A Soft Barren Aftershock by F. Paul Wilson
“And countered deBloise in the process,” she added.
“I still don’t see how,” Old Pete mused. He watched his young female companion closely. He had thought it unfortunate when he had learned that Josephine Finch had taken administrative control of IBA.
Her stock holdings entitled her to it, but she had seemed such a girlish thing when he had retired. She was a woman now and more like her grandfather than Old Pete had imagined anyone could ever be; she had his take-command attitude, his coolness, his decisiveness, his ability to deal practically with abstract situations. Yet her femininity was ever apparent and, somehow, enhanced by these qualities. IBA had been in her hands for five years now and was flourishing. Old Pete wished he were about fifty years younger.
His reverie was interrupted by their arrival at the hospital. There they learned that Larry had nothing physically wrong with him. All tests had come up negative.
“About the only thing I can suggest,” the doctor told Jo as they stood beside Larry’s bed, “is that this may be a psychogenic coma. It almost seems as if the mind induced this state upon itself but for what reason I can’t imagine.”
“Protection?” Jo suggested.
“Possibly, but from what?”
“That remains to be seen,” Jo muttered.
Later, when the doctor had gone and Old Pete was out attending to hotel accommodations, Jo sat alone in the darkened room and watched Larry Easly’s peaceful face. She fervently hoped that Larry’s prognosis was as favorable as the doctor had indicated. And she wasn’t thinking of the secret now sealed within him.
Three years of close association had formed a close bond between the two of them, a bond that might well grow into something more if they would only momentarily slow the pace of their individual lives. Larry was stopped in his tracks now; maybe if Jo decelerated a little . . .
There was a noise behind her and Jo turned to see five cloaked figures filing through the door. Wrinkled, blue-gray faces peered out from their hoods. Vanek. Jo’s feelings toward the Vanek were ambivalent. She couldn’t believe that they had killed her father, yet there was the fact of their confession to the crime. She waited for them to speak.
“We came to see the daughter of Junior Finch, our friend,” said one.
“How do you know who I am?” Jo said, springing to her feet. She had carefully hidden her identity on this trip, even to the point of using an account listed under a phony name to pay for Larry’s medical care.
“Vanek eyes are everywhere,” came the enigmatic reply.
“What do you want here?” she asked.
“We wished to pay you homage,” said the speaker. The five Vaneks bowed toward her.
“Wheels within wheels, bendreth,” they chorused. Then, in complete silence, they filed out.
Jo hesitated a moment, then rushed to the door and peered out. The Vaneks were gone. She flagged a nurse who was rounding the corner to her left.
“Where did those five Vaneks go?” she asked.
The nurse smiled. “Did you say five Vaneks? Dear, I’ve worked in this hospital for nearly ten years and I’ve never seen one Vanek set foot inside this building. They have their own medicine, you know.”
“I guess I was mistaken,” Jo lied after the slightest pause and closed the door again. Jebinose was proving to be a very strange planet.
On Jo’s order, a small psi-shielding device was placed in Easly’s room and hidden under the bed. She didn’t know exactly what had happened before but was quite sure there had been an attempt on Larry’s life and she wanted to be prepared in the event the assassin returned to finish the job. A psi shield might be the reason Larry was alive now and she wanted to take no chances.
The doctor returned and told her that the latest test results indicated a progressive shallowing of the coma; Easly was expected to regain consciousness within the next six or eight hours.
Jo placed a call to Old Pete. She stood at the window and stared at the last rays of sunset as she waited for the connection. Old Pete’s face appeared on the screen.
“I’m staying here tonight,” she told him. “I’ll call you as soon as there’s something to call about.”
Old Pete nodded from his hotel room. “O.K. I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”
Jo broke the connection and sat down beside the bed. She sat there with her thoughts and didn’t bother to turn on the room lights as night crept in. Consequently, she was startled when the night nurse popped in and threw the switch.
“Just checking up on him,” she said with a pleasant smile. She walked over to the vital signs indicator on the bed, glanced at the readings and nodded. “He’s coming along fine,” she said and departed.
The door opened again a few hours later. It was an orderly, a short, balding man in white.
“You’ll have to step out a minute, Miss, while I prepare him for some final tests,” he said in a rasping voice. “Sorry, but that’s the rule.”
Jo stood up. “Going to finish the job you bungled in the call booth?” she said through tight lips.
The orderly turned on her with blazing eyes. “Who are you?”
“I’m the person who was on the other end of that sub-space call when you tried to kill him,” Jo told him. “I saw you on the screen.”
Calmer now, Proska nodded. “So it seems I made two mistakes last night: not only did I forget about the psi shield on the booth but I carelessly got in range of the pick-up, too.” He shook his head. “Not as careful as I used to be. But I’ll tie up all the loose ends tonight. But before I do, tell me about this man. What was he after?”
Jo hesitated, not sure of what to do. There was a little red button on the visiphone for instant contact with the police. A single push would bring them immediately. She wanted to see this man in the hands of the police—although how they’d handle him was beyond her—but more than that, she wanted information. He obviously planned to kill her along with Larry so it might not be too difficult to get him to open up. Then she’d press that button.
“He’s a detective I sent here to get some information on Elson deBloise,” Jo said.
“What kind of information?” “Something that might be of political use,” she replied.
Proska’s eyes gleamed. “Blackmail, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“We thought it might be something like that. He had an interview with deBloise, then he was seen hovering over my house, then he went to Danzer and spent a long time talking to a Vanek. We didn’t like that; and then the speed with which he headed for the spaceport convinced us that he knew something, something dangerous.” He moved toward the bed. “But now it doesn’t matter what he knows.”
Jo reached for the red button on the visiphone but never made it. Her vision blurred as nausea and vertigo swept over her. She found herself sprawled flat on her back on the floor.
Proska’s teeth were clenched. “That was a futile move! I sensed a psi shield the moment I entered the room but your detective’s condition should be proof enough that a shield only dulls my powers.” He stopped speaking suddenly and eyed Jo as she slumped on the floor, eyed her sprawled legs, the curves of her body accentuated by the clingsuit.
“You know,” he said as he came around and sat on the edge of the bed, “it would be a shame to waste you.” His gaze roved her body again. “You could be very entertaining.”
Jo propped herself into a sitting position and laughed in his face.
“Don’t be so smug, my dear!” he flared. “You’re talking to Cando Proska and he can do unheard of things with his mind! I discovered as a child that I could kill with thought and it terrified me. But after years of being pushed about by people with power and money and being treated like any other worthless slob, I decided I’d had enough. I began experimenting with my powers and I learned, I learned. A fair number of people are dead or worse because of those experiments but I finally knew my capabilities.”
He glared at her, ego blazing in his eyes. “So
“Come to think of it, that’s probably what your detective discovered.
I `purged’—that’s my own little name for it—an off-worlder some years ago in Danzer. His name was Finch; you might have heard of him.”
Jo’s body froze with shock and rage. She managed to speak with only the greatest effort of will. ”I’d heard he was murdered.”
“Oh, he was. But not by me. You see, Finch’s success at integrating the town of Danzer was threatening to kill a bill on which Elson deBloise had staked his political future. I merely went to deBloise and told him I could help him if he’d meet me in my apartment. He was desperate by then so he came and I offered to stop Finch cold without the slightest use of force, or violence . . . for certain considerations, of course. He had learned that Finch was on the verge of success so he agreed. I merely went to Danzer and relieved Finch of all his cognitive abilities. He was a drooling vegetable when I left him in that alley.”
“But the knife,” Jo said.
Proska nodded. “One of his Vanek friends came along and saw his condition. He conferred with other Vaneks and they decided to kill him. They practically worshiped Finch and felt he would prefer to be dead than allowed to live on as a mindless blob of flesh. It all worked out rather well, actually. The Integration Bill passed with an impressive majority and I’ve been bleeding deBloise dry ever since.” He smiled at Jo’s questioning glance. “That’s right. I made a recording of our little ‘business conference’ in which he promised to pay me for stopping Finch. And if I should happen to die in a manner that is in anyway suspicious, a copy of that recording will go directly to the Federation Ethics Council and deBloise’s political career will be finished.
“And anytime I want to put pressure on him, I threaten him with Finch’s fate. It’s a perfect setup: he’s scared to death of me and yet he doesn’t dare do a thing to get rid of me. He’ll do just about anything I tell him to . . . it’s amazing how some people fear being a vegetable more than they fear dying.” He turned his gaze on Jo. “And now it’s your turn.”
“The shield!” she warned, hoping to deter him.
“That’s no problem. I know it’s hidden in this room and after you’re unconscious I’ll find it and disconnect it.”
As Jo struggled to her feet, Proska fixed his eyes upon her and she felt the vertigo and nausea again. But this time she was ready for it and resisted.
“You’re strong,” Proska commented. “Finch was strong, too, but eventually he was defeated.”
Jo’s knees suddenly buckled and she fell to the floor but kept resisting. “It must run in the family,” she said.
Proska must have been somewhat surprised, or puzzled, by this statement for the indescribable pressure on Jo’s consciousness lessened momentarily. She took advantage of the lapse.
“He was my father!” she screamed.
Not being psionic, Jo could never know, understand or explain what happened then. Proska recoiled—mentally and physically—at this revelation and at the intensity with which it was uttered. And in doing so he left open a channel between himself and the girl. Something flashed across that gulf, all the concentrated hatred, rage and disgust that had collected while Jo had listened to this horrid little monster of a man cold-bloodedly recount the murder of her father, the fury, resentment and repressed self-pity that had waited fifteen years for an object found one and channeled along the waiting path.
Proska twisted in agony and clawed at his eyes. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came forth. Unconscious, he crumbled to the floor.
Relief and reaction flooded Jo and she felt her own consciousness dimming. But before everything went black, she thought she saw the door to the room open and a hooded blue-gray face poke itself inside.
She was brought back to consciousness by the night nurse. “Feeling better now?” the woman asked. “I think you’d better take to a bed, Miss; you look awfully tired. You might have been on the floor for hours more if I hadn’t got the buzz.”
Jo was fully alert now and looked around the room for Proska. “Buzz?” she asked.
The nurse beamed. “Yes. Mr. Easly snapped out of his coma a few moments ago, saw you on the floor and rang for me.”
“Larry!” Jo cried, leaping to her feet. He lay there in the bed, smiling and looking perfectly healthy.
“Hi, Jo,” he said. The nurse quietly slipped out.
“Where’s Proska?” Jo said with no little agitation once they were alone.
Easly was surprised. “You know about Proska?”
“He came here tonight to finish you off, Larry. Wasn’t he here when you came to?”
“No,” Easly said, totally bewildered. “What are you talking about? And what were you doing passed out on the floor when I woke up? The nurse explained what she knew about what happened to me, but what happened to you?”
Jo placed a call to Old Pete and then proceeded to tell Larry all she knew. When she told him what Proska had said, he nodded.
“That’s what I found out from that Vanek in Danzer,” he said. He shook his head. “They consider him the most dangerous man in the universe but were just sitting around waiting for the Great Wheel to bring him his due. Frankly, it scares the hell out of me to know he’s running around loose!”
Old Pete arrived then and Jo re lated the events of the night again. “Did you say his name was Proska?” Old Pete asked.
Jo and Larry nodded in unison.
“Well, then, you have nothing further to worry about. As I came in I found the hospital in an uproar over the body that had been found outside the city. He had been wearing an orderly’s uniform but his name was Proska and no Proska had ever been employed by the hospital. I would have ignored the whole story except for the bizarre way the man had been killed.”
“You mean he’s been murdered?” Jo asked.
“Yes, almost ritualistically. It seems some person or persons nailed him to a tree, sawed off the top of his head, scooped out his brain and smashed it at his feet.”
“The Vanek!” Jo said.
“Not a chance,” Old Pete declared. “The Vaneks never take any decisive action on their own behalf, or on behalf of anyone else.”
“Maybe they’ve learned something,” Larry mused. “Maybe Junior Finch taught them that a little initiative is better than waiting for the Great Wheel. Maybe they didn’t want the daughter of their honored Junior to go the same way as her father and decided to do something.”
There was a pause, then: “For beginners, they sure don’t kid around,” said Old Pete with a visible shudder.
“This means deBloise is finished,” Jo said with satisfaction. “Proska’s recording should be on its way to the
Federation Ethics Council by now. That’s where he said it would go if his death had anything suspicious about it.”
“That stops deBloise,” Old Pete concurred, “but what about the Haas plan? The other Restructurists can carry it through without him.”
Jo smiled. “That remains to be seen.” She turned to the visiphone and placed a call to the Jebinose brokerage house.
“I’d like to buy some stock in Op-sal Pharmaceuticals and Fairgood Drive,” she said as a man’s face appeared on the screen.
“You and everybody else,” he said with a smirk. “I’ve been trying to get a bid in on those two issues all night. The Galactic Board has gone wild!”
“How about Teblinko, or Star Ways Drive?”
The man’s eyes lit up. “As much as you want! Good prices, too!”
“I’ll think about it,” Jo said. “Thank you.” She turned to Old Pete and Larry. “Well, that’s the end of deBloise’s plan.”
“I still don’t understand,
Jo moved away from the phone and slumped into a chair. “DeBloise was planning on SW running Haas out of business. He knew it would happen; and when it did he expected to go before the Federation and plead that further development of the warp gate is vital to the security of the Fed and will be needed on that inevitable day when we clash with the Tarks. He’d claim that unregulated competition was depriving the Federation of the gate, and he’d demand invocation of the emergency clause so that the Fed could intervene against SW.”
“That’s it!” Old Pete cried with dancing eyes. “If the plan succeeded, the Restructurists would have had a foothold in one of their prime target areas: regulation of trade!”
Easly was still somewhat puzzled. “How can you be so sure this is the plan?”
“It’s obvious when you tie everything together. DeBloise was carefully hiding his financial link with Haas—that indicated he feared a conflict of interest charge. He was also aware that backing Haas was financial suicide . . . Haas is a monomaniac and a lousy businessman to boot. With him in charge of production and marketing, the warp gate was doomed; Star Ways would drive him out of business before he could get off the ground. And since Haas will allow no one other than himself to produce the gate—to which he has full legal rights—the warp gate would thus be lost to humanity and ‘unregulated trade’ would be painted as the villain.
“The obvious military advantages of the gate would have made it a perfect lever to get at the emergency clause. The Restructurists would scream Security and it would be difficult to oppose them. So I decided to stop them before they got started. . . I struck at SW.”
Jo leaned forward as she spoke. “You see, SW is a well-diversified corporation and could afford to lose money on their warper in a price war as long as they could count on their subsidiaries to make up the difference. So I aimed at SW’s diversity: I took a gamble and tried to hurt its two biggest subsidiary companies and succeeded. An effective competitive price war is almost impossible for SW now and so there’s no excuse to invoke the emergency clause!”