“Oh … Uh, thanks.” Dar turned away to Whitey. “You sure we didn’t stumble into a mattress factory by mistake?”
Whitey frowned. “What do you mean?”
“There’s so much featherbedding.”
In the far corner, a small man in a business coverall came through a narrow door. “Rise, citizens, for your Executive Secretary.”
Those of the crew who were sitting (twelve, at the moment) hauled themselves to their feet.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Hiram!” A tall man with white hair and a craggy, handsome face strode briskly in, the fabric of his modest coverall glowing with the quiet sheen of luxury.
“We don’t stand on ceremony here.” To prove it, he sat down at the desk.
Dar swallowed around a sudden bulge in his throat. The Executive Secretary himself! Even out on a marches planet such as Wolmar, he’d seen pictures of that face so often that virtually every wrinkle in it was embedded in his memory. To suddenly be in the same room with the man himself was unnerving; he didn’t quite seem to be real.
“You’ve come damn near a hundred light-years to talk to this man,” Whitey muttered in his ear. “Go to it!” Aloud, he said, “Go check and see if he’s got any problems with his lines.”
Dar swallowed thickly and stepped forward, holding the script before him like a shield. He hovered just behind the staging director, dimly aware that the lady was chatting with the Exec, but not at all sure what she was saying. Finally, the Exec nodded, and the staging director stepped back, calling to Dar, “Ready any time.”
“Are there …” Dar’s voice broke into a squeak; he swallowed and licked his lips. The Exec glanced up at him in irritation. Dar cleared his throat and tried again. “Any problems with the script, sir?” He dropped his voice down just above a whisper and poured out the rest in a sudden rush: “Boundbridge, Satrap, and Forcemain aren’t going to wait for an election. They’ve had a coup d’etat planned for months. I have the codes that will unlock the proof of their complicity. Save democracy, sir!”
A slow grin spread over the Exec’s face. “Had that memorized, did you?”
Dar swallowed, and nodded.
The Exec nodded, too, and rose, clapping Dar on the shoulder. “It’s always a pleasure to meet a genuine patriot.” But his hand tightened, and he called out, “Did you hook up those cameras?”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary.” The staging director looked frightened. “We’re patched into network. You can go live to all of Terra whenever you want.”
“Good, good.” The Exec let go of Dar just as harder hands laid hold of him. Looking up, he saw the shop steward and one of the assistants holding him, each one leveling a small but efficient-looking pistol at his torso. Whitey was suffering the same treatment; and the whole crew, except for the camera operators and the staging director, had pistols out.
“All right, then. Put us on,” the Exec said. He smiled into the camera in front of him, seeming suddenly warm and weary, but solemn. The staging director raised a hand, palm flat and stiff, gazing off into space, listening to a voice talking into his ear-button. Suddenly his arm swung down like a sword, to point at the Exec.
“Fellow citizens,” the Exec intoned, “we are happy to be able to announce that we have arrested the vile telepath who has been stalking relentlessly through the planets, to Terra. He is here.”
The red light on his camera went off, and the corresponding light on the other camera glowed to life—pointing straight at Dar. With a sudden, horrible, sinking feeling, he realized everyone on Terra could see him.
“My Executive Guards caught him just in time,” the Exec went on, “right here, in this studio, attempting to assassinate me.”
A sudden horrible chill seized Dar’s intestines as he found a pistol in his hand. How …?
Then, suddenly, he realized what the Exec was saying, realizing he was being identified as the horrible, vicious, telepathic assassin. He screamed, “N-o-o-o-o!” and threw his weight frantically against the hands that held him. They bit into his arms like steel clamps, and he writhed and twisted, bellowing in outrage, trying to shake them off.
“He knew what I was going to say next,” the Exec said grimly, “that the danger is not over. For he has confederates, fellow citizens—traveling unseen and unknown, here on Terra itself! Where these vicious assassins will next strike, we cannot tell—nor who will be their next victim. Probably myself—but it also might be any one of you.”
His voice deepened, ringing with conviction. “They must be stopped! For you, my fellow citizens, do not have a corps of guardsmen to protect you day and night. They must be stopped—but your Civil Police cannot arrest the people whom they know to be dangerous telepaths, because of the restrictions of civil rights laws! The only way to end this peril is to grant me full emergency powers, so that I can have your police clap these criminals into jails, where they belong. Today I will ask the Assembly for those powers—but I will not receive them without your support. Call your Elector now! Tell him to give me the powers I need to protect you! So that mad-dog renegades, such as this one, can be banished to the farthest reaches of Terran space!”
He stared solemnly into the camera, the perfect image of a good but troubled man, until the red light went out.
Then he thrust himself to his feet, grinning, and turned to Dar. “Thank you, young man. You timed your struggling perfectly.”
“It’s you!” Dar burst out. “You’re the one who planned the coup!”
“No—but I will be the one who takes power. If there’s going to be a dictator, I intend to make sure that I’m it.”
“You don’t even care about saving democracy!”
“Why so surprised?” The Exec’s smile was gentle, sympathetic—and underscored with contempt. “You poor, naïve idiot! Did you honestly think any politician really cared about anything but personal power anymore?”
Dar stared at him, horrified.
Then the frustration broke, and the rage leaped through it. He threw himself at the Exec with a howl, fingers curving into claws—but the guards’ hands held him back, and a cold spray hit his face, filling his head with fumes that spread darkness through his brain.
12
WHY DID YOU ESCAPE FROM WOLMAR?”
The voice blasted through into Dar’s nice, warm nest of unconsciousness. An idiot monotone was singing in his right ear, and a cricket with absolutely no sense of rhythm was chirping into his left.
“HOW DID YOU LEAVE THE PLANET WOLMAR?”
“I hopped into a courier ship,” Dar answered truthfully. He levered his eyelids open, squinting against the light.
Five of them, actually—red, blue, green, yellow, and orange—hitting him with stroboscopic flashes that didn’t quite have a rhythmic pattern—but it was a different nonrhythmic pattern than the cricket’s. Dar stared, dazzled.
“WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”
It was ridiculous, but he couldn’t think of it. All he could think of was that he wanted someone to turn the lights off. “I don’t know!”
“EXCELLENT,” the unseen owner of the voice purred. “WHICH OF YOUR TRAVELING COMPANIONS WAS THE TELEPATH?”
“The what?”
“DO NOT SEEK TO MISLEAD US! WE KNOW THAT AT LEAST ONE MEMBER OF YOUR GROUP WAS A TELEPATH. AND DO NOT TRY TO READ OUR MINDS; THE SENSORY DISTRACTIONS YOU ARE EXPERIENCING WILL PREVENT YOU FROM BEING ABLE TO CONCENTRATE SUFFICIENTLY FOR TELEPATHY!”
“We hope,” someone near the voice muttered.
“I can’t read anybody’s mind!”
“SEE?” the voice boomed to someone else. “THE LIGHTS AND NOISES DO WORK!”
“I never could read anybody’s mind! I’m not a telepath!”
The voice was quiet for a moment; then it boomed, “WHEN WERE YOU LAST A TELEPATH?”
“Never! Never, so help me!”
“He could be lying,” the voice muttered.