He turned, a huge hunched bear, with shaggy brows protruding belligerently. His blazing eyes bored into the three newcomers as they stood uneasily together. Eleanor Stevens unzipped her greatcoat and tossed it over the back of a luxurious couch.
"Here they are," she said to Verrick. "They were all together, enjoying themselves." She stalked over, long legged in her velvet slacks and leather sandals, and stood before the fire. In the flickering light her flesh glowed a deep luminous red.
Verrick turned without ceremony to Benteley. "Always be where I can find you." He spat his words out contemptuously. "I don't have any more teeps around to thought-wave people in. I have to find them the hard way." He jerked his thumb at Eleanor. "She came along, but minus ability."
Eleanor smiled bleakly and said nothing.
Verrick spun round and shouted at Herb Moore, who had emerged from a deep chair in the corner. "Is that damn thing fixed yet?"
"Almost."
Verrick grunted. "This is a sort of celebration," he said to Benteley, "although I don't know what about."
Herb Moore strolled over, confident and full of talk, a sleek little model of an interplan star rocket in his hands.
"We've got plenty to celebrate. This is the first time a Quizmaster chose an assassin. Pellig isn't somebody chosen by a bunch of senile fogies; Verrick has had him on tap and——"
"You talk too much," Verrick cut in. "You're too full of easy words."
Benteley moved uncomfortably away. Verrick was slightly drunk, but behind his clumsy movements was a mind that missed nothing.
The chamber was high-ceilinged and like a church, domed and ribbed, its roof dissolving in amber gloom.
Laura was examining tapestries that hung dead and heavy over the windows. On a mantel over the huge fireplace were battered Saxon cups. Benteley gingerly took one down. It was a ponderous lump in his hands.
"You'll meet Pellig in a few minutes," Verrick announced. "Eleanor and Moore have already met him."
Moore laughed, an offensive sharp bark, like that of a thin-toothed dog.
"I've met him, all right," he said.
"He's cute," Eleanor said tonelessly.
Verrick continued: "Talk to him, stay with him. I want everybody to see him. I plan to send out only one assassin."
He strode to the closed double-doors at the end of the room and waved them open. Sound and rolling volumes of light billowed out.
"Get in there," Verrick ordered. "I'll find Pellig."
"A drink, sir or madam?"
Eleanor Stevens accepted a glass from the tray passed by a MacMillan robot. "What about you?" she said to Benteley. She brought the robot back and took a second glass. "Try it. Some kind of berry that grows on the sunward side of Callisto, in the cracks of a certain kind of shale. Verrick has a special work-camp to collect it."
Benteley took the glass. "Thanks."
"And cheer up."
"What's this all about?" Benteley indicated the packed cavern of murmuring people. They were all well dressed; every top-level class was represented. "I expect to see them start dancing."
"There was dinner and dancing earlier." Eleanor began to move off, her eyes intent on something. "Here they come."
A sudden rustle swept over the nearby people. They were all watching nervously, avidly, as Reese Verrick approached. With him was a slender man with arms loose at his sides, his face blank and expressionless. A ripple of sound swirled after him, the exclamations of tribute.
"That's him," Eleanor grated between her white teeth, eyes flashing. She grabbed fiercely at Benteley's arm. "That's Pellig. Look at him."
Pellig said nothing. His hair was straw-yellow, moist and limp. His features were uncertain, almost nondescript. A colourless, silent person almost lost from sight as the rolling giant beside him propelled him among the watching couples. After a moment the two of them were swallowed up by satin slacks and floor-length gowns, and the buzz of conversation was resumed.
Eleanor shivered.
"He gives me the creeps." She smiled up quickly at Benteley, still holding tight to his arm. "What do you think of him?"
"I didn't get any impression." In the distance Verrick was surrounded by a group of people, and Herb Moore's voice rose above the blur of sound: he was expounding again. Annoyed, Benteley moved a few steps away.
"Where are you going?" Eleanor asked.
"Home." The word slipped out involuntarily.
"Where do you mean?" Eleanor smiled wryly. "I can't analyse you any more. I gave all that up." She lifted her crimson hair to show the two dead circles above her ears, lead-grey spots that marred the smooth whiteness of her skin.
"I can't understand you," Benteley said, "discarding an ability you were born with."
"You sound like Wakeman. If I had stayed with the Corps I would have had to use my ability against Reese. So what else could I do but leave?" There was agony in her eyes. "You know, it's really gone. It's like being blinded. I screamed and cried a long time afterwards. I broke down completely."
"How are you now?"
She gestured shakily. "I'll live. Anyhow, I can't get it back. So forget it. Drink your drink and relax." She clinked glasses with him. "It's called methane gale. I suppose Callisto has a methane atmosphere."
"Have you ever been to one of the colony planets?" Benteley asked. He sipped at the amber liquid; it was strong stuff. "Have you ever seen one of the work-camps, or one of the squatters' colonies after a police patrol has finished with it?"
"I've never been off Earth. I was born in San Francisco nineteen years ago. All telepaths come from there, remember. During the Final War the big research installations at Livermore were hit by a soviet missile. Those who survived were badly injured. We're all descendants of one family, Earl and Verna Phillips. The whole Corps is related. I was trained all the time I was growing up."
Music had started up at one end of the chamber. A music robot of random combinations of sound, harmonic colours and shades that flitted agilely. Some couples started dancing listlessly. A group of men had gathered together and were arguing.
Near the double doors a few people were seeking their wraps and wandering away, dull-faced, vacant-eyed, mouths slack with fatigue and boredom.
Verrick's deep tones boomed out over everybody else's; he was dominating an argument. People nearby stopped talking and began filtering over to listen. A tight knot of men formed, grim-faced and serious, as Verrick and Moore waxed louder and hotter.
"Our problems are of our own making," Verrick asserted. "They're not real, like problems of supply and labour surplus. This M-game was invented by a couple of mathematicians during the early phase of the Final War."
"You mean discovered," Moore said. "They saw that social situations are analogues of strategy games, like poker. A system that works in a poker game will work in a social situation, like business or war."
"What's the difference between a game of chance and a strategy game?" Laura Davis asked, from where she and Al stood.
Annoyed, Moore snapped: "Everything! In a game of chance no deception is involved; in a poker game every player has a deliberate strategy of bluff, false leads, misleading signs."
Moore turned back to Verrick. "You want to deny that society operates like a strategy game? Minimax was a brilliant hypothesis. It gave us a rational, scientific method of cracking any strategy and transforming the strategy game into a chance game, where the regular statistical methods of the exact sciences function."