Three to Conquer (11 page)

             
"How did it happen?"

             
"Can a man with a harelip tell you how it happened? All I know is that I was bo
rn
that way. For a few years, I assumed that everyone else was precisely like
myself
. Being a child, it took quite a time to learn that it was not so; to learn that I was a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind; to learn that I could be feared, and that the feared are hated."

             
"There must be a reason for it," said Jameson. "Does it matter?"

             
"It matters a hell of a lot. You are a freak created by some very special arrangement of circumstances. If we could detail those circumstances fully and completely, we could estimate the likelihood of them being duplicated elsewhere. That, in turn, would give us a fair idea of whether there are any more like you—and, if so, who's got them."

             
Harper said quietly and soberly, "I don't think that matters a damn—not any more."

             
"Why doesn't it?"

             
"Because I made mental contact with Jocelyn Whittingham, and she promptly called me an insulting name.
So I shot her."

             
"You considered that adequate motive for murder?" prompted Jameson.

             
"In view of the name, yes
!
"

             
"
What did she call you?
"

             
"
A
Terrestrial bastard."

-

             
For a full two minutes Jameson sat there like one paralyzed. His thoughts milled mildly around, and he was momentarily oblivious of the fact that Harper could read them as easily as if they were in neon lights.

             
Then he asked, "Are you sure of that?"

             
"The only person in the world who can be positive about someone else's mind is a telepath," assured Harper. "
I'll
tell you something else: I shot her because I knew I couldn't kill her. It was a physical impossibility."

             
"How d'you make .that out?"

             
"No living man could harm Jocelyn Whittingham—because she was already dead."

             
"Now see here, we have a detailed police report—"

             
"I killed something else," said Harper. "I killed the thing that had already slaughtered her."

             
Jameson promptly went into another whirl. He had a cool, incisive mind used to dealing with highly complicated problems, but essentially normal ones. This was the first time within his considerable experience that he had been slapped in the face by a sample of the supernormal.

             
One thing surprised the observing Harper
—
namely, that much of the other's confusion stemmed from the fact that he lacked certain information he could reasonably be expected to possess. High up in the bureaucratic hierarchy Jameson might be; but evidently he was not high enough. All the same, he had enough pull to take the matter further and get some action.

             
Harper said, "You've got the bald account from police sources. It isn't enough. I'd like to give you my side of the story."

             
"Go ahead," invited Jameson, glad to concentrate on something that might clear up the muddle.

             
Commencing with his pick-up of the dying Alderson's broadcast, Harper took it through to the end.

             
Then he said, "No ordinary human being is ever aware of his mind being read. He gains no sense of physical contact that might serve to warn him; he remains completely unconscious of being pried into. I have been absorbing your thoughts the entire time we've been here together; your senses have not registered the probe in any way whatever, have they?"

             
"No," Jameson admitted.

             
"And if I had not told you that I'm a telepath, and satisfied you as to the truth of it, you'd have found no cause to suspect that your mind is wide open to me, would you?"

             
"No."

             
"Well," went on Harper reminiscently, "the instant I touched the mind inside Jocelyn Whittingham, it
felt
the contact; that mind knew whence it came, took wild alarm, and hated me with a most appalling ferocity. In the same instant I detected all its reactions and recognized it as non-human. The contact did not last a fiftieth of a second, but it was enough. I knew it as nothing bo
rn
of woman, as surely as your own eyes can tell you that a rattlesnake is not a mewling babe."

             
"If it wasn't human," inquired Jameson, with much skepticism, "what was it?"

             
"That I don't know."

             
"Of what shape or form?"

             
"The shape and form of the Whittingham girl.
It
had
to be that; it was using her body."

             
Disbelief suddenly swamped Jameson's brain. "I will concede that you are either a genuine telepath, or the practitioner of some new and superb trick that makes you look like one. But that doesn't mean I have to swallow this murder story. What your defense boils down to is that you shot a corpse animated by God knows what. No jury on earth will give such an incredible-plea a moment's consideration."

             
"I'll never face a jury," Harper told him.

             
"I think you will—unless you drop dead beforehand. The law must take its course."

             
"For the first time in my naughty life I'm above the law," said Harper, impressively confident. "What's more, the law itself is going to say
so."

             
"How do you reach that remarkable conclusion?"

             
"The law isn't interested only in the death of Jocelyn Whittingham. It is even more concerned about the slaying of Trooper Alderson, he having been a police officer. And you can't pin
that one
on me, because I didn't do it."

             
"Then who did?" Jameson challenged.

             
"A-a-ah!"
Harper eyed him meaningfully. "Now you're getting right down to the heart of the matter. Who killed Aider-son—and why?
"

             
"
Well?"

             
"Three men in a Thunderbug.
Three men who, in all probability, resented Alderson's intrusion at a critical moment, when the Whittingham girl was being taken over."

             
"Taken over?"

             
"Don't stare at me like that. How do' I know precisely what happened—something did happen to produce the result I discovered."

             
Jameson looked baffled.

             
"Three men," continued Harper, giving it emphasis.
"In green suits, matching green ties, gray shirts and collars.
Three men wearing uniforms with which nobody is familiar. Why haven't those uniforms been recognized?"

             
"Because they were not uniforms at all," Jameson hazarded. "They merely looked that way, having a sort of official cut, let us say."

             
"Or because they were uniforms that nobody knows about," suggested Harper, "because the government has said nothing to anybody."

             
"What the devil are you getting at?"

             
"We're pulling the Moon to pieces, and nobody thinks anything of it. It's been going on long enough to have become commonplace. We're so sophisticated about such matters that we've lost the capacity for surprise."

             
"I'm aware of all this, since I live in the present," said Jameson, a trifle impatiently. "What of it?"

             
"Has anyone cooked up notions of exploiting Venus or Mars? Have you sent anyone there
to
take a look and, if so, when was it? Are they due back by now? Were they three men in green uniforms with gray shirts?"

             
"My God!" ejaculated Jameson.

             
"Three men went somewhere, got more than they bargained for and involuntarily brought it back to spread around. That's my theory. Try it for size."

             
"If I approach the proper quarter with such a fantasy, they'll think I'm cracked."

             
"I know why you fear that; I can read your mind, remember? First, you personally know of no space-expedition, have heard not the slightest hint of one. Secondly, you cannot credit my diagnosis.
Right?"

             
"Fat lot of use denying it."

             
"Then look at it this way: I know that, for a fragmentary moment, I touched a genuinely alien mind in possession of a human body. That entity could not have solidified out of sheer nothingness. It must have arrived in some concealed manner. Somebody must have brought it. The only possible suspects are those three men."

             
"Go on," encouraged Jameson.

             
"We.
have
not the vaguest notion how long those three have been gallivanting around.
Maybe for a week, maybe for a year."
He fixed his listener with an accusative stare. "Therefore, the Whittingham girl may not have been the first. That trio may have given the treatment to a hundred, and maybe busily tending to a hundred more while we're sitting here making useless noises. If we wait long enough, they'll enslave half the world before we wake up."

             
Jameson fidgeted, and glanced hesitantly at the phone.

             
"Brockman of Special Services," said Harper. "He's the guy you've got in mind right now." He made an urgent gesture.
"All "right, get through to him.
What is there to lose? Perhaps he
'
ll tell you what he wouldn't dream of telling me. Ask him if an expedition is out in space, and when it's due back."

             
"Ten to one he
'
ll ignore the question and want to know why I'm asking," Jameson protested. "I can hardly offer him your notions, and secondhand at that."

             
"He'll jump on you only if there's no such expedition," Harper asserted. "But if there is one, and it's top secret, your query will make him hotfoot over to find how the news got out. Try him, and let's hear what he says."

             
Doubtfully, Jameson picked up the phone, said in resigned tones, "Get me Special Services Department, Mr. Brockman."

-

             
When the call went through, Jameson spoke in the reluctant manner of one compelled to announce the arrest of Snow White and all the seven dwarfs.