Death's Wisher by Jim Wannamaker (uplifting book club books .TXT) 📗

laughs and laughs. Finally he manages to say: 'You can't figure it out, can you? Well, I know. Old Dobbsie knows. It didn't explode because I willed it not to!'"

Flinn's mind was almost too tired to accept what he had heard. "Are you trying to tell me—"

"Figure it out for yourself," Wilmer said flatly. "It's your field. Telepathy, telehypnosis, and what's left?"

"Psychokinesis," Flinn said in a stifled voice.

"Right. Psychokinesis. Mind over matter."

Ordinarily, Patrick Flinn would have used the morning ride over Washington's broad avenues to good advantage—this was his first visit to the nation's capital—but his mind was too filled with the preceding day's revelations to permit anything save minimal sightseeing.

"I hate to keep repeating myself," Wilmer was saying, "but I must be certain you understand what's at stake here."

"I know," Flinn answered with some impatience. "I'm not to reveal, under any circumstances, the fact that I have telepathic powers."

"Correct." The physicist sat in the seat beside Flinn, and Hayes was in front beside the driver. "Your job is to find out just how much this man can do. We'd like to know the way he does it, too, but that's secondary."

"It strikes me," Flinn mused, "that anyone who can influence a fusion bomb can do anything."

"That's what we're afraid of." Wilmer looked soberly at the parapsychologist. "I think I can understand what's going on in your mind. This is your special love and you're finding it difficult to divorce yourself from pure clinical investigation. You want, really, to talk to Dobbs as one scientist to another. But I must warn you that this is impossible. If he gets the least inkling that you're a special mind, something disastrous may result. As long as he gets what he wants, fine, but rub him the wrong way and—"

"And yet you have him a virtual prisoner and he doesn't object?"

"Well, at least not strenuously," Wilmer said. "I don't profess to understand a warped mind, but apparently Dobbs realizes that his confinement is mostly protective custody. It's to his own advantage. After all, he doesn't have to stand up at a public forum and shout threats. All he has to do is contact the few to reach the many. And if he has the powers he says he has, full use of them would result in his own destruction. And he doesn't want that. He's too interested, right now, in satisfying his own animal appetites. But faced with losing everything—"

"Our biggest immediate worry," Hayes said from the front seat, "is keeping all this from the public. That's why we put Dobbs out of sight in a hurry. There have been some leaks already, but so far most people consider the papers' theories as just so much wild speculation. And thank God for that. You can understand why all recognizable public figures are keeping as far away from Dobbs as possible."

Flinn nodded; it was self-evident. There were other phases of the problem that bothered him more. He was still vaguely and, as it seemed, illogically worried about the several questions he had raised the day before.

The fact that Dobbs might have read his articles and hence might put two and two together, despite a cover identity, was the least of them. Flinn had never lectured in public, his efforts had received no publicity except in specialized psychological circles, and his latest monograph on TH had been published when Dobbs was working at the atoll.

Wilmer, Hayes, and others had managed to assuage reasonable fears on the other point. Flinn had always assumed that psychokinesis would be the logical result of advanced telepathy, that they were links in the same chain. Now it seemed that a person could be one without the other. Either you possessed a latent ability to scan mind-matter, or an affinity for material substance, but not necessarily both.

Earlier, Wilmer and Hayes had devised a test to check the possibility that Dobbs was an advanced telepath. They had mentally vilified him beyond the ability of even an accomplished actor to resist, over prolonged periods of time, and yet Dobbs had shown not the least indication that he had intercepted their thoughts. But there was one additional point.

"You used the expression 'warped mind' in describing Dobbs," Flinn said to Wilmer. "Is it your opinion then that he is definitely psychopathic? The reason I ask is that scanning a confused mind may prove to be more than I can handle."

"I used that expression for want of a better," Wilmer answered cautiously. "Put it this way—suppose you suddenly found you were able to control, even in a minor way, the stuff of the universe; would you use those powers for the benefit of mankind, or would you leap over the traces and reach for all the things that had been denied you over the years for moral, or legal, or whatever reasons?"

"You paint a lurid picture," Flinn said.

They turned down a side street in a residential district and drew up in front of what appeared to be a large two-story private home.

Flinn took a deep breath. He was rested now, but still uncertain whether he was up to what lay ahead.

After the preliminary discussion with Wilmer, Hayes, and Barnes—the latter had proved to be a military intelligence man—the previous afternoon, Flinn had been closeted immediately with a number of generals, admirals, and high-ranking civilians from both houses of Congress, the Defense Department, the Department of State, and various security agencies.

There had been the usual skepticism until he had performed some simple but histrionic "mind-reading" feats, and then there had been much talk about the responsibilities that had now become incumbent upon him and how perhaps even the fate of the nation was in his hands. It had left him wandering in a jungle of doubts and fears. Yet he had managed to sleep.

"The wonderful ability of the human mind to reject unpleasantness," he had told himself.

As a matter of fact, he had fallen into deep, untroubled unconsciousness within an hour of the time his head had first touched the pillow in the comfortable hotel room the government had provided. Hayes had been with him. "Security," Hayes had said.

And now, clean-shaven, his clothes neatly pressed, the substantial breakfast still warm in his stomach, and fatigue no longer in his muscles and nerves, Flinn told himself that he was as ready as he would ever be.

They got out of the conservative, unmarked sedan and approached the house. There was a man mowing the lawn, another clipping hedges, and still another polishing a car that was parked in the driveway just outside the spacious garage.

"How's it going?" Hayes said to the hedge trimmer.

"All quiet," the man answered without looking up.

They went around the house and entered unchallenged through a side door. It was all very casual, yet Flinn did not have to be told that they were under constant scrutiny.

The room in which he found himself was just off the kitchen. Three men in working clothes sat around a table, drinking coffee. They looked up and nodded. They seemed to be cut from much the same cloth as Fred Hayes, even to the expression.

"Well, well," one of them said, "the brain trust." He surveyed Flinn with frank interest, then faced Hayes. "Say, buddy, how does a man get a transfer out of this outfit?"

Hayes grinned his wolfish grin. "All in good time, partner." He pointed with his chin upstairs and raised his eyebrows.

The man who had spoken, a large, broad-shouldered youngster with an affably homely face, got up, stepped back from the table, and went into a vaudevillian travesty of a bow. "The great man has been prepared and awaits your presence." Then his expression changed. "What a party! I never saw so much liquor in my life! It's a lucky thing the rumpus room is soundproof."

"And girls!" one of the seated men said. "Man, oh, man!"

Flinn looked at Wilmer, and Wilmer shrugged as if to say, "That's the way it is."

"Just don't forget what you're here for," Hayes said harshly.

"Don't fret," the big man said. "None of us touched a drop."

"Neither did Dobbs," one of the seated men interjected. "I guess that's the only reason he's alive today." He guffawed loudly and suggestively.

Hayes leading, they entered a hallway and turned toward a flight of stairs.

"Your boys seemed very off-hand about all this," Flinn said to the government agent.

"Don't kid yourself," Hayes replied. "They're as nervous as cats."

"Come in, gentlemen," Dobbs called amiably from the rear of the spacious bedroom. There was an unobtrusive man in a dark suit with him, but he left immediately.

Now that he was face to face with the enigmatic Mr. Dobbs, Flinn felt a momentary sense of disappointment.

Malcolm Dobbs sat in a straight-backed chair beside the large bed. Next to him was a table laden with empty breakfast dishes. Dobbs was dressed in an ordinary bathrobe. He appeared to be in his mid-forties and had a full head of dark hair, slightly gray at the temples. His mild, undistinguished face was only slightly less tanned than Wilmer's, and he was of average size and weight. His dark eyes were the only things that belied the man's composed exterior; they were intelligent, interested, and intently watchful. A tiny smile lingered upon Dobbs' lips, as if he were sharing only with himself some form of immensely funny but eminently private joke.