Science fiction; Spy stories; Telepathy -- Fiction; United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation -- Fiction
Malone wasn't in the least worried about the letter. Burris, he knew,
would take care of anything like that. And, besides, he had other
things to think about.
The door to the next room had opened almost immediately, and two
husky, white-clad men were bringing in a strait-jacketed figure whose
arms were wrapped against his chest, while the jacket's extra-long
sleeves were tied behind his back. He walked where the attendants led
him, but his eyes weren't looking at anything in the room. They stared
at something far away and invisible, an impalpable shifting
nothingness somewhere in the infinite distances beyond the world.
For the first time, Malone felt the chill of panic. Here, he thought,
was insanity of a very real and frightening kind. Queen Elizabeth
Thompson was one thing--and she was almost funny, and likeable, after
all. But William Logan was something else, and something that sent a
wave of cold shivering into the room.
What made it worse was that Logan wasn't a man, but a boy, barely
nineteen. Malone had known that, of course--but seeing it was
something different. The lanky, awkward figure wrapped in a hospital
strait-jacket was horrible, and the smooth, unconcerned face was,
somehow, worse. There was no threat in that face, no terror or anger
or fear. It was merely--a blank.
It was not a human face. Its complete lack of emotion or expression
could have belonged to a sleeping child of ten--or to a member of a
different race. Malone looked at the boy, and looked away.
Was it possible that Logan knew what he was thinking?
_Answer me_, he thought, directly at the still boy.
There was no reply, none at all. Malone forced himself to look away.
But the air in the room seemed to have become much colder.
The attendants stood on either side of him, waiting. For one long
second no one moved, and then Dr. Dowson reached into his desk drawer
and produced a sheaf of papers.
"If you'll sign these for the government," he said, "you may have Mr.
Logan. There seems little else that I can do, Mr. Malone--in spite of
my earnest pleas--"
"I'm sorry," Malone said. After all, he _needed_ Logan, didn't he?
After a look at the boy, he wasn't sure any more--but the Queen had
said she wanted him, and the Queen's word was law. Or what passed for
law, anyhow, at least for the moment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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