“Why waste time on me?” Jerome said aloud. The boat was more than a hundred metres from the shore and he knew his voice would not carry the distance, but the act of composing a sentence and speaking seemed a good way for a non-telepath to isolate and project a single thought. He braced himself for another intangible hammer blow, but there was no response from the man with the rifle.
“Look, I don’t give a damn about what was going on between you and Pitman,” he said. “All I want is to be allowed to go home. I can’t harm you. Please let me go.”
Again there was no response. Jerome stared into the impartial blue lens of the sky and tried to read the telepathic silence. One interpretation was that the pallid man had accepted the logic of his argument and had quietly departed the scene, but Jerome’s instincts told him otherwise. There had been no reply because the killer on the shore saw no point in replying. He was still there, near the house, waiting for…What was he waiting for?
Jerome had hardly framed the question when the answer came to him. Rowing out to the centre of the lake with Pitman he had been heading into a breeze—and now that same breeze was gently taking the boat back towards its starting point. It would have been quite easy for a man with a hunting rifle to sink the rowboat and force Jerome into the water, but that would require a volley of shots and might attract attention. A much more efficient course was to be patient, to wait a few minutes until the target had helplessly drifted to the shore and despatch him with a single round. In the event, it would not even be necessary to fire the rifle, because the man from the filling station was capable of killing Jerome in a dozen different ways, all of them silent…
So it isn’t going to be my heart that does it, after all, Jerome thought in a kind of arctic bemusement as he lay on his back on the damp timbers of the boat. Pitman’s advice about a check-up was wasted…there isn’t going to be time for my arteries to finish silting themselves up…I had to get in between people from another world who—God knows why—want to kill each other…and there’s damn all I can do about it…because…because…
Jerome abruptly became aware of the shotgun. It was partially underneath Pitman’s prone body and the stock was nudging painfully into his own back. Grunting with the effort, he turned himself over and—hampered by the need to keep below the side of the boat—worked the gun free of Pitman’s dead weight. There was a comforting familiarity about its metalwork and oiled wood. It was no match for a rifle, but if he could keep the weapon hidden until the boat was close to the shore and then get in a quick shot its scattering effect would slightly reduce the odds against him.
Do you take me for a FOOL? The alien thought was loaded with contempt, reinforced by a vision of Jerome as something akin to a hairless baby rat, pink and squirming.
Jerome strove to fend off the intrusion. The shotgun was an old Stevens 12-gauge he had inherited from his father and he had only the vaguest ideas about its performance. He broke it open, with the intention of checking on whether Pitman had put in shells loaded with skeet shot or something with more carrying power, but there came yet another mental assault.
Do you really EXPECT me to ALLOW you to bring your TOY within range?
The baby rat was vivid in Jerome’s mind now—a glistening blob of unformed protoplasm—and the heel of a boot was stamping down on it. Sickened, Jerome concentrated his gaze on the twin yellow-gleaming circles of the cartridge bases, knowing all the while that his adversary had too great an advantage. Even if he got as close as fifty metres the shotgun would be an annoyance rather than a real threat to a rifleman, and the latter’s ability to divine exactly what Jerome was thinking and doing made the situation doubly hopeless. The only factor which might have given him a fighting chance would have been solid lead slugs in the shotgun, but he had never owned that kind of ammunition…
If I can’t fool a mind-reader, Jerome thought as he groped in his jacket for his pocket knife, the least I can do is make things harder for him. Confuse the issue. Use double-think. But how do I do that? No good thinking about something totally irrelevant like an orange…only gives the game away…become an automaton…use reflexes instead of words or thought pictures…oh god one of the shells is jammed in the ejector…should have done something about that thing years ago…and insult the bastard let him know what you think of him…have to pry the shell out with my knife…hello you ugly bastard you’re not just going to walk all over me you know…come out come OUT that’s better…
Jerome threw the knife aside, closed up the shotgun and raised himself high enough to look over the side. He was about eighty metres from the shore and he could see the pallid man standing in the shade of a crack willow near the house. Not giving himself time to think, Jerome sat up higher, put the gun to his shoulder and took aim.
Go ahead! The derisive challenge washed over Jerome. Waste your birdshot!
“Hello, you ugly bastard,” Jerome said aloud, desperately trying to hold the foresight on his target. The slight movement of the boat was making the task difficult, and seconds were slipping by, and no amount of effort on his part could shut out of his mind a memory-image of his knife cutting through the tube of the shell in the right-hand chamber, leaving only a single strand of plastic. The barrage of scorn which was clubbing at his mind became tinged with alarm and the figure on the shore made a sudden movement.
Jerome squeezed off his shot and allowed the recoil to topple him backwards into the boat.
He crouched beside Pitman’s body, ears ringing with manufactured thunder, and tried to feel what was happening at the edge of the lake. He had no doubt that the hundreds of lead pellets massed as a single projectile, still held together by the severed tube of the cartridge, would have been able to carry the distance to the shore and deliver a devastating punch—but had his aim been good enough? Shotgun sights were not designed for that kind of aiming, the boat had been rocking, and he had been in a state of panic. The psychic pressure from the rifleman appeared to have ceased, but that could mean he had decided to lie low and await his chance to end the strange duel.
Jerome weighed the possibilities and reluctantly came to the conclusion that he had nothing to gain by allowing himself to go on drifting towards the shore. If the pallid man had not been put out of action it would be better to find out sooner than later. Jerome gave an unhappy sigh and raised his head, wondering if a person who received a high-velocity bullet between the eyes had time to feel pain or realize what had happened to him.
There was no movement on the shore, nothing out of the ordinary to see. The afternoon sun glowed placidly on the walls of his house, visual echo of a hundred mellow weekends. Jerome studied the area of shade beneath the willow, but the various patches of colour he could distinguish remained ambiguous. He looked around for the oars he had released, found them floating within reach and manoeuvred them up into the rowlocks. In order to row properly he had to slide his feet under Pitman’s body, but the lolling pressure was merely something else to be accepted in a day which was testing his endurance to the limit.
As he pulled towards the side of the lake he imagined a rifle target stitched to his back and visualized it as seen through a sighting scope, growing larger with each second. So clear did the mental picture become that he was forced to wonder if it could be yet another telepathic transmission, a teasing punishment for his act of defiance, and with the accompanying spasm of alarm the tightness returned to his chest. He slackened off his pace, imposed a slow regularity on his breathing and practised the new art of tolerating the intolerable until the boat was nuzzling into reeds and mud. The water reached up to his knees in clamming intimacy as he stepped out.