That Sweet Little Old Lady by Randall Garrett
II
Early the next morning, Malone awoke on a plane, heading across thecontinent toward Nevada. He had gone home to sleep, and he'd had to wakeup to get on the plane, and now here he was, waking up again. It seemed,somehow, like a vicious circle.
The engines hummed gently as they pushed the big ship through the middlestratosphere's thinly distributed molecules. Malone looked out at thepurple-dark sky and set himself to think out his problem again.
He was still mulling things over when the ship lowered its landing gearand rolled to a stop on the big field near Yucca Flats. Malone sighedand climbed slowly out of his seat. There was a car waiting for him atthe airfield, though, and that seemed to presage a smooth time; Maloneremembered calling Dr. O'Connor the night before, and congratulatedhimself on his foresight.
Unfortunately, when he reached the main gate of the high double fencethat surrounded the more than ninety square miles of United StatesLaboratories, he found out that entrance into that sanctum sanctorum ofSecurity wasn't as easy as he'd imagined--not even for an FBI man. Hiscredentials were checked with the kind of minute care Malone had alwaysthought people reserved for disputed art masterpieces, and it was with agreat show of reluctance that the Special Security guards passed himinside as far as the office of the Chief Security Officer.
There, the Chief Security Officer himself, a man who could have doubledfor Torquemada, eyed Malone with ill-concealed suspicion while he calledBurris at FBI headquarters back in Washington.
Burris identified Malone on the video screen and the Chief SecurityOfficer, looking faintly disappointed, stamped the agent's pass andthanked the FBI chief. Malone had the run of the place.
Then he had to find a courier jeep. The Westinghouse division, itseemed, was a good two miles away.
As Malone knew perfectly well, the main portion of the entire YuccaFlats area was devoted solely to research on the new space drive whichwas expected to make the rocket as obsolete as the blunderbuss--at leastas far as space travel was concerned. Not, Malone thought uneasily, thatthe blunderbuss had ever been used for space travel, but--
He got off the subject hurriedly. The jeep whizzed by buildings, most ofthem devoted to aspects of the non-rocket drive. The other projectsbased at Yucca Flats had to share what space was left--and thatincluded, of course, the Westinghouse research project.
It turned out to be a single, rather small white building with a fencearound it. The fence bothered Malone a little, but there was no need toworry; this time he was introduced at once into Dr. O'Connor's office.It was paneled in wallpaper manufactured to look like pine, and thetelepathy expert sat behind a large black desk bigger than any Malonehad ever seen in the FBI offices. There wasn't a scrap of paper on thedesk; its surface was smooth and shiny, and behind it the nearlytransparent Dr. Thomas O'Connor was close to invisible.
He looked, in person, just about the same as he'd looked on the FBItapes. Malone closed the door of the office behind him, looked for achair and didn't find one. In Dr. O'Connor's office, it was perfectlyobvious, Dr. O'Connor sat down. You stood, and were uncomfortable.
* * * * *
Malone took off his hat. He reached across the desk to shake hands withthe telepathy expert, and Dr. O'Connor gave him a limp and fragile paw."Thanks for giving me a little time," Malone said. "I really appreciateit." He smiled across the desk. His feet were already beginning to hurt.
"Not at all," Dr. O'Connor said, returning the smile with one of his ownspecial quick-frozen brand. "I realize how important FBI work is to allof us, Mr. Malone. What can I do to help you?"
Malone shifted his feet. "I'm afraid I wasn't very specific on the phonelast night," he said. "It wasn't anything I wanted to discuss over aline that might have been tapped. You see, I'm on the telepathy case."
Dr. O'Connor's eyes widened the merest trifle. "I see," he said. "Well,I'll certainly do everything I can to help you."
"Fine," Malone said. "Let's get right down to business, then. The firstthing I want to ask you about is this detector of yours. I understandit's too big to carry around--but how about making a smaller model?"
"Smaller?" Dr. O'Connor permitted himself a ghostly chuckle. "I'm afraidthat isn't possible, Mr. Malone. I would be happy to let you have asmall model of the machine if we had one available--more than happy. Iwould like to see such a machine myself, as a matter of fact.Unfortunately, Mr. Malone--"
"There just isn't one, right?" Malone said.
"Correct," Dr. O'Connor said. "And there are a few other factors. In thefirst place, the person being analyzed has to be in a specially shieldedroom, such as is used in encephalographic analysis. Otherwise, themental activity of the other persons around him would interfere with theanalysis." He frowned a little. "I wish that we knew a bit more aboutpsionic machines. The trouble with the present device, frankly, is thatit is partly psionic and partly electronic, and we can't be entirelysure where one part leaves off and the other begins. Very trying. Verytrying indeed."
"I'll bet it is," Malone said sympathetically, wishing he understoodwhat Dr. O'Connor was talking about.
The telepathy expert sighed. "However," he said, "we keep working atit." Then he looked at Malone expectantly.
Malone shrugged. "Well, if I can't carry the thing around, I guessthat's that," he said. "But here's the next question: Do you happen toknow the maximum range of a telepath? I mean: How far away can he getfrom another person and still read his mind?"
Dr. O'Connor frowned again. "We don't have definite information on that,I'm afraid," he said. "Poor little Charlie was rather difficult to workwith. He was mentally incapable of co-operating in any way, you see."
"Little Charlie?"
"Charles O'Neill was the name of the telepath we worked with," Dr.O'Connor explained.
"I remember," Malone said. The name had been on one of the tapes, but hejust hadn't associated "Charles O'Neill" with "Little Charlie." He feltas if he'd been caught with his homework undone. "How did you manage tofind him, anyway?" he said. Maybe, if he knew how Westinghouse had foundtheir imbecile-telepath, he'd have some kind of clue that would enablehim to find one, too. Anyhow, it was worth a try.
"It wasn't difficult in Charlie's case," Dr. O'Connor said. He smiled."The child babbled all the time, you see."
"You mean he talked about being a telepath?"
Dr. O'Connor shook his head impatiently. "No," he said. "Not at all. Imean that he babbled. Literally. Here: I've got a sample recording in myfiles." He got up from his chair and went to the tall gray filingcabinet that hid in a far corner of the pine-paneled room. From a drawerhe extracted a spool of common audio tape, and returned to his desk.
"I'm sorry we didn't get full video on this," he said, "but we didn'tfeel it was necessary." He opened a panel in the upper surface of thedesk, and slipped the spool in. "If you like, there are other tapes--"
"Maybe later," Malone said.
* * * * *
Dr. O'Connor nodded and pressed the playback switch at the side of thegreat desk. For a second the room was silent.
Then there was the hiss of empty tape, and a brisk masculine voice thatoverrode it:
"Westinghouse Laboratories," it said, "sixteen April nineteen-seventy.Dr. Walker speaking. The voice you are about to hear belongs to CharlesO'Neill: chronological age fourteen years, three months; mental age,approximately five years. Further data on this case will be found in thefile _O'Neill_."
There was a slight pause, filled with more tape hiss.
Then the voice began.
"... push the switch for record ... in the park last Wednesday ... andperhaps a different set of ... poor kid never makes any sense in ...trees and leaves all sunny with the ... electronic components of thereducing stage might be ... not as predictable when others are aroundbut ... to go with Sally some night in the...."
It was a childish, alto voice, gabbling in a monotone. A phrase would bespoken, the voice would hesitate for just an
"... in receiving psychocerebral impulses there isn't any ... nonsenseand nothing but nonsense all the ... tomorrow or maybe Saturday with thegirl ... tube might be replaceable only if ... something ought to bedone for the ... Saturday would be a good time for ... work on theschematics tonight if...."
There was a click as the tape was turned off, and Dr. O'Connor lookedup.
"It doesn't make much sense," Malone said. "But the kid sure has a hellof a vocabulary for an imbecile."
"Vocabulary?" Dr. O'Connor said softly.
"That's right," Malone said. "Where'd an imbecile get words like'psychocerebral'? I don't think I know what that means, myself."
"Ah," Dr. O'Connor said. "But that's not _his_ vocabulary, you see. WhatCharlie is doing is simply repeating the thoughts of those around him.He jumps from mind to mind, simply repeating whatever he receives." Hisface assumed the expression of a man remembering a bad taste in hismouth. "That's how we found him out, Mr. Malone," he said. "It's ratherstartling to look at a blithering idiot and have him suddenly repeat thevery thought that's in your mind."
Malone nodded unhappily. It didn't seem as if O'Connor's information wasgoing to be a lot of help as far as catching a telepath was concerned.An imbecile, apparently, would give himself away if he were a telepath.But nobody else seemed to be likely to do that. And imbeciles didn'tlook like very good material for catching spies with.
Then he brightened. "Is it possible that the spy we're looking forreally isn't a spy?"
"Eh?"
"I mean, suppose he's an imbecile, too? I doubt whether an imbecilewould really be a spy, if you see what I mean."
Dr. O'Connor appeared to consider the notion. After a little while hesaid: "It is, I suppose, possible. But the readings on the machine don'tgive us the same timing as they did in Charlie's case--or even the samesort of timing."
"I don't quite follow you," Malone said. Truthfully, he felt about threemiles behind. But perhaps everything would clear up soon. He hoped so.On top of everything else, his feet were now hurting a lot more.
"Perhaps if I describe one of the tests we ran," Dr. O'Connor said,"things will be somewhat clearer." He leaned back in his chair. Maloneshifted his feet again and transferred his hat from his right hand tohis left hand.
"We put one of our test subjects in the insulated room," Dr. O'Connorsaid, "and connected him to the detector. He was to read from a book--abook that was not too common. This was, of course, to obviate the chancethat some other person nearby might be reading it, or might have read itin the past. We picked 'The Blood is the Death,' by HieronymusMelanchthon, which, as you may know, is a very rare book indeed."
"Sure," Malone said. He had never heard of the book, but he was, afterall, willing to take Dr. O'Connor's word for it.
The telepathy expert went on: "Our test subject read it carefully,scanning rather than skimming. Cameras recorded the movements of hiseyes in order for us to tell just what he was reading at any givenmoment, in order to correlate what was going on in his mind with thereactions of the machine's indicators, if you follow me."
Malone nodded helplessly.
"At the same time," Dr. O'Connor continued blithely, "we had Charlie ina nearby room, recording his babblings. Every so often, he would comeout with quotations from 'The Blood is the Death,' and these quotationscorresponded exactly with what our test subject was reading at the time,and also corresponded with the abnormal fluctuations of the detector."
* * * * *
Dr. O'Connor paused. Something, Malone realized, was expected of him. Hethought of several responses and chose one. "I see," he said.
"But the important thing here," Dr. O'Connor said, "is the timing. Yousee, Charlie was incapable of continued concentration. He could not keephis mind focused on another mind for very long, before he hopped tostill another. The actual amount of time concentrated on any given mindat any single given period varied from a minimum of one point threeseconds to a maximum of two point six. The timing samples, when plottedgraphically over a period of several months, formed a skewed bell curvewith a mode at two point oh seconds."
"Ah," Malone said, wondering if a skewed bell curve was the same thingas a belled skew curve, and if not, why not?
"It was, in fact," Dr. O'Connor continued relentlessly, "a suddenvariation in those timings which convinced us that there was anothertelepath somewhere in the vicinity. We were conducting a second set ofreading experiments, in precisely the same manner as the first set, and,for the first part of the experiment, our figures were substantially thesame. But--" He stopped.
"Yes?" Malone said, shifting his feet and trying to take some weight offhis left foot by standing on his right leg. Then he stood on his leftleg. It didn't seem to do any good.
"I should explain," Dr. O'Connor said, "that we were conducting thisseries with a new set of test subjects: some of the scientists here atYucca Flats. We wanted to see if the intelligence quotients of thesubjects affected the time of contact which Charlie was able tomaintain. Naturally, we picked the men here with the highest IQ's, thetwo men we have who are in the top echelon of the creative geniusclass." He cleared his throat. "I did not include myself, of course,since I wished to remain an impartial observer, as much as possible."
"Of course," Malone said without surprise.
"The other two geniuses," Dr. O'Connor said, "happen to be connectedwith the project known as Project Isle--an operation whose function Ineither know, nor care to know, anything at all about."
Malone nodded. Project Isle was the non-rocket spaceship. Classified.Top Secret. Ultra-Secret. And, he thought, just about anything else youcould think of.
"At first," Dr. O'Connor was saying, "our detector recorded the timeperiods of ... ah mental invasion as being the same as before. Then, oneday, anomalies began to appear. The detector showed that the minds ofour subjects were being held for as long as two or three minutes. Butthe phrases repeated by Charlie during these periods showed that his owncontact time remained the same; that is, they fell within the sameskewed bell curve as before, and the mode remained constant if nothingbut the phrase length were recorded."
"Hm-m-m," Malone said, feeling that he ought to be saying something.
Dr. O'Connor didn't notice him. "At first we thought of errors in thedetector machine," he went on. "That worried us not somewhat, since ourunderstanding of the detector is definitely limited at this time. We dofeel that it would be possible to replace some of the electroniccomponents with appropriate symbolization like that already used in thepurely psionic sections, but we have, as yet, been unable to determineexactly which electronic components must be replaced by what symboliccomponents."
Malone nodded, silently this time. He had the sudden feeling that Dr.O'Connor's flow of words had broken itself up into a vast sea ofalphabet soup, and that he, Malone, was occupied in drowning in it.
"However," Dr. O'Connor said, breaking what was left of Malone's trainof thought, "young Charlie died soon thereafter, and we decided to go onchecking the machine. It was during this period that we found someoneelse reading the minds of our test subjects--sometimes for a fewseconds, sometimes for several minutes."
"Aha," Malone said. Things were beginning to make sense again. _Someoneelse._ That, of course, was the spy.
"I found," Dr. O'Connor said, "on interrogating the subjects moreclosely, that they were, in effect, thinking on two levels. They werereading the book mechanically, noting the words and sense, but simplyshuttling the material directly into their memories without actuallythinking about it. The actual thinking portions of their minds wereconcentrating on aspects of Project Isle."
* * * * *
"In other words," Malone said, "someone was spying on them forinformation about Project Isle?"
"Wait a minute," Malone said. "Wait a minute. If this spy is so clever,how come he didn't read _your_ mind?"
"It is very likely that he has," O'Connor said. "What does that have todo with it?"
"Well," Malone said, "if he knows you and your group are working ontelepathy and can detect what he's doing, why didn't he just hold off onthe minds of those geniuses when they were being tested in yourmachine?"
Dr. O'Connor frowned. "I'm afraid that I can't be sure," he said, and itwas clear from his tone that, if Dr. Thomas O'Connor wasn't sure, no onein the entire world was, had been, or ever would be. "I do have atheory, however," he said, brightening up a trifle.
Malone waited patiently.
"He must know our limitations," Dr. O'Connor said at last. "He must beperfectly well aware that there's not a single thing we can _do_ abouthim. He must know that we can neither find nor stop him. Why should heworry? He can afford to ignore us--or even bait us. We're helpless, andhe knows it."
That, Malone thought, was about the most cheerless thought he had heardin some time.
"You mentioned that you had an insulated room," the FBI agent saidafter a while. "Couldn't you let your men think in there?"
Dr. O'Connor sighed. "The room is shielded against magnetic fields andelectromagnetic radiation. It is perfectly transparent to psionicphenomena, just as it is to gravitational fields."
"Oh," Malone said. He realized rapidly that his question had been alittle silly to begin with, since the insulated room had been the placewhere all the tests had been conducted in the first place. "I don't wantto take up too much of your time, doctor," he said after a pause, "butthere are a couple of other questions."
"Go right ahead," Dr. O'Connor said. "I'm sure I'll be able to helpyou."
Malone thought of mentioning how little help the doctor had been todate, but decided against it. Why antagonize a perfectly good scientistwithout any reason? Instead, he selected his first question, and askedit. "Have you got any idea how we might lay our hands on anothertelepath? Preferably one that's not an imbecile, of course."
Dr. O Connor's expression changed from patient wisdom to irritation. "Iwish we could, Mr. Malone. I wish we could. We certainly need one hereto help us with our work--and I'm sure that _your_ work is important,too. But I'm afraid we have no ideas at all about finding anothertelepath. Finding little Charlie was purely fortuitous--purely, Mr.Malone, fortuitous."
"Ah," Malone said. "Sure. Of course." He thought rapidly and discoveredthat he couldn't come up with one more question. As a matter of fact,he'd asked a couple of questions already, and he could barely rememberthe answers. "Well," he said, "I guess that's about it, then, doctor. Ifyou come across anything else, be sure and let me know."
He leaned across the desk, extending a hand. "And thanks for your time,"he added.
Dr. O'Connor stood up and shook his hand. "No trouble, I assure you," hesaid. "And I'll certainly give you all the information I can."
Malone turned and walked out. Surprisingly, he discovered that his feetand legs still worked. He had thought they'd turned to stone in theoffice long before.
* * * * *
It was on the plane back to Washington that Malone got his first inklingof an idea.
The only telepath that the Westinghouse boys had been able to turn upwas Charles O'Neill, the youthful imbecile.
All right, then. Suppose there were another one like him. Imbecilesweren't very difficult to locate. Most of them would be in institutions,and the others would certainly be on record. It might be possible tofind someone, anyway, who could be handled and used as a tool to find atelepathic spy.
And--happy thought!--maybe one of them would turn out to be ahigh-grade imbecile, or even a moron.
Even if they only turned up another imbecile, he thought wearily, atleast Dr. O'Connor would have something to work with.
He reported back to Burris when he arrived in Washington, told him aboutthe interview with Dr. O'Connor, and explained what had come to seem arather feeble brainstorm.
"It doesn't seem too productive," Burris said, with a shade ofdisappointment in his voice, "but we'll try it."
At that, it was a better verdict than Malone had hoped for. He hadnothing to do but wait, while orders went out to field agents all overthe United States, and quietly, but efficiently, the FBI went to work.Agents probed and pried and poked their noses into the files and datasheets of every mental institution in the fifty states--as far, at anyrate, as they were able.
It was not an easy job. The inalienable right of a physician to refuseto disclose confidences respecting a patient applied even to idiots,imbeciles, and morons. Not even the FBI could open the private files ofa licensed and registered psychiatrist.
But the field agents did the best they could and, considering thecircumstances, their best was pretty good.
Malone, meanwhile, put in two weeks sitting glumly at his Washingtondesk and checking reports as they arrived. They were uniformlydepressing. The United States of America contained more subnormal mindsthan Malone cared to think about. There seemed to be enough of them toexplain the results of any election you were unhappy over.Unfortunately, subnormal was all you could call them. Not one of themappeared to possess any abnormal psionic abilities whatever.
There were a couple who were reputed to be poltergeists--but in neithercase was there a single shred of evidence to substantiate the claim.
At the end of the second week, Malone was just about convinced that hisidea had been a total washout. A full fortnight had been spent ondigging up imbeciles, while the spy at Yucca Flats had been going righton his merry way, scooping information out of the men at Project Isle asthough he were scooping beans out of a pot. And, very likely, laughinghimself silly at the feeble efforts of the FBI.
Who could he be?
_Anyone_, Malone told himself unhappily. _Anyone at all._ He could bethe janitor that swept out the buildings, one of the guards at the gate,one of the minor technicians on another project, or even some oldprospector wandering around the desert with a scintillation counter.
Is there any limit to telepathic range?
The spy could even be sitting quietly in an armchair in the Kremlin,probing through several thousand miles of solid earth to peep into thebrains of the men on Project Isle.
That was, to say the very least, a depressing idea.
Malone found he had to assume that the spy was in the UnitedStates--that, in other words, there was some effective range totelepathic communication. Otherwise, there was no point in bothering tocontinue the search.
Therefore, he found one other thing to do. He alerted every agent to thejob of discovering how the spy was getting his information out of thecountry.
He doubted that it would turn up anything, but it was a chance. AndMalone hoped desperately for it, because he was beginning to be surethat the field agents were never going to turn up any telepathicimbeciles.
He was right.
They never did.