The Mightiest Man | Page 2

for his perverted amusement.
Then he released them, and released the millions of gibbering, twitching idiots that inhabited Southern Europe, and he came out of the river bed in which he had lain for forty-eight hours.
He walked alone through the deserted streets of Belgrade until he came to the United Nations building. There he told a very brave lieutenant that he was willing to stand trial any place in the world they wished.
For three days nobody came to arrest him. He sat alone with the lieutenant in the peopleless city of Belgrade and waited for his captors. They came then, timidly reassured by his non-violence. While he talked to them pleasantly the citizens of London and Paris suddenly began to dance jerky and grotesque jigs on the pavements of their cities. In the same moment the Chief Justice of the Court of the Nations, at a cocktail party in Washington, writhed in the exquisite pain of total muscle cramp, his august features twisted into a mask of abject fear.
The trial itself was a legal farce. The prisoner promptly pleaded guilty to the charge of betraying mankind to an alien race, but he didn't allow them to question him. When one lawyer persisted in face of his pleasant refusals, he died suddenly in a cramped ball of screaming agony.
The gray-faced Chief Justice inquired whether he wished to be sentenced and he answered yes, but not to death. They couldn't kill him, he explained. That was part of the reward the aliens had given him. The other part was that he could kill or immobilize anybody in the world--or everybody--from any distance. He sat back and smiled at the stricken courtroom. Then he lost his composure and his mouth twitched. He laughed uproariously and slapped his knees in ecstasy.
It was plain that he was fond of a joke.
An anonymous lawyer stood up and waited patiently for his merriment to subside.
If this was true, he asked, why had not the aliens used this power? Why had they not simply killed off the inhabitants and taken over the vacant planet? The traitor gazed kindly at him; and a court stenographer who had cautiously picked up a pencil returned agonizingly to her foetal position and, that way, died.
The traitor looked at his fingers and shrugged. The thumb that had been snapped off in the mob's frenzy was more than half grown again.
"They needed slaves," he said simply.
"And at the end, while some of them were still sane?"
The traitor raised his eyebrows, giving him his full courteous attention. The lawyer sat down abruptly, his question unfinished. The creature who had betrayed his own race smiled at him and permitted him to live.
He even completed his question for him, and answered it. "Why did they not kill then? They had something else on their minds--fungoids!" He laughed uproariously at his macabre joke. "And in their minds too!"
The lawyer's blue eyes gazed at him steadily and he stopped laughing. In the bated hush of the courtroom he said softly, "What a pity I'm not an alien too. You could have the fungoids destroy me!"
He laughed again helplessly, the tears running down his cheeks.
* * * * *
The Chief Justice adjourned the Court then and the prisoner sauntered to his comfortable quarters in front of his frightened guards.
That night, in his own living room, the Chief Justice danced an agonized fandango in front of his horror-stricken wife and the anonymous lawyer sat in his apartment, staring at the blank wall. He was glad the aliens had not made the traitor telepathic too.
He had found the chink in his armor.
The neural paralysis, the murders by remote control, were acts of a conscious will. He had himself admitted that if his mind was destroyed his powers would be destroyed with it. The aliens had not sought revenge because their minds were totally occupied with saving themselves. The stricken ones had simply lost the power.
The knowledge was useless to him. There was no way they could attack his mind without his knowing it.
Possibly they could steal away his consciousness by drugging or bludgeoning, but it would be racial suicide to attempt it. In the split moment of realization he would kill every human being on Earth. There would be nobody left to operate on his brain, to make him a mindless, powerless idiot for the rest of time. For any period of time, he corrected himself. His brain would heal again.
It was useless to think about it. There was nothing they could use against his invincibility. The only hope was to attack him unawares ... and if that hope was a fraction less than a certainty it could only mean final and absolute catastrophe.
The lawyer looked at his watch. It was four in the morning.
He went into the kitchenette and then shrugged himself