Cornut began to run. Carriers? Of course they were not carriers; he knew what it was. It was St Cyr perhaps, or one of the others, unable to break through the barrier of alcohol to reach his own mind, working with the half-waking minds of the hopeless hundreds on the grass to attack and destroy them. It was quite astonishing, meditated one part of his mind with drunken gravity, that there were so many partial telepaths in this random crowd; but the other part of his mind cried Run, run!
Stones began to fly, and from fifty yards away, across the green, Cornut heard a sound that might have been a shot. But the popper was whirling its blades above them now; they boarded it and it lifted, leaving the sudden mob, wakened to fury, milling about below.
The popper rose to join the rest of the squad. 'That was just in time,' breathed Cornut to the pilot. 'Thanks. Now head east until—'
The co-pilot was turning towards him, and something in his eyes stopped Cornut. Rhame saw it as fast as he. As the co-pilot was reaching for his gun the police sergeant brought up his fist. Co-pilot went one way, the gun another. Sitting on the co-pilot, Cornut and Rhame stared at each other. They didn't have to speak; the communication that passed between them was not telepathic; they both came to the same conclusion at once. Cornut jumped for the gun, pointed it at the only other man in the popper, the pilot. 'This is an emergency popper, right? With medical supplies.'
Rhame understood at once. He leaped for the locker and broke out a half-litre of brandy in a sealed flask. He handed it to the pilot. 'Drink!' he ordered. Then: 'Get on the radio! Tell every man in the squad to take at least two ounces of brandy!'
It was, thought Cornut dizzily, a hell of a way to fight a war.
CHAPTER XVII
Rhame was only a sergeant, but the pilot of the lead popper was a deputy inspector. Once he had enough alcohol in his bloodstream to blot out the nagging drive of the immortals he took command. The other helipoppers questioned his orders, all right. But they obeyed.
The fleet sailed out over the bay, over the city, up towards the mountains.
Underneath them the city lay helpless. It was flat and quiet from above, but at ground level it was a giant killing-pen where blind mobs roamed in terror. A thousand feet over the terrified streets, Cornut could see the fires of wrecked vehicles, the little heaps of motionless bodies, the utter confusion that the plague had wrought. Worse than plague was the panic. The deputy inspector had told him that there were by now more than ten thousand reported deaths in the city, but only a fraction of them were from smallpox. Terror had slain the rest.
Cornut knew that that was what the immortals wanted. They had kept their herd of contented, helpless, shortlived cattle long enough. The herd had prospered until it competed with its unseen owners for food and space. Like any good husbandman, the immortals had decided to thin the herd out.
What could be more painless, for them, than a biological thinner? As myxomatosis had rid Australia of the rabbit pest, so smallpox could control the swarming human vermin that was dangerous to the immortals.
Sergeant Rhame said thickly, 'Bad weather up there. I don't suppose we can go around.' Behind them the poppers trailed in clear air, but ahead, over the mountains, were towering clouds.
Cornut shook his head. He only knew the way St Cyr had gone, as St Cyr had seen it with his own eyes and the old islander had relayed it to him. They would have to fight through the storm.
Cornut closed his eyes briefly. It was war to the death now, and he wondered what it would be like to kill a man. He could understand well enough the motives of St Cyr and the others, waging a jealous battle against every threat, striking down those who like himself might learn of their existence, defeating research that might give them away by concealing it. It was a constant defensive action, and he could understand, he could even in a way forgive, their need to remove the threat. He could forgive their attempts on his own life, he could forgive their try at destroying most of a world.
He could not forgive the threat to Locille. For she was exposed. A few would survive the plague in any event - a few always did - but Cornut was a mathematician, and he did not accept one chance in a million as a sporting gamble against odds.
All these years, he dreamed, and all the while immortals were directing humanity in directions they chose. No wonder the great strides in medicine, no wonder the constant grinding competition between manufacturers for luxuries and comforts. How would it be if the immortals were destroyed?
And yet, he thought, beginning to sober up, and yet wasn't there something in Wolgren about that? No, not Wolgren.
But somewhere in statistical theory. Something about random movements. The Brownian Movement of molecules? That had been on Master Carl's mind, he remembered. The drunkard's walk - the undirected progress that moved from a dead centre ever more slowly, asymptotically, yet never stopped. Straight-line progress was always to an end; if the immortals directed it, it could go only so far as they could conceive.
They were not the future, he realized with sharp clarity. No super-potent force was the future; a kennelman could breed dogs only to his own specifications, he could not give the species the chance at free growth that could go on and on and endlessly on; and - Cornut, said a shrill, angry whine in his brain.
Panicky, he grabbed for the flask of medicinal brandy and blotted out the voice with a choking swallow.
The flask was getting low. They would have to hurry. They dared not get more sober.
Senator Dane stirred angrily and crackled an oath with his mind that sent ripples of laughter through the party. Don't laugh, you damned fools! he thought. I've lost them again.
'Sweety-heart,' caroled the ancient bobbysoxer from South America, Madam Sant'Anna, 'san fairy-ann. Don't cry.' A mental image of a fat weeping baby with Dane's face.
Pistols firing, Madam Sant'Anna skewered with a thousand swords, thought the senator.
Not me. 'What, me worry?' A giggle.
You'll laugh out of the other side of your face. An image of an unmarked grave. An obscene gesture from the senator; but, in truth, he wasn't really worried either. He cast out for Cornut's mind again, but not more than half-heartedly, and when he could not find it he projected a mental picture of a staggering, vomiting drunk that made them smile. The senator hurled a painful thought at one of the dark servants and cheerfully awaited the bringing of his candies.
Senator Dane never drank, but he had observed the shorties drinking, he knew what drinking could do. Sometimes the immortals got the same sort of selective release from alkaloids. Enough alcohol to blot out control, he was confident, would blot out the motor reflexes. They would pile up against a hill, they would crash into each other. Certainly they would never find this place - although Masatura-san's mind had been powerfully clear, and possibly there had been a leak, and - no. St Cyr himself had selected Masatura-san's tribe for the job of extermination. No one could conceal anything from St Cyr. And the place was quite unfindable.
It very nearly was. It had been a resort hotel at one time, used for conventions of the sort that are not meant to be public, pre-empted from a gangster who had in turn preempted it from its (more or less) legitimate builders. The gangster had been a nuisance, and the immortal who killed him had felt rather virtuous as he murdered a murderer.