Sight Gag, Laurence M. Janifer [best memoirs of all time txt] 📗
- Author: Laurence M. Janifer
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Remotely, that idea bothered him. But what difference did it make, after all? He had all the protection in the world. He had all the protection he was going to need. And all the time to fire one shot. Doing it blindfolded was going to be tough, but not insuperably tough. Fredericks had spent a week practicing, and he could locate a fly by sound within two inches, nineteen times out of twenty. That, he thought, was going to be good enough.
Upstairs, the Psi Operative thought so, too.
There had to be a way out, he told himself desperately.
But he couldn't find it.
He couldn't even come close.
n the way to Room 1212, he flipped on the shield, the mask, the binder field. Now let the superman try something, he thought wildly. Now let him try his tricks! He attached the blindfold as he got off the elevator. He could see Room 1212, three doors down the corridor, twenty steps—and then the blindfold was on. From now on he worked in the dark.
He felt the skeleton key in his palm and flipped the shield off for a second; then the key was in the lock, the shield back on, protecting him. The door opened slowly.
He heard it shut behind him. Then there was silence. He drew his gun.
"Go ahead," a muffled voice said from his right. "Go ahead and try something, Fredericks."
He whirled and almost fired—but voices could be thrown. He listened again. There was silence ... not quite silence ... a movement ... a rustle—
Breathing was faint but unmistakable. It gave him a new direction. Breathing couldn't be faked.
He pictured the Psi Operative, in one flash of imagination, trying to get through the shield, sweating as he strained helplessly against the force shield, the binder field, the mask, the blindfold—oh, there was no way out for the poor superman, no way at all.
And Psi Operatives didn't carry weapons or anything else. They depended on their powers, and that was all.
And he'd neutralized those powers.
The breathing gave him the direction. He turned again, bringing the gun up, and fired six shots without a second's break between them. There was a sound like a gasp, and then nothing.
Nothing at all.
Grinning wildly, Fredericks whipped off the blindfold and switched off his shield in one triumphant motion. There, on the floor—
There, on the floor, was a nice gray rug with nobody at all lying dead on top of it. In the half-second it took Fredericks to see that, the Psi Operative moved. Fredericks tossed the empty gun at him and missed; the man was coming too fast. He guarded his face but the Psi Operative didn't go for the face. Instead his hands went swinging up and out and back.
The sides of the palms landed neatly on the twin junctions of Fredericks' arms and shoulders. Fredericks let out a shriek as his arms turned to acutely painful stone, and the Psi Operative stepped back and moved again in one blinding motion. This time the solar plexus was the target for one balled fist.
And then, of course, it was all over.
f course it was simple," Donegan said. "Anyone could have thought of it—and I knew you would."
"All the same," the Psi Operative said, "I nearly didn't."
Donegan nodded. "If you hadn't," he said, "we'd stationed a man downstairs who'd memorized your room. He could have done the job, too."
The Operative blinked. "Who?" he said.
"Desk clerk," Donegan said.
"Why didn't you tell me—"
"Now, use your head," Donegan said. "If you'd known you were all right, you'd never have thought of the answer. You had to prove you could do it—prove it to yourself as well as to me."
"But—"
"And you had to prove you could beat him on his grounds, too, as well as yours," Donegan went on. "You had to take him, not only with psi forces, but with the only weapons a Psi Operative is allowed to carry."
"Fists," the Operative said. "Sure Judo and Karate are standard subjects—every Operative has to know them. What's so tough about that?"
"Nothing," Donegan said. "Nothing at all—except for Fredericks. He's been beaten on your ground, and on his own. Now he knows he's licked. Standard operating procedure."
"I guess so," the Operative said.
"And after all," Donegan said, "now that you're going up a grade—"
"Now that I'm what?"
"That," Donegan said, "was your promotion test, friend. And you passed."
There was a second of absolute silence. Then the Operative said: "And it was all so simple."
"Sure," Donegan said. "Simple enough so that you get a promotion out of it—and Fredericks gets sixty days for attempted assault."
"Not ADW—assault with a deadly weapon—because we've got to keep up the myth," the Operative said. "Psi Operatives are untouchable. No such thing as a deadly weapon for a Psi Operative."
"Which is nonsense," Donegan said, "but necessary nonsense. I wonder if Fredericks will ever figure out how you got him."
"I wonder," the Operative said. "He'll know about karate, of course."
"Karate's hand-to-hand fighting." Donegan said. "That was his field. No, I mean our field. Psi."
"It makes a nice puzzle for him, doesn't it?" the Operative said, and grinned. "After all, I didn't touch him—couldn't, in any way. He'd shielded himself perfectly from any telekinetic force—and I had no weapons. I couldn't even get to him barehanded because of his shield and the binder field. He had me located—no tomfoolery about that. He fired six shots at me, point-blank at can't-miss range."
"But you got him," Donegan said.
"Sure," the Operative said. "Simplest thing in the world."
"All you had to do—" Donegan began.
"All I had to do," the Operative finished for him, "was use my mind to move the bullets—as he fired them."
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sight Gag, by Laurence Mark Janifer
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