Kier Gray said coldly, "It's hardly necessary to tell me anything so obvious. Clear this carrion out, and then – we've got some planning to do. As for you, Kathleen, go to bed. You're in the way now."
As she hurried off, shaking now from reaction, Kathleen wondered: In the way? Did he just mean – Or did he mean – After the murders she had witnessed, she couldn't be sure of him, of anything. It was a long, long time before sleep came...
She was still alive the next day. And the next day. On the third day, as she was walking along a corridor, she became aware of Davy Dinsmore following her. Something of his mental attitude penetrated to her, and she, stopped.
He came running up to her, and said breathlessly, "It's all right. We can be friends again."
Kathleen looked at him but said nothing.
"You'll have to forgive me," Davy went on, scarcely pausing. "But when I heard about what was to happen to you on your birthday, my father warned me... I got scared. He said I had to make a show of being against you. I tried to think of some way to warn you. But you wouldn't read my mind. I could see that you wouldn't."
His story and his manner made his actions of three days ago so obvious that Kathleen said, "Oh!" And then, she stepped up to him, put her arms around him impulsively, and kissed him tearfully on the cheek. "You saved my life," she whispered. "If I hadn't known in advance, I don't know what would have happened."
Chapter Four
For Jommy Cross there were long spells of darkness and mental blankness that merged finally into a steely gray light through which vague thoughts at last wove a web of reality. He opened his eyes, conscious of great weakness.
He was lying in a little room, staring up at a smeared, dirty ceiling, from which some of the plaster had fallen. The walls were an uneven gray, splotched with age. The pane of the single window was cracked and discolored; the light that forced its way through fell across the end of the kon bedstead in a little pool and lay there as if exhausted from the effort.
Its wan brightness revealed bedclothes that were remnants of what had once been gray blankets. At one edge, straw stuck out from the old mattress, and the whole thing stank with a stale, unaired odor. Sick though he still was, Jommy flung the foul coverings from him and started to slip out of bed. A chain rattled menacingly, and there was sudden pain in his right ankle. He lay back, panting from the exertion, and stunned. He was chained to this loathsome bed!
Heavy footsteps aroused him from the stupor into which he had fallen. He opened his eyes to see a tall, gaunt woman in a formless gray dress standing at the door, her black eyes gleaming down at him like bright beads.
"Ah," she said. "Granny's new boarder has come out of his fever, and now we can get acquainted. That's good! That's good!"
She rubbed her dry hands together raspingly. "We're going to get along beautifully, aren't we? But you've got to earn your keep. No slackers can leech off Granny. No, sir. We'll have to have a heart-to-heart talk about that Yes, yes," she leered at him over clasped hands, "a heart-to-heart talk." Jommy stared up at the old woman in repelled fascination. As the thin, slightly stooped creature sank with a grunt, onto the foot of the bed, he drew his legs up against his body, withdrawing as far from her as the chain would allow. It struck him that he had never seen a face that more nearly expressed the malignant character that lay behind the mask of old flesh. With rising disgust, he compared her thin, lined, egg-shaped head with the mind inside; and it was all there. Every twisted line in that wrecked face had its counterpart in the twisted brain. A whole world of lechery dwelt within the confines of that shrewd mind.
His thought must have shown in his face, for she said with sudden savagery, "Yes, yes, to look at Granny you'd never think she was once a famous beauty. You'd never suspect that men once worshiped the white loveliness of her. But don't forget that this old hag saved your life. Never forget that, or Granny may turn your ungrateful hide over to the police. And how they'd love to have you. How they would love it! But Granny's kind to them that's kind to her and does as she wants."
Granny! Was there ever a term of affection more prostituted than by this old woman calling herself Granny!
He searched her mind, trying to find in its depths her real name. But there was only a blur of pictures of a silly, stage-struck girl, profligate of her charms, ruined, degraded to the level of the street, hardened and destroyed by adversity. Her identity was buried in a cesspool of the evil she had done and thought. There was an endless story of thieving. There was the dark kaleidoscope of more loathsome crimes. There was murder committed – Shuddering, immeasurably weary now that the first stimulus of her presence was fading, Jommy withdrew from the abomination that was Granny's mind. The old wretch leaned toward him, her eyes like gimlets drilling into his.
"It's true," she asked, "that slans can read minds?"
"Yes," Jommy admitted, "and I can see what you're thinking, but it's no use."
She chuckled grimly. "Then you don't read all that's in Granny's mind. Granny's no fool. Granny's smart; and she knows better than to think she can force a slan to stay and work for her. He has to be free for what she wants him to do. He's got to see that, being a slan, this will be the safest place for him until he grows up. Now, isn't Granny clever?"
Jommy sighed sleepily. "I can see what's in your mind, but I can't talk to you now. When we slans are sick – and that's not often – we just sleep and sleep. My waking up the way I did means that my subconscious was worried and forced me awake because it thought I was in danger. We slans have a lot of protections like that. But now I've got to go back to sleep and get well."
The coal– black eyes grew wide. The lustful mind recoiled, briefly accepting defeat in its main purpose of making immediate wealth from its prey. Greed yielded momentarily to violent curiosity, but there was no intention of letting him sleep.
"Is it true that slans make monsters out of human beings?"
Fury burned through Jommy's brain. Weariness fell away from him. He sat up, in rage.
"That's a lie! It's one of those horrible lies that human beings tell about us to make us seem inhuman, to make everybody hate us, kill us. It – "
He sank back, exhausted, rage evaporating. "My mother and father were the finest people alive," he said softly, "and they were terribly unhappy. They met on the street one day, and saw in each other's minds that they were slans. Until then they'd lived the loneliest of lives, they'd never harmed anyone. It's the human beings who are the criminals. Dad didn't fight as hard as he could have when they cornered him and shot him in the back. He could have fought. He should have! Because he had the most terrible weapon the world has ever seen – so terrible he wouldn't even carry it with him for fear he might use it. When I'm fifteen I'm supposed to – "
He stopped, appalled at his indiscretion. For an instant he felt so sick, so weary, that his mind refused to hold the burden of his thought. He knew only that he had given away the greatest secret in slan history, and if this grasping old wretch turned him over to the police in his present weakened condition, all was lost. Slowly, he breathed easier. He saw that her mind hadn't really caught the enormous implication in his revelation. She hadn't really heard him at the moment when he mentioned the weapon – for that rapacious brain had already been too long away from its main purpose. And now, like a vulture, it swooped down on prey it knew to be exhausted.
"Granny's glad to know that Jommy's such a nice boy. Poor, starving old Granny needs a young slan to make money for her and him. You won't mind working for tired old Granny, will you?" Her voice hardened. "Beggars can't be choosers, you know."