Linky tiptoed gently back out of hearing.
“She’s talking to Correlation now,” he reported to his friend. “Not at the sweetness stage yet. I think I’ll put in a little time checking the Library at that.”
The other clerk nodded without looking up. “You could use the Head’s information cabinet. He just went out.”
“Pyramid Effect,” Psych-Library Information instructed Linky gently a minute later. “Restricted, Galactic Zones. Result of the use of an expanding series of psychimpulse-multipliers, organic or otherwise, by Telepaths of the Orders Two to Four, for the transference of directional patterns, compulsions, illusions, et cetera, to large numbers of subjects.
“The significant feature of the Pyramid Effect is its elimination of excessive drain on the directing mentality, achieved by utilizing the neural or neural-type energies of the multipliers themselves in transferring the directed impulses from one stage to the next.
“Techniques required to establish the first and second stages of multipliers are classified as Undesirable General Knowledge. Though not infrequently developed independently by Telepaths above the primary level, their employment in any form is prohibited throughout the Confederacy of Vega and variously discouraged by responsible governments elsewhere.
“Establishment of the third stage, and subsequent stages, of impulse-multipliers involves a technique-variant rarely developed by uninstructed Telepaths below the Order of Five. It is classified, under all circumstances, as Prohibited General Knowledge and is subject to deletion under the regulations pertaining to that classification.
“Methodology of the Pyramid Effect may be obtained in detail under the heading `Techniques: Pyramid Effect’—”
The gentle voice subsided.
“Hm-m-m!” said Linky. He glanced about but there was nobody else in immediate range of the information cabinet. He tapped out “Techniques: Pyramid Effect,” and punched.
“The information applied for,” another voice stated tunelessly, “is restricted to Zone Agent levels and above. Your identification?”
Linky scowled, punched “Cancellation” quickly, murmured “Nuts!” and tapped another set of keys.
“Psychimpulse-multiplier,” the gentle voice came back. “Restricted, Galactic Zones. Any person, organic entity, energy form, or mentalized instrument employed in distributing the various types of telepathic impulses to subjects beyond the scope of the directing mentality in range or number—Refer to `Pyramid Effect’—”
That seemed to be that. What else was the Z.A. crying about? Oh, yes!
“Siva Psychosis,” the gentle voice resumed obligingly. “Symptom of the intermediate to concluding stages of the Autocrat Circuit in human-type mentalities—Refer to `Multiple Murder: Causes’—”
Linky grimaced.
“Got what you wanted?” The other clerk was standing behind him.
Linky got up. “No,” he said. “Let’s go anyhow. Your Final Mission came through?”
His friend shook his head.
“The guy got it. Ship and all. The automatic death signals just started coming in. That bong-bong . . . bong-bong stuff always gets on my nerves!” He motioned Linky into an elevator ahead of him. “They ought to work out a different sort of signal.”
* * *
“Understand you’ve been having some trouble with Department of Cultures personnel,” Snoops told the transmitter genially.
“Just one of them,” Pagadan replied, regarding him with disfavor. Probably, he wasn’t really evil but he certainly looked it—aged in evil, and wizened with it. Also, he had been, just now, very hard to find. “That particular one,” she added, “is worse than any dozen others I’ve run into, so far!”
“DC-COIF 1227, eh?” Snoops nodded. “Don’t have to make up a dossier for you on her. Got it all ready.”
“We’ve had trouble with her before, then?”
“Oh, sure! Lots of times. System Chief Jasse—beautiful big thing, isn’t she?” Snoops chuckled. “I’ve got any number of three-dimensionals of her.”
“You would have,” said Pagadan sourly. “For a flagpole, she’s not so bad looking, at that. Must be eight feet if she’s an inch!”
“Eight foot two,” Snoops corrected. “What’s she up to now, that place you’re at—Ulphi?”
“Minding other people’s business like any D.C. Mostly mine, though she doesn’t know that. I’m objecting particularly to her practice of pestering the Fleet for information they either don’t have or aren’t allowed to give for reasons of plain standard operational security. There’s a destroyer commander stationed here who says every time she looks at him now, he gets a feeling he’d better watch his step or he’ll get turned over and whacked.”
“She wouldn’t do that,” Snoops said earnestly. “She’s a good girl, that Jasse. Terribly conscientious, that’s all. You want that dossier homed out to you or right now, vocally?”
“Both. Right now I want mostly background stuff, so I’ll know how to work her. I’d psycho it out of her myself, but she’s using a pretty good mind-shield and I can’t spend too much mission-time on the Department of Cultures.”
Snoops nodded, cleared his throat, rolled his eyes up reflectively, closed them and began.
“Age twenty-five, or near enough to make no difference. Type A-Class Human, unknown racial variant. Citizen of the Confederacy; home-planet Jeltad. Birthplace unknown—parentage, ditto; presumably spacer stock.”
“Details on that!” interrupted Pagadan.
He’d intended to, Snoops said, looking patient.
* * *
Subject, at about the age of three, had been picked up in space, literally, and in a rather improbable section—high in the northern latitudes where the suns thinned out into the figurative Rim. A Vegan scout, pausing to inspect an area littered with the battle-torn wreckage of four ships, found her drifting about there unconscious and half-alive, in a spacesuit designed for a very tall adult—the kind of adult she eventually became.
Investigation indicated she was the only survivor of what must have been an almost insanely savage and probably very brief engagement. There was some messy evidence that one of the ships had been crewed by either five or six of her kind. The other three had been manned by Lartessians, a branch of human space marauders with whom Vega’s patrol forces were more familiar than they particularly wanted to be.
So was Pagadan. “They fight just like that, the crazy apes! And they’re no slouches—our little pet’s people must be a rugged lot to break even with them at three-to-one odds. But we’ve got no record at all of that breed?”
He’d checked pretty closely but without results, Snoops shrugged. And so, naturally enough, had Jasse herself later on. She’d grown up in the family of the scout’s second pilot. They were earnest Traditionalists, so it wasn’t surprising that at sixteen she entered the Traditionalist College on Jeltad. She was a brilliant student and a spectacular athlete—twice a winner in Vega’s System Games.
“Doing what?” inquired Pagadan curiously.
Javelin, and one of those swimming events; Snoops wasn’t sure just which— She still attended the College intermittently; but at nineteen she’d started to work as a field investigator for the Department of Cultures. Which wasn’t surprising either, since Cultures was practically the political extension of the powerful Traditionalist Creed—
They had made her a System Chief only three years later.
“About that time,” Snoops concluded, “was when we started having trouble with Jasse. She’s smart enough to suspect that whatever Galactic Zones is doing doesn’t jibe entirely with our official purpose in life.” He looked mildly amused. “Seems to think we might be some kind of secret police—you know how Traditionalists feel about anything like that!”
Pagadan nodded. “Everything open and aboveboard. They mean well, bless them!”
She went silent then, reflecting; while the alien black-and-silver eyes continued to look at Snoops, or through him possibly, at something else.
He heard himself saying uneasily, “You’re not going to do her any harm, Zone Agent?”
“Now why should I be doing System Chief Jasse any harm?” Pagadan inquired, much too innocently. “A good girl, like you say. And so lovely looking, too—in spite of that eight-foot altitude.”
“Eight foot two,” Snoops corrected mechanically. He didn’t feel at all reassured.
* * *
The assistant to the Chief of G.Z. Office of Correlation entered the room to which his superior had summoned him and found the general gazing pensively upon a freshly assembled illumined case-chart.
The assistant glanced at the chart number and shrugged sympathetically.
“I understand she wants to speak to you personally,” he remarked. “Is it as bad as she indicates?”
“Colonel Dubois,” the general said, without turning his head, “I’m glad you’re here. Yes, it’s just about as bad!” He nodded at the upper right region of the chart where a massed group of symbols flickered uncertainly. “That’s the bulk of the information we got from the Zone Agent concerning the planet of Ulphi just now. Most of the rest of it has been available to this office for weeks.”
Both men studied the chart silently for a moment.
“It’s a mess, certainly,” the colonel admitted then. “But I’m sure the Agent understands that, when an emergency is not indicated in advance, all incoming information is necessarily handled here in a routine manner, which frequently involves a considerable time-lag in correlation.”
“No doubt she does,” agreed the general. “However, we keep running into her socially when she’s around the System, my wife and I. Particularly my wife. You understand that I should like our summation of this case to be as nearly perfect as we can make it?”