Read Online The Whole Man by John Brunner - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Brunner
Tags: Science-Fiction, Fantasy
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out the mental voice of the telepathist addressing him, and where the link had formed between them there was a sensation like a half-healed bruise.
In the same instant he also realized that the girl’s mind had been switched off, and when he looked, he saw she had slumped unconscious in the mud.
Elation seized him briefly. If he could do this, he could do anything! Let them come for him; he would drive them back with blasts of mental resistance until they did what he wanted and left him alone.
And then he felt the pain.
From the shattered hulk of the helicopter, it welled out in black blinding waves, beyond all conscious control, and was aimed at Howson by the coexistent awareness of the sufferers that he was responsible. He gasped, thinking his own leg was broken, his own rib cage crushed, his own head laid open and bleeding by a sharp metal edge. Into his startled mind the telepathist reached again.
You did thaithat.
LEAVE ME ALONE!
And this time the surviving copter remained steady, the telepathic link only trembled and did not break, because the fury of Howson’s projection was muted by the received pain. He started to move again, swaying, vaguely intending to hide in the ruined warehouse, and trying to form contradictions to answer the telepathist’s accusations
Leave me alone. I don’t want to be important! When I get involved with the world bad things happen (confusion of concepts radiated from this: police waiting at his door, the helicopter pilot snatching convulsively at his controls).
He clambered up a mound of bricks and broken lumps of concrete, toward a wall in which half a window frame made a gap like a single battlement. The cool projection of the telepathist continued.
You waste your talent on fantasy. You don’t know how to use it. That’s why disaster—like a fast car you never learn to drive! And skillfully associated with the message, were images that made the pile of rubble seem to be the shell of a wrecked car, burning against the wall it had hit head-on.
Giddy with pain, panicking because the richness of this communication was so casual and so far beyond his ^own untrained competence, Howson came to the top of the pile of debris and swayed in the opening of the balfhalf- window. There was a drop of twelve feet beyond, into what had been a basement level. Horrified, he though’ of jumping down.
I can protect you from fear and pain. Let me.
NO NO NO LEA VE ME ALONE!
The contact wavered; the telepathist seemed to gather his strength. He “said”: All right, you deserve this for being a fool. Hold still!
A grip like iron closed on the motor centers of Howson’s brain. His hands clutched the frame of the old window, his feet found a steady purchase on its sill, and after that he could not move; the telepathist had frozen his limbs. He could not even scream his terror at discovering that this was possible.
Then images appeared.
A door giving onto an alley. Creaking open. Behind, the form of a man, skeletally thin, eyes bloodshot, cheeks sunken, dragging himself on by sheer will power. Through the door it could be seen that he had left a smeared trail in a layer of dust on the floor.
Half in, half out of the entrance, he collapsed. Time passed; a child chasing a ball down the alley found him, and went screaming to look for help.
A policeman came, made the starved man comfortable on his coat for a pillow. A doctor came with ambulance attendants. The trail in the dust was noticed, and the policeman and the doctor went into the dark passageway, tracing the man’s progress.
And now a room lit through dirty panes—a pigsty of a room containing four more skeletal shapes, a woman and three men, on empty wooden crates covered with rags, incapable of thought or movement, and on their faces and hands—
Howson revolted, vomit rising in his throat, but the stern mental grip held.
On their faces, on their eyelids and in the creases of their foreheads and behind their ears
In the same instant he also realized that the girl’s mind had been switched off, and when he looked, he saw she had slumped unconscious in the mud.
Elation seized him briefly. If he could do this, he could do anything! Let them come for him; he would drive them back with blasts of mental resistance until they did what he wanted and left him alone.
And then he felt the pain.
From the shattered hulk of the helicopter, it welled out in black blinding waves, beyond all conscious control, and was aimed at Howson by the coexistent awareness of the sufferers that he was responsible. He gasped, thinking his own leg was broken, his own rib cage crushed, his own head laid open and bleeding by a sharp metal edge. Into his startled mind the telepathist reached again.
You did thaithat.
LEAVE ME ALONE!
And this time the surviving copter remained steady, the telepathic link only trembled and did not break, because the fury of Howson’s projection was muted by the received pain. He started to move again, swaying, vaguely intending to hide in the ruined warehouse, and trying to form contradictions to answer the telepathist’s accusations
Leave me alone. I don’t want to be important! When I get involved with the world bad things happen (confusion of concepts radiated from this: police waiting at his door, the helicopter pilot snatching convulsively at his controls).
He clambered up a mound of bricks and broken lumps of concrete, toward a wall in which half a window frame made a gap like a single battlement. The cool projection of the telepathist continued.
You waste your talent on fantasy. You don’t know how to use it. That’s why disaster—like a fast car you never learn to drive! And skillfully associated with the message, were images that made the pile of rubble seem to be the shell of a wrecked car, burning against the wall it had hit head-on.
Giddy with pain, panicking because the richness of this communication was so casual and so far beyond his ^own untrained competence, Howson came to the top of the pile of debris and swayed in the opening of the balfhalf- window. There was a drop of twelve feet beyond, into what had been a basement level. Horrified, he though’ of jumping down.
I can protect you from fear and pain. Let me.
NO NO NO LEA VE ME ALONE!
The contact wavered; the telepathist seemed to gather his strength. He “said”: All right, you deserve this for being a fool. Hold still!
A grip like iron closed on the motor centers of Howson’s brain. His hands clutched the frame of the old window, his feet found a steady purchase on its sill, and after that he could not move; the telepathist had frozen his limbs. He could not even scream his terror at discovering that this was possible.
Then images appeared.
A door giving onto an alley. Creaking open. Behind, the form of a man, skeletally thin, eyes bloodshot, cheeks sunken, dragging himself on by sheer will power. Through the door it could be seen that he had left a smeared trail in a layer of dust on the floor.
Half in, half out of the entrance, he collapsed. Time passed; a child chasing a ball down the alley found him, and went screaming to look for help.
A policeman came, made the starved man comfortable on his coat for a pillow. A doctor came with ambulance attendants. The trail in the dust was noticed, and the policeman and the doctor went into the dark passageway, tracing the man’s progress.
And now a room lit through dirty panes—a pigsty of a room containing four more skeletal shapes, a woman and three men, on empty wooden crates covered with rags, incapable of thought or movement, and on their faces and hands—
Howson revolted, vomit rising in his throat, but the stern mental grip held.
On their faces, on their eyelids and in the creases of their foreheads and behind their ears
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