JAMIESON
By BILL DOEDE
Illustrated by GRAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine December 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
A Konv cylinder was the key to space—but
there was one power it could not match!
They lived in a small house beside the little Wolf river in Wisconsin.Once it had been a summer cottage owned by a rich man from Chicago.The rich man died. His heirs sold it. Now it was well insulated andMrs. Jamieson and her son were very comfortable, even in the coldestwinter. During the summer they rented a few row boats to vacationingfishermen, and she had built a few overnight cabins beside the road.They were able to make ends meet.
Her neighbors knew nothing of the money she had brought with her toWisconsin. They didn't even know that she was not a native. She neverspoke of it, except at first, when Earl was a boy of seven and they hadjust come there to live. Then she only said that she came from theEast. She knew the names of eastern Wisconsin towns, and small factsabout them; it lent an air of authenticity to her claim of being anative. Actually her previous residence was Bangkok, Siam, where theAgents had killed her husband.
That was back in '07, on the eve of his departure for Alpha Centaurus;but she never spoke of this; and she was very careful not to move fromplace to place except by the conventional methods of travel.
Also, she wore her hair long, almost to the shoulders. People said,"There goes one of the old-fashioned ones. That hair-do was popularback in the sixties." They did not suspect that she did this only tocover the thin, pencil-line scar, evidence that a small cylinder layunder her skin behind the ear.
For Mrs. Jamieson was one of the Konvs.
Her husband had been one of the small group who developed this tinyinstrument. Not the inventor—his name was Stinson, and the effectsproduced by it were known as the Stinson Effect. In appearanceit resembled a small semi-conductor device. Analysis by the bestscientific minds proved it to be a semi-conductor.
Yet it held the power to move a body instantly from one point in spaceto any other point. Each unit was custom built, keyed to operate onlyby the thought pattern of the particular individual.
Several times in the past seven years Mrs. Jamieson had seen otherKonvs, and had been tempted to identify herself and say, "Here I am.You are one of them; so am I. Come, and we'll talk. We'll talk aboutStinson and Benjamin, who helped them all get away. And Doctor Straus.And my husband, E. Mason Jamieson, who never got away because thosefilthy, unspeakable Agents shot him in the back, there in that coffeeshop in Bangkok, Siam."
Once, in the second year after her husband's death, an Agent came andstayed in one of her cabins.
She learned that he was an Agent completely by accident. While cleaningthe cabin one morning his badge fell out of a shirt pocket. She stoodstill, staring at the horror of it there on the floor, the shirt inher hands, all the loneliness returning in a black wave of hate andfrustration.
That night she soundlessly lifted the screen from the window over hisbed and shot him with a .22 rifle.
She threw