The Whole Man (24 page)

She tried to interrupt, but he rushed on, abandoning the use of slow words. Instead, he slammed whole blocks of issociated associated concepts into her mind directly.

Deep in Rudi’s brain, as in all ordinary people’s, there’s what we call body image—a master plan the body uses for its major repairs. I’m going after it. You’ll have to takz take instructions from me and carry them out because my hands are too clumsy for delicate work. Don’t try to think for yourself—let go!

LET.

GO!

And with that, he simultaneously reached deep into Rudi’s failing mind and took over control of Clara’s hands.

She straggled, but gamely tried to overcome her instinctive resistance, and within a minute he was able to make her lift back Rudi’s shoulders so they could see the gashed opening in his belly.

The sight shocked her so much Howson momentarily lost control; he spared a valuable few seconds to reassure her, and then continued his exploration of Rudi’s body image.

So many of his nerves were reporting damage and pain that he could not at first distinguish between them. He decreased his sensitivity, but that only resulted in a vague blur.

He sat down on a chair and steeled himself. Then he began again.

This time it was as if the nerves were reporting their agony directly to himself, from his own body lying torn and rainedruined. But none of that must be relayed to Clara, for it would render her incapable of assisting him. He had to absorb and master the pain within himself. …

All right, now. What first? Stop the leakage of blood before the activity of the brain wasted completely away. Something … Clips? Hair clips? Didn’t women usually have such things?

Clara had some in a bowl only a foot from her shoulder. She seized them and furiously began to clip the open ends of the major blood vessels. The weakening of the brain diminished, remained steady at an irreducible trickle.

All right. Put back the displaced intestines, so.

Covered with blood, Clara’s hands seized the gray-blue living guts and settled them tenderly in place; pushed at torn mesenteries and got them back roughly where they belonged. With each action came a reduction of the pain and damage reports battering at Howson. By the time she had completed the replacement of the vital organs he was able to open his eyes. He had not realized they were shut.

“An ordinary needle and thread,” he said huskily, and she got them; she left bloody hand prints on the table, on the door handle, everywhere. “Stitch the stomach wall together,” he directed, and she did, clumsily by surgical standards, but well enough. “Now the skin itself; now wash your hands, wash the skin, get a clean piece of cloth to dress it—”

Rudi’s mind blazed up as he returned to consciousness for an instant, unexpectedly; Howson gritted his teeth and slapped the ego back into oblivion. Rough-and-ready treatment, but then, so much damage had already been done to Rudi’s personality, a little more would make no difference.

What counted was that the tiny flicker of life smoldered on. It would last until a blood transfusion; then they could repair the damage properly. Meantime, Howson had achieved all he could ask: survival.

It had taken exactly five minutes.

Now there would be the ambulance, and police, with questions. He couldn’t remember if attempted suicide was still a crime here; in some places, he had a vague idea the antique Christian attitude endured. …

Clara came back from putting away the needle and thread, and stood gazing down at her handiwork. “Why did he have to try and kill himself?” she said half angrily, and Howson shook his head. He felt as tired as if he had walked a thousand miles, but he must not let weariness claim him.

“He didn’t try to kill himself,” he said. “It was an accident. It was stupid, but not suicidal. Part of a joke that went too far.”

She sensed what lay behind that, in his mind, and nodded without his needing to explain further, but he had to explain when the ambulance arrived, and again when the police came, and after it all he was so exhausted he sat down in the nearest chair and went to sleep.

When he awoke, he was for a long time puzzled as to where he could be. He lay on his back between sheets, a pillow comfortably under his head. But the bed didn’t have that slight ingenious bias which had been built into his own bed at Ulan Bator and which favored his back so subtly. More, the light played on the too-high ceiling in the wrong manner—

He came fully awake and turned on his side, and saw that Clara, wrapped in a plaid blanket, was dozing in the room’s one armchair.

She sensed his awakening and blinked her eyes open. She didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then she smiled.

“Feeling all right?” she asked banally. “You were so fast asleep you didn’t even notice when I put you to bed.”

“You what?”

“Did you expect me to put you on the floor?” She got to her feet, unwrapping the blanket, and stretched. She was wearing the same clothes she had had on during the party.

“I’d have been all right in the chair where I was!”

“Oh, shut up!” she said almost angrily. “You deserved the bed more than I did, by Christ. I don’t want to argue about it, anyway. Feel capable of breakfast?”

Howson sat up. He found she had taken off his shoes and jacket and left him otherwise fully dressed, so he pushed aside the bedclothes and got his feet to the floor. “Well, you know—you know, I think I do.”

She brought cereal and coffee and opened a can of fruit juice, and they sat eating off their knees on the edge of the unmade bed.

“What I want to know,” she said after a while, “is how you managed to fob everyone off with that phony story about an accident.”

Howson grunted. “If there’s one thing a projective telepathist can do convincingly, it’s tell a helie. I could make the average man believe the sun was out at midnight with
no
difficulty. I ought really to have fixed the same idea in the skulls of the other people who were here, for the sake of consistency, instead of ordering them off the premises. But I was so worried in case their presence distracted me … Oh, what the hell? None of them actually saw him do it.”

He put aside the bowl from which he had been eating. “I should have asked you before. How do you feel about being a telepathist yourself?”

The green eyes held a hint of uncertainty. “Then you meant what you said? I tried to—to receive something from you last night, after the police had gone, and nothing happened, so I guessed you’d just spun me a yarn to boost my confidence. Or something,” she finished lamely.

“You were probably too exhausted. I did mean what I said, of course. Tell me something: how did you know what Rudi had done?”

“Why, he—screamed!”

“He didn’t utter a sound. He might have been a genuine Samurai. If he had screamed, everyone in the room would have heard it. Only you and I knew what had happened beyond the closed door of the kitchen, and that means you’re a receptive telepathist. I’d already begun to suspect that you might be; I’m surprised you hadn’t wondered about it yourself.”

She finished eating and lighted a cigarette. “Oh, this is all so … disturbing! I mean, I’d always thought of telepathists as people—you know—
apart.”

“They are,” confirmed Howson with quiet grimness.

“And I didn’t even know there were—what do you call them?—receptive ones.”

“They do seem to be rather rare, as a matter of fact. I suspect there are probably a lot more than we know about. I mean, you can spot a projective telepathist easily, if he’s reasonably powerful and totally untrained; he stands out like a fire alarm. Me”—he chuckled—”—“they overheard from a satellite orbiting at six thousand miles! but how do you spot a receptive unless something happens positively to identify him, or her?”

He leaned back against the wall. “However, you may take all that as read, in your case. You’re about the right age for the talent to show itself, you know; mine came on when I was twenty, and that’s typical. So what are you going to do?”

“I’ve no idea.” She looked rather frightened. “I haven’t even worked out how I’m going to tell my family.”

“That’s one problem I never had to face,” Howson admitted. “Do they have prejudices, then?”

“I don’t know. I mean, the subject sort of never came up.” A thought creased her brow. “Look, what the hell do receptive telepathists
do,
anyway? Aren’t they pretty limited in their choice of work?”

“By comparison with projectives, I suppose they are,” Howson agreed in a judicious tone. “But a telepathist is a very special person, and the demand for their services isn’t by any means exhausted. I can tell you a few of the standard occupations. Most of the receptives I know are psychiatric diagnosticians and therapy watchdogs—”

‘“Are what?”

He explained. “Then there’s Olaf Marks, who’s a genius-spotter. He loves kids, so they gave him the business of discovering outstandingly brilliant children in the preverbal stage. Then there’s Makerakera, whom you may well have heard of; he’s recognized by the UN as an authority on aggression, and spends his time going from one potential crisis to another identifying grievances and having them put right. Oh, don’t worry about being limited in your choice of a career; we’re near enough unique to be able to pick and choose.”

She gave a little nervous laugh. “It’s funny to hear you say ‘we’ and know you’re includicg including me in it! Still, what you said is quite reassuring.”

“I’m not saying it to reassure you. I’m just telling you. Apart from anything else, you wouldn’t be happy doing anything which didn’t exploit your talent once it’s fully developed. I don’t want to make out that being a telepathist doesn’t pose its own problems, Lord knows. …” Howson sighed. “You were right about me last night, as you must have guessed.”

“More … more telepathy?”

“What do
you
think?”

She got up and began to clear away the breakfast things without answering. After an interval of silence she said, “How about Rudi, Gerry? Did you have a chance to find out what made him do it?”

“No. One has to learn not to intrude on another mind’s privacy. One
has
to, or life wouldn’t be worth living. And while we were patching him up, of course, I couldn’t spare the time. You’ve had a much better chance to find out why he did it.”

She made a helpless gesture. “All I could tell was that he was … well, living a helie, as they say. Doing it well, but …” She gestured to complete the statement. “Gerry, what are you doing here, anyway? You’re from Ulan Bator, aren’t you?”

“Yes—now. But I was born here.”

“Are you looking up old acquaintances?”

“I looked up a couple. That was a failure. No, I’m after new rather than old acquaintances. It’s partly a vacation, partly a voyage of self-discovery. … You’ll find out what I mean some day.”

She accepted the hint. “So, what should I do now, to get back to my own worries?” She smiled faintly.

“Officially, you should drop by at the local World Health headquarters and take the aptitude tests. Then they’d fly you to Ulan Bator or Canberra or perhaps Hong Kong for proper training. But I’d say, give yourself time to get used to the prospect before you report in.”

“You seem awfully sure I will report in, yet if I asked you not to tell anyone about me, I think you’d agree.”

“Of course. Only after a while you’ll get dissatisfied with your own awkwardness. You’ll get frustrated with things you don’t know how to handle. And one day youH you’ll say, ‘Ah, the hell with it,’ and go and ask how to use your gift to the full. It wasn’t telepathists who worked out the techniques, you know; it was ordinary psychologists who could no more project an impression than ride a bicycle to the moon. And now I want you to do something for me. Go down to the phone and call the hospital where they took Rudi—it’s the Main General. He’ll probably still be under sedation. Ask if we can— I’m sorry. Are you busy this morning?”

She shook her head.

“Then ask if we, if you want to come, can see him. Tell them I’m Gerald Howson, Psi.D., Ulan Bator. They’ll fall all over themselves to let me come.”

“Then why bother to call up first?”

Howson looked at her steadily. “I want them to have a chance to learn that I’m a runt with a bum leg instead of a husky superman,” he said calmly. “It hurts less that way.”

Clara bit her lip. “That was tactless of me,” she said.

“Yes,” said Howson, and got up. “I’ll go and wash up while you’re making that call.”

XXVII
xxvii

Rudi Allef lay in his hospital bed with a cradle to keep the bedding off his injured abdomen. He was not unconscious, but he was chiefly aware of pain. The sedatives he had been given had reduced it to a level like that of a raging headache, and enabled him for short periods to sidestep it within his mind and think coherently; however, most of the time the effort simply did not seem worthwhile.