Modus Vivendi by John Berryman (best fiction novels txt) 📖

clean and well-lit stairs, I reminded myself that I was probably entering a den of Psis—and clamped down tight on my thoughts. There was plenty they had better not peep.

Keys didn't have to knock on the door—there's always a telepath hanging around these Stigma hideouts who knows who's coming. A husky young man, quite blond and pink of face, opened the door. A soft rustle of music spilled out around his big shoulders. He wore a T-shirt, and his powerful forearms were bare.

"Hey!" he said to Keys, spotting himself as a Southerner as surely as if he'd had the Stars and Bars tattooed on his forehead. We followed him down a short hall into a room furnished, with a couple of couches, an easy-chair, several small but delightful tables, and a piano. Here was the music. A blond bombshell was drumming box chords on the ivories, and grouped around her on side chairs were four young men, playing with her. It was jazz, if that's what you call the quiet racket that comes out of a wooden recorder, a very large pottery ocharina that hooted like a gallon jug, a steel guitar and a pair of bongo drums played discreetly with the fingertips.

My appearance stopped them right in the middle of a chorus of "Muskrat Ramble." I'd have liked to hear more—it was Dixieland times two—what the Psis call Psixieland. That's jazz played by a gang of telepaths. Each one knows what the others are about to play. The result is extemporaneous counterpoint, but without the clinkers we associate with jazz. Almost too perfect, yet untrammeled.

My eyes ran around the room as the four men who had been playing with the girl got up and prepared to leave. The place was spotless. Oh, the furnishings weren't costly, but they were chosen with that sense of fitness, of refinement of color and decor that is curiously Psi. I suppose that's one of the little things that annoys Normals so much. Stigma powers seem to go beyond telepathy, clairvoyance and telekinesis—they extend in some hard to define way into the aesthetic. A chaste kind of cleanliness is only part of it. Taste, I guess that's the word. Their attire, their homes, everything about Psis, seems tasteful.

In moments only Keys, the blond Southerner and the still blonder bomb on the piano bench were left to face me. Keys poked a finger at the plow-jockey in the T-shirt. "Elmer," he explained.

"Take off yo' hat, Yankee," Elmer grinned. I felt it tipped from my head by his TK.

I glowered at him. "Kid stuff!" I snorted. "So you can lift four ounces from six feet away. But you don't have any idea what incorporeal hereditaments are. Which is better?"

The pink of his face got red. He could have broken me in two.

"Just making a point," I said. "I'm stupid about TK. You're stupid about the law. I figure that makes us even."

He clamped his mouth shut. I turned back to Keys and the girl I was sure was Mary Hall. "What I came here for—"

"What we got you here for," Keys interrupted, "was to set you straight on something." I guess I looked as surprised as I felt. The impossibly blond girl giggled. "Over the phone, Maragon," Keys went on, sitting down on the bench beside the girl, "you said there was a Federal rap hanging over Mary's head on this 99th National Bank fracas."

I nodded.

"The theory being," he went on, "that the law doesn't let anybody with the Stigma get away with a thing, right?"

"Right."

"Then relax. Mary hasn't got the Stigma. Have you, Mary?"

"No," she said. I looked her over more carefully. She was closer to twenty than thirty, round-faced, with blue eyes that were about as impossibly bright as her hair was impossibly white. It could have been a corneal tattoo, but somehow I doubted it. Impossibly red lips made up the patriotic triad of colors—but that was lipstick, pure and simple.

"No Stigma?" I demanded. "I know Psixieland when I hear it, Miss Hall. Don't tell me that wasn't telepathic jazz."

She tossed her short hair-do around. "My side-men were TP's," she conceded. "Why do you think I was playing box chords? They knew what I was playing—I didn't know what they'd play."

Well, some of it was adding up. Still, I had to be sure. "I see. Tell me, Mary, where were your parents on the 19th of April in '75?"

She sat up straight beside Keys on the bench, and her fair face flushed pinkly. "Drop dead!" she told me.

I stood up. "See you in jail," I said, and started for the door.

Elmer had played tackle for Ol' Miss—he sure stopped me in my tracks. "I reckon we ain't through with you yet, Yankee," he grinned. He hurt me with his hands, big as country hams. My stiffened fingers jabbed his T-shirt where it covered his solar plexus, and he dropped back, gasping.

"You could learn a little about fighting, too, Psi," I growled. "And you're through with me if that bottle blonde won't answer my questions."

"Hey!" Keys protested. "Come on, relax. Everybody!" he snapped, as Elmer got his breath back and came in for another tackle. I signaled for a fair catch, and he eased up.

I peered over my shoulder at the girl at the piano. "Well?" I asked her. "Where were your parents on the 19th of April in '75?"

Her eyes sought out Keys'. He nodded, dropping his gaze to the floor. "About fifty miles from Logan, Iowa," she said.

"And you don't have the Stigma?" I scoffed.

"Not everybody inside the Logan Ring was affected," she reminded me. "Which is my tough luck. But I am being crucified because Mother and Dad were in the Ring the day the N-bomb went off, whether I have the Stigma or not."

I came back to stand in front of her. "I'm an attorney," I said. "I have an idea what can happen to you if the Courts get hold of you. Right now they can't find you—which must mean you've been hiding." She confirmed that with a nod, biting her red, red lips. "They are after you, and a Federal rap is just the start," I said. "You have only one chance, Mary, and I'm glad you claimed it. The only way you can keep them from putting you over a barrel is to prove you don't have the Stigma. I think I know a way to do it. Are you ready to let me help you?"

"Not that fast," she said, looking worried. "Oh, I trust Keys' judgment about you. Yes, I do," she said earnestly, turning to Crescas. "Yes, I know he got you off, Keys. But it doesn't sound right. Why should he take a chance helping a Psi—even if I really don't have the Stigma? What's his angle?"

"Fair enough," Keys said. "How about it, Maragon?"

"I knew it was a bum rap they were trying to pin on Mary as soon as I heard about it," I explained. "This business about Mary having HC. There just isn't any such Psi power as hallucination, and every one of you knows it—it's an old wives' tale. I wouldn't touch this little lady with a ten-foot pole if I really thought she had the Stigma. I have a living to make around this town—and you can't handle Stigma business and get any decent trade, too."

I looked back at Mary. "How did you work your swindle at the bank?" I asked quietly.

She sighed. "Sleight of hand," she said. "A damned fool stunt. I figured to put the money back in a day or so. If somebody else hadn't been working the same racket, they'd never have caught me. But they had set a trap—"

"I thought it was some light-finger stuff," I grinned. "Well, it will take me a while to set up a real test of your Psi Powers. Where can I reach you—or are you spending the night here?"

"Certainly not!" she said, casting an annoyed glance at Elmer. She looked at her watch. "Would it be much longer than an hour? I might still be here, if Elmer—"

"Jes' fine," T-shirt said. "Unless yo' mine watching Keys and me practice." He grinned at me. "Keys is he'ping me build up mah TK," he explained.

"That'll make you popular," I sneered, as I wrote down Elmer's phone number. They let me out. It had been a pretty room, and in a way I hated to leave it. Still, by the time a cruising 'copter had taken me halfway back to my office up-town, I could relax the shield over my thoughts—and that was worth getting out of that Stigma hideaway.

It was a little after nine when I walked into the lobby and rang for the elevator. A man lounging against the wall over near the building directory raised a wrist-phone to his mouth and spoke quietly into it as I waited for the car to come. He didn't seem to be interested in me—but then, he wouldn't want to show it if he were. Fool around with the Stigma, would I?

The building was mostly dark—in our circle we make too much dough to be interested in overtime. I keyed myself into our waiting room, turned on the ceiling, and went into my private office. There was enough light leaking in from our foyer, so I added none.

I found Lindstrom at home—after all, he should have been by nine o'clock. "Maragon!" he said. "Kill your focus. I have guests!"

I reached up to twist the 'scope so that my image would be a blur on his screen. Nice beginning. I was as welcome as a thriving case of leprosy.

"I want you to make a test for me, Professor," I said. "Tonight."

He shook his head. "I told you I had guests. We're entertaining. No thanks, Maragon."

"A Normal is being crucified," I said quietly. "They've got her pegged as a Psi. I've got to get her off the hook."

"How could this happen?" he demanded.

"She hangs with a bunch of Stigma cases, for one thing," I said.

"Nobody forced her to associate with a gang of Psis," he said. "Serves her right."

"Nobody forced you to, either, Prof," I snarled. "But you have a steady stream of Stigma cases going through your laboratory."

"That's different!" he protested.

"Nuts. Now name a time when I can see you there."

"I don't want any part of it. If you're along, it will just mean trouble, Maragon. You got too much publicity on defending that TK locksmith. I've got a professional standing to maintain."

"You'd sure look silly if all the Psis in town blackballed you," I snarled at him. "Let me pass the word around—and you darned well know I've got the contacts to do it—and you've tested your last Stigma case. Then let's see what kind of a professional standing you've got."

He knew some pretty dirty words. "What time?" I pressed him, knowing the profanity was a confession of defeat.

"Not before eleven," he said glumly. "I won't forget this, Maragon."

"What the hell," I said. "I'm on every S-list in town already. You hardly count beside the other enemies I'm making." I cut the image.

As if at a signal, there was a tapping on the door to the corridor. I got out of my swivel, walked into the waiting room and opened up. The man who stood there was faintly familiar—but it was the gun in his fist that got most of my attention.

"Maragon?" he asked softly.

I spread my feet a little. "I knew I was making enemies pretty fast," I said to him. "But I didn't know how strongly. Listen," I snapped, "I'll bet one thing never occurred to you."

He was taken back. You're not supposed to snarl at a guy who pokes a gun at you. In theory it gives him the edge of any conversation. "Huh?" he said.

"The only thing that lousy pop-gun of yours is good for is shooting people. I don't think you came here to shoot me. Now what can you do?"

"Clown," he growled. "Where's Renner?"

"In bed, if he has any sense," I decided. "Make up your mind. Whom do you want?"

"For Pete's sake," he said. "Grammar at a time like this!" He looked down at his gun, decided I was right, and stuck it in a shoulder holster. Then his wrist came up in front of his mouth and I recognized him. It was the man who had lounged near the building directory when I had come in. "Come ahead," he said into the mike.

I turned my back on him and stomped into my office. Let them follow me.

But only one man came in, a minute or so later. "Does it have to be so dark?" he asked politely.

"Rheostat's by your elbow," I said. He reached for it and turned on the