . . . Peered out presently again through puzzled sore eyes into the gleaming of the bubble.
Hot terror jolted through her—
"Dasinger!"
Dasinger turned from the couch on which the Larien body lay, came quickly across the room. "Yes?"
Wergard indicated the other figure in the armchair.
"This one seems to be coming awake again!"
Dasinger looked at the figure. It was slumped back as far as the padded fastenings which held its arms clamped against the sides of the chair permitted. The head lolled to the left, eyes slitted, blood-smeared mouth half open. "What makes you think so?" he asked.
The figure's shoulders jerked briefly almost as he spoke.
"That," Wergard said. "It's begun to stir."
They watched, but the figure remained quiet now. Wergard looked at the screen. "Some slight change there, too!" he remarked. "Its eyes were open for a while. A minute ago, they closed."
"Coinciding with the first indication of activity here?" Dasinger asked.
"Very nearly. What about the one on the couch?"
Dasinger shrugged. "Snoring! Seems to smile now and then. Nobody could be more obviously asleep."
Wergard said, after a moment, "So it must be between these two now?"
"If she's been doing what we think, it should be. . . . There!"
The figure in the chair sucked in a hissing breath, head slamming up against the backrest. The neck arched, strained, tendons protruding like tight-drawn wires. Dasinger moved quickly. One hand clamped about the jaw; the other gripped the top of the skull. "Get something back in her mouth!"
Wergard already was there with a folded wet piece of cloth, wedged it in between bared teeth, jerked his fingers back with a grunt of pain. Dasinger moved his thumb up, holding the cloth in place. The figure was in spasmodic violent motion now, dragging against the fastenings. Wergard placed his palms above its knees, pressed down hard, felt himself still being shifted about. He heard shuddering gasps, glanced up once and saw blue eyes glaring unfocused in the contorted face.
"Beginning to subside!" Dasinger said then.
Wergard didn't reply. The legs he was holding down had relaxed, gone limp, a moment before. Howling sounds came from the screen, turned into a strangled choking, went silent. He straightened, saw Dasinger take the cloth from Telzey's mouth. She looked at them in turn, moved her puffed lips, grimaced uncomfortably.
"You put your teeth through your lower lip a while ago," Dasinger explained. He added, "That wasn't you, I suppose. You are back with us finally, aren't you?"
She was still breathing raggedly. She whispered, "Not quite . . . almost. Moments!"
Animal sounds blared from the screen again. Their heads turned toward it. Wergard went over, cut off the noise, looked at the twisting face that had belonged to Noal Selk. He came back then and helped Dasinger free Telzey from the chair. She sat up and touched her mouth tentatively, reminding Wergard of his bitten finger. He looked at it.
Telzey followed his glance. "Did I do that, too?"
"Somebody did," Wergard said shortly. He reached for one of the cloths they'd used to keep her mouth propped open, wrapped it around the double gash. "How do you feel, Telzey?"
She shifted her shoulders, moved her legs. "Sore," she said. "Very sore. But I don't seem to have pulled anything."
"You're back all the way?"
She drew a long breath. "Yes."
Wergard nodded. "Then let's get this straight. Over there on the couch, asleep—that's now Noal Selk?"
"Yes," Telzey said. "I'll have to do a little more work on him because he doesn't have all his memory yet. But it's Noal—in everything that counts, anyway."
"He doesn't have all his memory yet," Wergard repeated. "But it's Noal!" He stared at her. "All right. And you're you again." He jerked his thumb at the screen. "So the one who's down in the bubble now is Larien Selk?"
She nodded.
"Well—" Wergard shrugged. "I was watching it," he said. He looked at Dasinger. "It happened, that's all!"
He went to the screen console, unlocked the destruct switch, and turned it over. The screen went blank.
The three of them remained silent for some seconds then, considering the same thought. Wergard finally voiced it. "This is going to take a remarkable amount of explaining!"
"I guess it will," Telzey said. "But we won't have to do it."
"Eh?" said Dasinger.
"I know some experts," she told him. She climbed stiffly out of the chair. "I'd better get to work on Noal now, so we'll have that out of the way."
The Operator on Duty at the Psychology Service Center in Orado City lifted his eyebrows when he saw Telzey walking toward his desk in the Entry Hall. They'd met before. He pretended not to notice her then until she stopped before the desk.
He looked up. "Oh, it's you," he said indifferently.
Yes, it's me," said Telzey. They regarded each other with marked lack of approval.
"Specifically," asked the Operator, "why are you here? I'll take it for granted it has to do with your general penchant for getting into trouble."
"I wouldn't call it that," Telzey said. "I may have broken a few Federation laws last night, but that's beside the point. I'm here to see Klayung. Where do I find him?"
The Operator on Duty leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers.
"Klayung's rather busy," he remarked. "In any case, before we bother him you might explain the matter of breaking a few Federation laws. We're not in that much of a hurry, are we?"
Telzey considered him reflectively.
"I've had a sort of rough night," she said then. "So, yes—we're in exactly that much of a hurry. Unless your shields are a good deal more solid now than they were last time."
His eyelids flickered. "You wouldn't be foolish enough to—"
"I'll count to two," Telzey said. "One."
Klayung presently laid Telzey's report sheets down again, sat scratching his chin. His old eyes were thoughtful. "Where is he at present?" he asked.
"Outside the Center, in a Kyth ambulance," Telzey told him. "We brought Hishee along, too. Asleep, of course."
Klayung nodded. "Yes, she should have almost equally careful treatment. This is a difficult case."
"You can handle it?" Telzey asked.
"Oh, yes, we can handle it. We'll handle everything. We'll have to now. This could have been a really terrible breach of secrecy, Telzey! We can't have miracles, you know!"
"Yes, I know," Telzey said. "Of course, the Kyth people are all right."
"Yes, they're all right. But otherwise—"
"Well, I know it's going to be a lot of trouble for you," she said. "And I'm sorry I caused it. But there really wasn't anything else I could do."
"No, it seems there really wasn't," Klayung agreed. "Nevertheless—well, that's something I wouldn't recommend you try very frequently!"
Telzey was silent a moment.
"I'm not sure I'd try it again for any reason," she admitted. "At the end there, I nearly didn't get back."
Klayung nodded. "There was a distinct possibility you wouldn't get back."
"Were you thinking of having Noal go on as Noal?" Telzey inquired.
"That should be the simplest approach," Klayung said. "We'll see what the Makeup Department says. I doubt it would involve excessive structural modifications. . . . You don't agree?"
Telzey said, "Oh, it would be simplest, all right. But—well, you see, Noal was just nothing physically. He's got a great body now. It would be a shame to turn him back to being a nothing again."
Klayung looked at her a moment.
"Those two have had a very bad time," Telzey continued. "Due to Larien. It seems sort of fair, doesn't it?"
"If he's to become Larien Selk officially," Klayung remarked, "there'll be a great many more complications to straighten out."
"Yes, I realize that."
"Besides," Klayung went on, "neither Noal nor Hishee might want him to look in the least like Larien."
"Well, they wouldn't now, of course," Telzey agreed. "But after your therapists have cleared up all the bad things Larien's done to them, it might be a different matter."
Klayung's sigh was almost imperceptible. "All right. Supposing we get the emotional and mental difficulties resolved first, and then let the principals decide for themselves in what guise Noal is to resume his existence. Would that be satisfactory?"
Telzey smiled. "Thanks, Klayung!" she said. "Yes, very satisfactory!"