Read Online The Whole Man by John Brunner - Free Book Online Page B

and everywhere: dust. Settled gently and inexorably because they could not move to disturb it.
    That one was a telepathist, the message said. His name was Vargas. He too preferred to lose himself in fantasies, performed to an admiring audience. He, and the audience, died.
     
    Howson screamed. He managed it. He forced off the grasp that held him captive, and swayed, and knew in an instant of insane terror that he had lost his balance and was tumbling. His last conscious thought was of a tree branch and a bruise that had lasted weeks without healing.
     
    “You’re going to be all right.”
    The words were spoken aloud, and subtly reinforced by a mental indication of confidence in the future. Howson opened his eyes to see a calm face above him. It was rather a good-looking face, in fact, and it wore a smile.
    He licked his lips and tried to croak an answer, but his mind was ahead of his voice.
    “Don’t bother trying to talk. I’m the telepathist—I’m Danny Waldemar.”
    Awareness of bandages on his head and arms: a confused question.
    “You’re all right! We gave you prothrombin the moment we realized you were bleeding so badly. All the cuts are scabbing over.” And abruptly, a switch to telepathy: You’re a miracle, do you know that? You could have died a hundred times over, from accidents!
    He hadn’t done so, and therefore the point seemed irrelevant. He pursued a more important matter.
    What’s going to happen to me? The question was blurred with fear and vague images of human vivisection.
    “Don’t be afraid.” Waldemar spoke aloud, slowly, with emphasis. “Nothing can be done to you that you don’t understand. Nothing! From now on and forever you can always know what anyone is doing, and why!”
    Of … course! Howson felt a sort of smile come to his twisted face, and at its reassuring appearance Waldemar chuckled and got to his feet.
    Load you aboard the copter now. Get you somewhere and attend to those cuts properly.
     
    Wait.
     
    Waldemar checked, expressing attention.
    The girl. She’s deaf and dumb. I was all she had—all that mattered in her life. If you take me you’ve got to take her, too. It’s not fair.
     
    Surprised, Waldemar pursed his lips. There was a momentary sensation of listening, as though he had made a mental investigation and been satisfied.
    “Yes, why not? It’s absurd that anyone should be left like that nowadays. Her brain’s uninjured, and that means she can have an artificial voice, artificial ears. … Why not? We’ll take her with us, by all means.”
    Howson closed his eyes. He was fairly certain that the suggestion had been planted in his mind by Waldemar, but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was that he was content with what had happened, and the future no longer made him terrified.
    A mental chuckle came to him from Waldemar, and then he slept.ßook Two Agitat
     
     
     

 
     
    Book Two
      – - Agitat
     
     

 
     
     
    IX ix
     
     
     
    Howson sat staring dully out over Ulan Bator, thinking how much its condition resembled his own. He could sense its collective mood; for the rest of his life he would be unendingly subject to a kind of emotional weather, the sum of the individual minds surrounding him.
    The city had been a rather dowdy, provincial-feeling one, even though it was the capital of a country. The changing pattern of the world—transport, commerce, communications—had hurried it into modern times; now it was a place of fine white towers and broad avenues, and travelers of all kinds came. Amid the turmoil of change, old people could do no more than wonder what had hit them, and long without enthusiasm for the simpler past.
    So, too, he had been overtaken by a change he didn’t want, and believed he would accept only if other changes were found to be possible—changes he did desire.
    It wasn’t that they had not been kind to him. They had gone to a great deal of trouble. Apart from the immensely thorough medical