The Penal Cluster Part 5

A stewardess, clad in the chic BOAC uniform, moved down the aisle, quietly informing the pa.s.sengers that they could have coffee served at their seats or take breakfast in the lounge. The atmosphere of the plane's interior was filled with the low murmur of a hundred conversations against the background of the susurrant mutter of the mighty engines.

_Uhhh--uh--uh--dizzy--head hurts--uh--uh--_

The sounds in the plane altered subtly as the faint thought insinuated itself on every brain inside the aircraft. None of the Normal pa.s.sengers recognized it for what it was; it was too gentle, too weak, to be recognized directly by their minds.

But David Houston recognized it instantly for what it was.

Somewhere on the plane, a Controller had been unconscious. _Had_ been.

For now, his powerful mind was trying to swim up from the black depths of nothingness.

_Uh--uhhhh--uhh--_

The Normal pa.s.sengers became uneasy, not knowing why they were disturbed. To them, it was like a vaguely unpleasant but totally unrecognizable nudge from their own subconscious, like some long-forgotten and deeply buried memory that had been forced down into oblivion and was now trying to obtrude itself on the conscious mind.

_Uhhh--Oooohh--where?--what happened?--_

A fully conscious telepath could project his thoughts along a narrow locus, focusing them on a single brain, leaving all other brains oblivious to his thoughts. Like a TV broadcasting station, he could choose his wavelength and stick to it.

But a half-conscious Controller sprayed his thoughts at random, creating mental disturbances in his vicinity. Like a thunderstorm creating radio static, there was no selectivity.

Savagely, David Houston did what he had to do. It might be a trap, but he had to avoid the carnage that might follow if this went on. He hurled a beam of thought, hard-held, at the offending mind of the awakening telepath.

_DON'T THINK! RELAX!_

Normally it was impossible for a Controller to take over the mind of another Controller, but these were abnormal circ.u.mstances; the half-conscious man, whoever he was, was weakened mentally by some kind of enforced unconsciousness--either a drug or a stun gun. Houston took over his mind smoothly and easily.

_Robert Harris!_

Houston recognized the mind as soon as he held it.

He didn't try to force anything on Harris's mind; he simply held it, cradling it, helping Harris to regain consciousness easily, bringing him up from the darkness gently.

In normal sleep, everyone's mind retains a certain amount of self-control and awareness of environment. If it didn't, noise and bright lights wouldn't awaken a sleeping person.

In normal sleep, a telepath retained enough control to keep his thoughts to himself, even when waking up.

But total anaesthesia brought on a mental blackout from which the victim recovered only with effort. And during that time, a Controller's mind was violently disturbing to the Normal minds around him, who mistook his disordered thoughts for their own.

Like pouring heavy oil on choppy waters, Houston soothed the disturbances of Harris's mind, focusing the random broadcasts on his own brain.

And while he did that, he probed gently into the weakened mind of the prisoner for information.

Harris was a Controller, all right; there was no doubt about that. But nowhere in his mind was there any trace of any knowledge of what had happened to Sir Lewis Huntley. If Sir Lewis had actually been controlled, it hadn't been done by Robert Harris.

Houston wished he'd been able to probe Sir Lewis's mind; he'd have been able to get a lot more information out of it than he had in his possession now. But that would have been dangerous; if Sir Lewis was a Controller himself, and had been acting a part, Houston would have given himself away the instant he attempted to touch the baronet's mind. If, on the other hand, Sir Lewis had actually been under the control of another telepath, any probing into the mind of the puppet would have betrayed Houston to the real Controller.

Harris knew nothing. He wasn't acquainted with any other Controllers, and had kept his nose clean ever since he'd discovered his latent powers. He knew that megalomaniac Controllers were either captured or mobbed, and he had no wish to experience either.

The Normals had long since discovered that the only way to overcome a Controller was by force of numbers. A Controller could only hold one Normal mind at a time. That was why a mob could easily kill a single Controller; that was why the Psychodeviant Police had evolved the "net"

system for arresting a telepath.

Harris, then, had been framed. Or could it be called a frame-up when Harris was really guilty of the actual crime? Because the crime he had really been accused of was not that of controlling Sir Lewis, but the crime of being a telepath. That, and that alone, d.a.m.ned him in the eyes of the Normals; the crime of taking over a mind for gain was incidental.

The stigma lies in what he _was_, not what he did.

Harris himself was in the bottom of the plane, in the baggage section near the landing gear. After his trial, still drugged, he had been secretly put aboard, to be taken to the Long Island s.p.a.ceport in New York. It had had to be secret; no Normal would knowingly ride on an aircraft which carried a Controller, even if he were drugged into total unconsciousness.

With Harris were two PD Police guards. Their low conversation impinged on Harris's ears, and was transmitted to Houston's mind.

Suddenly, one of them said: "Hey! He's moving!"

"Better give him another shot, Harry;" said the other, "when those guys wake up, they drive you crazy."

Houston could almost feel the sting of the needle as it was inserted into the arm of the helpless prisoner.

Slowly, Harris's thoughts, which had begun to become fully coherent, again became chaotic, finally sliding off into silence and darkness.

"Are you all right, sir?"

Houston looked up from his intense concentration. The stewardess was standing by his seat. He realized that there was a film of perspiration on his brow, and that he probably had looked dazed while he was concentrating on Harris's mind.

"Sure," he said quickly, "I'm all right. I'm just a little tired. Had to get up too early to catch this plane." He rubbed his forehead. "I do have a little headache; would you happen to have any aspirin aboard?"

She smiled professionally. "Certainly, sir. I'll get a couple of tablets."

As she left for the first-aid cabinet, Houston thought bleakly to himself: _Harris was framed. Possibly others have been, too. But by whom? And why?_

He could see why a Normal might do such a thing. But why would a Controller do it?

There was only one answer. Somewhere, there was a Controller, or a group of Controllers who were megalomaniacs _par excellence_. If that were so, he--or they--could make the late "Blackjack" Donnely look like a meek, harmless, little mouse.

The one part of Continental U.S.A. over which the American Government had no jurisdiction was small, areawise, in comparison with its power.

The District of the United Nations occupied the small area of Manhattan Island which ran from 38th Street on the south to 49th Street on the north; its western border was Third Avenue, its eastern, the East River.

From here, the UN ruled Earth.

There were no walls or fences around it; only by looking at street signs could anyone tell that they had crossed an international border.

Crossing Third Avenue from west to east, one found that 45th Street had suddenly become Deutschland Stra.s.se; 40th Street became Rue de France; 47th was the Via Italiano. 43rd Street's sign was painted in Cyrillic characters, but beneath it, in English, were the words "Avenue of Mother Russia."

Third Avenue was technically One World Drive. Second Avenue was labelled as Planetary Peace Drive, and First was United Nations Drive.

But New Yorkers are, and always have been, diehards. Just as The Avenue of the Americas had forever remained Sixth Avenue, no matter what the maps called it, so had the other streets retained their old names in conversation.

Even the International Post Office, after years of wrangling, had given up, and letters addressed to _Supreme Headquarters, United Nations Police, 45th Street at Second Avenue_, were delivered without comment, even though the IPO still firmly held that they were technically misaddressed. And, privately, even the IPO officials admitted that the numbers were easier to say and remember than the polyglot street names that had been tagged on by the General a.s.sembly.

So when David Houston signalled a taxi at Grand Central Station and said, "Forty-fifth and Second," the driver simply set his automatic controls, leaned back in his seat, and said, "Goin' to see the cops, huh?"