"Henry Kuttner - The Lion and the Unicorn UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

McNey's mind blurred. Barton looked away mentally. But he had caught a scrap of something. He tried not to ask the question burning within him.
McNey said aloud, "Not yet, Dave. I mustn't even think it; you know that."
Barton nodded. He, too, realized the danger of working out a plan in advance. There was no effective barrier that could be erected against the paranoids probing.
Don't kill Callahan, McNey pleaded. Let me lead.
Unwillingly Barton assented. It's coming. Now.
His more disciplined mind, trained to sense the presence of the radiations that meant intelligence, had caught stray fragments from the distance. McNey sighed, put down his glass, and rubbed his forehead.
Barton thought. That Baldy with the Hedgehounds. May 1 bring him here if necessary?
Of course.
Then a new thought came in, confident, strong, calm. Barton moved uneasily. McNey sent out an answer.
After a minute Sergei Callahan stepped out of the dropper and stood waiting, warily eyeing the naturalist. He was a slim, blond, soft-featured man, with hair so long and thick that it was like a mane. Only affectation made paranoids wear wigs of such extreme style-that and their natural maladjustment.
He didn't look dangerous, but McNey felt as though a feral beast had come into the room. What had the medievalists symbolized by the lion? Carnal sin? He couldn't remember. But in Barton's mind he caught the echo of a similar thought: a carnivore, to be butchered!
"How d'you do," Callahan said, and because he spoke aloud, McNey knew that the paranoid had classed his hosts as a lower species, and gave them patronizing contempt. It was characteristic of the paranoids.
McNey rose; Barton didn't. "Will you sit down?" "Sure." Callahan dropped on a relaxer. "You're McNey. I've heard of Barton."
"I'm sure you have," the hunter said softly. McNey hastily poured drinks. Barton left his untasted.
Despite the silence, there was something in the room that had the quality of fourth-dimensional sound. There was no attempt at direct telepathic communication, but a Baldy is never in complete mental silence, except in the stratosphere. Like half-heard, distant music of toccata and fugue the introspective thoughts beat dimly out. Instinctively one man's mental rhythm sought to move in the same pattern as another's, as soldiers automatically keep step. But Callahan was out of step, and the atmosphere seemed to vibrate faintly with discord.
The man had great self-confidence. Paranoids seldom felt the occasional touches of doubt that beset the straight-line Baldies, the nagging, inevitable question telepaths sometimes
- asked themselves: Freak or true mutation? Though several generations had passed since the Blowup, it was still too early to tell. Biologists had experimented, sadly handicapped by the lack of possible controls, for animals could not develop the telepathic function. Only the specialized colloid of the human brain had that latent power, a faculty that was still a mystery.
By now the situation was beginning to clarify a trifle. In the beginning there had been three distinct types, not recognized until after the post-Blowup chaos had subsided into decentralization. There were the true, sane Baldies, typified by McNey and Barton. There were the lunatic offshoots from a cosmic womb raging with fecundity, the terato-logical creatures that had sprung from radiation-battered germ plasm-two-headed fused twins, cyclops, Siamese freaks. It was a hopeful commentary that such monstrous births had almost ceased.
Between the sane Baldies and the insane telepaths lay the mutation-variant of the paranoids, with their crazy fixation of egotism. In the beginning the paranoids refused to wear wigs, and, if the menace had been recognized then, extermination would have been easy. But not now. They were more cunning. There was, for the most part, nothing to distinguish a paranoid from a true Baldy. They were well camouflaged and safe, except for the occasional slips that gave Barton and his hunters a chance to use the daggers that swung at every man's belt.
A war-completely secret, absolutely underground by necessity-in a world unconscious of the deadly strife blazing in the dark. No nontelepath even suspected what was happening. But the Baldies knew.
McNey knew, and felt a sick shrinking from the responsibility involved. One price the Baldies paid for survival was the deification of the race, the identification of self, family, and friends with the whole mutation of telepaths. That did not include the paranoids, who were predators, menacing the safety of all Baldies on earth.
McNey, watching Callahan, wondered if the man ever felt self-doubt. Probably not. The feeling of inferiority hi paranoids made them worship the group because of pure egotism; the watchword was We are supermen! All other species are inferior.
They were not supermen. But it was a serious mistake to underestimate them. They were ruthless, intelligent, and strong.
Not as strong as they thought, though. A lion can easily kill a wild hog, but a herd of hogs can destroy a lion.
"Not if they can't find him," Callahan said, smiling.
McNey grimaced. "Even a lion leaves spoor. You can't keep on with your plan indefinitely without the humans suspecting,
you know."
Contempt showed in Callahan's thought. "They're not tele-paths. Even if they were, we have the Power. And you can't
tap that."
"We can read your minds, though," Barton put in. His eyes were glowing. "We've spoiled some of your plans that way."
"Incidents," Callahan said. He waved his hand. "They haven't any effect on the long-term program. Besides, you can read only what's above the conscious threshold of awareness. We think of other things besides the Conquest. And-once we arrange another step-we carry it out as quickly as possible, to minimize the danger of having the details read by one of the traitors."
"So we're traitors now," Barton said. Callahan looked at him. "You are traitors to the destiny of our race. After the Conquest, we'll deal with you."
McNey said, "Meanwhile, what will the humans be doing?" "Dying," Callahan said.
McNey rubbed his forehead. "You're blind. If a Baldy kills one human, and that's known, it'll be unfortunate. It might blow over. If two or three such deaths occur, there'll be questions asked and surmises made. It's been a long while since we had Baldy lynchings, but if one smart human ever guesses what's going on, there'll be a worldwide program that will destroy every Baldy on earth. Don't forget, we can be recognized." He touched his wig. "It won't happen."
"You underestimate humans. You always have." "No," Callahan said, "that's not true. But you've always underestimated Us. You don't even know your own capabilities."
"The telepathic function doesn't make supermen." "We think it does."
"All right," McNey said, "we can't agree on that. Maybe we can agree on other things."
Barton made an angry sound. Callahan glanced at him. "You say you understand our plan. If you do, you know it can't be stopped. The humans you're so afraid of have only two strong points: numbers and technology. If the technology's
smashed, We can centralize, and that's all We need. We can't do it now, because of the atomic bombs, of course. The moment we banded together and revealed ourselves-blam! So-"
"The Blowup was the last war," McNey said. "It's got to be the last. This planet couldn't survive another."
"The planet could. And we could. But humanity couldn't."
Barton said, "Galileo doesn't have a secret weapon."
Callahan grinned at him. "So you traced that propaganda, did you? But a lot of people are beginning to believe Galileo's getting to be a menace. One of these days, Modoc or Sierra'-s going to lay an egg on Galileo. It won't be our affair. Humans will do the bombing, not Baldies."
"Who started the rumor?" Barton asked.
"There'll be more, a lot more. We'll spread distrust among the towns-a long-term program of planned propaganda. It'll culminate in another Blowup. The fact that humans would fall for such stuff shows their intrinsic unfitness to rule. It couldn't happen in a Baldy world."
McNey said, "Another war would mean the development of anticommunication systems. That'd play into your hands. It's the old rule of divide and fall. As long as radio, television, helicopter and fast-plane traffic weld humans together, they're racially centralized."
"You've got it," Callahan said. "When humanity's lowered to a more vulnerable status, we can centralize and step in. There aren't many truly creative technological brains, you know. We're destroying those-carefully. And we can do it, because we can centralize mentally, through the Power, without being vulnerable physically."
"Except to Us," Barton said gently.
Callahan shook his head slowly. "You can't kill us all. If you knifed me now, it wouldn't matter. I happen to be a co-ordinator, but I'm not the only one. You can find some of Us, sure, but you can't find Us all, and you can't break Our code. That's where you're failing, and why you'll always fail."
Barton ground out his cigarette with an angry gesture. "Yeah. We may fail, at that. But you won't win. You can't. I've seen a pogrom coming for a long while. If it comes, it'll be justified, and I won't be sorry, provided it wipes out all of you. We'll go down too, and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you've destroyed the entire species through your crazy egotism."