The Mindwarpers

By Eric Frank Russell

Something bizarre is happening among the government workers at weapons laboratories across the United States. Increasing numbers of employees are abandoning their jobs for no apparent reason, some of them committing suicide, others trading their high-profile, specialized careers for unskilled jobs in obscure towns.
One such employee, metallurgist Richard Bransome, is drinking coffee at a café when he overhears a conversation about a long-ago murder that has newly come to light. The details awaken Bransome's suppressed memory of a similar crime that he committed years before. Like his co-workers, Bransome takes flight, eventually discovering that his sudden recollection is linked to an enemy spy ring and a powerful new weapon. Set during the height of Cold War tensions, this mystery offers a compelling mix of espionage novel, crime drama, and psychological thriller.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: May 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9780486821252

Eric Frank Russell

ERIC FRANK RUSSELL (1905-1978) was a British author best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. Much of his work was first published in the United States, in John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction and other pulp magazines. Russell also wrote horror fiction for Weird Tales and non-fiction articles on Fortean topics.

Book preview

Ten

ONE:

THE GOVERNMENTAL research establishment, the very heart of the country’s scientific effort, was huge and formidable by any standard, even that of the technological twentieth century. By comparison, Fort Knox and Alcatraz, the Bastille and the Kremlin were as frontier forts built with wood logs. Yet it was vulnerable. Hostile eyes had examined what little could be seen of it, hostile minds had carefully considered what little was known about it, after which the entire complex became less safe than a moth-eaten tent.

The outer wall stood forty feet high. It was eight feet thick, of granite blocks sealed and faced with aluminous cement. Satin-smooth, there wasn’t a toe-hold on it, not even for a spider. Beneath the base of the wall, thirty-six feet down, ran a sensitive microphone system, wired in duplicate, intended to thwart any human moles who might try to burrow their way inside. Those who had designed the wall had been firmly convinced that fanatics are capable of anything and that nothing was too far-fetched to justify counter-measures.

In the great length of this quadrilateral wall were only two breaks, a narrow one at the front for the entry and exit of personnel, a wider one at the back for trucks bringing supplies or removing products. Both gaps were protected by three forty-ton hardened steel doors, as massive as dock gates, mechanically operated and incapable of standing open more than one at a time. Each door was attended by its own squad of guards, big, tough, sour-faced men who in the opinion of all those who had dealings with them had been specially chosen for their mean, suspicious natures.

Exit was less difficult than entry. Invariably armed with a pass-out permit, the departer merely suffered the delay of waiting for each door to close behind him before the one in front could open. Movement in the opposite direction, inward, was the real chore. If one were an employee well-known to the guards one could get through subject to tedious waits at three successive doors plus a possible check on whether one’s pass—the pattern of which was changed at unpredictable intervals—bore the current design.

But the stranger had it tough no matter how high his rank, important his bearing or authoritative the documents he presented. He would certainly suffer a long and penetrating inquisition at the hands of the first squad of guards. If his questioners were not thoroughly satisfied—and most times they were satisfied with nothing in heaven or on earth—the visitor was likely to be searched right down to the skin. Any protest on his part usually resulted in the search being extended to include close inspection of his physical apertures. Anything found that was deemed suspicious, superfluous, unreasonable, inexplicable or not strictly necessary for the declared purpose of the visit was confiscated on the spot and returned to the owner when he took his departure.

And that was only the first stage of this bureaucratic purgatory. At the next door the second squad of guards specialized in concocting objections to entry not thought up by the first guards. Its members were not above belittling the security consciousness and search proficiency of the first guards and insisting upon a second more expert search. This could and sometimes did include removal of the dental plates and careful examination of the naked mouth, a tactic inspired by the known development of a camera the size of a cigarette’s filter-tip.

Guard squad number three had the worst skeptics of the lot. Its members had an infuriating habit of detaining twice-passed incomers while they checked with squads one and two was to whether this, that or the other question had been asked and, if so, what replies had been given. They had a tendency to doubt the truth of some replies, throw scorn upon the plausibility of others and seek contradictions over which they could foam at the mouth. Full details of searches were often demanded by them and any omission in search-technique was made good then and there even if the victim had to strip himself stark naked for the third time in thirty minutes. Guard squad number three also possessed but seldom used an X-ray machine, a polygraph, a stereoscopic camera, a fingerprinting outfit and several other sinister devices.

The great protective wall surrounding the plant was in keeping with what lay within. Offices, departments, machine shops and laboratories were rigidly compartmentalized with steel doors and stubborn guards blocking the way from one well-defined area to another. Each self-contained section was identified by the color of its corridors and doors, the higher up the spectrum the greater the secrecy and priority in security assigned to a given area.

Workers in yellow-door areas were not allowed to pass through blue doors. Toilers behind blue doors could go slumming as they called it by entering a yellow or lower priority area but were strictly forbidden to stick their noses the other side of purple doors. Not even the security guards could go beyond a black door without a formal invitation from the other side. Only the black-area men and the President and God Almighty could amble around other sections as they pleased and explore the entire plant.

Throughout the whole of this conglomeration ran its intricate nervous system in the form of wires buried in the walls, ceilings and, in some cases, under the floors; wires linking up with general alarm-bells and sirens, door-locking mechanisms, delicate microphones and television-scanners. All the watching and listening was done by black-area snoopers. The plant’s inmates had long accepted the necessity of being continually heard and seen even when in the toilet—for where better than the little room in which to memorize, copy or photoraph classified data?

Such trouble, ingenuity and expense was useless from the viewpoint of outside and unfriendly eyes. The place was, in fact, a veritable Singapore, wide open to attack from an unseen and unexpected quarter. There was no good reason why its weak spot should have passed by unobserved except, perhaps, that the apprehensive can be so finicky as to overlook the obvious.

In spite of hints and forewarnings the obvious was overlooked. The people at the top of the research center’s plant were highly qualified experts, each in his own field and therefore ignorant of other fields. The chief bacteriologist could talk for hours about a new and virulent germ without knowing whether Saturn has two moons or ten. The head of the ballistics department could draw graphs of complicated trajectories without being able to say whether an okapi belongs to the deer, horse or giraffe family. The entire place was crammed with experts of every kind save one—the one who could see and understand a broad hint when it became visible.

For example, nobody found any significance in the fact that while the plant’s employees bore security measures, searchings and snoopings with resigned fortitude, most of them detested the color-area system. Color had become a prestige symbol. The yellow-area man considered himself downgraded with respect to his blue-area counterpart even though getting the same salary. The man who worked behind red doors viewed himself as several cuts above a white-door man. And so on.

Women, always the socially conscious sex, boosted this attitude to the utmost Female workers and the wives of male workers adopted in their outside relations a farmyard pecking-order based upon the color of the area in which they or their husbands worked. The wives of black-area workers were tops and proud of it; those of white-area men were bottom and riled by it. The sweet smile and cooing voice and feline display of claws was the normal form of greeting among them.

Such a state of affairs was accepted by all and sundry as just one of those things. But it was not just one of those things; it was direct evidence that the plant was occupied and operated by human beings who were not robots made of case-hardened steel. The absent expert—a topflight psychologist—could have recognized this fact with half an eye even though he might not know a venturi-tube from a rocket nose-cap.

That was where the real weakness lay: not in concrete, granite or steel, not in mechanisms or electronic devices, not in routines or precautions or paperwork, but in flesh and blood.

Haperny’s resignation caused more irritation than alarm. Forty-two years old, dark-haired and running slightly to fat, he was a red-area expert specializing in high-vacuum phenomena. All who knew him regarded him as clever, hard-working, conscientious and as emotional as a plaster statue. So far as was known little interested Haperny beyond his work. The fact that he was a stodgy and determined bachelor was considered proof that he had nothing for which to live outside of his work.

Bates, the head of his department, and Laidler, the chief security officer, summoned him for an interview. They were sitting side by side behind a big desk when he lumbered in and blinked at them through thick-lensed glasses. Bates put a sheet of paper on the desk and poked it forward.

Mr. Haperny, I’ve had this passed to me. Your resignation. What’s the idea?

I want to leave, said Haperny, fidgeting.

Obviously! But why? Have you found a better position someplace else? If so, with whom? We are entitled to know.

Haperny shuffled his feet and looked unhappy. No, I haven’t got another job. Haven’t looked for one, either. Not just yet. Later on perhaps.

Then why have you decided to go? Bates demanded.

I’ve had enough.

Enough? Bates was incredulous. Enough of what?

Of working here.

Let’s get this straight, said Bates. You’re a valuable man and you’ve been with us fourteen years. Up to now you appear to have been content. Your work has been first-class and nobody has criticized it or you. If you could maintain that record you’d be secure for the rest of your natural life. Do you really want to throw away a safe and rewarding job?

Yes, said Haperny, dully determined.

And with nothing better in prospect?

That’s right:

Leaning back in his chair, Bates stared at him speculatively. Know what I think? I think you’re feeling the wear and tear. I think you ought to see the medic.

I don’t want to, declared Haperny. What’s more, I don’t have to. And I’m not going to.

He might certify that you’re suffering from the nervous strain of overwork. He might recommend that you be given a good, long rest, urged Bates. You could then take an extended vacation on full pay. Go fishing somewhere quiet and peaceful and come back in due course feeling like a million dollars.

I’m not interested in fishing.

Then what the devil are you interested in? What do you intend to do after you’ve left here?

I want to amble around for a time. Wherever the fancy takes me. I want to be free to go where I please.

Frowning to himself, Laidler chipped in with, Do you plan to leave this country?

Not immediately, said Haperny. Not unless I have to.

Have to? Any reason why you might have to? Getting no answer, Laidler went on, Your personal record shows that you have never been issued a passport. It’s my duty to warn you that you may have to face some mighty awkward questions if ever you do apply for one. You possess information that could be useful to an enemy, and the government cannot afford to ignore that fact.

Are you implying that I might be persuaded to sell what I know? growled Haperny, showing ire.

Not at all, not in present circumstances, said Laidler, evenly. Right now your character is above reproach. Nobody doubts your loyalty. But—

But what?

Circumstances can change. A fellow wandering aimlessly around without a job, with no source of income, must eventually come to the end of his savings. He then experiences his first taste of poverty. His ideas start altering. He has second thoughts about a lot of things he once took for granted. See what I mean?

I don’t contemplate becoming a hobo. I’ll get a job sometime, when I’m good and ready.

Is that so? interjected Bates, raising a sardonic eyebrow. What do you think the average employer is going to say when you walk in and ask could he use a nigh-vacuum physicist?

My qualifications don’t prevent me from washing dishes, Haperny pointed out. If you don’t mind, I’d like to be left to solve my own problems in my own way. This is a free country, isn’t it?

We want to keep it that way, put in Laidler.

Bates let go a deep sigh and opined, If a fellow insists on suddenly going crazy, I can’t stop him. So I’ll accept this resignation and pass it along to headquarters. No doubt they’ll take a grim view of it. If they decide that you are to be shot at dawn it’ll be up to them to tend to it. He waved a hand in dismissal. All right, leave it with me.

Haperny departed and Laidler said, Did you notice his expression when you made that crack about being shot at dawn? He knew you were kidding, of course, but all the same he seemed to go sort of strained looking. Maybe he’s scared of something.

Imagination, Bates scoffed. I was watching him myself. He looked normal enough in his stubborn, owl-eyed way. I think he’s belatedly jumpy because Nature’s caught up with him.

Meaning?

He’s been sexually retarded but at last has outgrown it. Even at forty-two it’s not too late to do something about it. Bet you he leaves here at full gallop, like an eager bull. He’ll keep running until he finds a suitable mate. Then he’ll get coupled and cool down and want his job back.

You may be right, conceded Laidler, but I wouldn’t care to put money on it. I feel instinctively that Haperny is badly worried. It would be nice to know what’s causing it.

Not the worrying type, Bates assured. Never has been and never will be. What he wants is a roll in the hay. No law against it, is there?

Sometimes I think there ought to be, said Laidler, mysteriously. Anyway, when a high-grade expert suddenly decides to take off into the blue we can’t safely assume that today’s date marks the opening of his breeding season. There may be a deeper and more dangerous reason. We need to know about that.

So?

He’ll have to be watched until we’re satisfied that he’s doing no harm and intends none. A couple of counter-espionage agents will have to keep tab on him. That costs money.

Will it come out of your wallet?

No.

Then what do you care?

Since you put it that way, said Laidler, I’ll admit that I don’t give a damn.

The news about Haperny drifted around the plant, causing a few raised eyebrows and some perfunctory discussion. In the canteen Richard Bransome, a green-area metallurgist, talked about it with his co-worker Arnold Berg. In the future both men were to be the unwilling subjects of greater mysteries, though, of course, neither suspected it at this time.

Arny, have you heard that Haperny is getting out?

Yes. Told me so himself a few minutes ago.

H’m! Has he become bored with the scenery? Or has someone offered him more money?

His story, said Berg, is that he’s become sick of regimentation and wants to run loose a while. It’s the gypsy in him.

Strange, mused Bransome. "I never thought of him as a fidget. Seemed to me as stolid and