Psychosphere (17 page)

“What do you know of ESP, Mr. Stone? No, do not answer; first let me tell you what I can do. I am telepathic, as you have discovered. I read minds. But that is only one of my powers. I cannot yet levitate, not yet, but I do have great potential. Here, let me show you…” He went to an upright weighing-machine and stood upon its platform. The needle spun dizzily and twitched to a halt at just over four hundred and thirty pounds.

“Now watch!” ordered Gubwa. He closed his eyes. In a matter of moments a fine beading of sweat stood out upon his brow. The needle on the dial crept down, down. Three hundred pounds. Two hundred and ten. One hundred and seventy.

Gubwa opened his eyes, sighed—and the needle shot up again. He stepped off the platform. “And that is a measure of power I must use constantly, Mr. Stone, else movement itself would be cumbersome. Hypnotism is another art of mine, in which I excel. But you will discover that for yourself soon enough. I am also what you might call a seer: I prognosticate. Not, unfortunately, very accurately—but I can see something of the future. The immediate future, quite clearly—the distant future, dimly. Suffice it to say that when I put my money on a horse it usually wins. In all matters of gambling, I am rather unbeatable.”

Stone frowned. In all matters of…
gambling
! His mouth fell open. Garrison! So that was how he did it!

Gubwa had chosen that very moment to read his mind. His pink eyes became slits in his puffy, leprous face: his version of a knowing smile. “Indeed,” his voice was very low, very sinister. “Richard Garrison—and you have been given the task of protecting him.”

Stone's mind went back to Garrison's file—all he had read and memorized of the man—but in the next moment he gasped, gritted his teeth and bit his lip until it hurt, deliberately dragging his mind away from that subject.

Gubwa laughed, a deep, almost hearty laugh. “Oh, do not concern yourself! I know more of Garrison than ever you could tell me. Far more, though not yet enough. Sincerely, Mr. Stone, there is nothing I want of you in the way of information. Nothing I want
out
of you at all. Instead, let me tell you something about him.” He quickly outlined the relevant facts, even went so far as to mention several things Stone had not previously known, until the agent once more relaxed in his chair. Gubwa was right: there was nothing Stone had that he didn't already know.

“So what do you want of me?”

Gubwa pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Again, it can do no harm to tell you. I have—‘a friend'—in a rival branch of your so-called ‘secret' services. He would dearly love to see Garrison dead, also to discredit MI6, your branch…”

“Sir Harry,” Stone scowled.

“Close enough,” Gubwa nodded. “Actually Sir Harry's boss, working through him.” He smiled again. “But you see, you
are
intelligent! And being so intelligent, perhaps I need explain no further?”

“I'm getting the picture,” Stone answered, “but I'd still be happier hearing it from you. I mean, you're the telepath, not me.”

Gubwa raised his eyebrows. “You disappoint me. But as you will, I shall explain:

“By using you to achieve my aims, I will kill Garrison—eventually—and at the same time perform a service useful to Sir Harry. MI6 will carry the burden of the blame. Now this is not all-important to me, this ‘service' I propose to perform. No, for eventually I will be obliged to deal with Sir Harry, too. That is to say, kill him. But being ‘in league with him,' shall we say, does give me a little security in the event that my plans are not immediately successful. It is simply a matter of being careful.”

“Let's get this straight,” said Stone. “You see yourself as the future Emperor of Earth, right?”

Gubwa nodded. “Yes.”

“I see. And you'll bring this about through, er, holocaust?”

“Not ‘er' holocaust, Mr. Stone, a holocaust. The neutron bomb, chiefly, though there will be other nuclear devices involved, yes.”

Stone nodded, very slowly. “And after that you intend that the human race—what's left of it—should become a gang of freaks,
Hermaphro Sapiens
, like yourself?”

“I will see to it that several genetic engineers, clone technicians, etc., survive, yes. They will be the fathers of the New Earth—figuratively speaking, of course. I, in fact, shall be the true father. My own sperm shall be the seed of future generations.”

Stone sighed, nodded, slumped down in his chair as best he could. After a moment he looked up. “You really are quite mad, you know that? I mean, surely this is something straight out of James Bond. Just let's suppose for a moment that you can do all you say you're going to do: mentally manipulate the world to disaster, kill us all off and start again with a selected few—yes, and even breed a race of superfreaks to—”

“Ah!” Gubwa stopped him. “No, I said nothing about that. I would never allow the development of another whose powers were as great or greater than my own. That would be strictly controlled.”

“I see…”

“What do you see?” said Gubwa, looking into the agent's mind. His great gray face grew angry then. He approached, towered over Stone's chair, looked down on him. “You're wrong, Stone, I fear no man!”

“Except Garrison?”

“I said I fear no
man
, Mr. Stone! No m-a-n.” Gubwa spelled it out. “You are
Homo Sapiens
; the world I envisage will be a world of
Hermaphro Sapiens
; but if I am right in what I suspect of Garrison—”

“He's not a man?”

“A man—of sorts.
Homo Superior
, I suspect.”

“And you want to know what it is he's got that makes him
Homo Superior
, right?”

“Correct. And when I have the answer—then he dies.”

“So what it boils down to, man or superman, you
do
fear him.”

“You see?” Gubwa hissed, towering closer still. “So very intelligent! Wasn't I right about you, Mr. Stone?” He clubbed one mighty fist and raised it, and for a moment Stone believed he would strike him. Then—

—He quickly turned away and pointed, throwing out the fingers of his fist straight and stiff in the direction of the bas-relief figure astride the Earth-image. “Nothing must be allowed to interfere with that, Mr. Stone—nothing!”

“And Garrison could, is that it?”

Gubwa turned and stared at him. “Perhaps,” he nodded. “Yes, perhaps he could. But that in itself is not my dilemma. No, you were right the first time. I want to know what makes him tick. You see, I know where
my
powers come from: they are born of the atom, as were the body and mind that house them. Therefore I will admit to being, as you say, a ‘freak,' a mutation. But Garrison is not. How then is
he
what he is?”

“A telepath?” Stone seemed surprised. “Surely lots of people have claimed to be—”

“
Claimed!
” Gubwa exploded. He threw back his great head and laughed. “Telepath! How little you know! You have no idea, Mr. Stone, what Garrison is, what he can do. Telepathy, indeed! Oh, much more than that. So much more. He is—” he threw his arms wide, forming a great cross, “—incredible! Let me tell you about Garrison. Let me fill in a few more of the gaps in your knowledge. Where to start…oh, yes!

“I have always been aware, you see, that certain minds are different. My own, for instance, and those of several others I've come across over the years. There are a great many men—women, too—whose ESP centers are developed away and beyond the norm or average. Indeed, one might grade them as the numismatist grades his coins.

“First there is ‘Ungraded' or ‘Poor,' common man in all his billions, who knows nothing whatsoever of ESP let alone controls the power. And ‘Fair,' who occasionally finds himself whistling some obscure tune precisely at the same time another begins to whistle it, for he has received an impression of it from that other's mind. Then there is ‘Fine' who knows ‘instinctively' when his father dies—though they are miles apart—or who can ‘feel' that something is about to happen. Of him there are many thousands. Do you see the structure?”

Stone nodded. “I follow you. Go on.”

“Very well. Above ‘Fine' we would place ‘Very Fine'—the man who can fairly accurately read the minds of his wife or children, and who usually has a leaning towards the so-called ‘occult.' That is to say, this one
knows
he is different. Alas, he is only a little different. But rising through the grades we now find ‘Extremely Fine'—the gambler whose chances are far better than average; perhaps the policeman or detective whose ‘hunches' always seem to work out. These are few and far between, and with them the power goes far beyond mere blood-ties or friendships. Rarer still, however, are the topmost grades, who can read most minds with little difficulty and whose control of ESP is far more extensive than mere telepathy.

“Recently, in Tibet, I discovered an entire cache of this latter grade—a rare find indeed. I became jealous, caused the Communist Chinese authorities there to suspect them of being Fifth Columnists—which they were—and was directly responsible for their extermination. All of this without once leaving this retreat of mine.”

“How utterly charming of you,” said Stone.

“Coins,” Gubwa continued, ignoring his sarcasm, “and their grading. I wandered there for a moment. Finally I must grade myself…

“Well, as I have said, I am unique. I suppose you might say that I have been overprinted—a rare coin made rarer still by having been struck twice on one disc…or perhaps I am an exceedingly high denomination mistakenly minted in a base metal. Just so—but this is a far different grading to the one I used to apply to myself, before the advent of Garrison.

“Oh, yes, for there was once a time when I considered myself FDC—that is to say
Fleur de Coin
. But…I graded myself too highly. It was a gigantic vanity. Only Garrison is truly FDC, and only he is truly unique. There
is
no other like him.

“Telepathy? That is the most meager of his talents. No, untrue, it is merely one of them. Consider: he was blinded. Now he sees. Consider: his woman was also blind. She sees. Ah, but that is not all: she
was
dead!”

At this Stone snorted his derision. “The body of a certain Vicki Maler was placed in cryogenic suspension at—”

“Not ‘a certain Vicki Maler,' Mr. Stone—
the
Vicki Maler. Garrison revived her. I know. I have been inside her mind. She was frozen against the chance—the million-to-one chance—that science might one day discover a means of reviving her. Garrison already has that science. And consider this: she was riddled with the terrible cancer which killed her. Now she is perfect. That, too, is Garrison's work…

“Finally there are his most recent—shall we continue to say—works? Occurring within the space of the last twenty-four hours, they are perfect examples of his power. Only yesterday—for you have been unconscious overnight, Mr. Stone—his plane was bombed. That was over the Aegean Sea. He flew that crippled plane to England, to Gatwick, and landed it there safely. Without engines, without any means of aerodynamic control, without wheels! And the plane landed like a feather, the most perfect of perfect crash-landings.”

“I know about that,” said Stone. “A miraculous escape, a—”

“Rubbish!” Gubwa snapped. “You know nothing. A miracle is in the eyes of the beholder. It is usually the occurrence of a highly unlikely event. The impossible on the other hand cannot occur because it is
impossible
. What will the authorities make of it, I wonder, when they discover that Garrison's plane came in ninety minutes too soon? From the moment the bomb exploded and crippled it, it must have been travelling at a speed
far in excess
of its maximum possible speed!”

Stone's mind was whirling again.

“Now
that
is what I call levitation!” Gubwa continued. “The pilot is still convinced it was an act of God. Oh, the effort tired Garrison, certainly, for which reason he is now resting—but is that difficult to understand? Think of it! Think of what he did! Moreover, he discovered the author of the crime and struck back. Except that here he was much more lenient than I would have been.”

“Now you've really lost me,” said Stone.

“Ah! Of course, for you do not yet know who tried to kill him. Well, I shall tell you. It was the Mafia—or rather, a small member of that crude and unwieldy organization. His name is Vicenti.”

“Carlo Vicenti? We've been interested in him and his pals for some time. Are you sure it was him? How did you get onto him so quickly?”

“I am sure, yes,” Gubwa answered. “The bomb could only have been planted in Rhodes; an ugly pair called the Black brothers are there; I have been in “Bomber” Bert Black's mind. It was them. He himself planted the device.”

“Wait,” said Stone, his gravelly voice suddenly weary. “Too fast. If they are still in Rhodes, how could you have been ‘in' Bomber's mind? How do you know they are there anyway?”

Gubwa turned Stone's chair to face his huge desk. “You see my computer there? I know the Blacks are in Rhodes because my computer told me. It talks to the computer at Gatwick. Also to those at New Scotland Yard, and to many others. Even to your own machine at MI6 HQ.” His smile was broader now than Stone had ever seen it. “Ah, and at last you begin to see, Mr. Stone! And perhaps I am not so crazy after all, eh?”

“But how did Garrison know it was Vicenti? And how did he strike back at him?”

Gubwa sighed, losing patience. “When the bomb went off he became aware that he was a target. He looked for people with a grudge. Vicenti was one such. A quick look inside his mind—” He shrugged.