“Try to take a nap, Martha. You’re tired. You’re exhausted.”
He saw the heaviness of her lids and watched her fight against it. But the fight was quickly lost. In sleep she looked more than ever like a child.
He reported the incident to Faven and Massio immediately. Faven shrugged. “Females are always more intuitive. I know Lofta wants us to keep her here. But this makes her dangerous. A little accident, maybe?”
“No,” said Amro with a quick force that surprised him.
Faven cooed and touched his cheek. “So he wants a little Earthchild plaything.”
“No, I merely meant that there’s no harm in her. She couldn’t possibly guess what we’re up to or how we got here. There’s no doubt in her mind but what I’m Quinn French. And by the way, there’s one Earthling who bequeathed me a supply of very interesting memories.”
Faven smiled. “We seem to share some of those, don’t we?”
Massio said quietly, “Jerry Raymond had it in his mind to kill his wife and Quinn French. I can detect the half-formed impulse.”
“I insist,” Faven said, “that we get rid of that creature before she makes genuine trouble.”
“You can make that suggestion to Lofta through me,” Amro said stiffly. “I’ll inform him of your desire when I report tonight.”
Massio stretched. “I, for one, like the feeling of being able to be off-guard. It is the first time in ten years that it’s been this way. The girl won’t bother me. Nothing can bother me so long as I don’t have to look at you two and wonder if you’re League substitutions.”
An hour later Martha came out onto the beach, walking unsteadily. She smiled at Quinn. “Goodness! I must have had a touch of the sun. Anyone else want a swim?”
“I do,” Quinn said. They walked down to the edge of the water. Martha fell heavily and lay dazed for a moment. Quinn turned and saw Faven standing by the house, an enigmatic smile on her lips.
“I... I must be sick,” Martha said calmly.
“No — you’re not. Swim out with me.”
“You’re angry. Why?”
“Be still and swim.”
A hundred yards from shore he turned. In his anger he had outdistanced her by a great deal. When she came up to him her eyes were wide.
“Heavens, Quinn! How on earth do you do that? You make bow waves!”
“You fell because Fran willed you to fall. You’re right. It is sort of a trick.”
“Why would she do that to — oh! I see. Well, you can tell her for me that I don’t want anything to do with you, Quinn.” “Will you please listen to me? Feel that?”
“Of course,” she said hotly. “And it’s a dirty trick. Just like a hot needle stabbing right through my forehead.”
“You don’t have any resistance at all — none. But I have a hunch I can teach you through visualization. Think of something strong — a barrier.”
“Like a brick wall?”
“Exactly. Now pretend it is right behind your eyes so that you’re seeing it with the back of your eyes. Just imagine a small area of it and individualize the bricks. Identify them along with the cement between them. Make as clear a picture as you can and think of it as hard as you can.”
He tried again, and felt a fractional resistance, a faint rubberiness before the probe slid through. “I could feel you push against the wall,” she said, with wonder. “But you got through.”
“Try again — try harder. Every brick — the pores in the bricks.”
They floated in the buoyant water and slowly she acquired the necessary barrier. It was stronger each time. And finally he knew that the resistance was such that the thrust necessary to get through it would surge into her brain with such force as to permanently damage her. He explained that to her.
“Make me insane just by — whatever it is that you do? Well — if you think so, please don’t try it. Now teach me how to do that to someone else, Quinn.”
“You can’t possibly learn it.”
“You did.”
“Say I had special aptitude.”
“How do you know I don’t?”
“I know you don’t. Be glad that I’ve at least taught you how to keep Faven from knocking you down at will.”
“Faven?”
“A pet name. I mean to say Fran.”
“I hope she tries again. Have I got news for her!”
“Remember, you have to anticipate her attempt, otherwise it’s no good. She and Jerry and I keep the shields erected at all times. It’s considered to be bad taste to try to violate the privacy of someone’s mind unless, of course, conditions make it such that that’s the only way you can converse.”
He slowed to let her catch up with him. “Then that’s what you were doing the first night I was here. Say, that’s only last night, isn’t it? What were you talking about, Quinn?”
“Primitive women.”
“Really! Are there some around here?”
“Quite nearby,” he said softly.
She walked ahead of him up the slope of the beach. He could not resist the impulse. She stumbled and turned sharply.
“See what I mean?” he said, grinning. “You have to anticipate it, or else walk around thinking of nothing but that wall.”
Chapter IV
Truce
Throughout the planets there was restlessness among the Stradai. Yet never before had society achieved such perfect balance. With a two trillion population base the increment for each year was sixteen point six billion or, based on average planet figures, a five-planet increment.
Basic decontamination squads maintained a five-year jump on the colonization, a fifteen-planet lead, with the agricultural groups and housing groups moving in a year behind them. Industrial resources were at constant full utilization to provide not only the necessary maintenance of the old but the complete supply of the new.
As the wave of population increase hit each prepared planet that planet became responsible for a fixed percentage of universal need, based on what it could best produce. To achieve this orderly result the above-ground organizations of both the Center and the League were forced to work with careful coordination, depending on the orders emanating from the home planet of Strada which over the long years had long ceased to maintain any form of heavy industry.
The entire planet was the bureaucratic nerve center of the continual expansion, a vast paperwork capital where even the smallest bureaus integrated their data on calculators half as large as the entire space occupied by bureau personnel.
A slight error on the part of Food Resources would result in deficiencies to be made up through the shift of manufacturing resources from other items. A faulty tabulation on the part of Center Research Facilities and a planet being currently occupied would lack the familiar huge white standard building common to all planets.
One area of careful cooperation was the ship facilities for the actual migrations. All planets at full population had to be constantly bled for the new ones being set up. Any delay in picking up the overage meant a strain on the facilities of the overburdened planet and a necessary diversion of cargo space to the planet to bring in the needed items from a planet with an overage.
With the Center responsible for the construction and maintenance of all space carriers of the commercial type and with the League responsible for routing, it was the most closely meshed area of cooperation. The League, however, had slowly taken over the construction, operation and maintenance of the vast patrol fleet.
To counteract this potential weapon the Center had liberally interpreted its maintenance of commercial carriers responsibility and had slowly acquired a “maintenance fleet” which, though ostensibly unwarlike, matched the force of the patrol fleet.