And in this must have lain something of what Stone had been thinking when he had started his crusade to break the monopoly of Fishhook, to bring to the paranormal people of the world outside of Fishhook some measure of the heritage which was rightly theirs by the very virtue of their abilities.
In that Blaine could find agreement with him, for it was not right, he told himself, that all the results of PK should be forever funneled through the tight controls of a monopoly that in the course of a century of existence had somehow lost the fervor of its belief and its strength of human purpose in a welter of commercialism such as no human being, nor any age, had ever known before.
By every rule of decency, parakinetics belonged to Man himself, not to a band of men, not to a corporation, not even to its discoverers nor the inheritors of its discoverers — for the discovery of it, or the realization of it, no matter by what term one might choose to call it, could not in any case be the work of one man or one group of men alone. It was something that must lay within the public domain. It was a truly natural phenomena — more peculiarly a natural resource than wind or wood or water.
Behind Blaine the logs, burning to the point of collapse, fell apart in a fiery crash. He turned to look at them -
Or tried to turn.
But he could not turn.
There was something wrong.
Somehow or other, the robe had become wrapped too tightly.
He pushed his hands out from his side to pull it loose, but he could not push his hands and it would not loosen.
Rather, it tightened. He could feel it tighten.
Terrified, he tried to thrust his body upward, trying to sit up.
He could not do it.
The robe held him in a gentle but unyielding grasp.
He was as effectively trussed as if he’d been tied with rope. The robe, without his knowing it, had become a strait jacket that held him close and snug.
He lay quietly on his back and while a chill went through his body, sweat poured down his forehead and ran into his eyes.
For there had been a trap.
He had been afraid of one.
He had been on guard against it.
And yet, of his own free will and unsuspecting, he had wrapped the trap about him.
TWENTY-FIVE
Rand had said “I’ll be seeing you,” when he had shaken hands and stepped into the transo. He had sounded cheerful and very confident. And he’d had a right to sound that way, Blaine thought ruefully, for he’d had it all planned out. He had known exactly what would happen and he’d planned it letter perfect — the one way to apprehend a man you happened to be just a little scared of, not knowing exactly what to expect from him.
Blaine lay on the floor, stretched out, held stretched out and motionless by the encircling robe — except, of course, it was not a robe. It was, more than likely, one of those weird discoveries which Fishhook, for purposes of its own, had found expedient to keep under very careful cover. Foreseeing, no doubt, that certain unique uses might be found for it.
Blaine searched his memory and there was nothing there — nothing that even hinted of a thing like this, some parasitic life, perhaps, which for time on end could lie quiet and easy, making like a robe, but which came to deadly life once it was exposed to something warm and living.
It had him now and within a little while it might start feeding on him, or whatever else it might plan to do with him. There was no use, he knew, to struggle, for at every movement of his body the thing would only close the tighter.
He searched his mind again for a clue to this thing and all at once he found a place — he could see a place — a murky, tumbled planet with tangled forestation and weird residents that flapped and crawled and shambled. It was a place of horror, seen only mistily through the fogs of memory, but the most startling thing about it was that he was fairly certain, even as he dredged it up, he had no such memory. He had never been there and he’d never talked to one who had, although it might have been something he’d picked up from dimensino — from some idle hour of many years before, buried deep within his mind and unsuspected until this very moment.
The picture grew the brighter and the clearer, as if somewhere in his brain someone might be screwing at a lens to get a better picture, and now he could see in remarkable and mind-chilling detail the sort of life that lived within the welter of chaotic jungle. It was horrendous and obscene and it crawled and crept and there was about it a studied, cold ferociousness, the cruelty of the uncaring and unknowing, driven only by a primal hunger and a primal hate.
Blaine lay frozen by the pitlike horror of the place, for it was almost as if he actually were there, as if a part of him lay on this floor before the fireplace while the other half was standing, in all reality, within the loathsome jungle.
He seemed to hear a noise, or this other half of him seemed to hear a noise, and this other half of him looked upward into what might have been a tree, although it was too gnarled, too thorned and too obnoxious to be any proper tree, and looking up, he saw the robe, hanging from a branch, with the shattered diamond dust sparkling in its fur, about to drop upon him.
He screamed, or seemed to scream, and the planet and its denizens faded out, as if the hand within his brain had turned the viewing lens out of proper focus.
He was back, entire, in the land of fireplace and of storeroom, with the transo machine standing in its corner. The door that went into the store was opening, and Grant was coming through.
Grant moved out into the room and eased the door behind him to its closed position. Then he swung around and stood silently, huge, and stolid, staring at the man upon the floor.
“Mr. Blaine,” he said, speaking softly. “Mr. Blaine, are you awake?”
Blaine did not answer.
“Your eyes are open, Mr. Blaine. Is there something wrong with you?”
“Not a thing,” said Blaine. “I was just lying here and thinking.”
“Good thoughts, Mr. Blaine?”
“Very good, indeed.”
Grant moved forward slowly, catfooted, as if he might be stalking something. He reached the table and picked up the bottle. He put it to his mouth and let it gurgle.
He put the bottle down.
“Mr. Blaine, why don’t you get up? We could sit around and talk and have a drink or two. I don’t get to talk to people much. They come here and buy, of course, but they don’t talk to me no more than they just have to.”
“No, thanks,” said Blaine. “I’m quite comfortable.”
Grant moved from the table and sat down in one of the chairs before the fireplace.
“It was a shame,” he said, “you didn’t go back to Fishhook with Mr. Rand. Fishhook is an exciting place to be.”
“You’re quite right,” Blaine told him, replying automatically, not paying much attention.
For now he knew — he knew where he’d got that memory, where he’d picked up the mental picture of that other planet. He had gotten it from the neat stacks of information he’d picked up from the Pinkness. He, himself, of course, had never visited the planet, but the Pinkness had.
And there was more to the memory than just the magic-lantern picture of the place. There was, as well, a file of data about the planet and its life. But disorderly, not yet sorted out, and very hard to get at.
Grant leaned back into his chair, smirking just a little. Grant reached out a hand and tapped his fingers on the robe. It gave forth a sound like a muted drum.
“Well,” he demanded, “how do you like it, Mr. Blaine?”
“I’ll let you know,” Blaine told him, “when I get my hands on you.”
Grant got up from the chair and walked back to the table, following an exaggerated, mocking path around the stretched-out Blaine. He picked up the bottle and had another slug.
“You won’t get your hands on me,” he said, “because in just another minute I’m going to shove you into the transo over there and back you go to Fishhook.”