From where he squatted with his own coffee Gumpner said, “Johnny, neither the general nor anybody else told any of us that you planned to try the perimeter today, only that you would try to do it from time to time, as you’ve been doing periodically for months. It just happened that one of the outer line of sentries, a fellow up a tall tree, spotted you sneaking across that little ridge back there, and passed on the signal to the perimeter.
“He didn’t recognize you—all he reported was a Ganik headed at us afoot. He had a scoped rifle and could likely have dropped you, then, but he was aware that the general wants live prisoners. It wasn’t until I got up there that I saw you and realized you’d chosen this time and place for one of the general’s impromptu problems. Still, you taught me and two snipers even more than you had in months past about camouflage and the fine art of bushwhacking. All I can say is, thank God you’re on our side, Johnny.”
The order of march for the next few days remained the same in all respects save that Johnny Kilgore rode with the point rather than ahead of it. They made good time in the week before any other singular events occurred, and Corbett was able to report the appreciable progress in the nightly conversations with Dr. David Sternheimer, via the big transceiver.
“Were we on the main trail, the big eastern one, David,’ we’d be making even better time than this. But I still agree that it will be better to stick to the one we came south on, this smaller, western one, for all its narrowness and twists and turns. Not only do Gumpner and I and some of the others who were with me last year know this trail well, there’s the additional fact that the Ganiks themselves use it seldom, so it will be an unfortunate coincidence if we run onto any of the uncouth bastards.”
During the conversation one night, Sternheimer had said, haltingly, “Now, Jay, you know that my belief in some of this parapsychological stuff is very limited. Nonetheless, I have this… how shall I say it?… this ‘feeling’ that Erica still is alive… somewhere. It’s most likely simply a matter of pure and unadulterated wishful thinking, of course. But… but, Jay, please, as a personal favor to me, keep your eyes open. Any sign, anything… ? Since that vicious bastard Braun did what he did to her… she… I now know that she meant far more to me than I ever… than I ever allowed myself to consciously realize… admit.
“You see, Jay, we still are subconsciously bound by the strictures, the morals of the world in which we matured, even though that world hasn’t existed for almost a millennium. In the beginning, when first Dr. Arenstein came down to work on the Project, she… just being near her, seeing her, hearing her voice, it… well, she aroused me… sexually, I mean.
“But back then, in our original bodies, there was a vast disparity in our ages. Dr. Arenstein… dammit! Erica … was no more than thirty-eight or -nine, while I was nearing seventy. I had my full share of enemies then, both outside and inside the Project, and the last thing I wanted or felt I could afford was to have the label ‘dirty old man’ added to all the other canards; nor would that have then been all, of course. I then had a still-living wife, though we had not lived together for years.
■ “That frigid, feminist bitch! She would have loved nothing so much as to have had the ammunition to publicly humiliate me… us, Erica and me… had I been so rash as to give it to her. May she rot and suffer in whatever hell she’s been in for these last thousand or so years!”
“And so, Jay, I was emotionally saddled with those same, senseless inhibitions for long centuries. Only when, last year, I… when I thought that Erica… dear, lovely woman… only then did I admit to myself just how stupid I had been for so long a time.
“Then, last winter, I began to have strange, disturbing dreams… dreams of Erica. I could see her in some low, smoky place… perhaps a cave… and there were other people there, too, men, 1 think, some of them, at least, armed with rifles. Laugh at me if you wish, but… but it all seemed so… so real that… that I thought, perhaps, if… ?”
“It’s entirely possible, David. According to Morty Lilienthal, an intense emotional attachment when combined with enforced separation and longing can heighten, increase, latent psychic abilities.”
Old frames of mind become often rock-hard and old habits are hard to break even in the face of suffering. “That fraud?” Sternheimer snorted scornfully. “That pompous ass of a Rhine-blinded idiot! I just wish I knew how that so-called psychometric, that lousy louse of a cheap fortuneteller, got assigned to the Project to begin with. I’m sorry to say so, Jay, but you have a very poor choice of associates.”
“David,” Corbett began, “now I know, along with everyone else at the Center, that you and Dr. Lilienthal don’t particularly care for each other…”
Sternheimer snorted again. “That, General Corbett, is the unparalleled understatement of two millennia!”
Corbett pushed on, regardless. “No matter, David, you are just now caught between a rock and a hard place, and, like it or him or not, Morty Lilienthal just may be the only one down there who can help you.
“Now you have just gone through a protracted and obviously difficult admission to me about an affair of the heart that everyone save only you at the Center has known about or at least surmised for centuries. You once considered— and likely a part of you still considers—even admission of these feelings to yourself to be far beyond the pale, much less the thought of consummating them, but still you have found the strength within yourself to sufficiently reshuffle your mind enough to admit them not only to yourself but to me.
“Now you’re going to have to do a bit more reshuffling, David. For all that mindspeak, as they call it, is a reality and has been a reality on this continent for centuries, and that this mindspeak is nothing more or less than what we once called telepathy, you have continued to regard it and all the other of the host of extrasensory abilities as, at the very best, pseudo-science and, as such, unworthy of your notice. Well, you’ve been wrong and you’re just going to have to bite the bullet and admit that too.
“David, Mcrty Lilienthal respects you and admires you, has always admired you and fought very hard to get assigned to the original Project in hopes that his then-rare specialty might be of help to you and your Project. He has since been hurt and embittered by your often and loudly expressed scorn of him and his field, but still he never has ceased to admire you and your unimpeachable accomplishments.
“Go to him, David. Better yet, call him to your office and tell him all that you’ve just told me. He can teach you to mindspeak, if you possess the germ of the ability. He’s already taught me in just the last few months to contact those capable of receiving at as much as several hundred meters distant.
“And David, there is another type of telepathy, one which non-Center people call farspeak. Certain unusual minds possessing this talent can communicate over vast distances, hundreds of kilometers; the outer ranges have never been determined. If you prove capable of this rarity, David, and if Erica is still alive somewhere, you might be able to actually contact her, converse with her or exchange thoughts and so make it easier for us to find her and bring her back to the Center… to you. Would that be worth the consumption of a helping of crow to you, David?”
“Abase myself to that young charlatan? Never!” snarled Sternheimer, adding in a more normal tone, “You ask too much, Jay. You must remember, I am after all the Director.”
“All right,” agreed Corbett, trying to mask from his tone the exasperation and disgust he was beginning to feel for Sternheimer and his rigidly closed mind. “Look at the matter this way, David. If you do possess long-range telepathy and you can find a way to develop mastery of that ability, it just might prove of value—possibly, of inestimable value—against the mutants, all of whom do any important long-range discussion in just that way.