The Dark Mind - The Transfinite Man Part 4

"Being expected," said Dalroi sourly, "is a luxury I can do without. I appear to have been elected target practice for every murderous thug for a pretty fair radius."

"You knew it was dangerous when you took on the job."

"I'm not speaking of natural chances. I speak in the capacity of a full fledged sitting duck. I am antic.i.p.ated whichever way I turn."

"You spoke to Madden?" asked Cronstadt impatiently. "How did he react?"

"Twisted," said Dalroi. "Like everything else about this affair. He tried to bribe me and then set an a.s.sa.s.sin to follow me. I lost two good friends in that episode. Somebody's going to pay for that mistake."

"Curious," said Cronstadt. "I thought Madden was the one Failway contact who might be persuaded to reason."

"That's the way I saw it too."

Dalroi got up and paced the office thoughtfully. The walls were s.h.i.+mmering with tri-di murals of the great north forests, lending the impression that the room was an isolated island in a world of cold and conifer.

Symbolically the woods mirrored Cronstadt the man: frigid, inaccessible, demanding. Then the tri-di s.h.i.+vered and dissolved with the inscrutable complexity of the art, and suddenly Dalroi was staring into the blinding white-heat of a blast furnace, mentally reeling in the face of the streaming fury of boiling steel cascading into some unnoticed ladle. Instinctively he stepped back as if to escape the jaws of h.e.l.l.

"Effective, isn't it?" asked Cronstadt, his finger still on the b.u.t.ton.

Dalroi nodded. The symbolism was not wasted on him. "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory ... !"

"What's that?"

"Skip it!" said Dalroi. "It seems you don't know me very well. I'm a lone wolf in all things and whereas I can stand a little cooperation I don't take kindly to being thrown to the wolves. Try it once more and I'll hit you so hard they'll have to fetch you out of orbit to bury you."Cronstadt recovered his composure. "For a n.o.body, Dalroi, you have remarkably big ideas."

"And for a rich man, Cronstadt, you have a remarkable tendency to confuse yourself with G.o.d."

Cronstadt inhaled sharply, then his face broadened into a slight, slow smile. "It seems we begin to understand each other. I see how you gained your reputation."

"And I, how you lost yours."

"Touche! You choose your a.s.sociates with care."

"I have to," said Dalroi sourly. "They all carry knives and I've a very broad back. Now I want to know what the h.e.l.l is going on. I joined you in good faith for a fight with Failway. Since then I've tangled with nearly everyone who has a gun or a brickbat and a general grudge against humanity. You're giving me the b.l.o.o.d.y run-around and I want to know why. Start talking."

Cronstadt inspected his nails closely. "You think I'm responsible?"

"I know you are. I was baptised under the shadow of the mighty double-cross. Ask your friend Gormalu about our last interview. What was your purpose in hiring me for a twisted, two-faced a.s.signment like this?"

"Some people hire technicians and advisers: we hire fanatics - they have a single-mindedness which begets results. You were picked because you have the disruptive and demoralising talents which we need."

"Who is 'we'? Your bogus committee?"

Cronstadt opened a desk drawer, withdrew a chess-piece and stood it on the table. "Does that answer your question?"

"Not quite," said Dalroi. "I've got the wrong shaped head to make a convincing Trojan-horse. I'm getting the h.e.l.l out to fight a private war on my own."

"You're too late," said Cronstadt gently. "Too late and much too valuable. We couldn't let you go now if we wanted to. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The die is already cast. We've big things planned for you."

"Such as a marble slab?"

"If necessary, but I don't think we shall need it. You seem to possess a high degree of immunity against ordinary murder and an innate capacity for violent destruction. Those are most useful a.s.sets for someone who is intended to take on Failway almost single handed."

"Do me a favour!" said Dalroi. "All this power-play has addled your brain. Sure I'm tough. You have to be tough to stay self-respecting down in the river area, but there's another hundred thousand just as tough playing the rackets or doing time on the Moor."

"I wonder," said Cronstadt quietly. He twisted round suddenly. Something flashed from his hand, glinting in the dim light - a sharp knife, curving.

Dalroi moved sideways with instant reaction, scarcely aware of how he moved or why. One instant he was leaning on the desk, the next he was standing bewildered with the knife he had caught still trembling in his fingers, the blade buried in his sleeve. But for his action the blade would have been buried in his heart. The wrath surged upon him like a runaway train-load of white-hot coals. With an uncontrollablemadness he sprang towards Cronstadt intent on wreaking terrible vengeance.

The baron offered no resistance. He stood perfectly still, smiling very slightly, looking Dalroi straight in the eyes. Had he done otherwise he would have been torn limb from limb. The unexpectedness of his composure robbed Dalroi of the blind anger, robbed him even of words.

Dalroi swayed uncertainly, peering once again into the blazing chasm which had opened momentarily in his mind. As the angry gulf closed down he found he was trembling from head to foot, his stomach knotted with the fearful implications.

"Lord!" he said. "Don't you ever try a trick like that again if you want to stay alive."

"That was by way of demonstration." Sweat stood out on Cronstadt's brow. "How many of your hundred thousand could catch an unexpected knife in mid-flight? Have you any idea of the reaction speed needed to do just that?"

"You knew I'd stop it," said Dalroi accusingly. "How?"

"Because we looked a long time for somebody with just that sort of talent. If you look long enough you can find somebody with a flair for anything. Your speciality appears to be staying violently alive. I would go so far as to say you're something of a genius at it."

"I manage to get by," said Dalroi sourly. "But let's get this straight. I contracted into this as one of a team.

What's this single-handed idea?"

"Think what we're trying to do with Failway. It's as big as the government and it isn't limited by the same niceties of means and morality. If the government declared war on Failway there wouldn't be any government by morning. Yet somebody's got to chop Failway back to size, somebody more terrible than the most ruthless opposition."

"We should have done it years ago," said Dalroi.

"Years ago, yes, but we didn't see the danger until too late. Now there is no civilised course of action left to take. Failway maintains a staff of around five hundred thousand souls, most of whom are virtually slaves, and the visitors average about four million. With that many potential hostages not even the Black Knights dare make an overt move of war. Failway is a dictators.h.i.+p which wouldn't hesitate at ma.s.s murder if it helped to maintain its hold. It's the most savage and b.l.o.o.d.y-minded piece of blackmail in the history of the human race."

"You don't have to tell me," said Dalroi. "Failway grows like a malignant cancer, feeding on the very filth and degradation which it breeds. You can't remove such barbarous poisons with good intentions and prayers; you have to take up a knife and hack out the rotting flesh, losing the limb if necessary, cauterising the wound with red-hot iron and cooling the iron with tears of pain. Barbarity must match barbarity, cruelty match cruelty; a dozen eyes for an eye and a hundred lives for a limb."

"Very true," said Cronstadt, "but do you appreciate the strategy needed for such a task? To send an army or even a team into Failway would result in the most unholy slaughter of thousands if not millions of innocent people. If Failway can be broken it can only be by one man who can't be touched by force or guile, fear or pity; one man whose frenzy is such that he could bear a million murders on his conscience without snapping; a man whose terrible thirst for vengeance would lead him on where even dedicated madmen fear to tread."

"And I take it that I've been elected?""Just so. It had to be. somebody tough and somebody who was not afraid to kill; it had to be somebody with a pa.s.sionate and relentless hatred of Failway and with a mind strong enough not to burn out under the strain: and primarily it had to be somebody whose innate capacity and ruthless determination to survive transcended all other emotions. We needed an indestructible and highly intelligent gutter-rat. It turned out to be you."

"Suppose I don't choose to be a b.l.o.o.d.y martyr?"

"You have no choice. We aren't fools, Dalroi. Either Failway goes under or we do, taking the remnants of our type of civilisation with us. n.o.body ever supposed you'd choose to take on the job. I merely put it to you that you don't have any alternative. Failway's already after your guts, we've made sure of that.

We've told them just how dangerous you are. Now you either fight Failway with our support or you fight them without."

"Fiends in h.e.l.l!" said Dalroi. "What kind of proposition do you call that?"

"Unanswerable. You have no option but to tackle Failway. You don't know it, Dalroi, but right now you're the most dangerous man in the world."

"My G.o.d!" said Dalroi, his voice tinged with immeasurable bitterness. "My G.o.d, I'll give you cause to regret this hour!"

Cronstadt studied him intently, a frown of puzzlement on his brow. "What do you mean by that?"

"Only this," said Dalroi. "I don't know what you've got set up for me, but if I survive I'll make you a promise - that each of you concerned with this act will die by my own hand. And G.o.d forgive the bitterness that lies within me."

Merely words, yet words impregnated with such intensity and hatred that the fiery murals suddenly seemed grossly opaque and sterile in the face of such crus.h.i.+ng emotion.

Dalroi, with a face of terrible thunder, turned slowly on his heel and left the room, and the sound of the door as it slammed behind him shook the silence of the great building like the firing of a cannon.

SEVEN.

Alone again, Cronstadt punched a b.u.t.ton on the communicator.

"Central Security. I want the Monitor of the Black Knights."

"You're already connected. We had a tap on your communicator. This is the Monitor speaking."

"Thank G.o.d! Did you hear that conversation?"

"Every word. Frankly you're lucky to be alive. I'd no idea Dalroi had managed to get through to you.

That boy's dynamite!"

"More than dynamite," said Cronstadt. "He's one of the Devil's own. We may have contrived a great deal more trouble than we're capable of handling."

"If it'll make you rest easier," said the Monitor, "it was only a matter of time before Dalroi and Failway came to grips anyway. We're merely catalysing the process by pus.h.i.+ng Dalroi to the limits of endurance.

At some point, in order to survive, he will have to tap the energies of the deep brain. At that moment he will cease to be strictly human and become ... something else. If he goes through that point still rationalthen I think we shall achieve our object. After that we shall have to salvage anything we can or kill anything we can't."

"It's a frightful thing," said Cronstadt, "to use a man as a weapon - especially this sort of a weapon.

How much untapped power is there in his mind?"

"We don't know, but it's plenty. The dark side of Dalroi's mind is a region of activity such as we have never met before. His breakthrough will be a mental Hiros.h.i.+ma. No one can say what the ultimate consequences may be - for him or for us."

"I'm afraid," said Cronstadt, "in case even we've underestimated him. He's the greatest potential source of death and destruction that PsychoStat has ever seen. He's got a mind like a blast furnace and he belongs to that order of evolution in which the instinct for survival is paramount and undiluted. We're opening a new sort of Pandora's box. I wonder if any of us is big enough to get it closed again."

Dalroi walked. The night streets were deserted and the noise of the craft on the river blended loud and clear with the rattle of couplings from the railway yards. Very, very slowly the white heat of anger faded to a grim determination coupled with genuine bewilderment. In a few frantic days his world had collapsed about his head. He was a marked man, and his thousands of friends and contacts were suddenly strangers or enemies. In the whole of the grey, raw town which had been his home there was not one sanctuary where he could turn for refuge, nor one person he could trust.

But this realisation, though appalling, was not the factor which generated the deepest, most penetrating bitterness. He appreciated the complexity of the trap, but why was the whole world gunning for Dalroi?

How does a man become so special that you set him up alone against any army and shadow him with another army to ensure that he does not default? Dalroi looked up at the patchy, patient stars and thought of the immeasurable wastes of the cosmos. A profound emptiness clawed within him. h.e.l.l! How does a man become the most dangerous man in the world and how does he prove it with nothing but two hands and a heart full of vengeance?

The tension was rising in the city. He could feel it plainly now. The canny burghers, ears to the ground, knew it also. The streets were strangely deserted. Since leaving Cronstadt the shadows had been following him, invisible except to the sixth-sense of the hunted. This was undoubtedly the work of a highly trained group of agents and suggested the refinements of the Black Knights rather than the cruder tactics of Failway Security. Whoever the shadows, they had radio control, for the ring was closing round him even as he walked. He could almost catch the whispered orders in the air.

As he came to a crossing a police patrol car came out of a turning opposite. The car drew rapidly to a halt and the searchlight swung back and locked on him. Dalroi knew better than to attempt to run in such a situation. His disguise would have to suffice.

"Attention, please! You are advised to return home or hurry to your nearest place of shelter. This area is liable to become the centre of violent civil disorder."

"What's the matter?" said Dalroi. "Don't tell me tonight's the night the teddy-bears have their picnic?"

There was a brief commotion within the car and Inspector Quentain hurled himself out on to the pavement.

"Dalroi! One day that sense of humour's going to hang you!"

"Good guessing, Quent," said Dalroi. "But how does it happen that you're riding around in patrol cars?

Don't tell me you've run out of traffic jams?""This is no joke, Dalroi. I've been looking for you since G.o.d knows when. We've got to get you out of here. There's a b.l.o.o.d.y war about to start and you're right at dead centre."

Dalroi glanced back at the apparently deserted streets behind. Only the faintest c.h.i.n.k of metal on metal somewhere in the darkness betrayed the phantom army at his heels.

"You could be right at that," he said. "Thanks for trying, Quent, but if I was to enter your car I doubt if any of us would get to the next corner alive. Heaven knows I'm no b.l.o.o.d.y hero, but I'm going to sweat this one out because there has to be some sense in it somewhere and I need to know what it is."

"Look, Dalroi, I haven't got time to explain, but you're in something diabolical and you're in it deep. For pity's sake climb into that car and we'll take it out through h.e.l.l if necessary."

"It would be necessary," said Dalroi quietly. "Thanks, Quent, but if you really want to do me a favour find out what happened to Zdenka and see she's in no danger. Where I'm going I may be a long time coming back."

He stood well back from the car so that the unseen watchers might not mistake his intention. Quentain paused as if to make a last appeal, then changed his mind. The car took off like a bat escaped from Hades.

It had scarcely cleared the corner before Dalroi was flat on his face, hugging the ground as a hail of bullets erupted from somewhere in front of him. Then all h.e.l.l broke loose. Shots crashed from all sides and for a period the street was almost continuously alight with the flashes from heavy-calibre automatics.

A light machine gun opened up and sprayed mercilessly around the surrounding buildings. Dalroi bit his lip and played possum.

There was an intensity and bitterness about the fray which was quite unlike the gang-wars of his youth.

This was battle for high stakes, with no quarter asked or given. Desperation was driven home with heated lead and errors of judgement were paid for with living blood. The air grew thick with acrid fumes and Dalroi was just considering his next move when the angry crossfire lessened. He never stood a chance. Something like a rifle b.u.t.t stove down on his unprotected neck and the blaze of lights in his brain eclipsed the erratic flashes of the waning battle.

He awoke in Peter Madden's office with a head which threatened to explode and a predisposition to murder which was restrained only by the tightness of his bonds. Madden was awaiting his recovery with interest.

"Allow me to introduce myself," he said. "The name you already know. The position is Chief of Failway Security."

"Bit of a change from Public Relations," said Dalroi critically.

Madden smiled. "Not when you consider the att.i.tude of some of our public. I must apologise if we bungled your entrance, Dalroi, but we hadn't antic.i.p.ated so formidable a bodyguard. The Black Knights guard you well. Confidentially, you've caused us a whole lot of trouble. You're a sight too clever by half."

"As a professional trouble-maker I have to be. I live by taking advantage of what other people overlook."

"A tenuous existence," said Madden, fingering a radiation pistol on the desk. "What happens when your adversary has all the angles covered?"

"I get almighty mad," said Dalroi. "Why is the whole world gunning for me?"Madden looked at him curiously. "I really think you don't know! Briefly, Failway has more to fear from you than from all the rest of our enemies put together. That's why you must be disposed of without undue delay, and this time I do have all the angles covered. If it's any consolation I'd like to say I wish it didn't have to be you."