down and tell me why I should give myself over to Communist China just because my grandfather was born here back in the days when China was a republic.”
* * * *
Spencer Candron knew that time was running out, but he had to force Ch’ien into the right position before he could act. He wished again that he had been able to keep the cigarettes. Ch’ien was a moderately heavy smoker, and one of those drugged cigarettes would have come in handy now. As it was, he had to handle it differently. And that meant a different approach.
“No, Dr. Ch’ien,” he said, in a voice that was deliberately too smooth, “I will not sit down, thank you. I would prefer that you stand up.”
The physicist’s face became a frozen mask. “I see that the doctorate you claim is not for studies in the field of physics. You’re not here to worm things out of me by discussing my work talking shop. What is it, Doctor Wan?”
“I am a psychologist.” Candron said. He knew that the monitors watching the screens and listening to the conversation were recording everything. He knew that they shouldn’t be suspicious yet. But if the real General Soong should decide to check on what his important guest was doing.…
“A psychologist,” Ch’ien repeated in a monotone. “I see.”
“Yes. Now, will you stand, or do I have to ask the guards to lift you to your feet?”
James Ch’ien recognized the inevitable, so he stood. But there was a wary expression in his black eyes. He was not a tall man; he stood nearly an inch shorter than Candron himself.
“You have nothing to fear, Dr. Ch’ien,” Candron said smoothly. “I merely wish to test a few of your reactions. We do not wish to hurt you.” He put his hands on the other man’s shoulders, and positioned him. “There,” he said. “Now. Look to the left.”
“Hypnosis, eh?” Ch’ien said with a grim smile. “All right. Go ahead.” He looked to his left.
“Not with your head,” Candron said calmly. “Face me and look to the left with your eyes.”
Ch’ien did so, saying: “I’m afraid you’ll have to use drugs after all, Dr. Wan. I will not be hypnotized.”
“I have no intention of hypnotizing you. Now look to the right.”
Ch’ien obeyed.
Candron’s right hand was at his side, and his left hand was toying with a button on his coat. “Now up,” he said.
Dr. James Ch’ien rolled his eyeballs upward.
Candron had already taken a deep breath. Now he acted. His right hand balled into a fist and arced upwards in a crashing uppercut to Ch’ien’s jaw. At almost the same time, he jerked the button off his coat, cracked it with his fingers along the special fissure line, and threw it to the floor.
As the little bomb spewed forth unbelievable amounts of ultra-finely divided carbon in a dense black cloud of smoke, Candron threw both arms around the collapsing physicist, ignoring the pain in the knuckles of his right hand. The smoke cloud billowed around them, darkening the room and obscuring the view from the monitor screens that were watching them. Candron knew that the guards were acting now; he knew that the big Mongols outside were already inserting the key in the door and inserting their nose plugs; he knew that the men in the monitor room had hit an alarm button and had already begun to flood the room with sleep gas. But he paid no attention to these things.
Instead, he became homesick.
Home. It was a little place he knew and loved. He could no longer stand the alien environment around him; it was repugnant, repelling. All he could think of was a little room, a familiar room, a beloved room. He knew the cracks in its ceiling, the feel of the varnish on the homely little desk, the touch of the worn carpet against his feet, the very smell of the air itself. And he loved them and longed for them with all the emotional power that was in him.
And suddenly the darkness of the smoke-filled prison apartment was gone.
Spencer Candron stood in the middle of the little hotel room he had rented early that morning. In his arms, he held the unconscious figure of Dr. James Ch’ien.
He gasped for breath, then, with an effort, he stooped, allowed the limp body of the physicist to collapse over his shoulder, and stood straight again, carrying the man like a sack of potatoes. He went to the door of the room and opened it carefully. The hall was empty. Quickly, he moved outside, closing the door behind him, and headed toward the stair. This time, he dared not trust the elevator shaft. The hotel only boasted one elevator, and it might be used at any time. Instead, he allowed his dislike for the stair treads to adjust his weight to a few pounds, and then ran up them two at a time.
On the roof of the hotel, he adjusted his emotional state once more, and he and his sleeping burden drifted off into the night, toward the sea.
* * * *
No mind is infinitely flexible, infinitely malleable, infinitely capable of taking punishment, just as no material substance, however constructed, is capable of absorbing the energies brought to bear against it indefinitely.
A man can hate with a virulent hatred, but unless time is allowed to dull and soothe that hatred, the mind holding it will become corroded and cease to function properly, just as a machine of the finest steel will become corroded and begin to fail if it is drenched with acid or exposed to the violence of an oxidizing atmosphere.
The human mind can insulate itself, for a time, against the destructive effects of any emotion, be it hatred, greed, despondency, contentment, happiness, pleasure, anger, fear, lust, boredom, euphoria, determination, or any other of the myriads of “ills” that man’s mind—and thus his flesh—is heir to. As long as a mind is capable of changing from one to another, to rotate its crops, so to speak, the insulation will remain effective, and the mind will remain undamaged. But any single emotional element, held for too long, will break down the resistance of the natural insulation and begin to damage the mind.
Even that least virulent of emotions, love, can destroy. The hot, passionate love between new lovers must be modified or it will kill. Only when its many facets can be shifted around, now one and now the other coming into play, can love be endured for any great length of time.
Possibly the greatest difference between the sane and the unsane is that the sane know when to release a destructive force before it does more than minimal damage; to modify or eliminate an emotional condition before it becomes a deadly compulsion; to replace one set of concepts with another when it becomes necessary to do so; to recognize that point when the mind must change its outlook or die. To stop the erosion, in other words, before it becomes so great that it cannot be repaired.
For the human mind cannot contain any emotion, no matter how weak or how fleeting, without change. And the point at which that change ceases to be constructive and becomes, instead, destructive—that is the ultimate point beyond which no human mind can go without forcing a change—any change—in itself.
Spencer Candron knew that. To over-use the psionic powers of the human mind is as dangerous as over-using morphine or alcohol. There are limits to mental powers, even as there are limits to physical powers.
Psychokinesis is defined as the ability of a human mind to move, no matter how slightly, a physical object by means of psionic application alone. In theory, then, one could move planets, stars, even whole galaxies by thought alone. But, in physical terms, the limit is easily seen. Physically, it would be theoretically possible to destroy the sun if one had enough atomic energy available, but that would require the energy of another sun—or more. And, at that point, the Law of Diminishing Returns comes into operation. If you don’t want a bomb to explode, but the only way to destroy that bomb is by blowing it up with another bomb of equal power, where is the gain?
And if the total mental power required to move a planet is greater than any single human mind can endure—or even greater than the total mental endurance of a thousand planets full of minds, is there any gain?
There is not, and