F Paul Wilson - LaNague 02 (24 page)

           
JO WAS
DOZING LIGHTLY in a chair when the new head nurse came in during the changeover
to the third shift and startled her to wakefulness.

           
“Sorry if I
surprised you, dear,” she said with a warm smile. “Just making my rounds.”

           
She was
older than most of the other nurses and seemed to have all her moves down to an
almost unconscious routine. She checked the vital-signs contacts and gave Larry
a long, careful look. Apparently satisfied, she smiled and nodded to Jo, then
left.

           
The door
was opened again a few moments later by a middle-aged orderly. He was short,
sallow-skinned, and balding. He seemed unduly surprised to see Jo sitting by
the bed.

           
“I’m sorry,
miss,” he said in a low voice, “but I’m going to prepare the patient for some
final tests and you’ll have to step out for a few minutes.”

           
Jo shot to
her feet and started to reach for her pouch, then changed her mind. “What? Must
I?”

           
“I’m sorry…
hospital rules.”

           
“All
right,” she said resignedly, and started for the door, swaying slightly with
fatigue.

           
When she
passed behind the orderly, however, her whole demeanor changed. Her right hand
shot into her hip pouch and pulled out a small but very deadly blaster. She had
it pointed at the orderly’s head and was squeezing the trigger when his
peripheral vision caught the movement. He turned–

           
–and Jo had
no body. At least that was the way it seemed. All tactile and proprioceptive
impulses from her extremities and torso had been cut off. She was a head
floating in the room. It was a sickening sensation. She could still use all her
facial muscles and could move her eyes. Could she speak? She was afraid to try,
afraid she’d only be able to scream. And she didn’t want to do that, not in
front of this creature.

           
“Not a fair
play at all,” he said mockingly. Jo’s arm was still extended in front of her,
the blaster still in her hand. He reached out casually and took it from her
grasp. “Why would you want to blow a poor orderly’s head off?”

           
Jo took a
deep breath. At least she thought she did; there was no sensation of her chest
expanding. She wasn’t sure she could keep herself from gibbering with fear, but
she would try to speak.

           
“I…” Her
throat seemed to be closing; she swallowed and tried again. “I wanted to keep
you from finishing what you started the other night.”

           
Eyes wide,
the little man moved closer. “How do you know about that?”

           
“I was on
the receiving end of the subspace call he was making when he collapsed. You
walked up, looked in, and walked away. I knew you were responsible.”

           
“So,” he
said slowly, glancing between Jo and Easly, “it seems I made two mistakes the
other night. Not only did I forget about the psi-shields on those booths, but I
walked into the field of the visual pickup. I’m either getting old or I’m
getting careless.” He held up the blaster. “Tell me, would you have really used
this on the back of my head?”

           
Jo tried to
nod, but her neck muscles wouldn’t respond. “Without the slightest hesitation.”
Her right arm remained extended with her hand a few tantalizing centimeters
from the blaster, but she could not reach for it. The arm would not respond! It
was as if it no longer belonged to her. She gave up trying and hunted for ways
to keep the man talking. Maybe the head nurse would come back.

           
“Can you
think of a better way to handle a psi-killer?” she added.

           
“Is that
what you think I am?” he said with an amused leer. “A psi-killer? How quaint!”

           
“Aren’t
you?”

           
“My dear,
to compare my capabilities to those of a psi-killer is to compare the
transmitting power of a subspace laser to an ancient crystal radio.”

           
Right then
and there, Jo knew she was dealing with a monstrous ego.

           
“What can
you do that’s so special?”

           
His eyes
danced as he looked at her, and suddenly she was–

           
–nowhere. Blackness, a total absence of
light. Silence, a total absence of sound. A total negation of sensation: she
did not soar, she did not float, she did not fall. The blackness had no depth,
nor did it press in on her. No dimensions: no time, no depth, no length or
width – she couldn’t even call herself a locus. She was nowhere and there was
no way out. She began to panic. No reference points. If only she could find
something to latch onto, to focus her mind on, she’d be able to hold her
sanity. But there was nothing but nothingness. Her panic doubled. Then doubled
again. Before too long it would overwhelm her consciousness and she’d be
irretrievably insane. She–

           
–was back
in the hospital, a head floating in the room.

           
“Like it?”
he asked, still smiling and watching her closely. “That’s my specialty and
that’s how you’ll spend the rest of your life. But first, some answers, please.
We know this man is a detective – did you hire him?”

           
It was a
while before Jo could speak. She was totally unnerved. She’d say anything to
delay being sent back into nowhere, but right now she couldn’t speak. He waited
patiently. Finally:

           
“Yes. I
hired him years ago to see what he could get on Elson deBloise.” She would lie,
but slowly and carefully.

           
“Why
deBloise?”

           
“I
represent a number of pro-Charter groups who think the Restructurists are
getting too powerful. They want leverage against deBloise.”

           
“Ah!
Political blackmail!”

           
“The name
of the game. But we never expected to run into anything like you,” she added,
trying to maneuver the conversation back around to what was undoubtedly the
man’s favorite subject: himself.

           
He bit.
“And you never will! Even if you should walk out of this room and live for another
thousand years, you will never meet another like Cando Proska! I was ten years
old when I first found out I could hurt someone with my mind. I killed a boy
that day. The knowledge of what I had done, and could still do, nearly
destroyed me then. But no one believed I was responsible.”

           
Although
his eyes remained fixed in Jo’s direction, he was no longer seeing her. “I
never tried to use my power again, never had another contact with psionics
until I was eighteen. I was walking through one of the seedier sections of our
fair city one night when a young man about my age pointed a blaster in my face
and demanded money.” He paused and smiled. “I killed him. It was so simple: I
just wished him dead and he dropped to the pavement. Suddenly, I was a different
person!”

           
His eyes
focused on Jo again. He was relishing the telling of his story – he had the
power of life and death over anyone he chose, but no one knew it. He could not
gloat in public and he desperately craved an audience.

           
“I began
experimenting. I used the flotsam and jetsam of the city – the zemmelar
zombies, the winos, the petty thieves, people no one would miss. I didn’t
understand my power then, and I still don’t, but I know what I can do. I can
shock a person into brief unconsciousness, or kill him instantaneously. Or” –
again a pause, again a smile – “I can throw him into permanent limbo: not only
complete deafferentation, as they call it, but complete de-efferentation as
well. No neurological impulses can enter or leave the conscious mind. It is the
most horrifying experience imaginable. You just had a taste of it and can
appreciate how long your sanity would last under those conditions.”

           
He began to
pace the room. “I bided my time doing bureaucratic drudge work until I could
find a way to make my special talents pay off. My patience was rewarded when I
found I could help out Elson deBloise by working my little specialty on a
troublemaker in a town called Danzer. If you were a native you’d have heard of
the man – Junior Finch.”

           
Had Proska
been watching Jo at that moment, he would have realized that he had struck a
nerve. Jo closed her eyes and clamped her teeth down on her lower lip. All fear
was suddenly gone, replaced by a mind-numbing cold. But in the center of that
coldness burned a small flame, growing ever brighter and hotter. The sensation
of an impending explosion was returning, building inexorably.

           
“I’ve heard
of him,” she managed to gasp after the slightest hesitation. “But I thought the
Vanek killed him.”

           
“Oh, they
did!” Proska said with a laugh. “They said they did and the Vanek never lie.
Perhaps you’ll appreciate the story. The man, Finch, was posing a real threat
to deBloise’s political career. We came to an agreement: In return for certain
financial considerations, I would take Finch out of the picture. I went to
Danzer that night, waited for him to leave a little celebration he was having,
and then intercepted him in an alley. He had been drinking, yet even in an
alcoholic haze he gave me more resistance than all my previous experimental
subjects combined. But I succeeded, as I always do. He was little more than a
drooling vegetable when I left him, an apparent victim of a very severe case of
the horrors. And that was the turning point of my life.”

           
Jo was sick
and nearly blind with fury at this point, but utterly helpless to do anything.
Her voice was almost a sob. “But the knife – the Vanek knife.”

           
“Ah!” he
said, too enraptured by his own narrative to notice Jo’s tortured expression.
“That was the final and perfect touch! One of Finch’s Vanek friends apparently
happened on him in the alley and somehow realized what had been done to him –
they have much greater depth of perception than pure Terrans. A knife in the
heart is a true act of friendship to someone I’ve put into limbo. The death
worked out very well for deBloise – his legislation passed with great fanfare
and his political future was set. He gave me a little trouble by crediting the
Vanek with ending Finch’s interference, but I gave him firsthand experience in
the range of my power, and he suddenly became quite agreeable. As an insurance
policy, I have proof of his first-degree involvement in Finch’s death ready to
go to the Federation ethics committee should anything suspicious happen to me.
All in all, my life is quite comfortable nowadays as a result of our
arrangement.”

           
He moved
close to Jo now, his face inches from hers. “But so much for history. My hold
over deBloise is weakened if anyone else knows what I know. Therefore, it is my
sad duty to see to it that you and your detective friend never know anything
again.”

           
The room
dimmed but did not disappear. Jo was ready for him this time and held on to
reality with every fiber of her consciousness. Her mind was being fueled by a
most formidable force: hate.

           
Proska’s voice
seemed to come from far away. “You put up a good defense,” he said with
amusement. “The last one to give me this much of a fight was Finch.”

           
“Maybe it
runs in the family,” Jo heard herself say.

           
“What do
you mean?” His tone was puzzled and the onslaught against her mind slackened
ever so slightly. She screamed:

           
“
JUNIOR FINCH WAS MY FATHER!”

           
The
emotional bomb that had been building within Jo detonated then, and the force
of the explosion coursed along the psionic channel that Proska had opened
between them. An awesome thrust: the grief, the anger, the repressed self-pity
that had accumulated within Jo since the death of her father had at last found
a target. It merged with the fresh rage and fury sparked by Proska’s cold-blooded
recounting of the destruction of her father’s mind, and lashed out with one
savage, berserk assault.

           
Proska
reeled backward and slammed his palms over his eyes. His mouth opened to scream
but no sound came forth as he toppled to the floor and lay flat on his back,
unconscious.

           
Jo suddenly
was aware of her body again. Her arms, legs, and torso were hers once more, but
the legs wouldn’t support her. Her knees buckled and she hit the floor.
Consciousness began to slip away, but before it was completely gone, she saw a
hooded, blue-skinned head poke inside the door and peer about the room.

           
WHEN JO
NEXT OPENED her eyes, she found herself looking into the face of the night
nurse. It took a few heartbeats to orient herself, then she looked across the
floor to where she had last seen Proska. He was gone. So was her blaster.

           
“Where is
he?” she asked, raising herself to a crouching position.