Pandemonium

“You’re making a terrible mistake,” O’Connell said. Those hard Irish r’s.

“There’s no mistake,” Stoltz said. “You have no idea how dangerous this man is. But don’t worry, we have no intention of harming him. Bertram, go with your colleagues and explain the situation to these people.”

I should have been scared, or angry, but all I could think was : Colleagues. Co-leagues. Heh.

“Shouldn’t I stay out here with Del?” Bertram said. “I could help—”

“That’s an order,” Stoltz said.

The man behind me pulled my torso into a sitting position. My helmeted head lolled forward like a bowling ball. Two goons herded the group to the main house. Lew glanced back as they reached the top of the steps, and hesitated. The gunman behind him gestured with his Taser, and Lew reluctantly went inside.

The commander patted me on the shoulder. “Let’s walk and talk.”

“At first I didn’t believe Bertram’s story,” Commander Stoltz said. “He has a history of mental troubles, as you know.”

I was too afraid of being Tasered again to point out that this was coming from a human hot plate who got his operating instructions from a pulp science fiction novel. We were walking slowly down the gravel road toward my cabin, one Human Leaguer a few feet ahead of us and two behind, their flashlights bouncing along the ground with us, skidding up into the trees. It had taken a few minutes to get my land legs back. My hands were cinched behind me in some kind of plastic cuffs, and they’d also fastened one of those packs onto my back. It was heavier than it had looked on the fat boys; the thing must be all battery.

“The independent evidence, however, was irrefutable. And considering your recent troubles in Chicago, it seemed as if indeed you were losing control for good. You must understand that we had to act quickly.”

“Oh, sure, of course,” I said, keeping the sarcasm out of my voice. I tried to subtly flex my hands, but the cuffs, whatever they were made of, had no give. I needed to stay calm, think my way out of this, but all I wanted to do was run screaming into the trees.

“The helmet you’re wearing operates on the same principles as my own personal integrity system,” he continued. “The constantly shifting electromagnetic field creates a kind of Faraday cage that interferes with the psionic frequencies of the GedankenKinder. Not only does it—”

“The who?”

“The Thought Children. A parallel race, descended from Neanderthals, with psychic abilities far beyond our own. The source of the so-called demons.”

What the fuck? Neanderthals?

We’d passed Lew’s cabin and my own. The yellow light shining through the trees ahead of us came from the safety light above the washhouse door.

“I thought you guys were all about the slans,” I said. “Bertram said—”

“Bertram’s only been a member of the league for a year. He’s not been fully authorized, and his personal integrity system is not up to the required level.” The commander touched me on the shoulder, trying to impart the seriousness of the matter. “We’re at war with telepaths, Del—intelligence can’t be trusted to an unsecured medium.”

“But you’re telling me,” I said.

“This is on a need-to-know basis—and I very much want you to understand some things, my friend. Bertram’s already told you that Van Vogt”—he pronounced the name Van Vote—“used the word ‘slan’ as a code for what popular culture has mislabeled ‘demons.’ That much is obvious, even to the casual reader. What Bertram has not been trusted with are the many other coded meanings embedded in the text. For example . . .”

There was no way of stopping the commander now.

“. . . consider the tendriled and tendrilless slans in the book. Van