Faircloth smiled. The computer even listed that as one possibility. Low probability, but that was on the basis of what we knew. We hadn’t even considered it. Yet every living Psi-High has known, for a long time, that someday two Psi-Highs would have a child, laws or no laws. We could only guess what the child might be like.”
The man looked at them sadly. The child would be lonely. beyond words,” he said. “He would be able to hide, yes. ; He would be able to tone down his psi-powers in order to appear like an ordinary Psi-High, roughly comparable, in a psi-negative, to voluntarily having both eyes and ears destroyed. But whatever happened, a double-Psi could never reveal the truth about himself. Not even to his closest friends.”
“And you knew from the start that the real alien had been killed?”
“Almost as soon as it happened. He died in agony. He had a powerful mind; ordinary Psi-Highs must only have picked up a ripple, but a hundred miles away in Des Moines I got a shower that nearly killed me. I knew that was from nothing human, not even another double-Psi. So I went down to the place and picked the details out of the farmer’s brain, masquerading as a Security agent. He was too frightened to tell anybody what he had done, and of course nobody later paid too much attention to him anyway.” The man shifted wearily on the cot. The alien must have been working so hard trying to maintain his disguise that he missed what the farmer was thinking until it was too late. But as soon as I knew that an alien with that kind of power had landed, I knew what I had to do: step into his shoes, pretend that I was he, and somehow give human Psi-Highs a chance to prove to the whole world that they were loyal, reliable human beings and not some new kind of dangerous freaks.”
“Of course Towne will fight,” said Roberts later, when the man had drifted off into an exhausted sleep. “He’s clever, and resourceful. When we rescue him from Eagle Rock, he’s going to know exactly what happened.”
Jean Sanders laughed happily. “And everyone is going to believe Dr. Abrams’ considered opinion that his mind has been affected by his terrible experience with the alien. Which is going to leave him helpless.” She looked at Paul. “And that’s something I’m vindictive enough to want to see. I want to see Ben Towne helpless, for once.”
Paul grinned. “You will. Things will have moved ’way ahead of him, by then. And of course, there will be a physical and mental examination. It will be a pity that the alien left his mind in such a state of shock and delusion, but maybe, after a few months of psychiatric treatment, someone will find out the real reason why he hates Psi-Highs so much. Of course, we can guess: an imperfect man, with that clubfoot of his, fighting to prove that he really is not a cripple in a world of normal men, fighting and hating the ones who are physically flawed. . and hating even more viciously those few of us he regards as super-perfect. And probably not even realizing that that’s why he hates us. If he could only be helped to see it and make peace with it and with us, we’ll have a powerful fighter on our side instead of against us.” He looked around at the others, his face grave. “We can’t afford to have the world against us again, not ever. That part of the news broadcast was perfectly true: there was an alien. He was telepathic. And there will be others coming, maybe in a year, maybe in five, or ten, or a hundred.” He leaned back wearily in the relaxer. “What happened this time, turned out to be an incredibly lucky break for us, thanks to our double-Psi friend here. But we must never forget the things about this alien scare that were true.”
Jean smiled, and put her arm around him. “Others will come, sometime, yes. But in the meantime, hundreds of Psi-Highs are going to be in intensive training. Psi-Highs are going to be marrying Psi-Highs. When other aliens come, they’ll find the Earth well guarded.” Her eyes drifted to the sleeping man on the cot, and then returned to Paul’s and held them. “And when they do come, there’ll be others—like him—to stop them.”
Part Three
Mirror, Mirror
Somewhere down on the surface of Saturn the Enemy was waiting.
The Earth outpost on the Satellite ship orbiting Saturn knew that he was there, with his four great ships and the unimaginable power that had brought him from whatever place he had come. But the Earth outpost did not know why he had come, and now they did not know what he intended, to do.
He had come into the solar system, and struck with pointless savagery, and then fled to a place where Earth ships could not follow him. Now he waited there, silent and enigmatic. His very presence was intolerable: the i-.irth outpost knew they had to fight him, somehow, but the fight was on his terms, on the battleground he had chosen.
It was an impossible war from the very start, a vicious war, draining the last reserves of the tiny group of Earthmen who had to fight it. It engulfed their waking hours and tortured their sleep with nightmares. There was no time to stop and ask themselves: why are we fighting this war?
They were fighting it, that was enough. Only the Enemy knew why . . . .
The waiting was the most terrible part of all for John Provost.
There was no chronometer in the day room of the Satellite ship, but Provost had his own private chronometer buried in his skull somewhere in that vague impersonal space that lay between his left ear and his left eyebrow, deep down, ticking away hours, minutes, seconds, ridiculous fractions of ridiculous segments of seconds, marking them off against him inexorably, the epitome of all timepieces. It was there in his head and he couldn’t get away from it, not even when his shift was over and he was back in. Relief, laboriously rebuilding the fragments of John Provost that the Enemy had torn away. Now, almost whole and fresh again, he could hear the chronometer clicking away against him, and once more he was certain that it was the waiting he feared far more than he feared the Enemy.
Almost time, Provost. Almost your turn to go down again . . . .
He paced the day room of the Satellite ship and felt sweat trickle down his chest from the waiting and the silence. Always, in the last hour before his shift, he lived in an envelope of self-induced silence. Canned music blared from the wall speaker, unnaturally loud, but Provost did not hear it. There was talking and chatter in the day room, harsh laughter all about him, noises of glasses clinking, feet shuffling. A dozen men were here, but to Provost the day room was like a TV with the sound turned off. He was utterly isolated, and that was the way he wanted it.
He rubbed wet palms against his trousers and waited.
Nobody looked at him, of course. The men knew that his shift was next. Nobody spoke to him; he might smile and answer them pleasantly, or he might turn on them, savagely and without warning, like a cornered rat. It had happened before, with others. He was like a crossbow with the spring drawn tight, waiting to be triggered, and nobody wanted to tamper with him twenty minutes before shift change. Everyone knew he wouldn’t be responsible for what he might do.
And with every passing second the spring was pulled tighter. That was what made the waiting so terrible.
He went below and stepped into a hot foam shower, felt the powerful muscles of his shoulders and neck relax a trifle. Briefly he thought of the Turner girl. Would she be in Relief when he returned? Of course, there were others equally well trained to help the men through the period of childish regression that inevitably occurred when their shifts were over and the pressure suddenly off—the only way they could rebuild their mental resources for another shift—but to John Provost, the Turner girl seemed better than any of the others.