“We found all the pieces of the gun, and all the threads from the rag. What we didn’t find right away were the bullets that had been in the gun when it had come apart.” He pointed toward the test tubes. “That’s why it took us so long to find them. We had to vacuum the carpet.”
She looked at the test tubes a second time, uncomprehendingly. “So they’ve been ground up for testing. What’s that supposed to tell us, Benjy?”
“No, you don’t understand,” he corrected her patiently. “We haven’t ground them up, for testing or for anything else. Pickett ground them up.”
Hank Moorhead and intercorporate political machinations were abruptly forgotten. “If this is your idea of a gag, Benjy, now’s not the time. I’ve just spent I forget how many days of utter and complete boredom squatting in a backwoods motel because of your infatuation with this old man.”
“It’s no joke, Ruth.”
“Well then, if you’re trying to see how easy I scare….”
“Ruth, I wish it was just a bad joke. As for trying to frighten you, I’m not. Not intentionally, anyway. Myself, I’m already scared shitless.” He thumbed a switch hidden beneath the edge of the tabletop. A concealed drawer slid open with a hum. It yielded a thick stack of paper.
“Here. These ought to be familiar to you.” He handed her the computer printouts. “Analysis of the powders in those test tubes. When we extracted them from the motel carpeting they were all mixed together. See what they are?” He tapped the papers. “Lead, sulfur, copper… the proportions are all just right, even down to those composing the brass casings of the shells. Put them together in the right way and you get six slugs for a .38 special. There are no powdered alloys in those test tubes, either. Only basic elements.”
She handed back the papers, waited quietly to hear the rest.
“What I think happened in that motel,” Huddy told her softly as he replaced the readouts in the drawer and slammed it shut, “is that our two men entered Pickett’s room as planned. This isn’t difficult to reconstruct, you know. One of them put the ether-soaked rag over the old man’s face. Pickett’s what- ever-it-is dissolved the rag. Probably broke down the ether as well, because one of the men insists that when the rag came apart the ether smell disappeared.”
“I still don’t know what you mean, ‘broke down’. Benjy—”
“Let me finish, Ruth. Pickett caused the rag to come apart. Then our people improvised to the best of their limited mental abilities. One of them pulled his gun and advanced on Pickett, intending to knock him out. So Pickett had to react a second time, just like he did outside Phoenix.
“Only this time he went further than Phoenix, much further. He didn’t just disassemble the threat the way he took the wheels off that pickup truck. He made absolutely certain the most threatening part of the object approaching him was rendered harmless. In this case that would be the bullets in the gun. He made sure that even if they put the gun back together again they weren’t going to be able to use it on him.” He led her back the way they’d come, picked up one of the pistol’s hand-grips.
“See this?” He held it against the metal section of the handle. “They don’t fit right anymore. We tried putting the gun back together again. It requires a closer tolerance than, say, slipping wheels back onto an axle. No part of this .38 fits quite right anymore.
“Monsey and his people put the parts under the microscope. You know what they found? There’s a tiny layer of steel and/or plastic missing. It’s only microns thick, but it’s missing. From all around the gun. Pickett doesn’t just cause things to come apart. That’s what a telekinetic does. Pickett, he …” Huddy shook his head and looked empty.
“There’s no name for it yet, for what he can do.” He gestured at the workbench. “Monsey doesn’t understand it either. He has no idea how those bullets were reduced to their basal elements or how that pistol was ‘filed’ down. But I do. I just don’t know what to call it. I suppose you could say that Jake Pickett’s a molecular disassembler.”
Somerset favored him with a blank stare. She knew what the words implied, but she’d never heard them employed in quite that manner, and certainly never in relation to a human being.
“What we think it means,” Huddy explained as he leaned back against the counter, “is that Pickett doesn’t simply lift the bullet head off the shell or the barrel off a revolver. Furthermore, it’s plain that he has no more idea how he does these things than we do. He’s entirely innocent as to the process.
“When he utilizes this ability, when he projects it, he engenders a chemical breakdown at the most basic level in whatever he’s concentrating on. The fact that the gun, for example, happens to come to pieces at the places where it’s normally joined is apparently a reflection of Pickett’s thinking. If he worked at it he could just as easily make the barrel come apart in the middle.”
“Then what about the bullets?” she asked quietly.
“I’m not sure. One of two things happened there. Either he was so blinded by fear that he didn’t relate to them in the way he did the gun and the rag—or for that matter, those pickup truck wheels or the bottle caps back in L.A.—or else this constant utilization of his ability is making it stronger and the treatment of the shells is the first manifestation of that intensified use.
“Pickett has the ability to destroy the molecular bonds that unite elements in chemical combinations. He can’t affect atomic valences. At least, I don’t think he can, because the elemental composition of the disintegrated bullets is normal. You know what this means to us?”
“I have a pretty good idea,” she replied. “It means that you’re going to have one hell of a time bringing him in for testing.”
“Oh, we’ll get him.” Huddy sounded very positive. “He has this peculiar ability, true, but he doesn’t know how it works and he’s not quite sure how or when to use it. In the final analysis he’s just an old man with a heart condition. The most valuable old man in the world, of course.” His words quickened, his voice took on a note of barely controlled excitement.
“Don’t you see what all this means, Ruth? What’s at stake here far exceeds anything I ever dreamed of. Anything anyone’s ever dreamed of. If Pickett can do that”—and he gestured down the bench toward the test tubes—“to a handful of bullets, imagine what he could do to a bomber in flight? Or to a nuclear plant in enemy territory?” Something more extreme than mere ambition shone in Benjamin Huddy’s eyes. Something which comes within reach of few men and which only saints seem able to resist.
“We’ve got to keep this quiet, sweetness. I mean really quiet. Besides us only Doctor Navis back in L.A. knows what’s really going on, and he’s ignorant of recent developments.” He gestured across the room to where a cluster of men and women clad in white were conversing in low tones.
“Monsey has suspicions, but at this point he’s just guessing. His assistants don’t even have suspicions. I think we can keep Monsey in the dark.” He let out a short, nervous laugh. “It’s not like anyone would believe the truth unless they had visible proof of what Pickett can do.”
“Touché,” she said sourly. “I still don’t see how you’re going to be able to pick the old man up.”
“It’s only a matter of the right time and place. Once we get him drugged he’ll be easy enough to handle. The problem with both the attempts outside Phoenix and in Benson was that he saw his assailants and had time to react. We have to get to him when he’s asleep. Everything will be worth it, though, when you take a moment to consider what we have here.”
Something very dangerous, she thought. Yet the possibilities raised by Jake Pickett’s awesome abilities were beginning to seduce her better judgment. Yes, much more than mere money and a few promotions was at stake now. Much more.
An exhausted Jake Pickett had no difficulty in sleeping on the bus. He drifted in and out of consciousness, luxuriating in the smooth ride and the chance to relax. Every time the bus made a stop he anxiously searched the loading dock for signs of men in neat business suits holding damp rags, but as the miles rolled by and none materialized, the tension slowly began to drain from him.
Maybe he’d finally succeeded in discouraging them, he mused. Perhaps they’d given him up as a bad job, or maybe they had lost track of him and were hunting him in Utah or Mexico.
Amanda wasn’t nearly so sanguine.
“You’re just deluding yourself if you think they’ve given up on you, Uncle Jake. These aren’t the kind of people who give up on something they want. They’re just laying back and lulling you into a false sense of security so they can surprise you once you’ve forgotten about them.”
“But there’s nothing I can do about it, Mandy.” A woman near the middle of the bus turned to frown at his whispering, but said nothing.
“There might be something, Uncle Jake. This is what I think you ought to do. The bugs and taps are still here in the house, so I guess they’re still worried about you coming here. There’s no other obvious reason for you to come all the way to Texas.”
“They can’t be sure I’m making this trip to visit you.”
“No, they can’t be positive. And we’re going to do something to really mess up that line of reasoning. Maybe they’ll leave us alone and we can get up to the University somehow, where there’ll be people around us all the time.”
“What do you suggest, Mandy?”
“Uncle Jake, they’ve been right behind you if not ahead of you ever since you left California.”
“Yeah,” he admitted reluctantly, “but I lost them outside Tucson.”
“Uncle Jake,” she said with a sigh, “that’s only temporary and you’re just fooling yourself if you think otherwise. The thing you have to do is keep them from tracking you down again. You need to get off that bus. Don’t get on any other buses, either. If they haven’t seen you on the bus they can’t be sure you’re on it. There’s still a chance to really lose them.” She paused and he had an image of her rustling something. It was full of lines and colors; a map.
“The interstate forks outside a little town called Kent. Twenty goes northeast to Dallas, Ten comes into Houston. Get off the bus in Kent. I don’t know if your bus stops there; it’s a pretty small town, but I’m sure the driver will let you off. Don’t come toward Houston. Go northeast and come down this way from Dallas. That’ll take a little longer but it sure ought to confuse them.”
Jake thought for a while, then nodded though she couldn’t see the gesture. “That’s a good idea, Mandy. Yes, that’s just what I’ll do.” He fell asleep with a pleased smile on his face.
Up by the middle of the bus a plump woman turned to her companion. “Old drunks,” she muttered. “They oughtn’t to let them on the bus.”
XIII
“You sure this is where you want to get off, mister?”
“I’m sure, son.”
The young driver shrugged, brought the bus to a halt by the side of the road. The door opened with a hiss. Jake made his way down the steps, turned to look back up into the bus.
“I’ve got friends supposed to meet me here,” Jake said cheerfully. He nodded southward. “Got a ranch not far from here. This is closer than town for them. Don’t worry. They’re expecting me.”
