Traitor to the Living Page 8

  The ruins of the house as seen from a helicopter were shown briefly. There was only a deep black hole with pieces of wood and metal scattered outward like the petals of a flower scattered by a giant reciting for-get-menots.

  Mr. Western, his bodyguards, and the unnamed client had scrambled out of the subbasement a few minutes after the explosion and escaped with some burns on their backs and heads.

  There was a shot of Western, part of his body and the top of his head covered with bandages. The casters added that he had stated that a new house would be built on the site and a new MEDIUM installed. Mr. Western had also stated that it would have done no good to kill him, since his followers would carry on his work.

  "I'd sure like to know what he was doing in that basement and who his client was," Gordon Carfax said.

  "I wish he had been killed!" Patricia said. "It would serve him right! And maybe then he might have confessed that he killed my father and stole MEDIUM."

  "Why should he?" Carfax said.

  "What would he have to gain by lying after he's dead?"

  "Being dead doesn't make you any less hypocritical or spiteful," Gordon said.

  "There you go again," she said. "You insist that they are not the dead but entities posing as the dead. Yet you talk as if you believed they are the dead."

  "I know. It's too easy to slide into the habit of thinking of them as those who did live. There's a continuity that overwhelms you even if you don't want to believe. A man dies and then you're talking to him. And it's only by a rigid discipline of mind that you can separate the two, the once-living man and the thing that's pretending to be him. H, that is..."

  "H, that is, they are not really discrete entities, is that what you were going to say?"

  "I'm afraid so," Carfax said, smiling. "In any event, human or not, they are dangerous. I know, though I can't prove it, that one of them was trying to take me over, possess me, when I was interviewing your father."

  "But how could they do that?"

  "How would I know? If I did suggest that to the news media, Western would be sure to stress my mental breakdown. Everybody would conclude that I was crazy. Maybe I am."

  "I don't think so," Patricia said. "But what matters now is what we can do. You'll have to forget Frances, for a while, anyway, until a new MEDIUM is built. It's an awful thing to say, but maybe it was a good thing that the house was blown up. Western's going to be too busy rebuilding to pay much attention to us. We can get something done while he's occupied."

  Like what? Carfax thought. But they were'going to Mrs. Webster for a seance, though he did not expect much from that, and he could sniff around later at the University of Big Sur.

  Just before they turned the TV off that night, the caster announced that the official report of the FCIM would be released within a few days. Apparently, the president had yielded to the public clamor. It was a decision reluctantly taken, since it was going to offend many voters no matter what its conclusions.

  11.

  The Spock business had always done well, but now it was in its Golden Age. Where there had been one medium before Western, there were now twenty. Some operated according to tradition, despising the use of electromechanical aids, depending solely upon their psychic powers. And upon the gullibility of their clients. Carfax thought. Others had gone modern and used devices of their own make which were supposed to be modeled on Western's. (All of these could be classified as fakes. Carfax assumed. But whatever their means, they took in the clients and the money).

  Mrs. Webster was no exception, as far as the money was concerned. She lived in a six-room penthouse on a thirty-six-story apartment building in Santa Monica only two blocks from the Pacific. A security guard checked Gordon and Patricia in the main lobby, and another accompanied them in a private elevator. A third rechecked their credentials before admitting them into the anteroom. A maid who looked as if she came from Arabia (and did) escorted them to the seance room. This had none of the trappings of the seance room which Carfax expected. It was large and airy and bright, its walls were oyster-white with a mural which looked like a Cazetti original (and was) running completely around the room, broken only by several doors. A Matisse and a Renoir which looked like originals (and were) were the only paintings. The furniture was the frail Neo-Cretan style, becoming so popular.

  Mrs. Webster herself looked as fragile as the furniture.

  She rose from a spindly sofa and approached them, her hand out, and smiling. She was about fifty years old and about five feet tall, thin in arms and legs but with large breasts and a posterior that delighted Carfax. Her face was oval, large-eyed, and highcheeked. Her hair was very black and long, floating free. She wore no jewelry except for a small golden ring set with an azure gem which Carfax could not identify. When he took her hand he saw that the ring itself was in the shape of a serpent.

  Mrs. Webster's voice was deep for such a small woman.

  "Please sit down. The others will arrive within a few minutes. You can smoke if you wish; there are some Kenyans on the table, but you can use your own if you like. You'll have to excuse me for a moment; I have to change into my working clothes."

  The few minutes stretched out to fifteen. Patricia smoked several of the strong Kenyans while Gordon paced back and forth, looking now and then out of the high and broad window fronting the ocean. He noticed thin wires running from the wall into the lower edge of the window. His eyebrows rose. Windows which could be electrically polarized were very expensive indeed.

  He had just glanced at his watch when he heard voices. The maid, now dressed in flowing white robes that made her look even more Arabic, entered. Behind her were three women and three men of various ages but all well-dressed. One of them, a blonde of about twenty, was too well-dressed, he thought. She wore the bell-shaped skirt reaching to the floor and the brocaded jacket which the more daring young girls in the larger cities were wearing in honor of then- recently dead idol, the singer Cybele Fidestes (nee Lucy Schwartz). For street wear, her breasts were covered with a thin gauze band, but she was now shedding that. Carfax wondered how he was supposed to keep his mind on psychic matters while confronted with such splendidly physical matters. Or were they supposed to distract him, to keep him from observation of fraud?

  Patricia's lips, he noted, had tightened when the girl entered, and when she removed the band, Patricia's eyes narrowed. She had looked at him to see if he was looking, but he had only grinned and winked at her.

  Mrs. Webster had explained over the phone that these guests were exceptionally psychic and would be present only to expedite communication. She had not said so, but Carfax had assumed that they were actually her part-time employes and would get a cut of her rather high fee. They included a professor of psychics from UCLA, a computer programmer, a retired naval officer, a grip for NBC, the wife of a professional painter, and the secretary of the Finnish consul for Los Angeles. The blonde, Gloriana Szegeti, worked for the Social Security office in Sherman Oaks. (But not in those clothes, surely, he thought.)

  Gloriana stood close to Gordon while she talked with him.

  "I thought your leg was broken, Mr. Carfax."

  "It was, and is, Ms. Szegeti," he said. "But they took the splint off the day after it was put on. The break was injected with epoxy glue and set overnight. So were my ribs. I can, theoretically, anyway, do the 100meter dash with no trouble. Actually, my muscles hurt like fury, and if an occasional twinge passes over my face, it is pain that is causing it. Or perhaps admiration for you."

  Ms. Szegeti laughed; Patricia made strangled sounds.

  "I'd read that they were using the epoxy treatment for broken bones in the East, but I didn't know they were using it here," Ms. Szegeti said.

  "I'm one of the first," Gordon said.

  Mrs. Webster entered, and the group became silent. She was now wearing a white chiton which was so thin that it was obvious she had no underclothing. Her breasts looked so firm they must have been pumped full of clinite. Was she also dressed to
distract him? If so, she was succeeding.

  "We'll sit down now, if you please," she said, indicating a large round table of ebony, its top inlaid with bright figures of fish, dolphins, and octopi. All but Ms. Szegeti went at once to the table, as she pressed a panel in the base of the wall. The light from the window dimmed. By the time she was seated, the window was a dark red oblong with the sun a very dark blue near its center. The room quickly filled with a thick reddish light. Ms. Szegeti, who was seated across from Carfax, became a dark blue statue with black nipples. He looked at Patricia and saw a blue ghost. His own hands were blue.

  The air-conditioning must have been adjusted for at least ten degrees lower; he was suddenly shivering.

  Mrs. Webster, seated at his right, took his hand in her small cool hand and said, "Everybody form a living link."

  Carfax took the hand of Mrs. Applechard, the painter's wife. It was much warmer than Mrs. Webster's.

  "This is merely to establish a vital flow between us," she said. "We'll just sit here and meditate, on anything you like, Patricia and Gordon, and feel the current of the living. Think nice warm thoughts, if you can. I suggest that you think of love, since that seems to work better in the preliminaries."

  That wasn't difficult, Carfax thought. Ms. Szegeti was bouncing up and down on her chair, and the blue oscillations proved that she certainly had had nothing to do with clinite. He wondered what Patricia was thinking. If she were watching Szegeti, she was not thinking of love.

  This seemed a strange prelude to communication with the dead. But psychologists, some anyway, maintained that there was a connection between sex and death in the minds of many Americans. They were, so it was claimed, the reverse and obverse sides of a psychic coin. Carfax considered that to be a depreciated currency.

  "Feel the current," Mrs. Webster said softly. "Feel it flow from one to one, flow through all, around and around, getting stronger with each circuit."

  Suddenly, Carfax felt a tingling where his skin met Mrs. Webster's. A few seconds later, his hand tingled where it was in contact with Mrs. Applechard's.

  Somebody moved, a tiny blue spark cracked, and Patricia gasped.

  Carfax was also startled, but he wondered if they were, in fact, hooked up to a generator of electricity. It did not seem likely, since the thin top and the legs of the table were not thick enough to conceal anything but a tiny battery. Of course, there could be wires running through the wood connected to a battery beneath the floor. A thin strip of conducting metal could run underneath the top and make contact with the bare bellies of Szegeti or Webster.

  On the other hand, the spark had been more like that generated by static electricity.

  Mrs. Webster's hand was cool and dry; Mrs. Ap- plechard's was warm and sweaty. The latter's hand should be a better electrical contact, yet the former's gave a much stronger tingling.

  Mrs. Webster said, "Break, if you please."

  Mrs. Applechard gave a sigh and moved her hand away. Szegeti stood up, with vibrations everywhere free, and walked over to a highboy. Carfax stood up and walked over to Patricia.

  "How'd it go?"

  She stood up and said, "I'd like a drink. But Mrs. Webster said we couldn't even have water during the seance."

  "Was that spark from you?" he said.

  "Yes. I started to move my hand away, and the spark leaped between my hand and Commander Gardner's.

  I wish they'd turn the lights on. Everybody looks so ghastly."

  A match speared the darkness; by its light he could see Szegeti's face, white now, and the cigarette in her lips. A moment later he caught the acrid odor.

  Patricia jumped, but it was not Szegeti that had startled her. The maid, a blue nun, had entered silently. She was carrying a bowl which glowed a faint orange.

  Mrs. Webster said, "You can smoke grass or tobacco, if you wish. Grass seems to be a better instrument for tuning."

  He presumed that "tuning" meant attaining a higher "vibration," whatever that meant.

  The maid put the bowl down on the table before Mrs. Webster's place and glided out, or seemed to glide. He walked over to the table and looked in the bowl. It held three lance-shaped leaves, serrate-edged, black in this light.

  "Laurel leaves, Gordon," Mrs. Webster said behind him. She moved closer so that her breast nudged the back of his right arm. "Laurus nobilis. The bay or >sweet laurel used by the nymphs, or the priestesses, of the pre-Hellenic religion in their orgiastic rites. These come from a tree near the oracular temple at Delphi. I only use them when the circumstances warrant."

  "You get better results when you chew them?"

  "Much better. But it's more dangerous to use them. I lose more control."

  "And why should that be dangerous?" he said, turning.

  Mrs. Webster did not move at once, so that she was pressed against him. Then she stepped back to look up at him. Her teeth were black in a blue face, and her tongue was a dark red nickering.

  "I don't want you to get too excited. It's better not to suggest what might happen."

  "I'm overly excited now," he said, wondering if she guessed the ambiguity.

  "All right," she said in a louder voice. "Put your cigarettes out and come back to the table. Patricia and Gordon, take the same places and link hands."

  This time, there was no tingling in his hands; the electricity seemed to be in the air. Carfax wondered how she could pick up the leaf and put it in her mouth when her hands were held. An arm came over her shoulder, picked up a leaf, and placed it in her open mouth. He turned his head and saw the maid standing just behind Mrs. Webster.

  There was silence eased only by the slight chewing noises from Mrs. Webster. The figures across the table became even more blue-black. His head started to ache.

  Mrs. Applechard's hand became wetter, but at the same time colder. The air was getting colder, too, and it seemed to him that the drop in temperature was not due to the air-conditioning. But that must be his imagination, Suddenly, Mrs. Webster spat, and he jumped. The mass of leaf shot out beyond the bowl, and he smelled a pleasant aromatic odor. A hand appeared in the corner of his eye. It dipped into the bowl, and it moved a dim object, another leaf, into her open mouth. Silence again, except for the moist chewing sounds.

  A few minutes later, while the noiselessness seemed to grow thick as a cloud, the second leaf shot out. The hand swooped down into the bowl and toward her mouth. Mrs. Webster whispered, "No! Enough!" and the hand, still holding the leaf, disappeared.

  His hand felt now as if it were a corpse's. Something rumbled on his left, making him start slightly. He relaxed a trifle and even grinned when he realized that it was gas in Mrs. Applechard's stomach. A highly nervous woman, he thought, though he didn't blame her. And why was she so nervous if she had been through this before? Was it because she had good reason to be? "Don't let loose!" Mrs. Webster said sharply.

  Silence again except for a panting sound. Was it coming from Patricia?

  Mrs. Webster's voice seemed to bellow in his ear.

  "Rufton Carfax!"

  Gordon Carfax felt as if he were turning into quartz from his inner core outward. He was stone precipitating from a thick liquid of fear. Something, or somebody, had entered the room or, rather, not entered but appeared in it. The air over the table was condensing, it was swirling, and the swirls were blackening. Air moved across his face and hands, air pushed out by a mass hovering over the table.

  "Rufton Carfax!"

  A pseudopod, long and thin but rounded at the end, slid out of the mass toward Mrs. Webster. Cold preceded it, cold that brought time to his skin and made the stone shiver.

  Someone across the table, dimly seen through the thickening, giggled. It was high-pitched and shaking with fear and not at all funny. Instead of breaking the tension, it hardened it.

  "Rufton Carfax! Be still!"

  Mrs. Webster's voice, though commanding, had frayed edges. Her hand had become so cold that Gordon wanted to let loose of it, but he was afraid to do so. If he brok
e the link, he might be helpless before something which would take immediate advantage of any weakness.

  "Rufton Carfax! Take your proper shape!"

  The woman giggled again; yes, it was Szegeti. And whoever was panting was desperately afraid.

  "Let it go!" a man moaned.

  "Hold on!" Mrs. Webster said. "You must not panic!"

  "For Christ's sake!" Patricia said. "That's not Father! What have you done?"

  "Stay within the bounds!" Mrs. Webster said, her voice cracking. "Stay! And identify yourself!"

  "It's not Father!" Patricia shrieked.

  A chair fell over, and a body struck the floor. There was a scramble of feet, a scream, and footsteps racing toward the door. Gordon jumped up, jerking Mrs.

  Webster and Applechard back and paining his bruised muscles, but they clung to his hands, and Mrs. Webster said, "Don't run!"

  Somebody was struggling with somebody--Patricia with the maid?--at the door. Suddenly Mrs. Webster shouted, "Be gone! Back to the pit from which you came!"

  The pseudopod lifted, curved like an elephant's trunk, and then shot out toward Mrs. Webster's face.

  She yelled, and she threw herself backward, pulling Gordon with her. They rolled on the floor while Mrs. Webster, her hands on her face, screamed. Gordon rose swiftly, though painfully, from the floor and saw Szegeti at the window, and he knew she was going to depolarize the window. The mass over the table was thinning now but thrashing around, pseudopods whirling outward, reaching for the edges of the table but never going past them. And then the light became redder and redder, and the sun came in unbarred, and the mass was gone.

  He turned to see the door open and the maid and Patricia running down the hall. Mrs. Webster was sitting up, her hands over her eyes and moaning, "I'm blind! I'm blind!"

  He leaned over and forced her hands away. "Of course you can't see, you fool!" he said savagely.