failed to gain any foothold upon any of the outplanets because the basic tenets of
Communism are completely unacceptable to the independent and self-reliant peoples of
the planets. The fact is, therefore, that Communism is bottled up on something over half
of the land surface of one planet, while we `contemptible capitalist warmongers’ are
spreading at an exponential rate over a constantly increasing number of planets. The
question is, what will this present Nameless One of EastHem-who is none too stable a
character-do about this state of affairs?”
Deston whistled, and after a short silence Barbara said, “He will bomb, I suppose you
mean.”
“Could be, at that,” Deston agreed. “Especially since EastHem never will catch up with
our production technology. The most important thing, as I see -it, is when.”
“Within a very few years, I think,” Adams said. “By these charts, five years at most, and
probably much less than that.”
“Nice,” Deston said, and thought for moments. “And he won’t stick around for the fallout.
He and the hard core of the Party will take off for some unknown planet -maybe they’ve
been working on it for years-with the idea of bombing a!! our planets. Is that your idea?”
“That is one of many, but I do not have enough data to give a high probability to any one
of them.”
“But Uncle Andy,” Barbara put in, “Since you never have been anybody’s professional
crepe-hanger, you’ve already decided what to do about it. So give.”
“I have been able to find only one solution having a probability of success of point nine
nine. In psionics, I think, lies the only possible answer. Such masters as Li Hing Wong
and the mahatmas can do much, but not nearly enough. What we should do is find and
train all the latent psiontists we can. I know of many who are not so latent,
either-Maynard, Smith, and Champion of GalMet; Lansing and DuPuy of WarnOil;
Hatfield, Spehn, and Dann of InStell; to name only a few of those whom I know
personally. There must be thousands of others, none of whom any one of us has ever
heard of. Such a force would almost certainly be able to cope with EastHem and its
bombs; therefore it seems to me that the best course to pursue is to set up a school for
psionic development.”
“Sounds good to me,” Deston approved, “Have you got it going? We’ll all get behind it
and push.”
“How could we have, young man? Even starting in a small way, such a school would
require an investment of at least a hundred thousand dollars-which might as well be a
million, as far as the Adams resources are concerned.”
“A megabuck wouldn’t more than start it, the way it ought to be.” Deston glanced at
Barbara, who nodded. He took a sheet of paper out of a drawer, wrote a couple of lines,
and went on, “Doe, for a man with your brains, you’ve got absolutely the least sense of
anybody I know. Any nitwit would know that DesDes would back any such project as that
clear up to the hilt. Here, give this to Lansing. It’s for twenty five megabucks now, and as
much more as you want, whenever you want it.”
Chapter 14
THE GENERAL STRIKE
In their suite, Percival Train put his arm around his wife’s supple waist, swung her
around, and kissed her lingeringly. “Let’s sit down and talk this thing out. We both
scanned both kids. We agree that they’re both normal-apparently so, anyway-now. So
what? Shoot me the load of what’s bothering you.”
“So a hell of a lot.” A cigarette appeared between Cecily’s lips, lit itself, and she burned
a quarter of it in one long inhalation. “I’ll give you both barrels. They had mind blocks.
Both of them did. Now they either haven’t any or are able to hide the fact that they have
and I know damn well which one it is. Now. How could a baby who can scarcely walk
yet-to say nothing of two of them-have anything to hide or want to? Or be able to if they
did? Here’s how. They were both conceived in subspace. . . .”
“So what? Don’t you think that ever happened before?” “Not in any ship that ever picked
up a zeta charge, it didn’t. No woman ever lived through that before to become a mother.
And both periods of gestation were impossibly long. And all four parents were powerful
psiontists; just how powerful you and I don’t know and can’t guess. And they both, at an
age when normal babies are completely dependent, have super-normal intelligence and
super-normal powers. . . .”
“Hold it, presh, you’re just guessing at that.”
“Guessing your left eyeball! Look at what happened! Could any normal man alive, of his
own ability, do what we know Upton Maynard did? Or Eldon Smith? Or Guerdon Dann?
And look at Steve Spehn. You know as well as I do, Perce, that it’s starkly impossible to
hide an operation as big as that from a spy system as good as EastHem’s. And look at
me. I never had even a trace of psionic ability before-how did I get it? And so all of a
sudden? And those are only a few of the stickers, big boy; if you aren’t convinced yet I
can go on for half an hour.”
Train, his face set hard in concentration, thought for minutes; then said, “I’m convinced
that. . .”
“Good! I didn’t expect you to admit it.”
“Hold on, Sess! I’m convinced that there’s an operator. I never thought about those things
before in that way, hut the way you pile them up leaves no room for doubt. But you got
off on the wrong foot and never corrected yourself-so you went clear out to the Pleiades,
by way of Canopus, Rigel, and S-Doradus, to hit Venus next door. Didn’t you ever hear
of Occam’s Razor?”
“Why, of course, but…”
“Use it, then, and that functional as well as beautiful red-thatched head of yours.”
It took her only a couple of seconds. “Why, it’s Barbara!” she shrieked then. “It’s been
Barbara all the time!” “Right. So let’s examine Barbara. She’s been an honest to-God
witch all her life. The greatest and probably the only one-hundred-percenter ever. She’s
known it and worked at it. That much we know for sure. What else she is we’ll never
know, but we can do some freehand guessing. She’s had her own way all her life. How?
Yet it never spoiled her. Why not? Even as a teenager, nobody’s line ever fooled her.
Why not? Above all, why wasn’t she ever shot or strangled or blown up with dynamite?”
Cecily nodded her spectacular head. “Competition must have tried. That has always
been the cut-throatingest of all cut-throat games. And, underneath, she really is hard.”
“Hard! She’s harder than the superneotride hubs of hell itself. Whenever she has wanted
anything she has taken it. Including Carlyle Deston. And speaking of Deston, look at what
happened to him-and me. He didn’t used to have any more psionic ability than I did-not
as much. Then, all of a sudden-both of us-bam-whingo! And you can’t say the kids did
that-not to him, anyway. Not only they weren’t born yet-you might claim they could work
pre-natally-they weren’t conceived yet . . . probably, that is . . .”
She laughed. “You can delete the `probably’, Perce. They got married right after their
first meetings, you know. Anyway, virgin brides or not, they certainly were not pregnant
ones. They both knew the facts of life.”
“Okay. She made full-scale, high-powered psionic operators out of Herc and Bun, too;
long before the kids were born and probably before they were conceived. So, for my
money, it was Bobby who worked all of us over and pulled the strings on the Adamses
and on Maynard And Company and did everything else that was done.”
“But those babies are not normal babies, Perce . . .” She paused, then went on, “But of
course . . .” She paused again.
“Of course,” he agreed “With cat-tractor-psiontist parents on both sides, how could they
be? Especially with said parents working on them-just like we’ll be working on ours-from
the day they were born? Or maybe even before? I’ll buy it that they have a lot more stuff
than any normal kids could possibly have; up to and including mind-blocks and even the
ability to hide them. When they grow up they’ll probably have a lot more stuff than any of
us. But now? And that kind of stuff? Uh-uh. No sale, presh; wrap it back up and put it
back up on the shelf.”
“I’ll do just that.” She drew a deep breath of relief and wriggled herself into closer and
fuller contact. “Just the thought of such little monsters as that simply petrified me.”
“I know what you mean. You almost gave me gooseflesh there for a minute myself.”