THE MAN WHO RATIONED
BABIES
By
the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in
danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken.
Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in
the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world.
For
it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit
to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and
send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged
citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision:
resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in
the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he
become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?
Turn
this book over for second complete novel
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROY
WALTON
He
had to adopt the motto—the
ends justify the means.
FITZMAUGHAM
His reward for devoted service was—an
assassin's bullet.
FRED
WALTON
His ambition was to fill his brother's
shoes—but he underestimated their size.
LEE PERCY
His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.
PRIOR
With the pen as his only weapon, could he
save his son?
DR.
LAMARRE
He
died for discovering the secret of immortality.
MASTER of Life and Death
by
ROBERT SILVERBERG
ACE BOOKS
A Division of A. A. Wyn,
Inc.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
master of life and death
Copyright
©, 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved
For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property
the secret visitors
Copyright ©, 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
the offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly
known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of
the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of
twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton,
Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as
he entered the hideous place.
Since
taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the
twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had
created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It
couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like
the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate
attractive quarters.
So
Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the
walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive
ceiling fixture to more subtle électroluminescents.
But the mark of the last
century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office.
Which
was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's
foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.
His desk was piled high with reports, and
more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant
administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director
FitzMaugham, and half the pay.
He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high
stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it.
It
was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia.
It was dated 4
June 2232, six
days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks
manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum.
Looks like a prime candidate for equalization.
Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite
and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re
equalization of . . ." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random,
". . . central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area
please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile
areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter
region, to ease transition."
He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them
until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let
himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several
hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of
Director Fitz-Maugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these
people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.
Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess
problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the
solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing
population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river,
before trouble came.
There
was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again.
"Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on
reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a precis
of each report, eliminating irrelevant data."
It was a basic step, one
that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked
on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness;
it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in
the formative stage.
He took another report from the heap. This
one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a
cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and
twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep.
That
was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report,
earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.
The annunciator chimed.
"I'm busy," Walton said
immediately.
"There's a Mr. Prior to see you,"
the annunciator's calm voice said. "He insists it's an emergency."
"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for
at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper
on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say,
1300."
Walton
heard an angry male voice muttering something in the cfuter office, and then
the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference
to a Happysleep commitment."
"Commitments
are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he
wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed.
"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all."
Walton
found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to
steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and
initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need—
The door burst open.
A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket
came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately
behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of
security. They carried drawn needlers.
"Are you Administrator Walton?" the
big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you.
I'm Lyle Prior."
The three security men caught up and swarmed
all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're
terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand
how he got in here, but he did."
"Ah—yes.
So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to
assassinate anybody, will you?"
"Administrator
Waltonl" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peacel How can you accuse me
of—"
One
of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to
reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all.
"Search him," Walton said.
They gave Prior an efficient going-over.
"He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to
health?"
"Neither. Leave him here with me."
"Are you sure you—"
"Get out of here," Walton snapped.
As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some
more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak
through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand;
it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world
who'd take this job. Now get out!"
They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited
until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he
knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as
regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit
that to the guards.
"Take a seat, Mr. Prior."
"I have to thank you for granting me
this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming
voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man."
"I am." Another three inches of
paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered.
"You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance.
At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in
need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr.
Prior."
"Thank you." Again that humility,
startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I
mean that you—"
"That
a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?"
Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted.
Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go
home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No
more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought
your last book was quite remarkable."
"The critics
didn't," Prior said diffidently.
"Critics!
What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years
ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message,
political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still
a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—"
Walton was ready to launch into a discussion
of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the
job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.
"Mr. Walton . . ."
"Yes?"
"My son Philip . . . he's two weeks old
now . . ."
Walton
understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold;
his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.
"He
was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's
perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—"
Walton
rose. "No," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading.
"Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you.
You're an intelligent man; you understand our program."
"I
voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan.
But I hadn't expected—"
"You thought euthanasia was a fine thing
for other people. So did everyone else," Walton
said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I
can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to
live."
"I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they
had practiced euthanasia a generation
ago? Where would my poems be now?"
It
was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it. "Tuberculosis is
an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we
strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits."
"Meaning you'll kill any children I
have?" Prior asked.
"Those
who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior.
Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the
impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you."
Prior
rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at
Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared
violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk
drawer.
But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll
leave you," he said somberly. "I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both
of us."
Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out,
then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports
slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were
three basilisks.
In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three
thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of
degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had
been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead
of time.
It was a tough-minded program. But why
transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world
with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in
pain, consuming precious food?
Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for
it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the
faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done
about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was
still growing.
Prior's
words haunted him. I
was tubercular. . . . where would my poems be now?
The big humble man was one of the great
poets. Keats had been tubercular too.
What good are poets? he asked himself savagely.
The
reply came swiftly: What
good is anything, then? Keats,
Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews . . . and Prior. How much
duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his
one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home.
Sweat poured down his back as he groped
toward his decision.
The step he was considering would disqualify
him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the
Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act.
But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.
Prior's baby.
With nervous fingers he switched on the
annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message.
I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour."
H
he stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively.
The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening
letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the
hallway.
There
was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks
of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man
Fitz-Maugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post . . . and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small
rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of
Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization
Law.
Well, just one lapse, he promised himself.
Ill spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law.
He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the
tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor.
"Roy."
At the sound of the quiet voice behind him,
Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to rum slowly.
The director stood there.
"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham."
The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined
face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look
preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?"
Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot
of work lately."
As
he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder
than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for
equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put
in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself.
The director smiled. "You never did leam
how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a wom-out wreck before you're half
my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the
morning, though. Mind if I join you?"
"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have
some work to do downstairs."
"Oh? Can't you take
care of it by phone?"
"No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt
as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal
attention."
"I see." The deep, warm eyes bored
into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think."
"Yes, sir. As soon as
the work eases up a little."
FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another
century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never leam how to relax, my
boy."
The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one
side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen; there was a coffee shop down there.
Hes-itandy, Walton pushed twenty, covering
the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination.
As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham
said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?"
"Yes," Walton said.
"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you
say is so good?"
"That's right, sir," Walton said
tightly.
"He
came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his
mind?"
Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son
spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down."
"Naturally,"
FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole
framework crumbles."
"Of course, sir."
The
lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a
neat, gleaming sign:
FLOOR 20
Euthanasia Clinic and Files
Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He
began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his
pupose must seem nakedly obvious now.
The
old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here,"
he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should
take some time off for relaxation each day."
"I'll try, sir."
Walton stepped out of the tube and returned
FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as
soon as he was alone.
Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn
that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!
Walton
wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked
briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept.
The room was large, as rooms went
nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes
racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six
weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data.
While
he stood there, the computer chartered, lights flashed. New facts poured into
the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.
"Can
I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek
employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without
personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can
do?"
"I'm
simply ^ running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?"
"Not at all, sir. Go
right ahead."
Walton
grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of
his presence.
No
doubt I must radiate charisma, he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by
virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protege and second-in-command. Outside,
in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and
Popeek rank quietly to himself.
Frowning,
he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah . . . Philip, wasn't it? He
punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.
A
moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced
with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's
record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of
the slot:
3216847AB1
PRIOR,
Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son
of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 51b. 3oz.
An elaborate description of the boy in great
detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and
gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the
notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of
the card:
EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332
EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED
He
glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere
in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend.
Walton had set up the schedule himself: the
gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half
an hour to save Philip Prior.
He
peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's
card into his breast pocket.
That
done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the
clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them
with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the
one he wanted: 3f2,
tubercular-prone.
He scrapped the guide sheet
he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of
card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits.
He proceeded to retype the child's card,
omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and
the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped
an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.
Then,
he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card
numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.
The deletions had been made. As far as the
machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.
He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still
twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.
Now came the real test:
could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in
the process?
Five doctors were bustling back and forth as
Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred
babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming
from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.
The
Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic
within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in
ten thousand would be denied a certificate . . . and life.
"Hello, Mr. Walton.
What brings you down here?"
Walton
smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in
touch with every department we have, you know."
"Mr.
FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really
getting a going-over today, Mr. Waltonl"
"Umm.
Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it.
He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.
"Seen my brother around?" he asked.
"Fred? He's working in room seven,
running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?"
"No—no,
don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt
relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of
Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have
Fred know he was down there.
Strolling casually through the clinic, he
peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones
today?"
"Seven so far. They're scheduled for the
1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph." "That
only makes six," Walton said.
"Oh,
and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven
in one morning."
"Have any trouble with
the parents?"
"What do you think?" the doctor
asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars
nearly raised the roof, though."
Walton
shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm.
Silence
for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you
if you like."
"Don't bother," Walton said
hurriedly.
He
moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber.
Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when
Walton appeared.
Falbrough
didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and
plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak
blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton."
"Good
morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?"
"Eleven hundred, as usual."
"Good. There's a new regulation in
effect from now on," Walton said. "To keep public opinion on our
side." "Sir?"
"Henceforth,
until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the
main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?"
"Mistake? But how—"
"Never
mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European
centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off, Walton thought in amazement.
Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of
course. Well double-check everything from now on." "Good. Begin with
the 1100 batch."
Walton
couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit,
and signaled for a lift tube.
Minutes later he was back in his office,
behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his
throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole
framework crumbles.
Well,
the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's
mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have
to cover his traces, somehow.
The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr.
Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir."
"Put him on."
The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared;
its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness. "What is it,
Doctor^'
"It's
a good thing you issued that order when you did, sirl You'll never guess what
just happened—"
"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak
up."
"I—well,
sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I
mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!"
"N,°r
"It's
the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The
boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine."
"Any
recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked.
"No, sir."
Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a
moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to
keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word
gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming
over us in half an hour."
"Yes,
sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?"
"Don't
say a word about this to anyone, not
even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find
his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking
for any future cases of this sort."
"Certainly, sir. Is
that all?"
"It
is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and
stared bleakly at the far wall.
The
Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law— the Equalization Law—Roy Walton
was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to
hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who
attempted to bribe an examining doctor.
He
felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause,
now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had
jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one
potentially tubercular baby.
Well, the thing was done.
No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted
down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic
to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this
morning's activities.
The annunciator
chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir."
Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said,
"Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do
something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no
good by this call. No good at all.
HI
rot walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take
form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact,
built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened
to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same
size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in
height.
Even
on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous
solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and
when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?"
His
brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?"
"I wasn't in your section. It was
official business, anyway. I didn't have time."
Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus
emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.
Fred
said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though."
"Official business!"
"Really, Roy?" His brother's tone
was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this
morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript
of your conversation with the machine."
Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton
sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff
hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a
Popeek computer outlet is confidential."
"Criminal offence? Maybe so . . . but
that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?"
''How much do you know?"
"You
wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you?
Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have
too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his
bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, nol"
"Thanks for small blessings," Roy
said acidly.
"You
got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall
we?"
"Anything
you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious
executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and
presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His
voice was barely audible.
"I won't keep you any longer,
then," Fred said.
The screen went dead.
Walton
killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the
opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away,
revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.
Idiot! he thought. Fooll
He had risked everything to save one baby,
one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the
old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and
his father-substitute.
FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal
Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the
future. And as for Fred . . .
There
was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as
brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten)
until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in
a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the
public crèche.
After
that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the
law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last
month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created
Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.
And now he has the upper hand for the first
time, Walton thought. I hope he's not thirsting for my scalp.
He
was being ground in a vise; he saw now the gulf between the toughness needed
for a Popeek man and the very real streak of softness that was part of his
character. Walton suddenly realized that he had never merited his office. His
only honorable move would be to offer his resignation to FitzMaugham at once.
He
thought back, thought of the Senator saying, This is a job for a man with no heart. Popeek
is the cruelest organization ever legislated by man. You think you can handle
it, Roy?
I think so, sir. I hope so.
He remembered going on to declare some fuzzy
phrases about the need for equalization, the immediate necessity for dealing
with Earth's population problem.
Temporary
cruelty is the price of eternal happiness, FitzMaugham had said.
Walton remembered the day when the United
Nations had finally agreed, had turned the Population Equalization Bureau
loose
on a stunned world. There had been the sharp flare of flash guns, the clatter
of reporters feeding the story to the world, the momentary high-mindedness, the
sense of the nobility of Popeek. . . .
And
then the six weeks of gathering hatred. No one liked Popeek. No one liked to
put antiseptic on wounds, either, but it had to be done.
Walton
shook his head sorrowfully. He had made a serious mistake by saving Philip Prior.
But resigning his post was no way to atone for it.
He
opaqued the window again and returned to his desk. It was time to go through
the mail.
The
first letter on the stack was addressed to him by hand; he slit it open and
scanned it.
Dear Mr Walton,
Yesterday
your men came and took away my mother to be kild. She didn't do nothing and
lived a good life for seventy years and I want you to know I think you people
are the biggest vermin since Hitler and Stalin and when youre old and sick I
hope your own men come for yoti and stick you in the furnace where you belong.
You stink and all of you stink.
Signed, Disgusted
Walton shrugged and opened the next letter,
typed in a crisp voicewrite script on crinkly
watermarked paper.
Sir:
I see by the papers that the latest
euthanasia figures are the highest yet, and that you have successfully rid the
world of many of its weak sisters, those who are unable to stand the gaff,
those who, in the words of the immortal Darwin "are not fit to
survive." My heartiest congratulations, sir, upon the scope and am~
bition. of your bold and courageous program. Your Bureau offers mankind its
first real chance to enter that promised land, that Utopia, that has been our
hope and prayer for so long.
I do
sincerely hope, though, that your Bureau is devoting careful thought to the
type of citizen that should be spared. It seems obvious that the myriad
spawning Asiatics should be reduced tremendously, since their unchecked
proliferation has caused such great hardship to humanity. The same might be
said of the Europeans who refuse to obey the demands of sanity; and, coming
closer to home, I pray you reduce the numbers of Jews, Catholics, Communists,
anti-Herschel-ites, and other freethinking rabble, in order to make the new
reborn world purer and cleaner and . . .
With a sickly cough Walton put the letter
down. Most of them were just this sort: intelligent, rational, bigoted letters.
There had been the educated Alabamian, disturbed that Popeek did not plan to
eliminate all forms of second-class citizens; there had been the Michigan
minister, anxious that no left-wing relativistic atheists escape the gas chamber.
And, of course, there were the other kind—the
barely literate letters from bereaved parents or relatives, accusing Popeek of
nameless crimes against humanity.
Well,
it was only to be expected, Walton thought. He scribbled his initials on both
the letters and dropped them into the chute that led to files, where they would
be put on microfilm and scrupulously stored away. FitxMaugham insisted that
every letter received be read and so filed.
Some
day soon, Walton thought, population equalization would be unnecessary. Oh,
sure, euthanasia would stick; it was a sane and, in the long run; merciful
process. But this business of uprooting a few thousand Belgians and shipping
them to the open spaces in Patagonia would cease.
Lang
and his experimenters were struggling to transform Venus into a livable world.
If it worked, the terraforming engineers could go on to convert Mars, the
bigger moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and perhaps even distant Pluto, if some
form of heating could be developed.
There
would be another transition then. Earth's multitudes would be shipped
wholesale to the new worlds. Perhaps there would be riots; none but a few
adventurers would go willingly. But some would go, and that would be a partial
solution.
And then, the stars. The faster-than-light
project was top secret, so top secret that in Popeek only FitzMaugham knew what
was being done on it. But if it came through . . .
Walton shrugged and turned back to his work.
Reports had to be read, filed, expedited.
The
thought of Fred and what Fred knew bothered him. If only there were some way to
relive this morning, to let the Prior baby go to the chamber as it deserved. .
. .
Tension
pounded in him. He slipped a hand into his desk, fumbled, found the green,
diamond-shaped pellet he was searching for, and swallowed the benzolurethrin
almost unthinkingly. The tranquilizer was only partly successful in relaxing
him, but he was able to work steadily, without a break, until noon.
He
was about to dial for lunch when the private screen he and FitzMaugham used
between their offices glowed into life.
"Roy?"
The director's face looked impossibly
tranquil. "Sir?"
"I'm
going to have a visitor at 1300. Ludwig. He wants to know how things are
going."
Walton
nodded. Ludwig was the head American delegate to the United Nations, a stubborn, dedicated man who had fought Popeek for years; then he had
seen the light and had fought just as strenuously for its adoption. "Do
you want me to prepare a report for him?" Walton asked.
"No, Roy. I want you to be here. I don't
want to face him alone."
';Sir?"
"Some
of the UN people feel I'm running Popeek as a one-man show," FitzMaugham
explained. "Of course, that's not so, as that mountain of work on your
desk testifies. But I want you there as evidence of the truth. I want him to
see how much I have to rely on my assistants."
"I get it. Very good, Mr.
FitzMaugham."
"And another thing," the Director
went on. "It'll help appearances if I show myself surrounded with loyal
young lieutenants of impeccable character. Like you, Roy."
"Thank you, sir," Walton said
weakly.
"Thank you. See you at 1300 sharp, then?"
"Of course, sir."
The screen went dead. Walton stared at it
blankly. He wondered if this were some elaborate charade of the old man's;
FitzMaugham was devious enough. That last remark, about loyal young lieutenants
of impeccable character . . . it had seemed to be in good faith, but was it?
Was FitzMaugham staging an intricate pretense before deposing his faithless
protege?
Maybe
Fred had something to do with it, Walton thought. He decided to have another
session with the computer after his conference with FitzMaugham and Ludwig.
Perhaps it still wasn't too late to erase the damning data and cover his
mistake.
Then
it would be just his word against Fred's. He might yet be able to brazen
through, he thought dully.
He
ordered lunch with quivering fingers, and munched drearily on the tasteless
synthetics for awhile before dumping them down the disposal chute.
at precisely 1255 Walton tidied his desk, rose and for the
second time that day, left his office. He was apprehensive, but not unduly so;
behind his immediate surface fears and tensions lay a calm certainty that
FitzMaugham ultimately would stick by him.
And
there was little to fear from Fred, he realized now. It was next to impossible
for a mere lower-level medic to gain the ear of the director himself; in the
normal course of events, if Fred attempted to contact FitzMaugham, he would
automatically be referred to Roy.
No;
the danger in Fred's knowledge was potential, not actual, and there might still
be time to come to terms with him. It was almost with a jaunty step that Walton
left his office, made his way through the busy outer office, and emerged in the
outside corridor.
Fred was waiting there.
He was wearing his white medic's smock,
stained yellow and red by reagents and coagulants. He was lounging against the
curving plastine corridor wall, hands jammed deep into his pockets. His
thick-featured, broad face wore an expression of elaborate casualness.
"Hello, Roy. Fancy finding you herel"
"How did you know I'd
be coming this way?"
"I
called your office. They told me you were on your way to the lift tubes. Why so
jumpy, brother? Have a tough morning?"
"I've had worse," Walton said. He
was tense, guarded. He pushed the stud beckoning the lift tube. "Where you
off to?" Fred asked.
"Confidential.
Top-level powwow with Fitz, if you have to know."
Fred's eyes narrowed. "Strictly
upper-echelon, aren't you? Do you have a minute to talk to a mere mortal?"
"Fred, don't make unnecessary trouble.
You know—"
"Can it. I've only got a minute or two left of my
lunch hour. I want to make myself perfectly plain with you. Are there any spy
pickups in this corridor?"
Walton considered that. There were none that
he knew of, and he knew of most. Still, FitzMaugham might have found it
advisable to plant a few without advertising the fact. "I'm not
sure," he said. "What's on your mind?"
Fred
took a pad from his pocket and began to scrawl a note. Aloud he said, "I'll take my chances and tell you about it
anyway. One of the men in the lab said another man told him you and FitzMaugham
are both secretly Herschel-ites." His brow furrowed with the effort of
saying one thing and writing another simultaneously. "Naturally, I won't
give you any names yet, but I want you to know I'm investigating his background
very carefully. He may just have been shooting his mouth off."
"Is
that why you didn't want this to go into a spy
pickup?" Walton asked.
"Exactly.
I prefer to investigate unofficially for the time being." Fred finished
the note, ripped the sheet from the pad and handed it to his brother.
Walton
read it wordlessly. The handwriting was jagged and untidy, for it was no easy
feat to carry on a conversation for the benefit of any concealed pickups while
writing a message.
It
said, T know
all about the Prior baby. I'll keep my mouth shut for now, so don't worry. But
don't try anything foolish, because I've deposited an account of the whole thing where you can't find it.
Walton crumpled the note
and tucked it into his pocket.
He
said, "Thanks for the information, Fred. I'll keep it in mind."
"Okay, pal."
The
lift tube arrived. Walton stepped inside and pressed twenty-nine.
In the moment it took for the tube to rise
the one floor, he thought, So Fred's playing a waiting game . . . He'll hold the information over
my head until he can make good use of it.
That
was some relief, anyway. No matter what evidence Fred had already salted away,
Walton still had a chance to blot out some of the computer's memory track and
obscure the trail to that extent.
The lift tube opened; a gleaming sign listed
the various activities of the twenty-ninth floor, and at the bottom of the list
it said D. F.
FitzMaugham, Director.
FitzMaugham's
office was at the back of a maze of small cubicles housing Popeek functionaries
of one sort or another. Walton had made some attempt to familiarize himself
with the organizational stratification of Popeek, but his success thus far had
been minimal. FitzMaugham had conceived the plan half a century ago, and had
lovingly created and worked over the organization's structure through all the
long years it took before the law was finally passed.
There were plenty of bugs in the system, but
in general FitzMaugham's blueprint had been sound—sound enough for Popeek to
begin functioning almost immediately after its UN approval. The manifold
departments, the tight network of inter-reporting agencies, the fantastically
detailed budget with its niggling appropriations for office supplies and its
massive expenditures for, say, the terraforming project-most of these were
fully understood only by FitzMaugham himself.
Walton glanced at his watch. He was three
minutes late;
the
conversation with his brother had delayed him. But Ludwig of the UN was not
known to be a scrupulously punctual man, and there was a high probability he
hadn't arrived.
The
secretary in the office guarding FitzMaugham's looked up as Walton approached.
"The director is in urgent conference, sir, and—oh, I'm sorry, Mr.
Walton. Go right in; Mr. FitzMaugham is expecting you."
"Is Mr. Ludwig here yet?"
"Yes, sir. He arrived about ten minutes
ago."
Curious,
Walton thought. From what he knew of Ludwig he wasn't the man to arrive early
for an appointment. Walton and FitzMaugham had had plenty of dealings with him
in the days before Popeek was approved, and never once had Ludwig been on time.
Walton shrugged. If Ludwig could switch his
stand so decisively from an emphatic anti-Popeek to an even more emphatic
pro-Popeek, perhaps he could change in other respects as well.
Walton
stepped within the field of the screener. His image, he knew, was being relayed
inside where FitzMaugham could scrutinize him carefully before admitting him.
The director was very touchy about admitting people to his office.
Five
seconds passed; it usually took no more than that for FitzMaugham to admit him.
But there was no sign from within, and Walton coughed discreetly.
Still
no answer. He turned away and walked over to the desk where the secretary sat
dictating into a voice-write. He waited for her to finish her sentence, then
touched her arm lightly.
"Yes, Mr. Walton?"
"The
screen transmission seems to be out of order. Would you mind calling Mr.
FitzMaugham on the annunciator and telling him I'm here?"
"Of course, sir."
Her fingers deftly flipped the switches. He
waited for her to announce him, but she paused and looked back at Walton.
"He doesn't acknowledge, Mr. Walton. He must be awfully busy."
"He has to acknowledge. Ring him again."
"I'm sorry, sir, but—"
"Ring him again."
She rang, reluctantly, without any response.
FitzMaugham preferred the sort of annunciator that had to be acknowledged;
Walton allowed the girl to break in on his privacy without the formality of a
return buzz.
"Still no answer,
sir."
Walton
was growing impatient. "Okay, devil take the acknowledgment. Break in on
him and tell him I'm waiting out here. My presence is important inside."
"Sir, Mr. FitzMaugham absolutely forbids
anyone to use the annunicator without his acknowledgment," the girl protested.
He
felt his neck going red. "I'll take the responsibility." "I'm
sorry, sir—"
"All right. Get away from that machine
and let me talk to him. If there are repercussions, tell
him I forced you at gunpoint."
She backed away, horrified, and he slid in
behind the desk. He made contact; there was no acknowledgment. He said,
"Mr. FitzMaugham, this is Roy. I'm outside your office now. Should I come
in, or not?"
Silence. He stared thoughtfully at the
apparatus. ,
"I'm going in
there," he said.
The door was of solid-paneled imitation wood,
a couple of inches thick and probably filled
with a good sturdy sheet of beryllium steel. FitzMaugham liked protection.
Walton contemplated the door for a moment. Stepping into the screener field, he said, "Mr.
FitzMaugham? Can you hear me?" In the ensuing silence he went on,
"This is Walton. I'm outside with a blaster, and unless I get any orders
to the contrary, I'm going to break into your office."
Silence. This was very extraordinary indeed.
He wondered if it were part of some trap of FitzMaugham's. Well, he'd find
out.soon enough. He adjusted the blaster aperture to short-range wide-beam, and
turned it on. A soft even flow of heat bathed the door.
Quite
a crowd of curious onlookers had gathered by now, at a respectful distance.
Walton maintained the steady heat. The synthetic wood was sloughing away in
dribbly blue masses as the radiation broke it down; the sheet of metal in the
heart of the door was gleaming bright red.
The
lock became visible now. Walton concentrated the flame there, and the door
creaked and groaned.
He
snapped the blaster off, pocketed it, and kicked the door soundly. It swung
open.
He had a momentary glimpse of a blood-soaked
white head slumped over a broad desk—and then someone hit him amidships.
He
was a man about his own height, wearing a blue suit woven through with
glittering gold threads; Walton's mind caught the details with odd clarity. The
man's face was distorted with fear and shock, but Walton recognized it clearly
enough. The ruddy cheeks, the broad nose and bushy eyebrows, belonged to
Ludwig.
The UN man. The man who had just assassinated
Director FitzMaugham.
He
was battering his fists into Walton, struggling to get past him and through the
wrecked door, to escape somewhere, anywhere. Walton grunted as a fist crashed
into his stomach. He reeled backward, gagging and gasping, but managed to keep
his hand on the other's coat. Desperately he pulled Ludwig to him. In the
suddenness of the encounter he had no time to evaluate what had happened, no
time to react to FitzMaugham's murder.
His one thought was that Ludwig had to be
subdued.
His
fist cracked into the other's mouth; sharp pain shot up through his hand at the
impact of knuckles against teeth. Ludwig sagged. Walton realized that- he was
blocking the doorway; not only was he preventing Ludwig from escaping, he was
also making it impossible for anyone outside to come to his own aid.
Blindly
he clubbed his fist down on Ludwig's neck, spun him around, crashed another blow
into the man's midsection. Suddenly Ludwig pulled away from him and ran back
behind the director's desk.
Walton
followed him . . . and stopped short as he saw the UN man pause, quiver
tremulously, and topple to the floor. He sprawled grotesquely on the deep beige
carpet, shook for a moment, then was still.
Walton
gasped for breath. His clothes were torn, he was sticky with sweat and blood,
his heart was pounding from unaccustomed exertion.
Ludwig's killed the director, he thought leadenly. And now Ludwig's dead.
He
leaned against the doorpost. He was conscious of figures moving past him, going
into the room, examining FitzMaugham and the figure on the floor.
"Are you all
right?" a crisp, familiar voice asked.
"Pretty winded,"
Walton admitted.
"Have some
water."
Walton
accepted the drink, gulped it, looked up at the man who had spoken.
"Ludwig! How in hell's name—"
"A
double," the UN man said. "Come over here and look at him."
Ludwig
led him to the pseudo-Ludwig on the floor. It was an incredible resemblance.
Two or three of the office
workers
had rolled the body over; the jaws were clenched stiffly, the face frozen in an
agonized mask.
"He
took poison," Ludwig said. "I don't imagine he expected to get out
of here alive. But he did his work well. God, I wish I'd been on time for once
in my life!"
Walton glanced numbly from the dead Ludwig on
the floor to the live one standing opposite him. His shocked mind realized
dimly what had .happened. The assassin, masked to look like Ludwig, had arrived
at 1300, and had been admitted to the director's office. He had killed the old
man, and then had remained inside the office, either hoping to make an escape
later in the day, or perhaps simply waiting for the poison to take effect.
"It
was bound to happen," Ludwig said. "They've been gunning for the
senator for years. And now that Popeek was passed ..."
Walton looked involuntarily at the desk,
mirror bright and uncluttered as always. Director FitzMaugham was sprawled
forward, hands half-clenched, arms spread. His impressive mane of white hair
was stained with his own blood. He had been clubbed—the simplest, crudest sort
of murder.
Emotional
reaction began. Walton wanted to break things, to cry, to let off steam
somehow. But there were too many people present; the office, once sacrosanct,
had miraculously become full of Popeek workers, policemen, secretaries, possibly
some telefax reporters.
Walton
recovered a shred of his authority. "All of you, outsidel" he said loudly. He recognized Sellors, the
building's security chief, and added, "Except you, Sellors. You can stay
here."
The
crowd melted away magically. Now there were just five in the office—Sellors,
Ludwig, Walton, and the two corpses.
Ludwig said, "Do you have any idea who
might be behind this, Mr. Walton?"
"I
don't know," he said wearily. "There are thousands who'd have wanted
to kill the director. Maybe it was a Herschelite plot. There'll be a full
investigation."
"Mind
stepping out of the way, sir?" Sellors asked. "I'd like to take some
photos."
Walton
and Ludwig moved to one side as the security man went to work. It was
inevitable, Walton thought, that this would happen. FitzMaugham had been the
living symbol of Popeek.
He walked to the battered door, reflecting
that he would have it repaired at once. That thought led naturally to a new
one, but before it was fully formed in his own mind, Ludwig voiced it.
"This is a terrible tragedy," the
UN man said. "But one mitigating factor exists. I'm sure Mr. FitzMaugham's
successor will be a fitting one. I'm confident you'll be able to carry on
FitzMaugham's great work quite capably, Mr. Walton."
V
the new sign on the office door said:
ROY WALTON Interim Director Bureau of Population
Equalization
He had argued against putting it up there, on
the grounds that his appointment was strictly temporary, pending a meeting of
the General Assembly to choose a new head for
Popeek.
But Ludwig had maintained it might be weeks or months before such a meeting
could be helcL and that there was no harm in identifying his office.
"Everything under
control?" the UN man asked.
Walton
eyed him unhappily. "I guess so. Now all I have to do is start figuring
out how Mr. FitzMaugham's filing system worked, and I'll be all set'."
"You mean you don't
know?"
"Mr. FitzMaugham took very few people
into his confidence," Walton said. "Popeek was his special
brain-child. He had' lived with it so long he thought its workings were
self-evident to everyone. There'll be a period of adjustment."
"Of course,"
Ludwig said.
"This
conference you were going to have with the director yesterday when he—ah, what
was it about?" Walton asked.
The UN man shrugged. "It's irrelevant
now, I suppose. I wanted to find out how Popeek's subsidiary research lines
were coming along. But I guess you'll have to go through Mr. FitzMaugham's
files before you know anything, eh?" Ludwig stared at him sharply.
Suddenly, Walton did not
like the cheerful UN^man.
"There'll
be a certain period of adjustment," he repeated. "I'll let you know
when I'm ready to answer questions about Popeek."
"Of course. I didn't mean to imply any
criticism of you or of the late director or of Popeek, Mr. Walton."
"Naturally. I understand, Mr.
Ludwig."
Ludwig took his leave at last, and Walton was
alone in the late Mr. FitzMaugham's office for the first time 'since the
assassination. He spread- his hands on the highly polished desk and twisted
his wrists outward in a tense gesture. His fingers made squeaking sounds as
they rubbed the wood surface.
It had'been an uneasy afternoon yesterday,
after the nightmare of the assassination and the subsequent security
inquisition. Walton, wrung dry, had gone home early, leaving Popeek headless
for two hours. The newsblares in the jetbus had been programmed with nothing
but talk of the killing.
"A
brutal hand today struck down the revered D. F. Fitz-Maugham, eighty-one, ~
Director of Population Equalization. Security officials report definite
prospects of solution of the shocking crime, and . . ."
The
other riders in the bus had been vehemently outspoken.
"It's about time they let him have
it," a fat woman in sleazy old clothes said. "That baby killerl"
"I knew they'd get him sooner or
later," offered a thin, wispy-haired old man. "They had to."
"Rumor going around he
was really a.Herschelite . .
."
"Some
new kid is taking over Popeek, they say. They'll get him too, mark my
words."
Walton,
huddling in his seat, pulled up his collar, and tried to shut his ears. It
didn't work.
They'll get him too, mark my words.
He hadn't forgotten that prophecy by the time
he reached his cubicle in upper Manhattan. The-harsh words had drifted through
his restless sleep all night.
Now, behind the safety of his office door, he
thought of them again.
He couldn't hide. It hadn't worked for
FitzMaugham, and it wouldn't for him.
Hiding wasn't the answer. Walton smiled
grimly. If martyrdom were in store for him, let martyrdom come. The work of
Popeek had to go forward. He decided he would conduct as much of his official
business as possible by screen; but when personal contact was necessary, he
would make no attempt to avoid it.
He glanced around FitzMaugham's office. The
director had been a product of the last century, and he had seen nothing ugly
in the furnishiilgs of the Cullen Building. Unlike Walton, then, he had not
had his office remodeled.
That
would be one of the first tasks—to replace the clumsy battery of
tungsten-filament incandescents
with a wall of électroluminescents, to replace the creaking sash windows with
some decent opaquers, to get rid of the accursed gingerbread trimming that
offended the eye in every direction. The thuhkety-thunk air-conditioner would have to go to; he'd
have a molecusorter installed in a day or two.
The
redecorating problems were the minor ones. It was the task of filling
FitzMaugham's giant shoes, even on an interim basis, that staggered Walton.
He
fumbled in the desk for a pad and stylus. This was going to call for an agenda.
Hastily he wrote:
J. Cancel F"s appointments
2. Investigate
setup in Files
a) Lang terraforming project
b) faster-than-light
c) budget—stretchable? .
d) locate spy pickups in building
3. Meeting with section chiefs
4. Press conference with telefax services
5. See Ludwig . . . straighten things out
6. Redecorate office
He thought for a moment, then erased a few of
his numbers and changed Press
conference to 6. and Redecorate
office to 4. He licked the stylus and wrote in at the very top of the paper:
0. Finish Prior affair.
In a way, FitzMaugham's assassination had
taken Walton off the hook on the Prior case. Whatever FitzMaugham suspected
about Walton's activities yesterday morning no longer need trouble him. If the
director had jotted down a memorandum on the subject, Walton would be able to
find and destroy it when he went through FitzMaugham's files later. And if the
dead man had merely kept the matter in his head, well, then it was safely at
rest in the crematorium.
Walton groped in his jacket pocket and found
the note his brother had slipped to him at lunchtime the day before. In the
rush of events, Walton had not had a chance to destroy it.
Now,
he read it once more, ripped it in half, ripped it again, and fed one quarter
of the. note into the disposal chute. He would get rid of the rest at
fifteen-minute intervals, and he would defy anyone monitoring the disposal
units to locate all four fragments.
Actually, he realized he was being
overcautious. This was Director FitzMaugham's office and FitzMaugham's disposal
chute. The director wouldn't have arranged to have his own chute monitored, would he?
Or
would he? There was never any telling, with Fitz-Maugham. The old man had
been-terribly devious in every maneuver he made.
The room had the dry, crisp smell of the
detecting devices that had been used—the close-to-the-ground, ugly
metering-robots that had crawled all over the floor, sniffing up footprints and
stray dandruff flakes for analysis, the chemical cleansers that had mopped the
blood out of the rug. Walton cursed at the air-conditioner that was so inefficiently
removing these smells from the air.
The
annunciator chimed. Walton waited impatiently for a voice, then remembered that
FitzMaugham had doggedly required an acknowledgment. He opened the channel and
said, "This is Walton. In the future no acknowledgment will be
necessary."
"Yes, sir. There's a reporter from Citizen
here, and one from Globe Telefax."
"Tell them I'm not seeing anyone today.
Here, 111 give them a statement. Tell them the Gargantuan task of picking up
the reins where the late, great Director FitzMaugham dropped them is one that
will require my full energy for the next several days. I'll be happy to hold my
first official press conference as soon as Popeek is once again moving- on an
even keel. Got that?" Yes, sir.
"Good.
Make sure they print it. And—oh, listen. If anyone shows up today or tomorrow
who had an appointment with Director FitzMaugham, tell him approximately the
same thing. Not in those flowery words, of course, but give him the gist of it.
I've got a lot of catching up to do before I can see people."
"Certainly, Director Walton."
He
grinned at the sound of those words, Director Walton. Turning
away from the annunciator, he took out his agenda and checked off number one, Cancel FitzMaugham s appointments.
Frowning,
he realized he had better add a seventh item to the list: Appoint new assistant administrator. Someone would have to handle his old job.
But now, top priority went to the item
ticketed zero on the list: Finish Prior affair. He'd never be in a better position to erase the evidence of yesterday's
illegality than he was right now.
"Connect me with euthanasia files,
please."
A moment later a dry voice said,
"Files."
"Files,
this is Acting Director Walton. I'd like a complete
transcript of your computer's activities for yesterday morning between 0900 and
1200, with each separate activity itemized. How soon can I have it?"
"Within minutes, Director Walton."
"Good. Send it sealed, by closed
circuit. There's some top-level stuff on that transcript. If the seal's not
intact when it gets here, I'll shake up the whole department.
"Yes, sir. Anything
else, sir?"
"No,_
that'll be—on second thought, yes. Send up a list of all doctors who were
examining babies in the clinic yesterday morning."
He waited. While he waited, he went through
the top layer of memoranda in FitzMaugham's desk.
There
was a note on top which read, Appointment with Lamarre, 11 June—1215. Must be firm with him, and must
handle with great delicacy. Perhaps time to let Walton know.
Hmm,
that was interesting, Walton thought. He had no idea who Lamarre might be, but
FitzMaugham had drawn a spidery little star in the upper-right-hand comer of
the memo sheet, indicating crash priority.
He flipped on the annunciator. "There's
a Mr. Lamarre who had an appointment with. Director FitzMaugham for 1215 today.
If he calls, tell him I can't see him today but will honor the appointment
tomorrow at the same time. If he shows up, tell him the same thing."
His
watch said it was time to dispose of another fragment of Fred's message. He
stuffed it into the disposal chute.
A
moment later the green light flashed over the arrival bin; FitzMaugham had not
been subject, as Walton had been in his previous office, to cascades of
material arriving without warning.
Walton
drew a sealed packet from the bin. He examined the seal and -found it
untampered, which was good; it meant the packet had come straight from the
computer, and had not even been read by the technician in charge. With it was a
typed list of five names—the doctors who had been in the lab the day before.
Breaking open the packet, Walton discovered-
seven closely-typed sheets with a series of itemized actions on them. He ran
through them quickly, discarding sheets one, two; and three, which dealt with
routine activities of the computer in the early hours of the previous day.
Item
seventy-three was his request for Philip Prior's record card. He checked that
one off.
Item
seventy-four was his requisition for the key to the clinic's gene-sorting code.
Item seventy-five was- his revision of Philip
Prior's records, omitting all reference to his tubercular condition and to the
euthanasia recommendation. Item seventy-six was the acknowledgment of this
revision.
Item seventy-seven was his request for the
boy's record card—this time, the amended one.lThe five items were dated and
timed; the earliest was 1025, the latest 1037, all on June tenth.
Walton
bracketed the five items thoughtfully, and scanned the rest of the page.
Nothing of interest there, just more routine business. But item ninety-two,
timed at 1102, was an intriguing one:
92: Full transcript of morning's transactions issued at request of Dr.
Frederic Walton, 932K104AZ.
Fred
hadn't been bluffing, then; be actually had possession of all the damning
evidence. But when one dealt with a computer and with Donnerson
micro-memory-tubes, the past was an extremely fluid entity.
"I
want a direct line to the computer on floor twenty," he said.
After
a brief lag a technician appeared on the screen. It was the same one he had
spoken to earlier.
"There's been an error in the
records," Walton said. "An error I wouldn't want to perpetuate. Will
you set me up so I can feed a direct order into the machine?"
"Certainly, sir. Go
ahead, sir."
"This is top secret. Vanish."
The
technician vanished. Walton said, "Items seventy-three through
seventy-seven on yesterday morning's record tapé are to be deleted, and the information carried in those tubes is to be
deleted as well. Furthermore, there is to be no record made of this
transaction."
The
voicewrite on floor twenty clattered briefly, and the order funneled into the
computer. Walton waited a moment, tensely. Then he said, "All right,
technician. Come back in where I can see you."
The
technician appeared. Walton said, "I'm running a check now. Have the
machine prepare another transcript of yesterday's activities between 0900 and
1200, and also one of today's doings for the last fifteen minutes."
"Right away, sir."
While
he waited for the new transcripts to arrive, Walton studied the list of names
on his desk. Five doctors— Gunther, Raymond, Archer, Hsi, Rein. He didn't know
which one of them had examined the Prior baby, nor did he care to find out. All
five would have to be transferred.
Meticulously,
he took up his stylus and pad again, and plotted a destination for each:
Gunther . . . Zurich.
Raymond . . . Glasgow.
Archer . . . Tierra del Fuego.
Hsi . . . Leopoldville.
Rein . . . Bangkok.
He nodded. That was optimum dissemination; he
would put through notice of the transfers later in the day, and by nightfall
the men would be on their way to their new scenes of operation. Perhaps they
would never understand why they had been uprooted and sent away from New York.
The
new transcripts arrived. Impatiently Walton checked through them.
In the June tenth transcript, item
seventy-one dealt with smallpox statistics for North America 1822-68, and item
seventy-two with the tally of antihistamine supply for requisitions for Clinic
Three. There was no sign of any of Walton's requests. They had vanished from
the record as completely as if they had never been.
Walton searched carefully through the June
eleventh transcript for any mention of his deletion order. No, that hadn't
been recorded either.
He
smiled, his first honest smile since FitzMaugham's assassination. Now, with the
computer records erased, the director dead, and the doctors on their way
elsewhere, only Fred stood in the way of Roy's chance of escaping punishment
for the Prior business.
He
decided he'd have to take - his chances with Fred. Perhaps brotherly love would
seal his lips after all.
VI
the late Director FitzMaugham's files were spread over
four floors of the building, but for Walton's purposes the only ones that
mattered were those to which access was gained through the director's office
alone.
A keyboard and screen were set into the wall
to the left of the desk. Walton let his fingers rest lighdy on the gleaming
keys.
The main problem facing him, he thought, lay
in not knowing where to begin. Despite his careful agenda, despite the
necessary marshaling of his thoughts, he was still confused by the enormity of
his job. The seven billion people of the world were in his hands. He could
transfer fifty thousand New Yorkers to the bleak northern provinces
of
underpopulated Canada with the same quick ease that he had shifted five
unsuspecting doctors half an hour before.
After a few moments of uneasy thought he
pecked out the short message, Request complete data file on terraforming project.
On
the screen appeared the words, Acknowledged and coded; prepare to receive.
The
arrival bin thrummed with activity. Walton hastily scooped out a double handful
of typed sheets to make room for more. He grinned in anguish as the paper kept
on coming. FitzMaugham's files on terraforming, no doubt, covered reams and
reams.
Staggering,
he carted it all over to his desk and began to skim through it. The data began
thirty years earlier, in 2202, with a photostat of a letter from Dr. Herbert
Lang to FitzMaugham, proposing a project whereby the inner planets of the solar
system could be made habitable by human beings.
Appended
to that was FitzMaugham's skeptical, slightly mocking reply; the old man had
kept everything, it seemed, even letters which showed him in a bad light.
After
that came more letters from Lang, urging FitzMaugham to plead terraforming's
case before the United States Senate, and FitzMaugham's increasingly more enthusiastic
answers. Finally, in 2212, a notation that the Senate had voted a
million-dollar appropriation to Lang—a miniscule amount, in terms of the
overall need, but it was enough to cover preliminary research. Lang had been
grateful.
Walton skimmed through more-or-less familiar
documents on the nature of the terraforming project. He could study those in
detail later, if time permitted. What he wanted now was information on the
current status of the project; FitzMaugham had been remarkably silent about it,
though the public impression had been created that a team of engineers headed
by Lang was already at work on Venus.
He
shoved whole handfuls of letters to one side, looking for those of recent
date.
Here
was one dated 1 Feb 2232, FitzMaugham to Lang: it informed the scientist that
passage of the Equalization Act was imminent, and that Lang stood to -get a substantial
appropriation from the UN in that event. A jubilant reply from Lang was
attached.
Following that came another, 10 May 2232,
FitzMaugham to Lang: official authorization of Lang as an executive member of
Popeek, and appropriation of—Walton's eyes bugged—five billion dollars for
terraforming research.
'Note from Lang to FitzMaugham, 14 May: the
terra-forming crew was leaving for Venus immediately.
Note
from FitzMaugham to Lang, 16 May: best wishes, and Lang was instructed to
contact FitzMaugham without fail at weekly intervals.
Spacegram
from Lang to FitzMaugham, 28 May: arrived" at Venus safely, preparing
operation as scheduled.
The
file ended there. Walton rummaged through the huge heap, hoping to discover a
later, communiqué; by Fitz-Maugham's own request, Lang should
have contacted Popeek about four days ago with his first report.
Possibly
it had gone astray in delivery, Walton thought. He spent twenty minutes digging
through the assorted material before remembering that he could get a replacement within seconds from the filing computer.
He
typed out a requisition for any and all correspondence between Director
FitzMaugham and Dr. Herbert Lang that was dated after 28 May 2232.
The machine acknowledged, and a moment later
replied, This
material is not included in memory banks.
Walton frowned, gathered up most of his
superfluous terraforming data, and deposited it in a file drawer. The status of the project, then, was uncertain: the
terraformers were on Venus and presumably at work, but were yet to be heard from.
The
next Popeek project to tack down would be the faster-than-light spaceship
drive. But after the mass of data Walton had just absorbed, he found himself
hesitant to wade through another collection so soon.
He realized that he was hungry for the sight
of another human being. He had spent the whole morning alone, speaking to
anonymous underlings via screen or annunciator, and requisitioning material
from an even more impersonal computer. He wanted noise, life, people around
him.
He
snapped on the annunciator. "I'm calling an immediate meeting of the
Popeek section chiefs," he said. "In my office, in half an hour—at
1230 sharp. Tell them to drop whatever they're doing and come."
Just
before they started to arive, Walton felt a sudden sick wave of tension sweep
dizzyingly over him. He pulled open the top drawer of his new desk and reached
for his tranquilizer tablets. He suffered a moment of shock and disorientation
before he realized that this was Fitz-Maugham's desk, not his own, and that
FitzMaugham forswore all forms of sedation.
Chuckling
nervously, Walton drew out his wallet and extracted the extra benzolurethrin he
carried for just such emergencies. He popped the lozenge into his mouth only a
moment before the spare figure of Lee Percy, first of the section chiefs to
arrive, appeared in the screener outside the door.
"Roy?
It's me—Percy."
"I
can see you. Come on in, Lee."
Percy
was in charge of public relations for Popeek. He was a tall, angular man with
thick corrugated features. After him came Teddy Schaunhaft, clinic coordinator;
Pauline
Medhurst, personnel director; Olaf Eglin, director of field agents; and Sue
Llewellyn, Popeek's comptroller.
These
five had constituted the central council of Popeek. Walton, as assistant
administrator, had served as their coordinator, as well as handling population
transfer and serving as a funnel for red tape. Above them all had been
Fitz-Maugham, brooding over his charges like an untroubled Wotan; FitzMaugham
had reserved for himself, aside from the task of general supervision, the
special duties attendant on handling the terraforming and faster-than-light wings
of Popeek.
"I should have called you together much
earlier than this," Walton said when they were settled. "The shock,
though, and the general confusion—"
"We
understand, Roy," said Sue Llewellyn sympathetically. She was a chubby
little woman in her fifties, whose private life was reported to be incredibly
at variance with her pleasantly domestic appearance. "It's been rough on
all of us, but you were so close to Mr. FitzMaugham. . . ."
There was sympathetic clucking from various
comers of the room'. Walton said, "The period of mourning will have to be
a Brief one. What I'm suggesting is that business continue as usual, without a
hitch." He glanced at Eglin, the director of field agents. "Olaf, is
there a man in your section capable of handling your job?"
Eglin looked astonished for a moment, then
mastered himself. "There must be five, at least. Walters, Lassen,
Dominic—"
"Skip the catalogue," Walton told
him. "Pick the man you think is best suited to replace you, and send his
dossier up to me for approval."
"And where do I go?"
"You
take over my slot as assistant * administrator. As director of field agents,
you're more familiar with the immediate problems of my old job than anyone
else here."
Eglin
preened himself smugly. Walton wondered if he had made an unwise choice; Eglin
was competent enough, and would give forth one hundred percent effort at all
times—but probably never the one hundred two percent a really great
administrator could put out when necessary.
Still, the post had to be filled at once, and
Eglin could pick up the reins faster than any of the others.
Walton
looked around. "Otherwise, activities of Popeek will continue as under Mr.
FitzMaugham, without a hitch. Any questions?"
Lee
Percy raised an arm slowly. "Roy, I've got a problem I'd like to bring up
here, as long as we're all together. There's a growing public sentiment that
you and the late director were secretly Herschelites." He' chuckled
apologetically. "I know it sounds silly, but I just report what I
hear."
"I'm familiar with the rumor,"
Walton said. "And I don't like it much, either. That's the sort of stuff
riots are made of."
The Herschelites were extremists who
advocated wholesale sterilization of defectives, mandatory birth control, and
half a dozen other stringent remedies for overpopulation.
"What
steps are you taking to counteract it?" Walton asked.
"Well,"
said Percy, "we're preparing a memorial program for FitzMaugham which will
intimate that he was murdered by the Herschelites, who hated him."
"Good. What's the slant?"
"That
he was too easygoing, too humane. We build up the Herschelites as
ultrareactionaries who intend to enforce their will on humanity if they, get
the chance, and imply FitzMaugham was fighting them tooth and nail. We close
the show with some shots of you picking up the great man's mantle, etcetera,
etcetera. And a short-speech from you affirming the basically humanitarian
aims of Popeek."
Walton smiled approvingly and said, "I
like it. When do you want me to do the speech?"
"We won't need you," Percy told
him. "We've got plenty of stock footage, and we can whip the speech out of
some spare syllables you left around."
Walton frowned. Too many of the public
speeches of the day were synthetic, created by skilled engineers who split words
into their component phonemes and reassembled them in any shape they pleased.
"Let me check through my speech before you put it over, at least."
"Will
do. And well squash this Herschelite thing right off the bat."
Pauline Medhurst squirmed uneasily in her
chair. Walton caught the hint and recognized her.
"Uh,
Roy, I don't know if this is the time or the place, but I got that transfer
order of yours, the five doctors . . ."
"You
did? Good," Walton said hurriedly. "Have you notified them
yet?"'
"Yes. They seemed
unhappy about it."
"Refer
them to FitzMaugham's book. Tell them they're cogs in a mighty machine,-
working to save humanity. We can't let personal considerations interefere,
Pauline."
"If you could only
explain why—"
"Yeah," interjected Schaunhaft, the
clinic coordinator suddenly. "You cleaned out my whole morning lab shift
down there. I was wondering—"
Walton
felt like a stag at bay. "Look," he said firmly, cutting through the
hubbub, "I
made the transfer. I had
reasons for doing it. It's your job to get the five men out where they've been
assigned, and to get five new men in here at once. You're not required to make
explanations to them— nor I to you."
Sudden
silence fell over the office. Walton hoped he had not been too forceful, and
cast suspicion on his actions by his stiffness.
"Whew!" Sue Llewellyn said.
"You really mean business!"
"I said we were going to run Popeek
without a hitch," Walton replied. "Just because you know" my
first name, that doesn't mean I'm not going to be as strong a director as
FitzMaugham was."
Until the UN picks my successor, his mind added. Out loud he said,
"Unless you have any further questions, Til ask you now to return to your
respective sections."
He sat slumped at his desk after they were
gone, trying to draw on some inner reserve of energy for the strength to go on.
One day at the job, and he was tired,
terribly tired. And it would be six weeks or more before the United Nations
convened to choose the next director of Popeek.
He didn't know who that man would be. He
expected they would offer the job to him, provided he did competent work during
the interim; but, wearily, he saw he would have to turn the offer down.
It was not only that his nerves couldn't
handle the grinding daily tension of the job; he saw now what Fred might be up
to, and it stung.
What if his brother were to hold off exposing
him until the moment the UN proffered its appointment . . . and then took that
moment to reveal that the head of Popeek, far from being- an iron-minded
Herschelite, had actually been guilty of an irregularity that transgressed
against one of Popeek's own operations? He'd be finished. He'd be laughed out
of public life for good—and probably prosecuted in the bargain—if Fred exposed
him.
And Fred was perfectly capable of doing just
that.
Walton
saw himself spinning dizzily between conflicting alternatives. Keep the job and
face his brother's expose? Or resign, arid vanish into anonymity. Neither
choice seemed too appealing.
Shrugging, he dragged himself out of his
chair, determined to shroud his conflict behind the mask of work, He typed a
request to Files, requisitioning data on the faster-than-light project.
Moments later, the torrent began—rising from
somewhere in the depths of the giant computer, rumbling upward through the
conveyor system, moving onward toward the twenty-ninth floor and the office of
Interim Director Walton.
VII
The
next morning there was a
crowd gathered before the Cullen Building when Walton arrived.
There
must have been at least a hundred people, fanning outward from a central focus.
Walton stepped from the jet-bus and, with collar pulled up carefully to obscure
as much of his face as possible, went to investigate.
A small red-faced man stood on a rickety
chair against the side of the building. He was flanked by a pair of brass
flagpoles, one bearing the American flag and the other the ensign of the United
Nations. His voice was a biting rasp-probably, thought Walton, intensified,
sharpened, and made more irritating by a harmonic modulator at his throat. An
irritating voice put its message across twice as fast as a pleasant one.
He
was shouting, "This is the place! Up here, in. this building, that's where
they are! That's where Popeek wastes our money!"
From
the slant of the man's words Walton instandy thought: Herschelite!
He
repressed his anger and, for once, decided to stay and hear the extremist out.
He had never really paid much attention to Herschelite propaganda—he had been
exposed to little of it—and he realized that now, as head of Popeek, he owed it
to himself to become familiar with the anti-Po-peek arguments of both extremist
factions—those who insisted Popeek was a tyranny, and the Herschelites, who
thought it was too weak.
"This
Popeek," the little man said, accenting the awkwardness of the word.
"You know what it is? It's a stopgap. It's a silly, soft-mirided,
half-hearted attempt at solving our problems. It's a fake, a fraud, a
phony!"
There
was real passion behind the words. Walton distrusted small men with deep wells
of passion; he no more enjoyed their company than he did that of a dynamo or an
atomic pile. They 'were always threatening to explode.
The
crowd was stirring restlessly. The Herschelite was getting to them, one way or
another. Walton drew back nervously, not wanting to be recognized, and
stationed himself at the fringe of the crowd.
"Some
of you don't like Popeek for this reason or that reason. But let me tell you
something, friends . . . you're wronger than they arel We've got to get tough
with ourselves! We have to face the truth! Popeek is an unrealistic
half-solution to man's problems. Until we limit birth, establish rigid
controls over who's going to live and who isn't, welt was straight Herschelite
propaganda, undiluted. Walton wasn't surprised when someone in the audience
interrupted, growling, "And who's going to set those controls? You?"
"You
trusted yourselves to Popeek, didn't you? Why hesitate, then, to trust
yourselves to Abel Herschel and his group of workers for the betterment and
purification of mankind?"
Walton was almost limp with amazement. The
Herschelite group was so much more drastic in its approach than Popeek that he
wondered how they dared come out with these views in public. Animosity was high
enough against Popeek; would the public accept a group more stringent yet?
The little man's voice rose high.
"Onward with the Herschelites! Mankind must move forwardl The Equalization
people represent the forces of decay and slothl"
Walton turned to the man next to him and
murmured, "But Herschel's a fanatic. They'll kill all of us in the name of
mankind."
The
man looked puzzled; then, accepting the idea, he nodded. "Yeah, buddy. You
know, you may have something there."
That was all the spark needed. Walton edged
away surreptitiously and watched it spread through the crowd, while the little
man's harangue grew more and more inflammatory.
Until a rock arced through the air from
somewhere, whipped across the billowing UN flag, and cracked into the side of
the building. That was the signal.
A
hundred men and women converged on the little man on the battered chair.
"We have
to face the truth!" the harsh voice cried; then the flags were swept down, trampled on.
Flagpoles fell, ringing metallically on the concrete; the chair toppled. The
little man was lost beneath a tide of remorseless feet and arms.
A siren screamed.
"Cops!"
Walton yelled from his vantage point some thirty feet away, and abruptly the
crowd melted away in all directions, leaving Walton and the little man alone on
the street. A security wagon drew up. Four men in gray uniforms sprang out.
"What's been going on here? Who's this
man?" Then, seeing Walton, "Hey! Come over here!"
"Of
course, officer." Walton turned his collar down and drew near. He spotted
the glare of a ubiquitous video camera and faced it squarely. "I'm
Director Walton of Popeek," he said loudly, into the camera. "I just
arrived here a few minutes ago. I saw the whole thing."
"Tell us about it, Mr. Walton," the
security man said.
"It
was a Herschelite." Walton gestured at the broken body crumpled against
the ground. "He was delivering an inflammatory speech aimed against
Popeek, with special reference to the late Director FitzMaugham and myself. I
was about to summon you and end the disturbance, when the listeners became
aware that the man was a Herschelite. When they understood what he was
advocating, they—well, you see the result."
"Thank
you, sir. Terribly sorry we couldn't have prevented it. Must be very
unpleasant, Mr. Walton."
"The
man was asking for trouble," Walton said. "Popeek represents the
minds and hearts of the world. Herschel and his people seek to overthrow this
order. I can't condone violence of any sort, naturally, but"—he smiled
into the camera—"Popeek is a sacred responsibility to me. Its enemies I
must regard as blind and misguided people."
He
turned and entered the building, feeling pleased with himself. That sequence
would be shown globally on the next news screenings; every newsblare in the
world would be reporting his words.
Lee
Percy would be proud of him. Without benefit either of rehearsal or phonemic
engineering, Walton had delivered a rousing speech and turned a grisly
incident into a major propaganda instrument.
And
more than that, Director FitzMaugham would have been proud of him.
But beneath the glow of pride, he was
trembling. Yesterday he had saved a boy by a trifling alteration of his
genetic record; today he had killed a man by sending a whispered accusation
rustling through a mob.
Power.
Popeek represented power,
perhaps the greatest power in the world. That power would have to be channeled
somehow, now that it had been unleashed.
The stack of papers relating to the
superspeed space drive was still on his desk when he entered the office. He-had
had time yesterday to read through just some of the earliest; then, the
pressure of routine had dragged him off to other duties.
Encouraged by FitzMaugham, the faster-than-light
project had originated about a decade or so before. It stemmed from the fact
that the ion-drive used for travel between planets had a top velocity, a
limiting factor of about ninety thousand miles per second. At that rate, it
would take some eighteen years for a scouting party to visit the closest star
and report back . . . not very efficient for a planet in a hurry to expand
outward.
A
group of scientists had set to work developing a sub-space warp drive, one that
would cut across the manifold of normal space and allow speeds above light
velocity.
All
the records were here: the preliminary trials, the budget allocations, the
sketches and plans, the names of the researchers. Walton ploughed painstakingly
through them, learning names, assimilating scientific data. It seemed that,
while it was still in its early stages, FitzMaugham had nurtured the project
along with money from his personal fortune.
For most of the morning Walton leafed through
documents describing projected generators, types of hull material,
specifications, speculations. It was nearly noon when he came across the
neatly-typed note from Colonel Leslie McLeod, one of the military scientists in
charge of the ultra-drive project. Walton read it through once, gasped, and
read it again.
It was dated 14 June 2231, almost one year
ago. It read:
My dear Mr. FitzMaugham:
I'm sure it will gladden you to learn that we
have at last achieved success in our endeavors. The X-72
passed its last tests splendidly, and we are
ready to leave on the preliminary scouting flight at once.
McLeod
It was followed by a note from FitzMaugham to
McLeod, dated 15 June:
Dr. McLeod:
All best wishes on your great adventure. 1
trust you'll be departing, as usual, from the Nairobi base within the next few
days. Please let me hear from you before departure.
FitzM.
The file concluded with a final note from
McLeod to the director, dated 19 June 2231:
My dear Mr. FitzMaugham:
The
X-72 will leave Nairobi in eleven hours, bound outward, manned by a crew of
sixteen, including myself. The men are all impatient for the departure. I must
offer my hearty thanks for the help you have given us over the past years,
without which we would never have reached this step.
Flight plans include visiting several of the
nearer stars, with the intention of returning either as soon as we have
discovered a ludyitable extra-solar world, or one year after departure,
whichever first occurs.
'Sincere good wishes, and may you have as
much success when you plead your case before the United Nations as we have had
here—though you'll forgive me for hoping that our work might make any
population equalization program on Earth totally superfluous!
McLeod
Walton stared at the three notes for a
moment, so shocked he was unable to react. So a faster-than-light drive was not
merely a hoped-for dream, but an actuality—with the first scouting mission a
year absent already!
He
felt a new burst of admiration for FitzMaugham. What a marvelous old scoundrel
he had been!
Faster-than-light
achieved, and the terraforming group on Venus, and neither fact released to the
public ... or even specifically given
to FitzMaugham's own staff, his alleged confidants.
It had been shrewd of him, all right. He
had'made sure nothing could go wrong. If something happened to Lang and his
crew on Venus—and it was quite possible, since word from them was a week
overdue—it would be easy to say that the terraforming project was still in the
planning stage. In the event of success, the excuse was that word of their
progress had been withheld for "security reasons."
And
the same would apply to the space drive; if McLeod and his men vanished into
the nether regions of interstellar space and never returned, FitzMaugham would
not have had to answer for the failure of a project which, as far as the public
knew, was still in the planning stage. It was a double-edged sword with the
director controlling both edges.
And
now Walton was in charge. He hoped he would be able to continue' manipulations
with an aplomb worthy of the late Director FitzMaugham.
The
annunciator chimed. "Dr. Lamarre" is here for his appointment with
you, Mr. Walton."
Walton
was caught off guard. His mind raced furiously. Lamarre? Who the dickens—oh, that left-over
appointment of FitzMaugham's.
"Tell
Dr. Lamarre I'll be glad to see him in just a few minutes, please. I'll buzz
you when I'm ready."
Hurriedly he gathered up
the space-flight documents and jammed them in a file drawer near the data on
terraforming. He surveyed his office; it looked neat, presentable. Glancing
around, he made sure no stray documents were visible, documents which might
reveal the truth about the space drive.
"Send in Dr.
Lamarre," he said.
Dr.
Lamarre was a short, thin, pale individual, with an uncertain wave in his sandy
hair and a slight stoop of his shoulders. He carried a large, black leather
portfolio which seemed on the point of exploding.
"Mr. Walton?"
"That's right. You're
Dr. Lamarre?"
The small man handed him an
engraved business card.
T.
ELLIOT LAMARRE Gerorttologist
Walton
fingered the card uneasily and returned it to its owner. "Gerontologist?
One who studies ways of increasing the human life-span?"
"Precisely."
Walton frowned. "I presume you've had
some previous dealings with the late Director FitzMaugham?"
Lamarre gaped. "You mean he didn't tell you?"
"Director FitzMaugham shared very little
information with his assistants, Dr. Lamarre. The suddenness of my elevation
to this post gave me little time to explore his files. Would you mind filling
me in on the background?"
"Of course." Lamarre crossed his
legs and squinted myopically across the desk at. Walton. "To be brief, Mr.
FitzMaugham first heard of my work fourteen years ago. Since that time, he's
supported my experiments with private grants of his own, public appropriations
whenever possible, and lately with money supplied by Popeek. Naturally, because
of the nature of my work I've shunned publicity. I
completed
my final tests last week, and was to have seen the director yesterday.
But—"
"I
know. I was busy going through Mr. FitzMaugham's files when you called
yesterday. I didn't have time to see anyone." Walton wished he had checked
on this man Lamarre earlier. Apparently it was a private project of FitzMaugham's
and of some importance.
"May I ask what this 'work' of yours
consists of?"
"Certainly. Mr. FitzMaugham expressed a
hope that someday man's life span might be infinitely extended. I'm happy to
report that I have developed a simple technique which will provide just
that." The little man smiled in self-satisfaction. "In short,"
he said, "what I have developed, in everyday terms, is immortality, Mr.
Walton."
VIII
walton was becoming hardened to astonishment; the further
he excavated into the late director's affairs, the less susceptible he was to
the visceral reaction of shock.
Still, this stunned him for a moment.
"Did you say you'd perfected this
technique?" he asked slowly. "Or that it was still in the planning
stage?"
Lamarre tapped the thick, glossy black
portfolio. "In here. I've got it all." He seemed ready to burst with
self-satisfaction.
Walton leaned back, spread his fingers
against the surface of the desk, and wrinkled his forehead. "I've had this
job since" 1300 on the tenth, Mr. Lamarre. That's exactly two days ago, minus
half an hour. And in that time I don't think I've had less than ten major
shocks and half a dozen minor ones."
"Sir?"
"What
I'm getting at is this: just why did Director FitzMaugham sponsor this project
of yours?"
Lamarre
looked blank. "Because the director was a great humanitarian, of course.
Because he felt that the human life was short, far too short, and he wished his
fellow men to enjoy long life. What other reason should there be?"
"I
know FitzMaugham was a great man ... I
was his secretary for three years." (Though he never said a word a-hout you, Dr. Lamarre, Walton thought.) "But to develop
immortality at this stage of man's existence . . ." Walton shook his head.
"Tell me about your work, Dr. Lamarre."
"It's difficult to sum up readily. I've
fought degeneration of the body on the cellular level, and my tests show a
successful outcome. Phagocyte stimulation combined with —the data's all here,
Mr. Walton. I needn't run through it for you."
He began to hunt in the portfolio, fumbling
for something. After a moment he extracted a folded quarto sheet, spread it
out, and nudged it across the desk toward Walton.
The director glanced at the sheet; it was
covered with chemical equations. "Spare me the technical details, Dr.
Lamarre. Have you tested your treatment yet?"
"With the only test possible, the test
of time. There are insects in my laboratories that have lived five years or
more —veritable Methuselahs of their genera. Immortality is not something one
can test in less than infinite time. But beneath the microscope, one can see
the cells regenerating, one can see decay combated. . . ."
Walton
took a deep breath. "Are you aware, Dr. Lamarre, that for the benefit of
humanity I really should have you shot at once?"
"Whatr
Walton nearly burst out laughing; the man
looked outrageously funny with that look of shocked incomprehension
on
his face. "Do you understand what immortality would do to Earth?" he
asked. "With no other planet of the solar system habitable by man, and
none of the stars within reach? Within a generation we'd be living ten to the
square inch. We'd—"
"Director FitzMaugham was aware of these
things,'' La-marre interrupted sharply. "He had no .intention of administering
my discovery wholesale to the populace. What's more, he was fully confident
that a faster-than-light space drive would soon let us reach the planets, and
that the terraforming engineers would succeed with their work on Venus."
"Those
two factors are still unknowns in the equation," Walton said.
"Neither has succeeded, as of now. And "-we can't possibly let word
of your discovery get out until there are avenues to handle the overflow of
population already on hand."
"So you propose—"
"To confiscate the notes you have with
you, and to insist that you remain silent about this serum of yours until I
give you permission to announce it."
"And if I refuse?"
Walton spread his hands. "Dr. Lamarre,
I'm a reasonable man trying to do a very hard job. You're a scientist— and a
sane one, I hope. I'd appreciate your cooperation. Bear with me a few weeks,
and then perhaps the situation will change."
Awkward silence followed. Finally Lamarre
said, "Very well. If you'll return my notes, I promise to keep silent
until you give me permission to speak."
"That won't be enough. Ill need to keep
the notes."
Lamarre sighed. "If you insist," he
said.
When he was again alone, Walton stored the
thick portfolio in a file drawer and stared at it quizzically.
FitzMaugham, he thought, you were incredible]
Lamarre's
immortality serum, or whatever it was, was deadly. Whether it actually worked
or not was irrelevant. If word ever escaped that an immortality drug existed,
there would be rioting and death on a vast scale.
FitzMaugham
had certainly seen that, and yet he had sublimely underwritten development of
the serum, knowing that if terraforming and the ultradrive project should fail,
Lamarre's project represented a major threat to civilization.
Well,
Lamarre had knuckled under to Walton willingly enough. The problem now was to
contact Lang on Venus and find out what was happening up there. . . .
"Mr.
Walton," said the annunciator. "There's a coded message arriving for
Director FitzMaugham."
"Where from?"
"From space, sir. They say they have
news, but they won't give it to anyone but Mr. FitzMaugham."
Walton cursed. "Where is this message
being received?"
"Floor twenty-three,
sir. Communications."
"Tell them I'll be
right down," Walton snapped.
He
caught a lift tube and arrived on the twenty-third floor moments later. No
sooner had the tube door opened than he sprang out, dodging around a pair of
startled technicians, and sprinted down the corridor toward communications.
Here throbbed the network that held the
branches of Popeek together. From here the screens were powered, the
annunciators were linked, the phones connected.
Walton pushed open a door marked Communications Central and confronted four busy engineers who were
crowded around a complex receiving mechanism.
"Where's that space message?" he
demanded of the sallow young engineer who approached him.
"Still coining in, sir. They're
repeating it over and over.
We're
triangulating their position now. Somewhere near the orbit of Pluto, Mr. Walton."
"Devil with that.
Where's the message?"
Someone
handed him a slip of paper. It said, Calling Earth. Urgent call, top urgency, crash urgency. Will communicate
only with D. F. FitzMaugham.
"This
all it is?" Walton asked. "No signature, no ship name?"
"That's right, Mr. Walton."
"Okay. Find them in a hurry and send
them a return message. Tell them FitzMaugham's dead and I'm his successor.
Mention me by name."
"Yes, sir."
He stamped impatiently around the lab while
they set to' work beaming the message into the void. Space communication was a
field that dazzled and bewildered Walton, and he watched in awe as they swung
into operation.
Time
passed. "You know of any ships supposed to be in that sector?" he
asked someone.
"No, sir. We weren't expecting any calls
except from Lang on Venus—" The technician gasped, realizing he had made a
slip, and turned pale.
"That's
all right," Walton assured him. "I'm the director, remember? I know
all about Lang."
"Of course, sir."
"Here's
a reply, sir," another of the nameless, faceless technicians said. Walton
scanned it.
It
read, Hello Walton. Request
further identification before we report. McL.
A little shudder of satisfaction shook Walton
at the sight of the initialed McL. at
the end of the message. That could mean only McLeod—and that could mean only one thing: the experimental starship had returnedl
Walton
realized depressedly that this probably implied that they hadn't found any Earth-type
worlds among the stars. McLeod's note to FitzMaugham had said they would search
for a year, and would return home at the end of that time if they had no
success. And just about a year had elapsed.
He said, "Send this return message:
McLeod, Nairobi, X-72. Congratulations! Walton."
The
technician vanished again, leaving Walton alone. He gazed moodily at the
complex maze of equipment all around him, listened to the steady tick-tick of the communication devices, strained his
ears to pick up fragments of conversation from the men.
After
what seemed like an hour, the technician returned. "There's a message
coming through now, sir. We're decoding it as fast as we can."
"Make
it snappy," Walton said. His watch read 1429. Only twenty minutes had
passed since he had gone down there.
A grimy sheet of paper, was thrust under his
nose. He read it:
Hello Walton, this is McLeod. Happy to report
that experimental ship X-72 is returning home with all hands in good shape,
after a remarkable one-year cruise of the galaxy. I feel like Ulysses returning
to Ithaca, except we didn't have such a hard time of it.
I
imagine you'll be interested in this: we found a perfectly lovely and livable
world in the Procyon system. No intelligent life at all, and incredibly fine
climate. Pity old FitzMaugham couldn't have lived to hear about it. Be seeing
you soon. McLeod.
Walton's hands were still shaking as he
pressed the actuator that would let him back into his office. He would have to
call another meeting of the section chiefs again, to discuss the best method of
presenting this exciting news to the world.
For one thing, they would have to explain
away Fitz-
Maugham's
failure to reveal that the X-72 had been sent out over a year ago. That could
be easily handled.
Then,
there would have to be a careful build-up: descriptions of the new world,
profiles of the heroes who had found it, etcetera. Someone was going to have to
work out a plan for emigration . . . unless the resourceful Fitz-Maugham had
already drawn up such a plan and stowed it in Files for just this anticipated
day.
And
then, perhaps Lamarre could be called back now, and allowed to release his
discovery. Plans buzzed in Walton's mind: in the event that people proved
reluctant to leave Earth and conquer an unknown world, no matter how tempting
the climate, it might be feasible to dangle immortality before them—to restrict
Lamarre's treatment to volunteer colonists, or something along that line. There
was plenty of time to figure that out, Walton thought.
He
stepped into his office and locked the door behind him. A glow of pleasure
surrounded him; for once it seemed that things were heading in the right
direction. He was happy, in a way, that FitzMaugham was no longer in charge.
Now, with mankind on the threshold of—
Walton blinked. Did I leave that file drawer open when I left
the office? he
wondered. He was usually more cautious than that.
The file was definitely open now, as were the
two cabinets adjoining it. Numbly he swung the cabinet doors wider, peered into
the shadows, groped inside.
The
drawers containing the documents pertaining to terraforming and to McLeod's
space drive seemed intact. But the cabinet in which Walton had placed Lamarre's
portfolio—that cabinet was totally emptyl
Someone's
been in here, he
thought angrily. And then the anger changed to agony as he remembered what had
been in Lamarre's portfolio, and what would happen if that formula were loosed
indiscriminately in the world.
the odd part of it, Walton thought, was that there was
absolutely nothing he could do.
He
could call Sellors and give him a roasting for not guarding his office
properly, but that wouldn't restore the missing portfolio.
He
could send out a- general alarm, and thereby let the world know that there was
such a thing as Lamarre's formula. That would be catastrophic.
Walton
slammed the cabinet shut and spun the lock. Then, heavily, he dropped into his
chair and rested his head in his arms. All the jubilation of a few moments before
had suddenly melted into dull apprehension.
Suspects?
Just two—Lamarre, and Fred. Lamarre because he was obvious; Fred because he
was likely to do anything to hurt his brother.
"Give me Sellors in security,"
Walton said quietly.
Sellors' bland face appeared on the screen.
He blinked at the sight of Walton, causing Walton to wonder just how ghastly
his own appearance was; even with the executive filter touching up the
transmitted image, sprucing him up and falsifying him for the public benefit,
he probably looked dreadful.
"Sellors, I want you to send out a
.general order for a Dr. Lamarre. You'll find his appearance recorded on the
entrance tapes for today; he came to see me earlier. The first name'
is—ah—Elliot. T. Elliot Lamarre, gerontologist. I don't know where he
lives."
"What should I do when I find him,
sir?"
"Bring him here at once. And if you
catch him at home,
slap a seal on his door. He may be in
possession of some very important secret documents." "Yes, sir."
"And get hold of the doorsmith who
repaired my office door; I want the lock calibration changed at once,
"Certainly, sir."
The
screen faded. Walton turned back to his desk and busied himself in meaningless
paper work, trying to keep himself from thinking.
A
few moments later the screen brightened again. It was Fred.
Walton stared coldly at his brother's image. "Well?" Fred
chuckled. "Why so pale and wan, dear brother? Disappointed in love?
"What do you want?"
"An
audience with His Highness the Interim Director, if it please His Grace."
Fred grinned unpleasantly. "A private, audience, if you please,
m'lord."
"Very well. Come on up here."
Fred
shook his head. "Sorry, no go. There are too many tricky spy pickups in
that office of .yours. Let's meet elsewhere, shall we?"
"Where?"
"That
club you belong to. The Bronze Room."
Walton
sputtered. "But I can't leave the building nowl There's no one who—"
"Now,"
Fred interrupted. "The Bronze Room. It's in the San Isidro, isn't it? Top
of Nevillfe Prospect?"
"All
right," said Walton resignedly. "There's a door-smith coming up here
to do some work. Give me a minute lo cancel the assignment and I'll meet you
downstairs."
"You
leave now," Fred said. "I'll arrive five minutes after you. And you
won't need to cancel anything. I was
the doorsmith."
' Neville Prospect was the most fashionable
avenue in all of New York City, a wide strip of ferroconcrete running up the
West Side between Eleventh Avenue and the West Side Drive from Fortieth to
Fiftieth Street. It was bordered on both sides by looming apartment buildings
in which a man of wealth might Jiave as many as four or five rooms to his
suite; and at the very head of the Prospect, facing downtown, was the mighty
San Isidro, a buttressed fortress of gleaming metal and stone whose mighty,
beryllium-steel supports swept out in a massive arc five hundred feet in either
direction.
On the hundred fiftieth floor of the San
Isidro was the exclusive Bronze Room, from whose quartz windows might be seen
all the sprawling busyness of Manhattan and the close-packed confusion of New
Jersey just across the river.
The jetcopter delivered Walton to the
landing-stage of the Bronze Room; he tipped the man too much and stepped
within. A door of dull bronze confronted him. He touched his key to the signet
plate; the door pivoted noiselessly inward, admitting him.
The color scheme today was gray: gray light
streamed from the luminescent walls, gray carpets lay underfoot, gray tables
with gray dishes were visible in the murky distance. A gray-clad waiter, hardly
more than four feet tall, sidled up to Walton.
"Good to see you again, sir," he
murmured. "You have not been here of late."
"No," Walton said. "I've been
busy."
"A terrible tragedy, the death of Mr.
FitzMaugham. He was one of our most esteemed members. Will you have your usual
room today, sir?"
Walton
shook his head. "I'm entertaining a guest—my brother, Fred. We'll need a
compartment for two. Hell identify himself when he arrives."
"Of course. Come with me, please."
The gnome led him through a gray haze to
another bronze door, down a corridor lined with antique works of art, through
an interior room decorated with glowing lumi-facts of remarkable quality, past
a broad quartz window so clean as to be dizzyingly invisible, and up to a
narrow door with a bright red .signet plate in its center. For you, sir.
Walton touched his key to the signet plate;
the door crumpled like a fan. He stepped inside, gravely handed the gnome a
bill, and closed the door.
The
room was tastefully furnished, again in gray; the Bronze Room was always
uniformly monochromatic, though the hue varied with the day and with the mood
of the city. Walton had long speculated on what the club precincts would be
like were the electronic magic disconnected.
Actually, he knew, none of the Bronze Room's
appurtenances had any color except when the hand in the control room threw
the switch. The club held many secrets. It was FitzMaugham who had brought
about Walton's admission to the club, and Walton had been deeply grateful.
He
was in a room just comfortably large enough for two, with a single bright window
facing the Hudson, a small onyx table, a tiny screen tastefully set in the
wall, and a bar. He dialed himself a filtered rum, his favorite drink. The
dark, cloudy liquid came pouring instantly from the spigot.
The
screen suddenly flashed a wave of green, breaking the ubiquitous grayness. The
green gave way to the bald head and scowling face of Kroll, the Bronze Room's
doorman.
"Sir, there is a man outside who claims
to be your brother. He alleges he has an appointment with you here."
"That's
right, Kroll; send him' in. Fulks will bring him to my room."
"Just one moment, sir. First it is
needful to verify." Kroll's face vanished and Fred's appeared. "Is
this the man?" Kroll's voice asked. "Yes," Walton said.
"You can send my brother in."
Fred seemed a little dazed by the opulence.
He sat gingerly on the edge of the foamweb couch, obviously attempting to
appear blase and painfully conscious of his failure to do so.
"This is quite a place," he said
finally.
Walton
smiled. "A little on the palatial side for my tastes. I don't come here
often. The transition hurts too much when I go back outside."
"FitzMaugham got you in here, didn't
he?"
Walton nodded.
"I
thought so," Fred said. "Well, maybe someday soon I'll be a member
too. Then we can meet here more often. We don't see enough of each other, you
know."
"Dial yourself a drink," Walton
said. "Then tell me what's on your mind—or were you just angling to get an
invite up here?"
"It was more than that. But let me get a
drink before we begin."
Fred
dialed a Weesuer, heavy on the absinthe, and took a few sampling sips before
wheeling around to face Walton. He said, "One of the minor talents I
acquired in the course of my wanderings was doorsmithing. It's really not very
difficult to leam, for a man who applies himself."
"You were the one who repaired my office
door?"
Fred
smirked. "I was. I wore a mask, of course, and my uniform was borrowed.
Masks are very handy things. They make them most convincingly, nowadays. As,
for instance, the one worn by the man who posed as Ludwig."
"What do you know about—"
"Nothing. And that's the flat truth, Roy. I didn't kill
FitzMaugham,
and I don't know who did." He drained his drink and dialed another.
"No, the old man's death is as much of a mystery to me as it is to you.
But I have to thank you for wrecking the door so completely when you blasted
your way in. It gave me a chance to make some repairs when I most wanted
to."
Walton
held himself very carefully in check. He knew exactly what Fred was going to
say in the next few minutes, but he refused to let himself precipitate the
conversation.
With
studied care he rose, dialed another filtered rum for himself, and gently slid
the initiator switch on the electroluminescent kaleidoscope embedded in the
rear wall.
A
pattern of lights sprang into being—yellow, pale rose, blue, soft green. They
wove together, intertwined, sprang apart into a sharp hexagon, broke into a
scatter-pattern, melted, seemed to fall to the carpet in bright flakes.
"Shut that thing off!" Fred snapped
suddenly. "Come on! Shut it! Shut it!"
Walton
swung around. His brother was leaning forward intently, eyes clamped tight
shut. "Is it off?" Fred asked. "Tell me!"
Shrugging, Walton canceled the signal and the
lights faded. "You can open your eyes, now. It's off."
Cautiously Fred opened his eyes. "None
of your fancy tricks, Royl"
"Trick?" Walton asked innocently.
"What trick? Simple decoration, that's all—and quite lovely, too. Just
like the kaleidowhirls you've seen on video."
Fred
shook his head. "It's not the same thing. How do I know it's not some sort
of hypnoscreen? How do I know what those lights can do?"
Walton realized his brother was unfamiliar
with wall kaleidoscopes. "It's perfectly harmless," he said.
"But if you don't want it on, we can do without it."
"Good. That's the way I like it."
Walton observed that Fred's cool confidence
seemed somewhat shaken. His brother had made a tactical error in insisting on
holding their interview here, where Walton had so much the upper hand.
"May I ask again why you wanted to see
me?" Walton said.
"There
are those people," Fred said slowly, "who oppose the entire principle
of population equalization."
"I'm
aware of that. Some of them are members of this very club."
"Exactly.
Some of them are. The ones I mean are the gentry, those still lucky enough to
cling to land and home. The squire with a hundred acres in the Matto Grosso;
the wealthy landowner of Liberia; the gentleman who controls the rubber output
of one of the lesser Indonesian islands. These people, Roy, are unhappy over
equalization. They know that sooner or later you and your Bureau will find out
about them and will equalize them . . . say, by installing a hundred Chinese on
a private estate, or by using a private river for a nuclear turbine. You'll
have to admit that their dislike of equalization is understandable."
"Everyone's
dislike of equalization is understandable," Walton said. "I dislike
it myself. You got your evidence of that two days ago. No one likes to give up
special privileges."
"You see my point, then. There are
perhaps a hundred of these men in close contact with each other—" "What!"
"Ah, yes," Fred said. "A
league. A conspiracy, it might almost be called. Very, very shady doings."
"Yes."
"I work for
them," Fred said. i
Walton
let that soak in. "You're an employee of Pop-eek," he said. "Are
you inferring that you're both an employee of Popeek and an employee of a
group that seeks to undermine Popeek?" , Fred grinned proudly.
"That's the position on the nose. It calls for remarkable
compartmentalization of mind. I think I manage nicely."
Incredulously Walton said, "How long has
this been going on?"
"Ever
since I came to Popeek. This group is older than Popeek. They fought
equalization all the way, and lost. Now they're working from the bottom up and
trying to wreck things before you catch wise and confiscate their estates, as
you're now legally entitled to do."
"And
now that you've warned me they exist," Walton said, "you can be
assured that that's the first thing I'll do. The second thing I'll do will be
to have the security men track down their names and find out if there was an
actual conspiracy. If there was, it's jail for them. And the third thing I'll
do is discharge you from Popeek."
Fred
shook his head. "You won't do any of those things, Roy. You can't."
"Why?"
"I know something about you that
wouldn't look good if it came out in the open. Something that would get you
bounced out of your high position in a flash." „
"Not fast enough to stop me from setting
the wheels going. My successor would continue the job of rooting out your
league of landed gentry."
"I
doubt that," Fred said calmly. "I doubt it very much —because I'm going to be your successor."
crosscurrents of fear ran through Walton. He said,
"What are you talking about?"
Fred folded his arms complacently. "I
don't think it comes as news to you that I broke into your office this morning
while you were out.- It was very simple: when I installed the lock, I built in
a canceling circuit that would let me walk in whenever I pleased. And this
morning I pleased. I was hoping to find something I could use as immediate
leverage against you, but I hadn't expected anything as explosive as the
portfolio in the left-hand cabinet.
"Where is it?"
Fred
grinned sharply. "The contents of that portfolio are now in very safe
keeping, Roy. Don't bluster and don't threaten, because it won't work. I took
precautions."
"And-"
"And you know as well as I what would
happen if that immortality serum got distributed to the good old man in the
street," Fred said. "For one thing, there'd be a glorious panic. That
would solve your population problem for, a while, with millions killed in the
rush. But after that— where would you equalize, with every man and woman on
Earth living forever, and producing immortal children?"
"We don't know the long-range effects
yet—"
"Don't
temporize. You damned well know it'd be the biggest upheaval the world has ever
seen." Fred paused. "My employers," he said, "are in
possession of the Lamarre formulas now."
"And
with great glee are busy making themselves immortals."
"No. They don't trust the stuff, and
won't use it until it's been tried on two or 'three billion guinea pigs. Human
ones."
"They're
not planning to release the serum, are they?" Walton gasped.
"Not immediately," Fred said.
"In exchange for certain concessions on your part, they're prepared to
return Lamarre's portfolio to you without making use of it."
"Concessions? Such as what?"
"That you refrain from declaring their
private lands open territory for equalization. That you resign your post as
interim director. That you go before the General Assembly and recommend me as
your successor."
"You?"
"Who else is best fitted to serve the
interests I represent?"
Walton
leaned back, his face showing a mirth he scarcely felt. "Very neat, Fred.
But full of holes. First thing, what assurance have I that your wealthy friends
won't keep a copy of the Lamarre formula and use it as a bludgeon in the future
against anyone they don't agree with?"
"None," Fred admitted.
"Naturally.
What's more, suppose I refuse to give in and your employers release the serum
to all and sundry. Who gets hurt? Not me; I live in a one-room box myself. But
they'll be filling the world with billions and billions of people. Their
beloved estates will be overrun by the hungry multitudes, whether they like it
or -not. And no fence will keep out a million hungry people."
"This is a risk they recognize,"
Fred said.
Walton smiled triumphantly. "You mean
they're bluffing! They know they don't dare release that serum, and they think
they can get me out of the way and you, their puppet, into office by making
menacing noises. All right. I'll call their bluff."
"You mean you refuse?"
"Yes," Walton
said. "I have no intention of resigning my interim directorship, and when
the Assembly convenes I'm going to ask for the job on a permanent basis.
They'll give it to me."
"And my evidence
against you? The Prior baby?"
"Hearsay. Propaganda.
I'll laugh it right out of sight."
"Try
laughing off the serum, Roy. It won't be so easy as all that."
"I'll
manage," Walton said tightly. He crossed the room and jabbed down on the
communicator stud. The screen lit; the wizened face of the tiny servitor
appeared.
"Sir?"
"Fulks, would you show this gentleman
out of my chamber, please? He has no further wish to remain with me."
"Right away, Mr. Walton."
"Before you throw me out," Fred
said, 'let me tell you one more thing." "Go ahead."
"You're acting stupidly—though that's
nothing new for you, Roy. I'll give you a week's grace to make up your mind.
Then the serum goes into production."
"My mind is made up," Walton said
stiffly. The door telescoped and Fulks stood outside. He smiled obsequiously at
Walton, bowed to Fred, and said to him, "Would you come with me,
please?"
It was like one of those dreams, Walton
thought, in which you were a butler bringing dishes to the table, and the tray
becomes obstinately stuck to your fingertips and refuses to be separated; or in
which the Cavendishes are dining in state and you come to the table nude; or in
which you float downward perpetually with never a sign of bottom.
There never seemed to be any way. out. Force
opposed force and he seemed doomed' always to be caught in the middle.
Angrily
he snapped the kaleidoscope back on and let its everchanging swirl of color
distract him. But in the depth of the. deepest violet he kept seeing his
brother's mocking face.
He summoned Fulks.
The
gnome looked up at him expectantly. "Get me a jet-copter," Walton
ordered. "I'll be waiting-on the west stage for it."
"Very good, sir."
Fulks
never had any problems, Walton reflected sourly. The little man had found his
niche in life; he spent his days in the plush comfort of the Bronze Room,
seeing to the wants of the members. Never any choices to make, never any of the
agonizing decisions that complicated life.
Decisions. Walton realized that one
particular decision had been made for him, that of seeking the directorship permanently.
He had not been planning to do that. Now he had no choice but to remain in
office as long as he could.
He
stepped out onto the landing stage and into the waiting jetcopter.
"Cullen Building," he told the robopilot abstractedly.
He did not feel very cheerful.
The annunciator panel in Walton's office was
bright as a Christmas tree; the signal bulbs were all alight, each representing
someone anxious to speak to him. He flipped over the circuit-breaker,
indicating he was back in his office, and received the first call.
It
was from Lee Percy. Percy's thick features were wrinkled into a smile.
"Just heard that speech you made outside the building this morning, Roy.
It's getting a big blare on the newsscreens. Beautiful! Simply beautiful!
Couldn't have been better if we'd concocted it ourselves."
"Glad
you like it," Walton said. "It really was off the cuff."
"Even
better, then. You're positively a genius. Say, I wanted to tell you that we've
got the FitzMaugham memorial all whipped up and ready to go. Full channel
blast tonight over all media at 2000 sharp ...
a solid hour block. Nifty. Neat."
"Is my speech in the program?"
"Sure
is, Roy. A slick one, too. Makes two speeches of yours blasted in a single
day."
"Send
me a transcript of my speech before it goes on the air," Walton said.
"I want to read and approve that thing if it's supposed to be coming out
of my mouth."
"It's a natural, Roy. You don't have to
worry."
"I want to read it beforehand!" Walton snapped.
"Okay, okay. Don't chew my ears off. I'M
ship it to you posthaste, man. Ease up. Pop a pill. You aren't loose,
Roy."
"I can't afford to be," Walton
said.
He broke contact and almost instantly the
next call blossomed on the screen. Walton recognized the man as one of the
technicians from communications, floor twenty-three.
"Well?"
"We heard from McLeod again, sir.
Message came in half an hour ago and we've been trying to reach you ever
since." "I wasn't in. Give me the message."
The
technician unfolded a slip of paper. "It says, 'Arriving Nairobi tonight,
will be in New York by morning. McLeod.'"
"Good. Send him confirmation and tell
him I'll keep the entire morning free to see him." "Yes, sir."
"Oh—anything from Venus?"
The
technician shook his head emphatically. "Not. a peep. We can't make
contact with Dr. Lang at all." ,
Walton
frowned. He wondered what was happening to the tenaforming crew up there.
"Keep trying, will you?
Work
a twenty-four-hour-a-day schedule. Draw extra pay. But get in touch with Lang,
dammitl"
"Y-yes, sir. Anything else?"
"No. Get off the line."
iAs
the contact snapped Walton
smoothly broke connection again, leaving ten more would-be callers sputtering.
A row of lights a foot long indicated their presence on the line. Walton
ignored them and turned instead to his newsscreen.
The
1400 news was on. He fiddled with the controls and saw his own face take form
on the screen. He was standing outside the Cullen Building, looking right out
of the screen at himself, and in the background could be seen a huddled form
under a coat. The dead Herschelite.
Walton
of the screen was saying, ". . . The man was asking for trouble. Popeek
represents the minds and hearts of the world. Herschel and his people seek to
overthrow this order. I can't condone violence of any sort, naturally, but
Popeek is.a sacred responsibility to me. Its enemies I must regard as blind and
misguided people."
He
was smiling into the camera, but there was something behind the smile,
something cold and steely, that astonished the watching Walton. My God, he thought, ƒ* that genuine? Have I really grown so hard?
Apparently
he had. He watched himself turn majestically and stride into the Cullen
Building, stronghold of Popeek. There was definitely a commanding air about
him.
The commentator was saying, "With those
heartfelt words, Director Walton goes to his desk in the Cullen Building to
carry out his weighty task. To bring life out of death, joy out of sadness—this-
is the job facing Popeek, and this is the .sort of man to whom it has been
entrusted. Roy Walton, we salute you!"
The screen panned to a still of Director
FitzMaugham. "Meanwhile," the commentator went on, "Walton's
predecessor, the late D. F. FitzMaugham, went to his rest today.
Police
are still hoping to uncover the group responsible for his brutal slaying, and
report a good probability of success. Tonight all channels will carry a
memorial program for this great leader of humafiity. D. F. FitzMaugham, hail
and farewell!"
A
little sickened, Walton snapped the set off. He had to admire Lee Percy; the
propaganda man had done his job well. With a minor assist from Walton by way of
a spontaneous speech, Percy had contrived to gain vast quantities of precious
air time for Popeek. All to the good.
The annunciator" was still blinking
violently; it seemed about to explode with the weight of pent-up, frustrated
calls. Walton nudged a red stud at the top and Security Chief Sellors entered
the screen.
"Sellors, sir. We've been looking for
this Lamarre. Can't find him anywhere."
"What?"
"We
checked him to his home. He got there, all right. Then he disappeared. No sign
of him anywhere in the city. What now, sir?"
Walton
felt his fingers quivering. "Order a tracer sent out through all of Appalachia.
No, cancel that—make it country-wide. Beam his description everywhere. Got any
snaps?"
"Yes," sir."
"Get them on the air. Tell the country
this man is vital to global security. Find him, Sellors." "We'll give
it a try."
"Better than that. You'll find him. If he doesn't turn up within eight hours, shift the tracer to
world-wide. He might be anywhere—and he has to be found I"
Walton blanked the screen and avoided the
next caller. -He called his secretary and said, "Will you instruct everyone
now calling me to refer their business downstairs to Assistant Administrator
Eglin. If they don't want to do that, tell them to put it in ■writing and
send it to me. I can't accept any more calls just now." Then he added,
"Oh, put me through to Eglin myself before you let any of those calls
reach him.''
Eglin's face appeared on the private screen
that linked the two offices. The small man looked dark-browed and harried.
"This is a hell of a job, Roy," he sighed.
"So
is mine," Walton said. "Look, I've got a ton of calls on the wire,1
and I'm transferring them all down to you. Throw as many as you can down to the
subordinates. It's the only way to keep your sanity."
"Thanks. Thanks loads, Roy. All I need
now is some more calls."
"Can't be helped. Who'd you pick for
your replacement as director of field . agents?" Walton asked.
"Lassen. I sent his dossier to you hours
ago."
"Haven't read it yet. Is he on the job
already?"
"Sure. He's been there since I moved up here," Eglin
said. "What—" t
"Never
mind," said Walton. He hung up and called Lassen, the new director of
field agents.
Lassen was a boyish-looking young man with
stiff sandy hair and a sternly efficient manner. Walton said, "Lassen, I
want you to do a job for me. Get one of your men to make up a fist of the
hundred biggest private estates still unequalized. I want the names of their
owners, location of the estates, acreage, and things like that. Got it?"
"Right. When will you
want it, Mr. Walton?"
"Immediately. But I don't want it to be
a sloppy job. This is top important, double."
Lassen nodded. Walton grinned at him—the boy
seemed to be in good control of himself—and clicked off. •
He realized that he'd been engaged in half a
dozen high-power conversations without a break, over a span of perhaps twenty
minutes. His heart was pounding; his feet felt numb.
He popped a benzolurethrin into his mouth and
kept on going. He would need to act fast, now that the wheels were turning.
McLeod arriving the next day to report the results of the faster-than-light
expedition, Lamarre missing, Fred at large and working for a conspiracy of
landowners—Walton foresaw that he would be on a steady diet of tranquilizers for the next few days.
He opened the arrival bin and pulled out a handful of paper. One thick bundle was the dossier on Lassen; Walton
initialed it and tossed it unread into the Files chute. He would have to rely
on Eglin's judgement; Lassen seemed competent enough.
Underneath
that, he" found the script of the FitzMaugham memorial program to be shown
that evening. Walton sat back and started to skim through it.
It
was the usual sort of eulogy. He skipped rapidly past FitzMaugham's life and
great works, on to the part where Interim Director Walton appeared on the
screen to speak.
This
part he read more carefully. He was very much interested in the words that
Percy had placed in his mouth.
XI
the
speech that night went over
well . . . almost.
Walton watched the program in the privacy of
his home, sprawled out on the foamweb sofa with a drink in one hand and the
text of Percy's shooting-script in the other. The giant screen that occupied
nearly half of his one unbroken wall glowed in lifelike colors.
FitzMaugham's career was
traced with pomp and circumstance, done up in full glory: plenty of ringing
trumpet flourishes, dozens of eye-appealing color groupings, much high-pitched,
tense narrative. Percy had done his job skillfully. The show was punctuated by
quotations from Fitz-Maugham's classic book, Breathing Space and Sanity. Key government figures drifted in and out of
the narrative web-work, orating sonorously. That pious fraud, M. Seymour
Lanson, President of the United States, delivered a flowery speech; the old
figurehead was an artist at his one function, speechmaking. Walton watched,
spellbound. Lee Percy was a genius in his field; there was no denying that.
Finally, toward the end of the hour, the
narrator said, "The work of Popeek goes on, though its lofty-minded creator
lies dead at an assassin's hand. Director FitzMaugham had chosen as his
successor a young man schooled in the ideals of Popeek. Roy Walton, we know,
will continue the noble task begun by D. F. FitzMaugham."
For
the second time that day Walton watched his own face appear on a video screen.
He glanced down at the script in his hand and back up at the screen. Percy's
technicians had done a brilliant job. The Walton-image on the screen looked so
real that the Walton on the couch almost believed he had actually delivered
this speech—although he knew it had been cooked up out of some rearranged
stills and a few brokendown phonemes with his voice characteristics.
It was a perfectly innocent speech. In humble
tones he expressed his veneration for the late director, his hopes that he
would be able to fill the void left by the death of FitzMaugham, his sense of
Popeek as a sacred trust. Half-listening, Walton began to skim the script.
Startled, Walton looked down at the script. He
didn't remember having encountered any such lines on his first reading, and he
couldn't find them now. "This morning," the pseudo-Walton on the
screen went on, "we received contact from outer space! From a faster-than-light ship sent out over a year ago to explore our
neighboring stars.
"News
of this voyage has been withheld until now for security reasons. But it is my
great pleasure to tell you tonight that the stars have at last been reached by
man. . . . A new world waits for us out there, lush, fertile, ready to be
colonized by the brave pioneers of tomorrow!"
Walton
stared aghast at the screen. His simulacrum had returned now to the script as
prepared, but he barely listened.
He
was thinking that Percy had let the cat out for sure. It was a totally unauthorized
newsbreak. Numbly, Walton watched the program come to its end, and wondered
what the repercussions would be once the public grasped all the implications.
He
was awakened at 0600 by the chiming of his phone. Grumpily he climbed from bed,
snapped on the receiver, switched the cutoff on the picture sender in order to
hide his sleep-rumpled appearance, and said, "This is Walton. Yes?"
A
picture formed on the screen: a heavily-tanned man in his late forties, stocky,
hair close cropped. "Sorry to roust you this way, old man. I'm
McLeod."
Walton came fully awake in an instant.
"McLeod? Where are you?"
"Out
on Long Island. I just pulled into the airport half a moment ago. Traveled all
night after dumping the ship at Nairobi."
"You made, a good landing, I hope?"
"The
best. The .ship navigates like a bubble." McLeod frowned worriedly.
"They brought me the early-morning telefax while I was having breakfast. I
couldn't help reading all about the speech you made last night."
"Oh. I-"
"Quite a crasher of a speech,"
McLeod went on evenly. "But don't you think it was a little .premature of
you to release word of my flight. I mean—"
"It was quite premature," Walton
said. "A member of my staff inserted that statement into my talk without
my knowledge. He'll be disciplined for it."
A
puzzled frown appeared on McLeod's face. "But you made that speech with your own lipsl How can you blame it on a member of
your staff?"
"The science that can send a ship to
Procyon and back within a year," Walton said, "can also fake a
speech. But I imagine we'll be able to cover up the pre-release without too
much trouble."
"I'm
not so sure of that," said McLeod. He shrugged apologetically. "You
see, that planet's there, all right. But it happens to be the property of alien
beings who live in the next world. And they're not so,happy about having Earth
come crashing into their system to colonize!"
Somehow Walton managed to hang onto his
self-control, even with this staggering news crashing about him. "You've
been in contact with these beings?" he asked.
McLeod nodded. "They have a translating
gadget. We met them, yes."
Walton
moistened his lips. "I think there's going to be trouble," he said.
"I think I may be out of a job, too." " "What's that?"
"Just thinking out
loud," Walton said. "Finish your breakfast and meet me at my office
at 0900. We'll talk this thing out then."
Walton was in full command of himself by the
time he reached the Cullen Building.
He had read the morning
telefax and heard the news-blares: they all screamed the sum and essence of
Walton's speech of the previous night, and a few of the braver telefax outfits
went as far as printing a resume of the entire speech, boiled down to Basic, of
course, for benefit of that substantial segment of the reading public that was
most comfortable while moving its hps. The one telefax outfit most outspokenly
opposed to Popeek, Citizen,
took great delight in
giving the speech full play, and editorializing on a subsequent sheet against
the "veil of security" hazing Popeek operations.
Walton
read the Citizen
editorial twice, savoring
its painstaking simplicities of expression. Then he clipped it out neatly and
shot it down the chute to public relations, marked Attention: Lee Percy.
"There's
a Mr. McLeod waiting to see you," his secretary informed him. "He
says he has an appointment."
"Send him in," Walton said.
"And have Mr. Percy come up here also."
While he waited for McLeod to arrive, Walton
riffled through the rest of the telefax sheets. Some of them praised Popeek for
having uncovered a new world; others damned them for having hidden news of the
faster-than-light drive so long. Walton stacked them neatly in a heap at the
edge of his desk.
In
the bleak, dark hours of the morning, he had expected to be compelled to
resign. Now, he realized, he could immeasurably strengthen his own position if
he could control the flow of events and channel them properly.
The
square figure of McLeod appeared on the screen. Walton admitted him.
"Sir. I'm
McLeod."
"Of course. Won't you sit down?"
McLeod was tense, stiffly formal, very
British in his reserve and general bearing. Walton gestured uneasily, trying
to cut through the crackle of nervousness.
"We
seem to have a mess on our hands," he said. "But there's no mess so
messy we can't muddle through it, eh?"
"If we have to, sir. But I can't help
feeling this could all have been avoided."
"No. You're wrong, McLeod. If it could have been avoided, it would have been avoided. The fact that some idiot
in my public relations department gained access to my wire and found out you
were returning is incontrovertible; it happened, despite precautions."
"Mr. Percy to see you," the
annunciator said.
The
angular figure of Lee Percy appeared on the screen. Walton told him to come in.
Percy looked frightened—terrified, Walton
thought. He held a folded slip of paper loosely in one hand.
"Good morning,
sir."
"Good morning, Lee." Walton
observed that the friendly Roiy had changed to the formal salutation, sir. "Did you get the clipping I sent you?"
"Yes, sir."
Glumly.
"Lee,
this is Leslie McLeod, chief of operations of our successful faster-than-light
project. Colonel McLeod, I want you to meet Lee Percy. He's the man who
masterminded our little newsbreak last night."
Percy
flinched visibly. He stepped forward and laid his slip of paper on Walton's
desk. "I m-made a m-mistake last night," he stammered. "I should
never have released that break."
"Damned
right you shouldn't have," Walton agreed, carefully keeping any hint of
severity from his voice. "You have us in considerable hot water, Lee. That
planet isn't ours for colonization, despite the enthusiasm with which I allegedly
announced it last night. And you ought to be clever enough to realize it's
impossible to withdraw and deny good news once you've broken it."
"The planet's not ours? But—?"
"According to Colonel McLeod,"
Walton said, "the planet is the property of intelligent alien beings who
live on a neighboring world, and who no more care to have their system overrun
by a pack of Earthmen than we would to have extrasolar aliens settle on
Mars."
"Sir,
that sheet of paper . . ." Percy said in a choked voice.
"It's—it's—"
Walton
unfolded it. It was Percy's resignation. He read the note carefully twice,
smiled, and laid it down. Now was his time to be magnanimous.
"Denied,"
he said. "We need you on our team, Lee. I'm authorizing a ten percent
pay-cut for one week, effective yesterday, but there'll be no other
penalty."
"Thank you, sir."
He's crawling to me, Walton thought in amazement. He said,
"Only don't pull that stunt again, or I'll not only fire you but blacklist
you so hard you won't be able to find work between here and Procyon.
Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Okay. Go back to your office and get to
work. And no more publicity on this faster-than-light thing until I authorize
it. No—cancel that. Get out a quick release, a followup on last night. A smoke
screen, I mean. Cook up so much cloudy verbiage about the conquest of space
that no one bothers to remember anything of what I said. And play down the
colonization anglel"
"I get it, sir." Percy grinned
feebly.
"I doubt that," Walton snapped.
"When you have the release prepared, shoot it up here for my okay. And
heaven help you if you deviate from the text I see by as muqh as a single
comma!"
Percy practically backed out of the office.
"Why
did you do that?" McLeod asked, puzzled. "You mean, why did I let him
off so lightly?" McLeod nodded. "In the military," he said,
"we'd have a man shot for doing a thing like that."
"This
isn't the military," Walton said. "And even though the man behaved
like a congenital idiot yesterday, that's not enough evidence-to push him into
Happysleep. Besides, he knows his stuff. I can't afford to discharge him."
"Are public relations
men that hard to come by?"
"No. But he's a good one—and the
prospect of having him desert to the other side frightens me. He'll be forever
grateful to me now. If I had fired him, he would've had half a dozen
anti-Popeek articles in the Citizen before
the week was out. And they'd ruin us."
McLeod
smiled appreciatively. "You handle your job well, Mr. Walton."
"I
have to," Walton said. "The director of Popeek is paid to produce two
or three miracles per hour. One gets used to it, after a while. Tell me about these aliens, Colonel McLeod."
McLeod swung a briefcase to Walton's desk and
flipped the magneseal. He handed Walton a thick sheaf of glossy color photos.
"The first dozen or so are scenes of the
planet," McLeod explained. "It's Procyon VIII—number eight out of
sixteen, unless we missed a couple. We checked sixteen worlds in the system,
anyway. Ten of 'em were methane giants; we didn't even bother to land. Two were
ammonia supergiants, even less pleasant. Three small ones had no atmosphere at
all worth speaking about, and were no more livable looking than Mercury. And
the remaining one was the one we call New Earth. Take a look, sir."
Walton looked. The photos showed rolling
hills covered with close-packed shrubbery, flowing rivers, a lovely sunrise.
Several of the shots were of indigenous life—a wizened little four-handed
monkey, a six-legged doglike thing, a toothy
bird.
"Life
runs to six limbs there," Walton observed.. "But how livable can this
place be? Unless your photos are sour, that grass is blue . . . and the water's peculiar looking, too. What
sort of tests did you run?"
"It's
the light, sir. Procyons a double star; that faint companion gets up in the
sky and does tricky things to the camera. That grass may look blue, but it's a
chlorophyll-based photosynthesizer all the same. And the water's nothing but HaO,
even with that purple tinge."
Walton nodded. "How
about the atmosphere?"
"We were breathing it for a week, and no
trouble. It's pretty rich in oxygen—twenty-four percent. Gives you a bouncy feeling—just right for pioneers, I'd say."
"You've prepared a full report on this place, haven't you?"
"Of course. It's right here."
McLeod started to reach for his briefcase.
"Not just yet," Walton said.
"I want to go through the rest of these snapshots." He turned over
one after another rapidly until he came to a photo that showed a strange blocky
figure, four-armed, bright green in color. Its neckless head was encased in a
sort of breathing mask fashioned from some transparent plastic. Three cold,
brooding eyes peered outward.
"What's this?" Walton asked.
"Oh, that." McLeod attempted a
cheerful grin. "That's a Dirnan.
They live on Procyon IX, one of the ammonia-giant planets. They're the aliens
who don't want us there."
XII
Walton
stared at the photograph of
the alien. There was intelligence there . . . yes, intelligence and
understanding, and perhaps even a sort
of compassion.
He
sighed. There were always qualifications, never unalloyed successes.
"Colonel
McLeod, how long would it take your ship to return to the Procyon system?"
he asked thoughtfully.
McLeod considered the question. "Hardly
any time, sir. A few days, maybe. Why?"
"Just
a wild idea. Tell me about your contact with these—ah—Dirnans."
"Well, sir, they landed after we'd spent
more than a week surveying New Earth. There were six of
them, and they had their translating widget with them. They told us who they
were, and wanted to know who we were. We told them. They said they ran the
Procyon system, and weren't of a mind to let any alien beings come barging
in."
"Did they sound hostile?" Walton
asked.
"Oh,
no. Just businesslike. We were trespassing, and they asked us to get off. They
were cold about it, but not angry."
"Fine,"
Walton said. "Look here, now. Do you think you could go back to their
world as—well as an ambassador from Earth? Bring one of the Dirnans here for
treaty talks, and such?"
"I
suppose so," McLeod said hesitantly. "If it's necessary."
"It looks as if it may be. You had nó luck in any of the other nearby
systems?" "No."
"Then
Procyon VIII's our main hope. Tell your men we'll offer double pay for this
cruise. And make It as fast as you know how."
"Hyperspace travel's practically
instantaneous," McLeod said. "We spent most of our time cruising on
standard ion drive from 'planet to planet. Maneuvering in the subspace
manifold's a snap, though."
"Good. Snap it up, then. Back to Nairobi
and clear out of there as soon as you're ready. Remember, it's urgent you bring
one of the aliens here for treaty talks." "I'll do my best,"
McLeod said.
Walton stared at the empty seat where McLeod
had been, and tried to picture a green Diman sitting there, goggling at him
with its three eyes.
He
was beginning to feel like a juggler. Popeek activity proceeded on so many
fronts at once that it quite dazzled him. And every hour there were new
challenges to meet, new decisions to make.
At
the moment, there were too many eggs and not enough baskets. Walton realized he
was making the same mistake FitzMaugham had, that of carrying too much of the
Popeek workings inside his skull. If anything happened to him, the operation
would be fatally paralyzed, and it would be some time before the gears were
meshing again.
He resolved to keep a journal, to record each
day a full and mercilessly honest account of each of the many maneuvers in
which he was engaged. He would begin with his private conflict with
Fred and the interests Fred represented, follow through with the
Lamarre-immortality episode, and include a detailed report on the problems of
the subsidiary projects, New Earth and Lang's terraforming group.'
That
gave him another idea. Reaching for his voicewrite, he dictated a concise
confidential memorandum instructing' Assistant Administrator Eglin to outfit an
investigatory mission immediately; purpose, to go to Venus and make contact
with Lang. The terraforming group was nearly two weeks overdue in its scheduled
report. He could not ignore them any longer.
The everlasting annunciator chimed, and
Walton switched on the screen. It was Sellors, and from the look of abject
terror on the man's face, Walton knew that something sticky had just
transpired.
"What is it, Sellers? Any luck in
tracing Lamarre?"
"None,
sir," the security chief said. "But there's been another development,
Mr. Walton. A most serious one. Most serious."
Walton was ready to expect anything—a
bulletin announcing the end of the universe, perhaps. "Well, tell me
about it," he snapped impatiently.
Sellors
seemed about ready to collapse with shame. He said hesitantly, "One of the
communications technicians was making a routine check of the building's
circuits, Mr. Walton. He found one trunk-line that didn't seem to belong where
it was, so he checked up and found out that it had been newly installed."
"Well, what of it?"
"It
was a spy pickup with its outlet in your office, sir," Sellors said,
letting the words tumble out in one blur. "All the time you were talking
this morning, someone was spying on you."
Walton
grabbed the arms of his chair. "Are you telling me that your department
was blind enough to let someone pipe a spy pickup right into this office?"
he demanded. "Where did this outlet go? And is it cut off?"
"They cut it off as soon as they found
it, sir. It went to a men's lavatory on the twenty-sixth floor."
"And how long was it
in operation?"
"At
least since last night, sir. Communications assures me that it couldn't
possibly have been there before yesterday afternoon, since they ran a general
check then and didn't see it."
Walton
groaned. It was small comfort to know that he had had privacy up till last
evening; if the wrong people had listened in on his conversation with McLeod,
there would be serious trouble.
"All
right, Sellors. This thing can't be your fault, but keep your eyes peeled in
the future. And tell communications that my office is to be checked for such
things twice a day from now on, at 0900 and at 1300."
"Yes, sir." Sellors looked
tremendously relieved.
"And
start interrogating the communications technicians. Find out who's responsible
for that spy circuit, and hold him on security charges. And locate
Lamarre!"
"I'll do my best, Mr.
Walton."
While
the screen was clearing, Walton jotted down a memorandum to himself: investigate Sellors. So far, as security chief, Sellors had
allowed an assassin to reach FitzMaugham, allowed Prior to burst into Walton's
old office, permitted Fred to masquerade as a doorsmith long enough to gain
access to Walton's private files, and stood by blindly while Lee Percy tapped
into Walton's private wire and some unidentified technician strung a spy
pickup into the director's supposedly sacred office.
No
security chief could have been as incompetent as all that. It had to be a
planned campaign, directed from the outside.
He dialed Eglin.
"Olaf, you get my message about the
Venus rescue mission okay?"
"Came
through a few minutes ago. I'll have the specs drawn up by tonight."
"Devil with that," Walton said.
"Drop everything and send that ship out now. I've got to know what Lang and his crew are up to, and I have to know
right away. If we don't produce a livable Venus, or at least the possibility of
one, in a couple of days, we'll be in for it on all sides."
"Why? What's up?"
"You'll see. Keep an eye on the telefax.
Ill bet the next edition of Citizen is
going to be interesting."
It was.
The glossy sheets of the
1200 Citizen extruded themselves from a million receivers
in the New York area, but none of those million copies was as avidly pounced on
as was Director Walton's. He had been hovering near the wall outlet for ten
minutes, avidly awaiting the sheet's arrival.
And he was not disappointed.
The streamer headline ran:
THINGS FROM SPACE NIX BIG POPEEK PLAN
And under it in smaller type:
Greenskinned Uglies Put Feet In Director
Walton's Big Mouth
He smiled grimly and went on to the story
itself. Written in the best approved Citizen journalese,
it read:
Fellow
human beings, we've been suckered again. The Citizen found out for sure this morning that the big
surprise Popeek's Interim Director Walton yanked out of his hat last night has
a hole in it.
It's
sure dope that there's a good planet up there in the sky for grabs. The way we
hear it, it's just like earth only prettier, with trees and flowers (remember
them?). Our man says the air there is nice and clean. This world sounds okay.
But
what Walton didn't know last night came home to roost today. Seems the folks on
the next planet out there don't want any sloppy old Earthmen messing up their
pasture—and so we ain't going to have any New Earth after all. Wish-washy
Walton is a cinch to throw in the towel now.
More
dope in later editions. And check the edit page for extra info.
It was obvious, Walton thought, that the spy
pickup which had been planted in his office had been a direct pipe line to the Citizen news desk. They had taken his conversation
with McLeod and carefully ground it down into the chatty, informal, colloquial
style that made Citizen
the world's most
heavily-subscribed telefax service.
He
shuddered at what might have happened if they'd had their spy pickup installed
a day earlier, and overheard Walton in the process of suppressing Lamarre's
immortality serum. There would have been a lynch mob storming the Cullen
Building ten minutes after the Citizen hit
the waves with its expose.
Not
that he was much better off now. He no longer had the advantage of secrecy to
cloak his actions, and public officials who were compelled to conduct business
in the harsh light of public scrutiny generally didn't hold their offices for
long.
He turned the sheet over and searched for the
editorial column, merely to confirm his expectations.
It was captioned in bold black:
ARE WE PATSIES FOR GREENSKINS? And went on to say:
Non-human beings have said "Whoa!"
to our plans for opening up a new world in space. These aliens have put thumbs
down on colonization of the New Earth discovered by Colonel Leslie McLeod.
Aside
from the question of why Popeek kept word of the McLeod expedition from the
public so long, there is this to consider—will we take this lying down?
We've got to find space for us to live. New
Earth is a good place. The answer to the trouble is
easy: we take New Earth. If the
greenskins don't like it, bounce 'em!
How about it? What do we do? Mr. Walton, we
want to know. What goes?
It
was an open exhortation to interstellar warfare. Dispiritedly, Walton let the
telefax sheets skitter to the floor, and made no move to pick them up.
War
with the Dimans? If Citizen
had its way, there would
be. The telefax sheet would remorselessly stir the people up until the cry for
war was unanimous.
Well,
thought Walton callously, a good war would reduce the population
surplus. The idiots!
He caught the afternoon newsblares. They were
full of the Citizen
break, and one commentator
made a point-blank demand that Walton either advocate war with the Dimans or
resign.
Not long afterward, UN delegate Ludwig
called.
"Some hot action over here today,"
he told Walton. "After that Citizen thing
got out, a few of the Oriental delegates started howling for your scalp on
sixteen different counts of bungling. What's going on, Walton?"
"Plenty
of spy activity, for one thing. The main problem, though, is the nucleus of
incompetent assistants surrounding me. I think I'm going to reduce the local
population personally before the day is out. With a blunt instrument,
preferably."
"Is there any truth in
the Citizen story?"
"Hell, yes!" Walton exclaimed.
"For once, it's gospell An enterprising telefax man rigged a private pipe
line into my office last night and no one caught it until it was too late.
Sure, those aliens are holding out. They don't want us coming in there."
Ludwig chewed at his lip.
"You have any plans?"
"Dozens
of them. Want some, cheap?" He laughed, a brittle, unamused laugh.
"Seriously,
Roy. You ought to go on the air again and smooth this thing over. The people
are yelling for war with these Dirnans, and half of us over here at the UN
aren't even sure the damned creatures exist. Couldn't you fake it up a
little?"
"No," Walton said. "There's
been enough faking. I'm going on the air with the truth for a change! Better
have all your delegates over there listening in, because their ears are in for
an opening."
As soon as he was rid of Ludwig he called Lee
Percy.
"That
program on the conquest of space is almost ready to go," the public
relations man informed him.
"Kill it. Have you seen the noon Citizen?"
"No; been too busy on the new program.
Anything big?"
Walton
chuckled. "Fairly big. The Citizen just
yanked the rug out from under everything. Well probably be at war with Procyon
IX by sundown. I want you to buy me air space on every medium for the 1900 spot
tonight."
"Sure thing. What land of speech you
want us to cook up?"
"None at all," Walton said.
"I'm going to speak off the cuff for a change. Just buy the time for me,
and squeeze the budget for all it's worth."
XIH
the bright light of the video cameras flooded the room. Percy
had done a good job; there was a representative from every network, every
telefax, every blare of any sort at all.
The
media had been corralled. Walton's words would echo round the world.
He
was seated behind his desk—seated, because he could shape his words more
forcefully that way, and also because he was terribly tired. He smiled into
the battery of cameras.
"Good evening," he said. "I'm
Roy Walton, speaking to you from the offices of the Bureau of Population
Equalization. I've been director of Popeek for a little less than a week, now, and I'd like to make a report—a progress report, so to speak.
"We of Popeek regard ourselves as
holding a mandate from you, the people. After all, it
was the world-wide referendum last year that enabled the United Nations to put
us into business. And I want to tell you how the work of Popeek is going.
"Our aim is to provide breathing space
for human beings. The world is vastly overcrowded, with its seven billion
people. Popeek's job is to ease that overcrowdedness, to equalize the
population masses of the world so that the empty portions of the globe are
filled up and the extremely overcrowded places thinned out a little. But this
is only part of our job—the short-range, temporary part. We're planning for the
future here. We know we can't keep shifting population from place to place on
Earth; it won't work forever. Eventually every square inch is going to be
covered, and then where do we go?
"You know the answer. We go out. We reach for the stars. At present we have spaceships that can take us
to the planets, but the planets aren't suitable for human life. All right,
we'll make them suitable! At this very moment a team of
engineers is on Venus, in that hot, dry, formaldehyde atmosphere, struggling to
turn Venus into a world fit for oxygen-breathing human beings. They'll do it,
too—and when they're done with Venus they'll move on to Mars, to the Moon,
perhaps to the big satellites of Jupiter and Saturn too. Therell be a day when the
solar system will be habitable from Mercury to Pluto—we hope.
"But even that is short-range,"
Walton said pointedly. "Therell be a day—it may be a hundred years from
now, or a thousand, or ten thousand—when the entire solar system will be as
crowded with humanity as Earth is today. We have to plan for that day, too.
It's the lack of planning on the part of our ancestors
that's made things so hard for us. We of Popeek don't want to repeat the tragic
mistakes of the past.
"My predecessor, the late Director FitzMaugham,
was aware of this problem. He succeeded in gathering a group of scientists and
technicians who developed a super space drive, a faster-than-light ship that
can travel to the stars virtually instantaneously, instead of taking years to
make the trip as our present ships would.
"The ship was built and sent out on an
exploratory mission. Director FitzMaugham chose to keep this fact a secret. He
was afraid of arousing false hopes in case the expedition should be a failure.
"The expedition was not a failurel Colonel Leslie McLeod and his men discovered a planet similar
to Earth in the system of the star Procyon. I have seen photographs of New
Earth, as they have named it, and I can tell you that it is a lovely planet . .
. and one that will be receptive to our pioneers."
Walton
paused a moment before launching into the main subject of his talk.
"Unfortunately,
there is a race of intelligent beings living on a neighboring planet of this
world. Perhaps you have seen the misleading and inaccurate reports blared today
to the effect that these people refuse to allow Earth to colonize in their
system. Some of you have cried out for immediate war against these people, the
Dimans.
"I
must coiifirm part of the story the telefax carried today: the Dinians are
definitely not anxious to have Earth set up a colony on a world adjoining
theirs. We are strangers to them, and their reaction is understandable, After
all, suppose a race of strange-looking creatures landed on Mars, and proceeded
with wholesale colonization of our neighboring world? We'd be uneasy, to say
the least.
"And so the Dimans are uneasy. However,
I've summoned a Dirnan ambassador—our first diplomatic contact with intelligent
alien creatures!—and I hope hell be on Earth shortly. I plan to convince him
that we're peaceful, neighborly people, and that it will be to our mutual
benefit to allow Earth colonization in the Procyon system.
"I'm
going to need your help. If, while our alien guest is here, he discovers that
some misguided Earthmen are demanding war with Dirna, he's certainly not going
to think of us as particularly desirable neighbors to welcome with open arms. I
want to stress the importance of this. Sure, we can go to war with Dima for
possession of Procyon VIII. But why spread wholesale destruction on two worlds
when we can probably achieve our goal peacefully?
"That's all I have to say tonight,
people of the world. I hope you'll think about what I've told you. Popeek works
twenty-four hours a day in your behalf, but we need your full cooperation if
we're going to achieve our aims and bring humanity to its full maturity. Thank
you."
The
floodlights winked out suddenly, leaving Walton momentarily blinded. When he
opened his eyes again he saw the cameramen moving their bulky apparatus out of
the office quickly and efficiently. The regular programs had returned to the
channels—the vapid dancing and joke-making, the terror shows, the
kaleidowhirls.
Now
that it was over, now that the tension was broken, Walton experienced a moment
of bitter disillusionment. He had had high hopes for his speech, but had he
really put it over? He wasn't sure.
He glanced up. Lee Percy
stood over him.
"Roy, can I say something?" Percy
said diffidendy.
"Go ahead," Walton said.
"I don't know how many millions I forked
over to put you on the media tonight, but I know one thing—we threw a hell of a
lot of money away."
Walton sighed wearily. "Why do you say
that?"
"That
speech of yours," Percy said, "was the speech of an amateur. You
ought to let pros handle the big spiels, Roy."
"I thought you liked the impromptu thing
I did when they mobbed that Herschelite. How come no go tonight?"
Percy shook his head. "The speech you
made outside the building was different. It had emotion; it had punch! But
tonight you didn't come across at all."
^No?"
"I'd
put money behind it." Acidly Percy said, "You can't win the public
opinion by being reasonable. You gave a nice smooth speech. Bland . . . folksy.
You laid eveiything on the line where they could see it."
"And
that's wrong, is it?" Walton closed his eyes for a moment. "Why?"
"Because they won't listen! You gave
them a sermon when you should have been punching at them! Sweet reason! You
can't be sweet
if you want to sell your
product to seven billion morons!"
"Is that all they
are?" Walton asked. "Just morons?"
Percy
chuckled. "In the long run, yes. Give them their daily bread and their one
room to live in, and they won't give a damn what happens to the world.
FitzMaugham sold them Popeek the way you'd sell a car without turbines. He
hoodwinked them into buying something they hadn't thought about or
wanted."
"They needed Popeek, whether they wanted it or not. No one needs a car without
turbines."
"Bad
analogy, then," Percy said. "But it's true. They don't care a blast
about Popeek, except where it affects them. If you'd told them that these
aliens would kill them all if they didn't act nice, you'd have gotten across.
But this sweetness and light business—oh, no, Roy. It just doesn't work."
"Is that all you have to tell me?"
Walton asked.
"I guess so. I just wanted to show you
where you had a big chance and muffed it. Where we could have helped you out if
you'd let us. I don't want you to think I'm being rude or critical, Roy; I'm
just trying to be helpful."
"Okay, Lee. Get out."
"Huh?"
"Go
away. Go sell ice to the Eskimos. Leave me alone, yes?"
"If
that's the way you want it. Hell, Roy, don't brood over it. We can still fix
things up before that alien gets here. We can put the content of tonight's
speech across so smoothly that they won't even know we're—"
"Get out!"
Percy
skittered for the door. He paused and said, "You're all wrought up, Roy.
You ought to take a pill or something for your nerves."
Well, he had his answer. An expert evaluation
of the content and effect of his speech.
Dammit,
he had tried to reach them. Percy said he hadn't, and
Percy probably was right, little as Walton cared to admit the fact to himself.
But
was Percy's approach the only one? Did you have to lie to them, push them,
treat them as seven billion morons?
Maybe.
Right now billions of human beings—the same human beings Walton was expending
so much energy to save —were staring at the kaleidowhirl programs on their
videos.
Their
eyes were getting fixed, glassy. Their mouths were he-ginning to sag open,
their cheeks to wobble, their lips to droop pendulously, as the hypnosis of the
color patterns took effect.
This
was humanity. They were busy forgetting all the things they had just been
forced to listen to. All the big words, like mandate and eventually and wholesale destruction. Just so many harsh syllables to be wiped away
by the soothing swirl of the colors.
And
somewhere else, possibly, a poet named Prior was listening to his baby's
coughing and trying to write a poem —a poem that Walton and a few others would
read excitedly, while the billions would ignore it.
Walton
saw that Percy was dead right: Roy Walton could never have sold Popeek to the
world. But FitzMaugham, that cagy, devious genius, did it. By waving his hands
before the public and saying abracadabra, he bamboozled them into approving
Popeek before they knew what they were being sold.
It was a lousy trick, but FritzMaugham had
realized that it had to be done. Someone had killed him for it, but it was too
late by then.
And Walton saw that he had taken the wrong
track by trying to be reasonable. Percy's callous description of humanity as
"seven billion morons" was uncomfortably close to the truth. Walton
would have to make his appeal to a more subliminal level.
Perhaps,
he thought, at the level of the kaleidowhirls, those endless patterns of
colored light that were the main form of diversion for the Great Unwashed.
I'll get to them, Walton promised himself. There can't be any dignity or nobility in
human life with everyone crammed into one sardine can. So I'll treat them like
the sardines they are, and hope 1 can turn them into the human beings they
could be if they only had room.
He
rose, turned out the light, prepared to leave. He wondered if the late Director
FitzMaugham had ever faced an internal crisis of this sort, or whether
FitzMaugham had known these truths innately from the start.
Probably,
the latter was the case. FitzMaugham had been a genius, a sort of superman. But
FitzMaugham was dead, and the man who carried on his work was no genius. He was
only a mere man.
The
reports started filtering in the next morning. It went much as Percy had
predicted.
Citizen
was the most virulent.
Under the sprawling headline, WHO'S KIDDING WHOP the
telefax sheet wanted to know what the "mealy-mouthed" Popeek director
was trying to tell the world on all media the night before. They weren't sure,
since Walton, according to Citizen, had
been talking in "hifalutin prose picked on purpose to befuddle John Q.
Public." But their general impression was that Walton had proposed some
sort of sellout to the Dimans.
The
sellout idea prevailed in most of the cheap telefax sheets.
"Behind
a cloud of words, Popeek czar Walton is selling the world downstream to the
greenskins," said one paper. "His talk last night was strictly bunk.
His holy-holy words and grim face were supposed to put over something, but we
ain't fooled—and don't you be fooled either, friend!"
The video commentators were a little kinder,
but not very. One called for a full investigation of the Earth-Dima situation.
Another wanted to know why Walton, an appointed official and not even a
permanent one at that, had taken it upon himself to handle such high-power
negotiations. The UN seemed a little worried about that, even though Ludwig had
made a passionate speech insisting that negotiations with Dima were part of
Walton's allotted responsibilities.
That touched off a new ruckus. "How much
power does Walton have?" Citizen demanded
in a later edition. "Is he the boss of the world? And if he is, who the
devil is he anyway?"
That struck Walton harder than all the other
blows. He had been gradually realizing that he did, in fact, control what
amounted to dictatorial powers over the world. But he had not yet fully
admitted it to himself, and it hurt to be accused of it publicly.
One thing was clear: his attempt at sincerity
and clarity had been a total failure. The world was accustomed to subterfuge
and verbal pyrotechnics, and when it didn't get the expected commodity, it grew
suspicious. Sincerity had no market value. By going before the public and
making a direct appeal, Walton had aroused the suspicion that he had something
hidden up his sleeve.
When Citizens third
edition of the day openly screamed for war with Dima, Walton realized the time
had come to stop playing it clean. From now on, he would chart his course and
head there at any cost.
He tore a sheet of paper from his memo pad
and inscribed on it a brief motto: The ends justify the means!
With that as his guide, he was ready to get
down to work.
XIV
Martinez, security head for the entire Appalachia
district, was a small, slight man with unruly hair and deep, piercing eyes. He
stared levelly at Walton and said, "Sellors has been with security for
twenty years. It's absurd to suggest that he's disloyal."
"He's
made a great many mistakes," Walton remarked. "I'm simply suggesting
that if he's not utterly incompetent he must be in someone else's pay."
"And
you want us to break a man on your say-so, Director Walton?" Martinez
shook his head fussily. "I'm afraid I can't see that. Of course, if you're
willing to go through the usual channels, you could conceivably request a
change of personnel in this district. But I don't see how else—"
"Sellors will have to go," Walton
said. "Our operation has sprung too many leaks. Well need a new man in
here at once, and I want you to double-check him personally."
Martinez
rose. The little man's nostrils flickered ominously. "I refuse. Security
is external to whims and fancies. If I remove Sellors, it will undermine
security self-confidence all throughout the country."
"All right," sighed Walton.
"Sellors stays. Ill file a request to have him transferred, though."
"I'll pigeonhole it. I can vouch for
Sellors' competence myself," Martinez snapped. "Popeek is in good
hands, Mr. Walton. Please believe that."
Martinez left. Walton glowered at the
retreating figure. He knew Martinez was honest—but the security head was a
stubborn man, and rather than admit the existence of a flaw in the security
structure he had erected, Martinez would let a weak man continue in a vital
position.
Well,
that blind spot in Martinez' makeup would have to be compensated for, Walton
thought. One way or another, he would have to get rid of Sellors and replace
him with a security man he could trust.
He scribbled a hasty note and sent it down
the chute to Lee Percy. As Walton anticipated, the public relations man phoned
minutes later.
"Roy,
what's this release you want me to get out? It's fantastic—Sellors a spy? How?
He hasn't even been arrested. I just saw him in the building."
Walton smirked. "Since when do you have
such a high respect for accuracy?" he asked. "Send out the release
and we'll watch what happens."
The
1140 newsblares were the first to carry the news. Walton listened cheerlessly
as they revealed that Security Chief Sellors had been arrested on charges of
disloyalty. According to informed sources, said the blares, Sellors was now in
custody and had agreed to reveal the nature of the secret conspiracy which had
hired him.
At
1210 came a later report: Security Chief Sellors had temporarily been released
from custody.
And
at 1230 came a still later report: Security Chief Sellors had been assassinated
by an unknown hand outside the Cullen Building.
Walton
listened to the reports with cold detachment. He had foreseen the move:
Sellors' panicky employers had silenced the man for good. The ends jtistify the means, Walton told himself. There was no reason to
feel pity for Sellors; he had been a spy and death was the penalty. It made no
real difference whether death came in a federal gas chamber or as the result of
some carefully faked news releases.
Martinez
called almost immediately after word of Sellors' murder reached the blares. The
little man's face was deadly pale.
"I
owe you an apology," he said. "I acted like an idiot this
morning."
"Don't
blame yourself," Walton said. "It was only natural that you'd trust
Sellors; you'd known him so long. But you can't trust anyone these days,
Martinez. Not even yourself."
"I will have to
resign," the security man said.
"No.
It wasn't your fault. Sellors was a spy and a bungler, and he paid the price.
His own men struck him down when that rumor escaped that he was going to
inform. Just send me a new man, as I asked—and make him a good one!"
Keeler, the new security attaché, was a crisp-looking man in his early thirties. He reported direcdy to
Walton as soon as he reached the building.
"You're
Sellors' replacement, eh? Glad to see you, Keeler." Walton studied him. He
looked tough and hard and thoroughly incorruptible. I've a couple of jobs I'd
like you to start on right away. First, you know Sellors was looking for a man
named Lamarre. Let me fill you in on that, and—"
"No
need for that," Keeler said. "I was the man Sellors put on the
Lamarre chase. There isn't a trace of him anywhere. We've got feelers out all
over the planet now, and no luck."
"Hmm."
Walton was mildly annoyed; he had been wishfully hoping Sellors had found
Lamarre and had simply covered up the fact. But if Keeler had been the one who
handled the search, there was no hope of that.
"All
right," Walton said. "Keep on the hunt for Lamarre. At the moment I
want you to give this building a thorough scouring. There's no telling how many
spy pickups Sellors planted here. Top to bottom, and report back to me when the
job is done."
Next
on Walton's schedule was a call from communications. He received it and a
technician told him, "There's been a call from the Venus ship. Do you want
it, sir?"
"Of coursel"
"It
says, 'Arrived Venus June fifteen late, no sign of Lang outfit yet. Well keep
looking and will report daily.' It's signed, 'Spencer.'"
"Okay,"
Walton said. "Thanks. And if any further word from them comes, let me have
it right away."
The
fate of the Lang expedition, Walton reflected, was not of immediate importance.
But he would like to know what had happened to the group. He hoped Spencer and
his rescue mission had something more concrete to report tomorrow.
The annunciator chimed. "Dr. Frederic
Walton is on the line, sir. He says it's urgent."
"Okay," Walton said. He switched
over and waited for his brother's face to appear on the screen. A nervous current
of anticipation throbbed in him.
"Well, Fred?" he asked at length.
"You've
been a busy little bee, haven't you?" Fred said. "I understand you
have a new security chief to watch over you.
"I don't have time to make conversation
now," Walton snapped.
"Nor do I. You fooled us badly, with
that newsbreak on Sellors. You forced us into wiping out a useful contact prematurely."
"Not so useful," Walton said.
"I was on to him. If you hadn't killed him, I would have had to handle the
job myself. You saved me the trouble."
"My, myl Getting
ruthless, aren't we!"
"When the occasion demands," Walton
said.
"Fair enough. We'll play the same
way." Fred's eyes narrowed. "You recall our conversation in the
Bronze Room the other day, Roy?"
"Vividly."
"I've called to ask for your
decision," Fred said. "One way or the other."
Walton was caught off guard. "But you
said I had a week's grace!"
"The
period has been halved," Fred said. "We now see it's necessary to
accelerate things."
"Tell
me what you want me to do. Then 111 give you my answer."
"It's simple enough. You're to resign in
my favor. If it's not done by nightfall tomorrow, we'll find it necessary to
release the Lamarre serum. Those are our terms, and don't try to bargain with
me."
Walton was silent for a moment, contemplating his brother's cold face on the screen. Finally he
said, "It takes time to get such things done. I can't just resign overnight."
"FitzMaugham did."
"Ah, yes—if you call that a resignation. But unless you want to inherit the same sort of chaos I
did, you'd better give me a little time to prepare things."
Fred's
eyes gleamed. "Does that mean you'll yield? You'll resign in my
favor?"
"There's no guarantee the UN will accept
you," Walton warned. "Even with my recommendation, I can't promise a one hundred percent chance of success."
"We'll have to risk it," said Fred.
"The important step is getting you out of there. When can I have
confirmation of all this?"
Walton
eyed his brother shrewdly. "Come up to my office tomorrow at this time.
I'll have everything set up for you by then, and I'll be able to show you how
the Popeek machinery works. That's one advantage you'll have over me.
FitzMaugham kept half the workings in his head."
Fred grinned savagely. "I'll see you
then, Roy." Chuckling, he added, "I knew all that ruthlessness of
yours was just skin deep. You never were tough, Roy."
Walton glanced at his watch after Fred had
left the screen. The time was 1100. It had been" a busy moming.
But
some of the vaguenesses were beginning to look sharper. He knew, for instance,
that Sellors had been in the pay of the same organization that backed Fred. Presumably,
this meant that FitzMaugham had been assassinated by the landed gentry.
But
for what reason? Surely, not simply for the sake of assassination. Had they
cared to, they might have killed FitzMaugham whenever they pleased.
He saw now why the assassination had been
timed as it had. By the time the conspirators had realized that Walton was sure
to be the old man's successor, Fred had already joined their group. They had
ready leverage on the prospective director. They knew they could shove him out
of office almost as quickly as he got in, and supplant him with their puppet,
Fred.
Well, they were in for a surprise. Fred was
due to appear at Walton's office at 1100 on the morning of the seventeenth to
talce over command. Walton planned to be ready for them by then.
There was the matter of Lamarre. Walton
wanted the little scientist and his formula badly. But by this time Fred had
certainly made at least one copy of Lamarre's documents; the threat would
remain, whether or not Popeek recovered the originals.
Walton
had twenty-four hours to act. He called up Sue Llewellyn, Popeek's comptroller.
"Sue, how's our budget looking?"
"What's on your mind, Roy?"
"Plenty. I want to know if I can make an
expenditure of —say, a billion, between now and nightfall." "A billion? You joking, Roy?"
"Hardly." Walton's tone was grim.
"I hope I won't need it all. But there's a big purchase I want to make ... an investment. Can you squeeze out the
money? It doesn't matter where you squeeze it from, either, because if we don't
get it by nightfall there probably won't be a Popeek by the day after
tomorrow."
"What are you talking about, Roy?"
"Give
me a yes or no answer. And if the answer's not the one I want to hear, I'm
afraid you can start looking for a new job, Sue."
She uttered a little gasp. Then she said,
"Okay, Roy. Ill play along with you, even if it bankrupts us. There's a billion at your disposal as of now, though Lord knows what I'll use for
a payroll next week."
"You'll
have it back," Walton promised. "With compound interest."
His next call was to a man he had once dealt
with in his capacity of secretary to Senator FitzMaugham. He was Noel Hervey, a
registered securities and exchange slyster.
Hervey was a small, worried-looking little
man, but his unflickering eyes belied his ratty appearance. "What troubles
you, Roy?"
"I want you to make a stock purchase for
me, pronto. Within an hour, say?"
Hervey shook his head instantly. "Sorry,
Roy. I'm all tied up on a hefty monorail deal. Won't be free until Wednesday
or Thursday, if by then."
Walton
said, "What sort of money will you be making on this big deal of yours,
Noel?"
"Confidential! You wouldn't invade a
man's privacy on a delicate matter like—"
"Will it be worth five million dollars
for you, Noel?"
"Five million—hey, is this a gag?"
"I'm
awfully serious," Walton said. "I want you to swing a deal for me,
right away. You've heard my price."
Hervey
smiled warmly. "Well, start talking, friend. Consider me hired."
A
few other matters remained to be tended to hurriedly. Walton spent some moments
talking to a communications technician, then sent out an order for three or
four technical books—Basic
Kaleidowhirl Theory and
related works. He sent a note to Lee Percy requesting him to stop by and see
him in an hour, and told his annunciator that for no reason whatsoever was he
to be disturbed for the next sixty minutes.
The hour passed rapidly; by its end, Walton's
head was slightly dizzy from too much sluirrming, but his mind was thrumming
with new possibilities, with communications potentials galore. Talk about
reaching peoplel He had a naturall
He flipped on the annunciator. "Is Mr.
Percy here yet?"
"No, sir. Should I send for him?"
"Yes. He's due here any minute to see
me. Have there been any calls?"
"Quite
a few. I've relayed them down to Mr. Eglin's office, as instructed."
"Good girl," Walton said.
"Oh, Mr. Percy's here. And there's a
call for you from communications."
Walton
frowned. "Tell Percy to wait outside a minute or two. Give me the
call."
The
communications tech on the screen was grinning excitedly. He said,
"Subspace message just came in for you, sir.
"From Venus?"
"No, sir. From Colonel McLeod."
"Let's have it," Walton said.
The technician read, " 'To Walton from
McLeod, via sub-space radio: Have made successful voyage to Procyon system, and
am on way back with Dirnan ambassador on board. See you soon, and good
luck—you'll need it.'"
"Good. That all?"
"That's all, sir."
"Okay.
Keep me posted." He broke contact and turned to the annunciator.
Excitement put a faint quiver in his voice. "You can send in Mr. Percy
now," he said.
walton looked up at the public relations man and said,
"Hov much do you know about kaleidowh-rls, Lee?"
"Not
a hell of a lot. I never watch the things, myself. They're bad for the
eyes."
Walton smiled. "That makes you a
nonconformist, doesn't it? According to the figures I have here, the nighdy
kaleid-owhirl programs are top-ranked on the rating charts."
"Maybe so," Percy said cautiously.
"I still don't like to watch them. What goes, Roy?"
"I've suddenly become very interested in
kaleidowhirls myself," Walton said. He leaned back and added casually,
"I think they can be used as propaganda devices. My brother's reaction to
one gave me the idea, couple days ago, at the Bronze Room. For the past hour or
so, I've been studying kaleidowhirls in terms of information theory. Did you
know that it's possible to get messages across via kaleido-whirl?"
"Of course," Percy gasped.
"But the Communications Commission would never let you get away with
it!"
"By the time the Communications
Commission found out what had been done," Walton said calmly, "we
wouldn't be doing it any more. They won't be able to prove a thing."
Sarcastically he added, "After spending a lifetime in public relations,
you're not suddenly getting a rush of ethics, are you?"
"Well . . . let's have the details,
then."
"Simple
enough," Walton said. "We feed through a verbal message—something
like Hooray for Popeek or I Don't Want War With Dirna. We flash it on the screen for, say, a microsecond, then cover it up with
kaleidowhirl patterns.
Wait
two minutes, then flash it again. Plenty of noise, but the signal will get
through if we flash it often enough."
"And it'll get through deep down,"
Percy said. "Sub-liminally. They won't even realize that they're being indoctrinated,
but suddenly they'll have a new set of opinions about Popeek and Dirnal"
He shuddered. "Roy, I hate to think what can happen if someone else gets
to thinking about this and puts on his own kaleidowhirl show."
"I've thought of that. After the Dima
crisis is over-after we've put over our point—I'm going to take steps to make
sure no one can use this sort of weapon again. I'm going to frame someone into
putting on a propaganda kaleidowhirl, and then catch him in the act. That
ought to be sufficient to wise up the Communications Commission."
"In
other words," Percy said, "you're willing to use this technique now. But since you don't want anyone else to use it, you're willing to give
up future use of it yourself as soon as the Dima trouble is over."
"Exactly." Walton shoved the stack
of textbooks over to the PR man. "Read these through first. Get yourself
familiar with the setup. Then buy a kaleidowhirl hour and get a bunch of our
engineers in there to handle the special inserts. Okay?"
"It's
nasty, but I like it. When do you want the program to begin?"
"Tomorrow. Tonight, if you can work it.
And set up a poll of some kind to keep check on the program's effectiveness. I
want two messages kaleidowhirled alternately: one supporting Popeek, one
demanding a peaceful settlement with the aliens. Have your pulse takers feel
out the populace on those two propositions, and report any fluctuation to me
immediately."
"Got it."
"Oh,
one more thing. I suspect you'll have some extra responsibilities as of
tomorrow, Lee."
"Eh?"
"Yoit
office will have one
additional medium to deal with. Telefax. I'm buying Citizen and we're going to turn it into a pro-Popeek
rag."
Percy's
mouth dropped in astonishment; then he started to laugh. "You're a wonder,
Roy. A genuine wonder."
Moments after Percy departed, Noel Hervey,
the security and exchange slyster, called. "Well?" Walton asked.
Hervey
looked preoccupied. "I've successfully spent a couple of hundred million
of Popeek's money in the last half-hour, Roy. You now own the single biggest
block of Citizen
stock there is."
"How much is that?"
"One
hundred fifty-two thousand shares. Approximately thirty-three percent."
"Thirty-three percentl What about the
other eighteen percent?"
"Patience,
lad, patience. I know my job. I snapped up all the small holdings there were,
very quietly. It cost me a pretty penny to farm out the purchases, too."
"Why'd you do that?" Walton asked.
"Because
this has to be handled very gingerly. You know the ownership setup of Citizen?"
"No."
"Well, it goes like this: Amalgamated
Telefax owns a twenty-six percent chunk, and Horace Murlin owns twenty-five
percent. Since Murlin also owns Amalgamated, he votes fifty-one percent of the
stock, even though it isn't registered that way. The other forty-nine percent
doesn't matter, Murlin figures. So I'm busy gathering up as much of it as I can
for you—under half a dozen different brokerage names. I doubt that I can get it
all, but I figure on rounding up at least forty-nine percent. Then I'll
approach Murlin with a Big Deal and sucker him into selling me six percent of
his Citizen stock. Hell check around, find out that the
remaining stock is splintered ninety-seven different ways, and hell probably
let go of a little of his, figuring he still has control."
"Suppose he
doesn't?" Walton asked.
"Don't
worry," Hervey said confidently. "He will. I've got a billion
smackers to play "with, don't I? I'll cook up a deal so juicy he can't
resist it—and all hell have to do to take a flyer will be to peel off a little
of his Citizen stock. The second he does that, I transfer
all the fragmented stock to you. With your controlling majority of fifty-one
percent, you boot Murlin off the Board, and the telefax sheet is yours! Simple?
Clear?"
"Perfectly,"
Walton said. "Okay. Keep in touch."
He
broke contact and walked to the window. The street was packed with people
scrambling in every direction, like so many ants moving at random over the
ground. Many of them clutched telefax sheets—and the most popular one was the Citizen. Many of them would gape and goggle at
kaleidowhirl programs, come evening.
Walton
suddenly tightened his fist. In just that way, he thought, Popeek was
tightening its hold on the public by capturing the mass media. If Hervey's
confidence had any justification in truth, they would own the leading
anti-Popeek telefax sheet by tomorrow. With subtle handling over the course of
several days, they could swing the slant of Citizen around to a pro-Popeek stand, and do it so
surreptitiously that it would seem as though the sheet had never had any other
policy.
As
for the kaleidowhirl subterfuge—that, Walton admitted, was hitting below the
belt. But he had resolved that all would be fair during the current crisis.
There would be time enough for morality after war had been averted.
At about 1430 that day, Walton took advantage
of a lull in activities to have a late lunch at the Bronze Room. He felt that
he had to get away from the confining walls of his office for at least some
part of the afternoon.
The
Bronze Room had adopted cerise as its color scheme for the day. Walton selected
a private room, lunched lightiy on baked chlorella steak and filtered rum, and
dialed a twelve-minute nap. When the alarm system in the foamweb couch stirred
him to wakefulness, he stretched happily, some of the choking tension having
been washed out of him.
Thoughtfully,
he switched on the electroluminescent kaleidoscope and stared at it. It worked
on the same principle as the kaleidowhirl programs beamed over the public
video, except that the Bronze Room provided closed-channel beaming of its own
kaleidoscopic patterns; tending more to soft greens and pale rose, they were on
a higher esthetic plane, certainly, than the jagged, melodramatic purples and
reds the video channels sent out for popular consumption.
But
it was with a certain new apprehension that Walton now studied the
kaleidoscopic pattern. Now that he knew what a dangerous weapon the flashing
colors could be, how could he be certain that the Bronze Room proprietors were
not flashing some scarcely seen subliminal command at him this very moment?
He turned the set off with a brusque gesture.
The ends justify the means. A nice homily, he thought, which allowed him
to do almost anything. It brought to mind the rationale of Ivan Karamazov:
without God, everything is permissible.
But
both God and Dostoevski seem to be obsolete these days, he reminded himself.
God is now a lean young man with an office on the twenty-ninth floor of the
Cullen Building—and as for Dostoevski, all he did was write books, and
therefore could not have been of any great importance.
He felt a tremor of
self-doubt. Maybe it had been unwise to let kaleidowhirl propaganda loose on
the world; once unleashed, it might not be so easily caged again. He realized
that as soon as the Popeek campaign was over, he would have to make sure some
method was devised for pre-checking all public and closed-channel kaleidoscopic
patterns.
The
most damnable part of such propaganda techniques, he knew, was that you could
put over almost any idea at all without arousing suspicion on the part of the
viewer. He wouldn't know he'd been tampered with; you could tell him so, after
the new idea had been planted, and by then he wouldn't believe you.
Walton
dialed another filtered rum, and lifted it to his lips with a slightly shaky
hand.
"Mr. Ludwig of the United Nations called
while you were out, sir," Walton was told upon returning to his office.
"He'd like you to call him back."
"Very well. Make the
connection for me."
When
Ludwig appeared, Walton said, "Sorry I missed your call. What's
happening?"
"Special
session of the Security Council just broke up. They passed a resolution
unanimously and shipped it on to the Assembly. There's going to be an immediate
hearing to determine the new permanent head of Popeek."
Walton
clamped his lips together. After a moment he said, "How come?"
"The
Dirnan crisis. They don't want a mere interim director handling things. They
feel the man dealing with the aliens ought to have full UN blessing."
"Should
I interpret that to mean I get the job automatically?"
"I couldn't swear to it," said
Ludwig. "General consensus certainly favors you to continue. I'd advise
that you show up at the hearing in person and present your program in detail;
otherwise they may stick some smoothtalking politico in your place. The noise
is slated to start at 1100, day after tomorrow. The eighteenth."
"Ill be there," Walton said.
"Thanks for the tip."
He
chewed the end of his stylus for a moment, then hastily scribbled down the
appointment. As of now, he knew he couldn't worry too strongly about events
taking place the day after tomorrow—not with Fred arriving for a showdown the
next morning.
The
next day began busily enough. Hervey was the first to call.
"The
Citizens sewed up, Roy! I had dinner with Murlin last
night and weaseled him out of four percent of Citizen stock in exchange for a fancy tip on the new
monorail project out Nevada way. He was grmning all over the place—but I'll bet
he's grinning out of the other side of his mouth this morning."
"Is it all
arranged?" Walton asked.
"In
the bag. I was up by 0700 and consolidating my holdings—your holdings, I mean.
Forty-seven percent of the stock I had fragmented in a dozen different outfits;
the other two percent outstanding belonged to rich widows who wouldn't sell. I
lumped the forty-seven percent together in your name, then completed the transfer
on Murlin's four percent and stuck that in there too. Citizen telefax is now the property of Popeek,
Roy!"
"Fine work. How much did it cost?"
Then
he said, "Four hundred eighty-three million and some change. Plus my usual
five percent commission, which in this case comes to about two and a quarter
million."
"But
I offered you five million," Walton said. "That offer still
goes."
"You
want me to lose my license? I spend years placing bribes to get a slyster's
license, and you want me to throw it away for an extra couple million? Uh-uh.
Ill settle for two and a quarter, and damn good doing I call that for a day's
work."
Walton
grinned. "You win. And Sue Llewellyn will be glad to know it didn't cost
the whole billion to grab Citizen. You'll
be over with the papers, won't youP"
"About 1000," the slyster said.
"I've gotta follow through for Murlin on his monorail deal first. The poor
sucker! See you in an hour."
"Right."
Rapidly Walton scribbled memos. As soon as
the papers were in his hands, he'd serve notice on Murlin that a stockholders'
meeting was to be held at once. After that, he'd depose Murlin, fire the
present Citizen
editors, and pack the
telefax sheet with men loyal to Popeek.
Fred
was due at 1100. Walton buzzed Keeler, the new security chief, and said,
"Keeler, I have an appointment with someone at 1100. I want you to station
three men outside my door and frisk him for weapons as he comes in."
"We'd do that anyway, sir. It's standard
procedure now."
"Good. But I want you to be one of the
three. And make sure the two who come with you are tight-mouthed. I don't want any newsbreaks on this."
"Right, sir."
"Okay. Be there about 1050 or so. About
1115, I'm going to press my door opener, and I want you and your men to break
in, arrest my visitor, and spirit him off to the deepest dungeon security has.
And leave him there. If Martinez wants to know what's going on, tell him I'll
take responsibility."
Keeler
looked vaguely puzzled, but merely nodded. "We frisk him first, then let
him talk to you for fifteen minutes. Then we come in on signal and take him
away. I've got it."
"This man's a dangerous anti-Popeek
conspirator. Make sure he's drugged before he gets out of my office. I don't
want him making noise."
The
annunciator sounded. "Man from communications has a message for you, Mr.
Walton."
He
switched over from Keeler to communications and said, "Go ahead."
"From McLeod, Mr. Walton. We just got
it. It says, 'Arriving Nairobi on the 18th, will be in your office with Diman
following morning if he feels like making the trip. Otherwise will you come to
Nairobi?'"
"Tell him yes, if necessary,"
Walton said.
He
glanced at his watch. 0917. It looked like it was going to be hectic all day.
And Fred was due at 1100.
XVI
hervey showed up at 1003, grinning broadly. He unfolded a
thick wad of documents and thrust them at Walton.
"I hold in my hand the world's most
potent telefax sheet," Hervey said. He flipped the documents casually onto
Walton's desk and laughed. "They're all yours. Fifty-one percent, every
bit of it voting stock. I told Murlin about it just before I left him this
morning. He turned purple."
"What did he
say?"
"What
could he say? I asked him offhandedly if he knew
where all the outstanding Citizen stock
was, and he said yes, it was being held by a lot of small holders. And then I
told him that somebody was buying out the small holders, and that I was selling
my four percent to him. That's when he started to change colors. When I left he
was busy making phone calls, but I don't think hell like what he's going to
find out."
Walton riffled through the
papers. "It's all here, eh? Fine work. Ill put through your voucher in
half an hour or so, unless you're in a hurry."
"Oh,
don't rush," Hervey said. He ran a finger inside his collar. "Couple
of security boys outside, y'know. They really gave me a going-over."
"I'm
expecting an assassin at 1100," Walton said lighdy. "They're on the
lookout."
"Oh? A close friend?"
"A relative," Walton said.
Fred
arrived promptly at 1100. By that time Walton had already set the machinery in
operation for the taking-over of Citizen.
The first step had been to call Horace Murlin
and confirm the fact that Popeek now owned the telefax sheet. Murlin's fleshy
face was a curious shade of rose-purple; he sputtered at Walton for five
minutes before admitting he was beaten.
With Murlin out of the way, Walton selected a
new editorial staff for the paper from a list Percy supplied. He intended to
keep the reporting crew of the old regime intact; Citizen had a fantastically efficient newsgathering
team, and there was no point in breaking it up. It was the policy-making level
Walton was interested in controlling.
The
1000 edition of Citizen
was the last under the old
editors. They had received word from Murlin about what had happened, and by
1030, when Walton sent his dismissal notices over, they were already cleaning
out their desks.
That
1000 edition was a beauty, though. The lead headline read:
ARE WE CHUMPS FOR THE GREENSK1NS?
And
most of the issue was devoted to inflammatory pro-war anti-Popeek journalism. A
full page of "letters from the readers"—actually transcribed phone
calls, since few of Citizens
readers were interested in
writing letters—echoed the editorial stand. One "letter" in
particular caught Walton's attention.
It was from a Mrs. P.F. of New York City Environ, which probably meant Jersey or lower
Connecticut, and it was short and to the point:
To the Editor—
Horray
for you. Popeek is a damned crime and that Walton criminal ought to be put away
and we ought to kill those greenskins up there before they kill us. We gotta
have room to live.
Kill them before they kill us. Walton snickered. All the old hysterias, the
old panic reactions, come boiling up again in times of stress.
He
looked at his hand. It was perfectly steady, even though his wrist watch told
him Fred would be here in just a few
minutes. A week ago, a situation like this would have had him gobbling
benzolurethrin as fast as he could unwrap the lozenges.
The ghosdy presence of FitzMaugham seemed to
hover in the room. The
ends justify the means, Walton
told himself grimly, as he waited for his brother to arrive.
Fred
was dressed completely in black, from his stylish neo-Victorian waistcoat and
the bit of ribbon at his throat to the mirror-bright leather pumps on his feet.
The splendor of his clothing was curiously at odds with the coarseness of his
features and the stockiness of his body.
He
walked into Walton's office at the stroke of 1100 and sighed deeply—the sigh of
a man about to take permanent possession. "Good morning, Roy. I'm on
time, as always."
"And looking radiant, my dear
brother." Walton gestured appreciatively at Fred's clothes. "It's
been a long time since I've seen you in anything but your lab smock."
"I
gave notice at the lab yesterday, night after I spoke to you. I'm no longer an
employee of Popeek. And I felt I should dress with the dignity suitable to my
new rank." He grinned buoyandy. "Well, ready to turn over the orb and
scepter, Roy?"
"Not exactly,"
Walton said.
"But-"
"But
I promised you I'd resign in your favor today, Fred. I don't think I ever used
those words, but I certainly implied it, didn't I?"
"Of
course you did. You told me to come here at 1100 and you'd arrange the
transfer."
Walton nodded. "Exactly so." He waited
a long moment and then said quietly, "I lied, Fred."
He
had chosen the words carefully, for maximum impact. He had not chosen wrongly.
For
a brief instant Fred's face was very pale against the blackness of his garb.
Total disbelief flickered across his eyes and mouth.
Walton
had considered his brother's mental picture of him—the elder brother, virtuous,
devoted to hard work, kind to animals, and just a little soft in the head.
Also, extremely honest.
Fred hadn't expected Walton to be lying. And
the calm admission stunned him.
"You're
not planning to go through with it, then?" Fred asked in a dead voice.
"No."
"You realize what this means in terms of
the serum, don't you? The moment I get out of here and transmit your refusal
to my employers, they'll begin wholesale manufacture and distribution of the
Lamarre serum. The publicity won't be good, Roy. Nor the result."
"You won't get out of
here," Walton said.
Another
shock wave rippled over Fred's face. "You can't be serious, Roy. My
employers know where I am; they know what I'm here for. If they don't hear from
me within twenty-four hours, they'll proceed with serum distribution. You can't
hope to—"
"I'll
risk it," Walton interrupted. "If nothing else, 111 have a twenty-four extension. You didn't
really think I could hand Popeek over to you on a platter, Fred? Why, I don't
even know how secure my own position is here. So I'm afraid 111 have to back down on my offer. You're under arrest, Fred!"
"Arrest!"
Fred sprang from his seat
and circled around the desk toward Walton. For a moment the two brothers stared
at each other, faces inches apart. Walton put one hand on his brother's
shoulder and, gripping tightly, forced him around to the front of the desk.
"You
had this all planned, didn't you?" Fred said bitterly. "Yesterday,
when you talked to me, you knew this was what you were going to do. But you
said you'd yield, and I believed you! I don't fool easy, but I thought I had
you pegged because you were my brother. I knew you. You wouldn't do a sneaky thing like this."
"But I did,"
Walton said.
Suddenly,
Fred jumped. He charged at Walton blindly, head down.
In
the same motion, Walton signaled for Keeler and his men to break in, and met
Fred's charge. He caught his brother in midstride with a swinging punch that
sent his head cracking back sharply.
Fred's
face twisted and writhed, more in astonishment than pain. He stepped back,
rubbing his chin. "You've changed," he said. "This job's made
you tough. A year ago you would never have done this to me."
Walton
shrugged. "Look behind you, Fred. And this time you can trust me."
Fred
turned warily. Keeler and two other gray-clad security men stood there.
"Drug him and take him away,"
Walton said. "Have him held in custody until I notify Martinez."
Fred's
eyes widened. "You're a dictator!" he
said hoarsely. "You just move people around like chessmen, Roy. Like
chessmen."
"Drug him," Walton repeated.
Keeler stepped forward, a tiny hypodermic
spray cupped in his hand. He activated it with a twitch of his thumb and
touched it to Fred's forearm. A momentary hum droned in the office as the
vibrating spray forced the drug into Fred's arm.
He
slumped like an empty sack. "Pick him up," Keeler ordered. "Take
him and let's get going."
The story broke in the 1300 edition of Citizen, and from the general tone of the piece Walton
could see the fine hand of Lee Percy at work.
The headline was:
GUY TRIES TO KNOCK OFF POPEEK HEAD
After
the usual string of subheads, all in the cheerful, breezy, barely literate Citizen style, came the body of the story:
A guy tried to bump Popeek top number Roy
Walton today. Security men gat there in time to keep Walton from getting the
same finisher as dead Popeek boss FitzMaugham got last week.
Walton says he's all right; the assassin
didn't even come close. He also told our man that he expects good news on the
New Earth bit soon. We like the sound of those words. Popeek may be with the
stream after all. Who knows?
The voice was that of Citizen, but the man behind the voice was thinking a
little differently. Had the previous editors of Citizen been handling the break, the prevailing tone
would most likely have been too-bad-he-missed.
Walton called Percy after the edition came
out. "Nice job you did on our first Citizen," he
said approvingly. "It's just what I want: same illiterate style, but a
slow swerving of editorial slant until it's completely pro-Popeek."
"Wait
till you see tomorrow's paper. We're just getting the hang of itl And well have
our first kaleidowhirl show at 2000 tonight. Cost a fortune to buy in, but we
figured that's the best hour."
"What's the buried message?"
"As
you said," Percy told him. "A pro-Popeek job and some pacifist stuff.
We've got a team of pollsters out now, and they say the current's predominantly
going the other way. We'll be able to tell if the kaleidowhirl stuff works out,
all right."
"Keep
up the good work," Walton said. "Well get there yet. The alien isn't
due to arrive for another day or so— McLeod gets into Nairobi tomorrow some
time. I'm going to testify before the UN tomorrow, too. I hope those UN boys
are watching our pretty color patterns tonight."
Percy grinned. "Boy,
you bet!"
Walton threw himself energetically into his
work. It was taking shape, now. There were still some loose ends, of course,
but he was beginning to feel that some end to the tangle of interlocking
intrigues was in sight.
He checked with a public recreation director
and discovered there would be a block forum on West 382nd Street at 1830 that
night. He made a note to attend, and arranged to have a synthetic mask
fashioned so he wouldn't have to reveal his own identity.
Twenty-four
hours. In that time, Fred's employers would presumably be readying themselves
to loose Lamarre's serum on the world; an extraterrestrial being would be
landing on Earth—and, by then, Walton would have been called to render an
account of his stewardship before the United Nations.
The annunciator chimed again.
"Yes?" Walton said.
"Mr.
O'Mealia of Mount Palomar Observatory, calling long distance to talk to you,
sir."
"Put him on," Walton said
puzzledly.
O'Mealia
was a red-faced individual with deep-set, compelling eyes. He introduced himself
as a member of the research staff at Mount Palomar. "Glad I could finally
reach you," he said, in a staccato burst of words. "Been trying to
call for an hour. Made some early-morning observations of Venus a little while
ago, and I thought you'd be interested."
"Venus? What?"
"Cloud
blanket looks awfully funny, Mr. Walton. Blazing away like sixty. Got the whole
staff down here to discuss it, and the way it looks to us there's some sort of
atomic chain-reaction going on in Venus' atmosphere. I think it's those
terraforming men you Popeek folk have up there. I think they've blown the whole
place upl"
walton
stepped off the
jetbus at Broadway and West 382nd Street, paused for a moment beneath a street
lamp, and fingered his chin to see if his mask were on properly. It was,
Three
youths stood leaning against a nearby building. "Could you tell me where
the block meeting's being held?" Walton asked.
"Down the street and
turn left. You a telefax man?"
"Just an interested citizen,"
Walton said. "Thanks for the directions."
It
was easy to see where the block meeting was; Walton saw streams of
determined-looking men and women entering a bulky old building just off 382nd
Street. He joined them and found himself carried along into the auditorium.
Nervously
he found a seat. The auditorium was an old one, predominandy dark brown and
cavernous, with row after row of hard wooden folding chairs. Someone was adjusting
a microphone on stage. A sharp metallic whine came over the public-address
system.
"Testing. Testing, one
two three . . ."
"It's
all right, Max!" someone yelled from the rear. Walton didn't turn around
to look.
A low undercurrent of murmuring was audible.
It was only 1815; the meeting was not due to start for another fifteen minutes,
but the hall was nearly full, with more than a thousand of the local residents
already on hand.
The
fifteen minutes passed slowly. Walton listened carefully to the conversations
around him; no one was discussing the Venus situation. Apparentiy his cloud of
censorship had been effective. He had instructed Percy to keep all
word of the disaster from the public
until'the 2100 news-blares. By that time, the people would have been exposed to
the indoctrinating kaleidowhirl program at 2000, and their reaction would be
accordingly more temperate—he hoped.
Also, releasing the news early would have
further complicated the survey Walton was trying to make by attending this
public meeting. The Index of Public Confusion increased factorially; one extra
consideration for discussion and Walton's task would be hopelessly difficult.
At
exactly 1830, a tall, middle-aged man stepped out on the stage. He seized the
microphone as if it were a twig and said, "Hello, folks. Glad to see
you're all here tonight. This is an important meeting for us all. In case some
of you don't know me—and I do see some new faces out there—I'm Dave Forman, president of the West 382nd Street Association.
I also run a little law business on the side, just to help pay the rent."
(Giggles.)
"As
usual in these meetings," Forman went
on, "we'll have a brief panel discussion, and then I'll throw the thing
open to you folks for floor discussion. The panelists tonight are people you
all know—Sadie Hargreave, Dominic Campo-bello, Rudi
Steinfeld. Come on out here, folks."
The
panelists appeared on the stage diffidently. Sadie Hargreave was a short, stout,
fierce-looking little woman; Campobello was chunky, balding, Steinfeld tall and
ascetic. Walton was astonished that there should be such camaraderie here. Was
it all synthetic? It didn't seem that way.
He
had always remained aloof, never mingling with his neighbors in the gigantic
project where he lived, never suspecting the existence of community life on
this scale. But, somehow, community life had sprung up in this most Gargantuan
of cities. Organizations within each project, within each block perhaps, had
arisen, converting New York into an interlocking series of small towns. I ought to investigate the grass roots more often, Walton thought. Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid having a night on
the town.
"Hello, folks," Sadie Hargreave
said aggressively. "I'm glad I can talk to you tonight. Gosh, I want to
speak out. I think it's crazy to let these thing-men from outer space push us
around. I for one feel we ought to take strong action against that space
world."
Cries
of "Yeahl Yeahl Go to it, Sadie!" rose from the audience.
Skillfully she presented three inflammatory
arguments in favor of war with Dima, backing up each with a referent of high
emotional connotation. Walton watched her performance with growing admiration.
The women was a born public relations technician. It was too bad she was on the
other side of the fence.
He saw the effect she had: people were
nodding in agreement, grimacing vehemently, muttering to themselves. The mood
of the meeting, he gathered, was overwhelmingly in favor of war if Dima did not
yield New Earth.
Dominic
Campobello began his address by inviting all and sundry to his barber shop;
this was greeted with laughter. Then he launched into a discourse on Popeek as
an enemy of mankind. A few catcalls, Walton noted, but again chiefly approval.
Campobello seemed sincere.
The
third man, Rudi Steinfeld, was a local music teacher. He, too, spoke out
against Popeek, though in a restrained, dryly intellectual manner. People began
yawning. Steinfeld cut his speech short.
It
was now 1900. In one hour Percy's kaleidowhirl program would be screened.
Walton
stayed at the block meeting until 1930, listening to citizen after citizen rise
and heap curses upon Popeek, Dima, or Walton, depending on where his particular
ire lay. At 1930 Walton rose and left the hall.
He phoned Percy. "I'm
on West 382nd Street. Just attended a block meeting. I'd say the prevailing
sentiment runs about ninety percent agin us. We don't have the people backing
our program any more, Lee."
"We
never did. But I think well nail 'em now. The kaleidowhiH's ready to go, and
it's a honey. And I think Citizen will
sell 'em tool We're on our way, Roy."
"I hope so," Walton said.
He
was unable to bring himself to watch Percy's program, even though he reached
his room in time that night. He knew there could be no harm in watching—at
least not for him—but the idea of voluntarily submitting his mind to external
tampering was too repugnant to accept.
Instead he spent the hour dictating a report
on the block meeting, for benefit of his pollster staff. When he was done with
that, he turned to the 2100 edition of Citizen, which
came clicking from the telefax slot right on schedule.
He had to look hard for the Venus story.
Finally he found it tucked away at the bottom of the sheet.
ACCIDENT
ON VENUS A big blowup took place on the planet Venus earlier today. Sky-men who
watched the popoff say it was caused by an atomic explosion in the planet's
atmosphere.
Meanwhile,
attempts are being made to reach the team of
Earth engineers working on Venus. ■ No word from them yet. They may be
dead.
Walton
chuckled. They
may be dead, indeed!
By now Lang and his team, and the rescue mission as well, lay dead under
showers of radioactive formaldehyde, and Venus had been turned into a blazing
hell ten times less livable than it had been before.
Percy
had mishandled the news superbly. For one thing, he had carefully neglected to
link Lang with Popeek in any way. That was good connotative thinking. It would
be senseless to identify Popeek in the public mind with disasters or fiascos
of any kind.
For
another, the skimpy insignificance of the piece implied that it had been some
natural phenomenon that sent Venus up in flames, not the fumbling attempts of
the terra-formers. Good handling there, too.
Walton
felt cheerful. He slept soundly, knowing that the public consciousness was
being properly shaped.
By 0900, when he arrived at his office, the
pollsters had reported a ten percent swing in public opinion, in the direction
of Popeek and Walton. At 1000, Citizen hit
the slots with an extra announcing that prospects for peaceful occupation of
New Earth looked excellent. The editorial praised Walton. The
letters-to-the-editor column, carefully fabricated by Lee Percy, showed a
definite upswing of opinion.
The trend continued, and it was contagious.
By 1100, when Walton left the Cullen Building and caught a jet-copter for
United Nations Headquarters, the pro-Popeek trend in public opinion was almost
overwhelming.
The
copter put down before the gleaming green-glass facade of UN Headquarters;
Walton handed the man a bill and went inside, where a tense-faced Ludwig was
waiting for him.
"They
started early," Ludwig said. "It's been going on since 1000."
"How do things
look?"
"I'm
puzzled, Roy. Couple of die-hards are screaming for your scalp, but you're
getting help from unexpected quarters. Old Mogens Snorreson of Denmark suddenly
got up and said it was necessary for the safety of mankind that we give you a
permanent appointment as director of Popeek."
"Snorreson?
But hasn't he been the one
who wanted me bounced?"
Ludwig
nodded. "That's what I mean. The climate is changing, definitely changing.
Ride the crest, Roy. The way things look now, you may end up being swept into
office for life."
They entered the giant Assembly hall. At the
dais, a black-faced man with bright teeth was speaking. "Who's that?"
Walton whispered.
"Malcolm
Nbono, the delegate from Ghana. He regards you as a sort of saint for our
times."
Walton
slipped into a seat in the gallery and said, "Let's listen from here
before we go down below. I want to catch my breath."
The young man from Ghana was saying, . .
Crisis points are common to humanity. Many years ago, when my people came from
their colonial status and achieved independence, we learned that painstaking
negotiations and peaceful approaches are infinitely more efficacious than
frontal attack by violent means. In my eyes, Roy Walton is an outstanding exponent
of this philosophy. I urge his election as director of the Bureau of Population
Equalization."
A heavy-bearded, ponderous man to Nbono's
right shouted "Bravo!" at that point, and added several thick
Scandinavian expletives.
"That's good old Mogens. The Dane really
is on your side this morning," Ludwig said.
"Must
have been watching the kaleidowhirl last night," Walton murmured.
The
delegate from Ghana concluded with a brief tremolo cadenza praising Walton.
Walton's eyes were a little moist; he hadn't realized he was a saint. Nbono
tacked on an abrupt coda and sat down.
"All right,"
Walton said. "Let's go down there."
They made a grand entrance. Ludwig took his
seat behind the neon United
States sign, and Walton slid
into the unoccupied seat to Ludwig's right. A definite stir of interest was
noticeable.
The secretary-general was
presiding—beady-eyed Lars Magnusson of Sweden. "I see Mr. Walton of Popeek
has arrived," he commented. "By a resolution passed unanimously
yesterday, we have invited Mr. Walton this morning to address us briefly. Mr.
Walton, would you care to speak now?"
"Thank you very
much," Walton said. He rose.
The
delegates were staring at him with great interest . . . and, somewhere behind
them, obscured by the bright lights of the cameras, there were, he sensed, a
vast multitude of onlookers peering at him from the galleries.
Onlookers
who had seen Percy's kaleidowhirl last night, evidendy. A thunderous wave of applause
swept down on him. This
is too easy, he
thought. That
kaleidowhirl program seems to have hypnotized everybody.
He moistened his lips.
"Mr. Secretary-General, members of the
Assembly, friends: I'm very grateful for this chance to come before you on my
own behalf. It's my understanding that you are to choose a permanent successor
to Mr. FitzMaugham today. I offer myself as a candidate for that post."
He
had planned a long, impassioned, semantically loaded speech to sway them, but
the happenings thus far this morning convinced him it was unnecessary. The
kaleidowhirl had done the work for him.
"My qualifications for the post should
be apparent to all. I worked with the late Director FitzMaugham during the
formative days of Popeek. Upon his death I succeeded to his post and have
efficiently maintained the operation of the Bureau during the eight days since
his assassination.
"There
are special circumstances which dictate my continuation in office. Perhaps you
know of the failure of our terraforming experiments—the destruction of our
outpost on Venus, and the permanent damage done to that planet. The failure of
this project makes it imperative that we move outward to the stars to relieve
our population crisis."
He
took a deep breath. "In exacdy four hours," he said, "a
representative of an alien race will land on Earth to confer with the director
of Popeek. I cannot stress too greatly the importance of mamtaining a
continuity of thought and action within our Bureau. Bluntly, it is essential that
I be the one who deals with this alien. I ask
for your support. Thank you."
He took his seat again. Ludwig was staring at
him, aghast.
"Royl
What kind of a speech was that? You can't just demand the jobl You've got to give reasons! You have to—"
"Hush,"
Walton said. "Don't worry about it. Were you watching the kaleidowhirls
last night?"
"Me? Of course not!"
Walton grinned. "They were," he said, gesturing at the other
delegates. "I'm not worried."
XVIII
walton left the Assembly meeting about 1215, pleading
urgent Popeek business. The voting began at 1300, and half an hour later the
result was officially released.
The 1400 Citizen was the first to carry the report.
WALTON
ELECTED POPEEK HEAD The General Assembly of
the United Nations gave Roy Walton a healthy vote of confidence today. By a 95-0 vote, three abstaining, he was
picked to succeed the late D. F. FitzMaugham as Popeek czar. He
has held the post on a temporary basis for
the past eight days.
Walton
rang up Percy. "Who wrote that Citizen piece
on me?" he asked.
"I did, chief. Why?"
"Nicely done, but not enough sock. Get
all those three-syllable words out of it by the next edition. Get back to the
old Citizen style of jazzy writing."
"We thought we'd brush it up a little
now that you're in," Percy said.
"No.
That's dangerous. Keep to the old style, but revamp the content. We're rolling
along, now. What's new from the pollsters?"
"Fifty percent swing to Popeek. You're
the most popular man in the country, as of noon. Churches are offering up
prayers for you. There's a move afoot to make you President of the United
States in place of old Lanson."
"Let
Lanson keep his job," Walton chuckled. "I'm not looking for any
figurehead jobs. I'm too young. When's the next Citizen due?"
"At 1500. We're keeping up hourly
editions until the crisis is over."
Walton
thought for a moment. "I think 1500's too early. The Dirnan arrives in
Nairobi at 1530 our time. I want a big splash in the 1600 edition—but not a
word before thenl"
"I'm with you," Percy said, and
signed off.
A
moment later the annunciator said, "There's a closed-circuit call for you
from Batavia, sir."
"From where?"
"Batavia. Java."
"Let's have it," Walton said.
A
fleshy face filled the screen, the face of a man who had who had lived a soft
life in a moist climate. A rumbling voice said, "You are Walton."
"I am Walton."
"I
am Gaetano di Cassio. Pleased of making the acquaintance, Signor Director
Walton. I own rubber plantation in the area here."
Walton's
mind immediately clocked off the top name on the list of landed proprietors
Lassen had prepared for him:
di
Cassio, Gaetano. 57. Holdings estimated at better than a billion and a quarter.
Born Genoa 2175, settled in Amsterdam 2199. Purchased large Java holding 2211.
"What can I do for you, Mr. di
Cassio?"
The rubber magnate looked ill; his fleshy
face was beaded with globules of sweat. "Your brother," he grunted
heavily. "Your brother worked for me. I sent him to see you yesterday. He
has not come back."
"Indeed?"
Walton shrugged. "There's a famous phrase I could use at this point. I
won't."
"Make no flippancies," di Cassio
said heavily. "Where is he?"
Walton said, "In jail. Attempted
coercion of a public official." He realized di Cassio was twice as nervous
and tense as he was.
"You
have jailed him," di Cassio repeated flatly. "Ah, I see. Jail."
The audio pickup brought in the sound of stertorous breathing. "Will you
not free him?'' di Cassio asked.
"I will not."
"Did he not tell you what would happen
if he would not be granted his request?"
"He told me,"
Walton said. "Well?"
The
fat man looked sick. Walton saw that the bluff was going to be unsuccessful;
that the conspirators would not dare put Lamarre's drug into open production.
It had been a weapon without weight, and Walton had not let himself be cowed by
it.
"Well?" Walton repeated inflexibly.
"You trouble me sorely," said di
Cassio. "You give my heart pain, Mr. Walton. Steps will have to be
taken." "The Lamarre immortality serum—"
The face on the screen turned a leaden gray.
"The serum," di Cassio said, "is not entered into this
talking." "Oh, no? My brother Fred made a few remarks—"
"Serum rum
esiste!"
Walton
smiled calmly. A nonexistent serum," he said, "has, unfortunately,
nonexistent leverage against me. You don't scare me, di Cassio. I've outbluffed
you. Go take a walk around your plantation. While you still have it, that
is."
"Steps will be taken," di Cassio
said. But his malevolence was hollow. Walton laughed and broke contact.
He drew Lassen's list from his desk and
inscribed a brief memo to Olaf Eglin on it. These were the hundred biggest
estates in the world. Within a week, there would be equalized Japanese living
on all of them.
He
called Martinez of security. "I've ordered my brother Fred remanded to
your care," he said.
"I know." The security man sounded
peeved. "We can't hold a man indefinitely, not even on your say-so,
Director Walton."
"The
charge is conspiracy," Walton said. "Conspiracy against the
successful operation of Popeek. Ill have a list of the ringleaders on your desk
in half an hour. I want them rounded up, given a thorough psyching, and
jailed."
"There
are times," Martinez said slowly, "when I suspect you exceed your
powers, Director Walton. But send me the list and 111 have the arrests
made."
The afternoon crawled. Walton proceeded with
routine work on half a dozen fronts, held screened conferences with each of his
section chiefs, read reports augmenting what he already knew of the Venus
disaster, and gobbled a few benzolurethrin tranquilizers.
He
called Keeler and learned that no sign of Lamarre had come to light yet. From
Percy he discovered that Citizen had
added two hundred thousand subscribers overnight. The 1500 edition had a
lengthy editorial praising Walton, and some letters that Percy swore were
genuine, doing the same.
At 1515 Olaf Eglin called to announce that
the big estates were in the process of being dismembered. "You'll be able
to hear the howls from here to Batavia when we get going," Eglin warned.
"We have to be tough," Walton told
him firmly.
At 1517 he devoted a few minutes to a
scientific paper that proposed terraforming Pluto by establishing synthetic hydrogen-fusion
suns on the icy planet. Walton skimmed through the specifications, which
involved passing a current of several million amperes through a tube containing
a mixture of tritium and deuterium. The general idea, he gathered, was to
create electromagnetic forces of near-solar intensity; a pulsed-reaction engine
would supply a hundred megawatts of power continuously at 10,000,000 degrees
centigrade.
Has
possibilities, Walton
noted, and forwarded the plan on to Eglin. It sounded plausible enough, but.
Walton was personally skeptical of undertaking any more terraforming
experiments after the Venus fiasco. There were, after all, limits to the public
relations miracles Lee Percy could create.
At 1535 the annunciator chimed again.
"Call from Nairobi, Africa, Mr. Walton." "Okay."
McLeod appeared on the screen.
"We're here," he said.
"Arrived safely half a microsecond ago, and all's well." "How
about the alien?"
"We
have him in a specially constructed cabin. Breathes hydrogen and ammonia, you
know. He's very anxious to see you. When can you come?"
Walton
thought for a moment. "I guess there's no way of transporting him here, is
there?"
"I
wouldn't advise it. The Dirnans are very sensitive about traveling in such a
low gravitational field. Makes their stomachs queasy, you know. Do you think
you could come out here?"
"When's the earliest?"
"Oh—half an
hour?" McLeod suggested.
"I'm on my way," said Walton.
The sprawling metropolis of Nairobi, capital
of the Republic of Kenya, lay at the foot of the Kikuyu Hills, and magnificent
Mount Kilimanjaro towered above it. Four million people inhabited Nairobi,
finest of the many fine cities along Africa's western coast. Africa's Negro
republics had built soundly and well after achieving their liberation from
colonial status.
The
city was calm as Walton's special jet decelerated for landing at the vast
Nairobi airport. He had left at 1547 New York time; the transatlantic trip had
taken two hours and some minutes, and there was an eight-hour time zone
differential between Kenya and New York. It was now 0313 in Nairobi; the
early-morning rain was falling right on schedule as the jet taxied to a halt.
McLeod
was there to meet him. "The ship's in the hills, five miles out of town.
There's a copter waiting for you here."
Moments
after leaving the jetliner, Walton was shepherded aboard the 'copter. Rotors
whirred; the 'copter rose perpendicularly until it hung just above the
cloud-seeders at 13,000 feet, then fired its jets and streaked toward the
bills.
It was not raining when they landed;
according to Mc-Leod, the night rain was scheduled for 0200 in this sector, and
the seeders had already been here and moved on to bring rain to the city
proper. A groundcar waited for them at the airstrip in the hills. McLeod drove,
handling the turboelectric job with skill.
"There's the
ship," he said proudly, pointing.
Walton felt a sudden throat lump.
The
ship stood on its tail in the midst of a wide, flat swath of jet-blackened
concrete. It was at least five hundred feet high, a towering pale needle
shimmering brighdy in the moonlight. Wideswept tailjets supported it like
arching buttresses. Men moved busily about in the floodlighted area at its
base.
McLeod drove up to the ship and around it.
The flawless symmetry of the foreside was not duplicated behind; there, a
spidery catwalk ran some eighty feet up the side of the ship to a gaping lock,
and by its side a crude elevator shaft rose to the same hatch.
McLeod drew efficient salutes from the men as
he left the car; Walton, only puzzled glares.
"We'd
better take the elevator," McLeod said. "The men are working on the
catwalk."
Silently
they rode up into the ship. They stepped through the open airlock into a
paneled lounge, then into narrow compam'onways. McLeod paused and pressed down
a stud in an alcove along the way.
"I'm
back," he announced. "Tell Thogran Klayrn that I've brought Walton.
Find out whether hell come out to talk to him."
"I
thought he had to breathe special atmosphere," Walton said. "How can
he come out?"
"They've
got breathing masks. Usually they don't like to use them." McLeod listened
at the earpiece for a moment, then nodded. To Walton he said, "The alien
will see you in the lounge."
Walton had barely time to fortify himself
with a slug of filtered rum when a crewman appeared at the entrance to the
lounge and declared ostentatiously, "His Excellency, Thogran Klaym of
Dima."
The alien entered.
Walton had seen the photographs, and so he
was partially prepared. But only partially.
The photos had not given him any idea of
size. The alien stood eight feet high, and gave an appearance of astonishing
mass. It must have weighed four or five hundred pounds, but it stood on two
thick legs barely three feet long. Somewhere near the middle of the columnar
body, four sturdy arms jutted forth strangely. A neckless head topped the
ponderous creature—a head covered entirely with the transparent breathing
mask. One of the hands held a mechanical device of some sort; the translating
machine, Walton surmised.
The
alien's hide was bright-gTeen,
and leathery in texture. A
faint pungent odor drifted through the room, as of an object long immersed in
ammonia.
"I
am Thogran Klaym," a booming voice said. "Diplo-masiarch of Dima. I
have been sent to talk with Roy Walton. Are you Roy Walton?"
"I am." Walton's voice sounded cold
and dry to his own ears. He knew he was too tense, pressing too hard. "I'm
very glad to meet you, Thogran Klaym."
"Please sit. I do not. My body is not
made that way."
Walton sat. It made him feel uncomfortable to
have to crane his neck upward at the alien, but that could not be helped.
"Did you have a pleasant trip?" Walton asked, temporizing
desperately.
A half-grunt came from
Thogran Klaym. "Indeed it was so. But I do not indulge in little talk. A
problem we have, and it must be discussed."
"Agreed."
Whatever a diplomasiarch might be on Dima, it was not a typical diplomat. Walton was relieved that it would not be necessary
to spend hours in formalities before they reached the main problem.
"A
ship sent out by your people," the alien said, "invaded our system
some time ago. In command was your Colonel McLeod, whom I have come to know
well. What was the purpose of this ship?"
"To
explore the worlds of the universe and to discover a planet where we of Earth
could settle. Our world is very overcrowded now."
"So
I have been given to know. You have chosen Labura —or, in your terms, Procyon
VIII—as your colony. Is this so?"
"Yes,"
Walton said. "It's a perfect world for our purposes. But Colonel McLeod
has informed me that you object to our setding there."
"We do so object." The Diman's
voice was cold. "You are a young and active race. We do not know what
danger you may bring to us. To have you as our neighbors—"
"We could swear a
treaty of eternal peace," Walton said.
"Words. Mere words."
"But
don't you see that we can't even land on
that planet of yoursl It's too big, too heavy for us. What possible harm could
we do?"
"There
are races," said the Diman heavily, "which believe in violence as a
sacred act. You have long-range missiles. How might we trust you?"
Walton squirmed; then sudden inspiration
struck him. "There's a planet in this system that's as suitable for your
people as Labura is for ours. I mean Jupiter. We could offer you colonial
rights to Jupiter in exchange for the privilege of colonizing Labura!"
The
alien was silent for a moment. Considering? There was no way of telling what
emotions passed across that face. At length the alien said, "Not
satisfactory. Our people have long since reached stability of population. We
have no need of colonies. It has been many thousands of your years since we
have ventured into space."
.
Walton felt chilled. Many
thousands of years! He realized he was up against a formidable
life form.
"We
have learned to stabilize births and deaths," the Diman went on
sonorously. "It is a fundamental law of the universe, and one that you
Earthfolk must leam sooner or later. How you choose to do it is your own
business. But we have no need of planets in your system, and we fear allowing
you to enter ours. The matter is simple of statement, difficult of resolution.
But we are open to suggestions from you."
Walton's mind blanked. Suggestions? What
possible suggestion could he make?
He
gasped. "We have something to offer," he said. "It might be of
value to a race that has achieved population stability. We would give it to you
in exchange for colonization rights."
"What is this
commodity?" the Diman asked.
"Immortality," Walton said.
XIX
he returned to New York alone, later that night, too
tired to sleep and too wide awake to relax. He felt like a poker player who had
triumphantly topped four kings with four aces, and now was fumbling in his hand
trying to locate some of those aces for his skeptical opponents.
The alien had accepted his offer. That was
the one solid fact he was able to cling to, on the lonely night ride back from
Nairobi. The rest was a quicksand of ifs and may-bes.
If Lamarre could be found . . .
If the serum actually had any value . . .
If it was equally effective on Earthmen and Dirnans . . .
Walton
tried to dismiss the alternatives. He had made a desperately wild offer, and it
had been accepted. New Earth was open for colonization, if . . .
The
world outside the jet was a dark blur. He had left Nairobi at 0518 Nairobi
time; jetting back across the eight intervening time zones, he would arrive in
New York around midnight. Ultrarapid jet transit made such things possible; he
would live twice through the early hours of June nineteenth.
New
York had a fifteen minute rain scheduled at 0100 that night. Walton reached the
housing project where he lived just as the rain was turned on. The night was
otherwise a little muggy; he paused outside the main entrance, letting the
drops fall on him. After a few minutes, feeling faindy foolish and very tired,
he went inside, shook himself dry, and went to bed. He did not sleep.
Four
caffeine tablets helped him get off to a running start in the morning. He
arrived at the Cullen Building early, about 0835, and spent some time bringing.
his private journal up to date, explaining in detail the burden of his
interview with the alien ambassador. Some day, Walton thought, a historian of
the future would discover his journal and find that for a short period in 2232
a man named Roy Walton had acted as absolute dictator of humanity. The odd
thing, Walton reflected, was that he had absolutely no power drive: he had been
pitchforked into the role, and each of his successive extra-legal steps had
been taken quite genuinely in the name of humanity.
Rationalization? Perhaps. But a necessary
one.
At
0900 Walton took a deep breath and called Keeler of security. The security man
smiled oddly and said, "I was just about to call you, sir. We have some
news, at last."
"News? What?"
"Lamarre.
We found his body this morning, just about an hour ago. Murdered. It turned up
in Marseilles, pretty badly decomposed, but we ran a full check and the
retinal's absolutely Lamarre's."
"Oh,"
Walton said leadenly. His head swam. "Definitely Lamarre," he
repeated. "Thanks, Keeler. Fine work. Fine."
"Something wrong, sir?
You look—"
"I'm
very tired," Walton said. "That's all. Tired. Thanks, Keeler."
"You called me about something,
sir," Keeler reminded him gendy.
"Oh,
I was calling about Lamarre. I guess there's no point in—thanks, Keeler."
He broke the contact.
For
the first time Walton felt total despair, and, out of despair, came a sort of
deathlike calmness. With Lamarre dead, his only hope of obtaining the serum was
to free Fred and wangle the notes from him. But Fred's price for the notes
would be Walton's job. Full circle, and a dead end.
Perhaps Fred could be induced to reveal the
whereabouts of the notes. It wasn't likely, but it was possible. And if not?
Walton shrugged. A man could do only so much. Terraforming had proved a
failure, equalization was a stopgap of limited value, and the one extrasolar
planet worth colonizing was held by aliens. Dead end.
I tried, Walton thought. Now let someone else try.
He shook his head, trying to clear the fog of
negation that suddenly surrounded him. His thinking was all wrong; he had to
keep trying, had to investigate every possible avenue before giving up.
His
fingers hovered lightly over a benzolurethrin tablet, then drew back. Stiffly
he rose from his chair and switched on the annunciator.
"I'm
leaving the office for a while," he said hoarsely. "Send all calls to
Mr. Eglin."
He had to see Fred.
Security Keep was a big, blocky budding
beyond the city limits proper, a windowless tower near Nyack, New York.
Walton's private jetcopter dropped noiselessly to the landing stage on the wide
parapet of the building. He contemplated its dull-bronze metallic exterior for
a moment.
"Should I wait
here?" the pilot asked.
"Yes," Walton said. With accession
to the permanent directorship he rated a private ship and a five pilot. "I
won't be here long."
He
left the landing stage and stepped within an indicated screener field. There
was a long pause. The air up here, Walton thought, is fresh and clean, not like
city air.
A voice said, "What is your business
here?"
"I'm
Walton, director of Popeek. I have an appointment with Security Head
Martinez."
"Wait a moment, Director Walton."
None
of the obsequious sirring
and pleasing Walton had grown accustomed to. In its way,
the bluntness of address was as refreshing as the unpolluted air.
Walton's
keen ears detected a gentle electronic whirr; he was being thoroughly scanned.
After a moment the metal door before him rose silently into a hidden slot, and
he found himself facing an inner door of burnished copper.
A screen was set in the inner door.
Martinez' face confronted him.
"Good morning, Director Walton. You're
here for our interview?" "Yes."
The inner door closed. This time, two chunky
atomic cannons came barreling down to face him snout first. Walton flinched
involuntarily, but a smiling Martinez stepped before them and greeted him.
"Well, why are you here?"
"To see a prisoner of yours. My brother,
Fred."
Martinez
frowned and passed a delicate hand through his rumpled hair. "Seeing
prisoners is positively forbidden, Mr. Walton. Seeing them in person, that is.
I could arrange a closed-circuit video screening for you."
"Forbidden? But the
man's here on my word alone. I—"
"Your
powers, Mr. Walton, are still somewhat less than infinite. This is one rule we
never have relaxed, and never will. The prisoners in the Keep are under
constant security surveillance, and your presence in the cell block would
undermine our entire system. Will video do?"
"I
guess it'll have to," Walton said. He was not of a mind to argue now.
"Come with me,
then," said Martinez.
The
little man led him down a dim corridor into a side room, one entire wall of
which was an unlit video screen. "You'll have total privacy in here,"
Martinez assured him. He did things to a dial set in the right-hand wall, and
murmured a few words. The screen began to glow.
"You
can call me when you're through," Martinez said. He seemed to glide out of
the room, leaving Walton alone with Fred.
The
huge screen was like a window directly into Fred's cell. Walton met his
brother's bitter gaze head on.
Fred
looked demonic. His eyes were ringed by black shadows; his hair was uncombed,
his heavy-featured face unwashed. He said, "Welcome to my palatial abode,
dearest brother."
"Fred,
don't make it hard for me. I came here to try to clarify things. I didn't want to stick you away here. I had to."
Fred smiled balefully. "You don't need
to apologize. It was entirely my fault. I underestimated you; I didn't realize
you had changed. I thought you were the same old softhearted dope I grew up
with. You aren't."
"Possibly." Walton wished he had
taken that benzolur-ethrin after all. Every nerve in his body seemed to be
jumping. He said, "I found out today that Lamarre's dead."
"So?"
"So
there's no possible way for Popeek to obtain the immortality serum except through
you. Fred, I need that serum. I've promised it to the alien in exchange for
colonization rights on Procyon VIII."
"A
neat little package deal," Fred said harshly. "Quid pro quo. Well, I hate to spoil it, but I'm not going
to tell where the quo lies hidden. You're not getting that serum
out of me."
"I
can have you mind blasted," Walton said. "They 11 pick your mind
apart and strip it away layer by layer until they find what they want. There
won't be much of you left by then, but we'll have the serum."
"No
go. Not even you can swing that deal," Fred said. "You can't get a
mind-pick permit on your lonesome: you need the President's okay. It takes at
least a day to go through channels—half a day, if you pull rank. And by that
time, Roy, 111 be out of here."
"What?"
"You heard me clear enough. Out. Seems you're holding me here on pretty tenuous grounds. Habeas corpus
hasn't been suspended yet, Roy, and Popeek isn't big enough to do it. I've got
a writ. I'll be sprung at 1500 today."
"Ill
have you back in by 1530," Walton said angrily. "We're picking up di
Cassio and that whole bunch. That'll be sufficient grounds to quash your habeas
corpus."
"Ah!
Maybe so," Fred said. "But I'll be out of here for half an hour.
That's long enough to let the world know how you exercised an illegal special
privilege and spared Philip Prior from, Happysleep. Wiggle out of that one,
then."
Walton began to sweat.
Fred had him neatly nailed this time.
Someone in security evidently had let him
sneak his plea out of the Keep. Martinez? Well, it didn't matter. By 1500 Fred
would be free, and the long-suppressed Prior incident would be smeared all over
the telefax system. That would finish Walton; affairs were at too delicate an
impasse for him to risk having to defend himself now. Fred might not be able to
save himself, but he could certainly topple his brother.
There
was no possible way to get a mind-pick request through before 1500; President
Lanson himself would have to sign the authorization, and the old dodderer would
take his time about it.
Mind
picking was out, but there was still one weapon left to the head of Popeek, if
he cared to use it. Walton moistened his lips.
"It
sounds very neat," he said. "Ill ask you one more time: will you
yield Lamarre's serum to me for use in my negotiations with the Diman?"
"Are
you kidding? No!" Fred said positively. "Not to save your life or
mine. I've got you exactly where I want you, Roy. Where I've wanted you all my
life. And you can't wriggle out of it."
"I
think you've underestimated me again," Walton said in a quiet voice.
"And for the last time."
He
stood up and opened the door of the room. A gray-clad security man hovered
outside.
"Will
you tell Mr. Martinez I'm ready to leave?" Walton said.
The jetcopter pilot was
dozing when Walton reached the landing stage. Walton woke him and said,
"Let's get back to the Cullen Building, fast."
The
trip took about ten minutes. Walton entered his office, signaling his return but
indicating he wanted no calls just yet. Carefully, thoughtfully, he arranged
the various strands of circumstance in his mind, building them into a
symmetrical structure.
Di
Cassio and the other conspirators would be rounded up by nightfall, certainly. But
no time element operated there; Walton knew he could get mind-pick
authorizations in a day or so, and go through one after another of them until
the whereabouts of Lamarre's formula turned up. It was brutal, but necessary.
Fred
was a different problem. Unless Walton prevented it, he'd be freed on his writ
within hours—and when he revealed the Prior incident, it would smash Walton's
whole fragile construct to flinders.
He
couldn't fight habeas corpus. But the director of Popeek did have one weapon
that legally superseded all others. Fred had gambled on his brother's softness,
and Fred had lost.
Walton
reached for his voicewrite and, in a calm, controlled voice, began to dictate
an order for the immediate removal of Frederic Walton from Security Keep, and
for his prompt transference to the Euthanasia Clinic on grounds of criminal
insanity.
XX
even after that—for which he felt no guilt, only
relief-Walton felt oppressive foreboding hanging over him. Martinez phoned,
late that day, to inform him that the hundred landowners had been duly
corralled and were being held In the lower reaches of Security Keep.
"They're
yelling and squalling," Martinez said, "and they'll have plenty of
high-power legal authority down here soon enough. You'd better have a case
against them."
"I'm
obtaining an authorization to mind blast the one named di Cassio. He's the
ringleader, I think." Walton paused for a moment, then asked, "Did a
Popeek copter arrive to pick up Frederic Walton?"
"Yes,"
Martinez said. "At 1406. A lawyer showed up here waving a writ, a little
while later, but naturally we had no further jurisdiction." The security man's
eyes were cold and accusing, but Walton did not flinch.
"1406?"
he repeated. "All right, Martinez. Thanks for your cooperation."
He
blanked the screen. He was moving coolly, crisply now. In order to get a
mind-pick authorization, he would have to see President Lanson personally. Very
well; he would see President Lanson.
The
shrunken old man in the White House was openly deferential to the Popeek head.
Walton stated his case quickly, bluntly. Lanson's watery, mild eyes blinked a
few times at the many complexities of the situation. He rocked uneasily up and
down.
Finally
he said, "This mind picking—it's absolutely necessary?"
"Absolutely. We must
know where that serum is hidden."
Lanson
sighed heavily. "Ill authorize it," he said. He looked beaten.
Washington
to New York was a matter of some few minutes. The precious authorization in his
hands, Walton spoke to di Cassio via the screener setup at Security Keep,
informed him of what was going to be done with him. Then, despite the fat man's
hysterical protests, he turned the authorization over to Martinez with
instructions to proceed with the mind pick.
It
took fifty-eight minutes. Walton waited in a bare, austere office somewhere in
the Keep while the mind-picking technicians peeled away the cortex of di Cassio's
mind. By now Walton was past all ambivalence, all self-doubt. He thought of
himself as a mere robot fulfilling a preset pattern of action.
At 1950 Martinez presented himself before
Walton. The little security head looked bleak.
"It's done. Di Cassio's been reduced to
blubber and bone. I wouldn't want to watch another mind picking too soon."
"You may have to," Walton said.
"If di Cassio wasn't the right one, I intend to go straight down the line
on all hundred-odd of them. One of them dealt with Fred. One of them must know
where the Lamarre papers are."
Martinez shook his head wearily. "No.
There won't need to be any more mind-picking. We got it all out of di Cassio.
The transcript ought to be along any moment."
As
the security man spoke, an arrival bin in the office flashed and a packet
arrived. Walton broke impatiently for the bin, but Martinez waved him away.
"This is my domain, Mr. Walton. Please be patient."
With
infuriating slowness, Martinez opened the packet, removed some closely-typed
sheets, nodded over them. He handed them to Walton.
"Here.
Read for yourself. Here's the record of the conversation between your brother
and di Cassio. I think it's what you're looking for."
Walton accepted the sheets tensely and began
to read:
Di
Cassio: You
have a what?
Fred Walton: An immortality serum. Eternal life. You
know.
Some Popeek scientist invented it, and I stole his notebook from my brother's
office. It's all here.
Di
Cassio: Buono!
Excellent work. Excellent. Immortality, you say?
Fred Walton: Damned right. And itfs the weapon we can use
to pry Roy out of office. All I have to do is tell him he'd better get out of
the way or we'll turn the serum loose on humanity, and he'll move. He's an
idealist—stars in his eyes and all that. He won't dare resist.
Di
Cassio: This
is marvelous. You will, of course, send the serum formula to us for safe
keeping?
Fred
Walton: Like
hell I will. I'm keeping those notes right where they belong—inside my head.
I've destroyed the notebooks and had the scientist killed. The only one who
knows the secret is yours truly. This is just to prevent double-crossing on
your part, di Cassio. Not that I don't trust you, you understand. Di Cassio: Fred, my boy-Fred Walton: None of that stuff. You gave me a free hand.
Don't try to interfere now.
Walton let the transcript slip from his numb
hands to the floor.
"My God," he said
softly. "My Godl"
Martinez'
bright eyes flicked from Walton to the scattered papers on the floor.
"What's the trouble? You've got Fred in your custody, haven't you?"
"Didn't you read the
order I sent you?"
Martinez
chuckled hollowly. "Well, yes—it was a Happy-sleep authorization. But I
thought it was just a way of avoiding that writ ... I mean . . . your own brother, man?"
"That was no dodge," Walton said.
"That was a Happy-sleep order, and I meant it. Really. Unless there was a
slipup, Fred went to the chamber four hours ago. And," said Walton,
"he took the Lamarre formula along with him."
Alone
in his office in the night-shadowed Cullen Building, Walton stared at his own
distorted reflection mirrored in the opaqued windows. On his desk lay the slip
of paper bearing the names of those who had gone to Happysleep in the 1500
gassing.
Frederic Walton was the fourth name on the
list. For once, there had been no slip-ups.
Walton thought back over the events of the
last nine days. One of his earliest realizations during that time had been that
the head of Popeek held powers of life and death over humanity.
Godlike,
he had assumed both resposibilities. He had granted life to Philip Prior; that
had been the start of this chain of events, and the first of his many mistakes.
Now, he had given death to Frederic Walton, an act in itself justifiable, but
in consequence the most massive of his errors.
All his scheming had come to naught. Any help
now would have to come from without.
Wearily,
he snapped on the phone and asked for a connection to Nairobi. The
interstellar swap would have to be canceled; Walton was unable to deliver the
goods. Fred would have the final smirk yet.
Some minutes later, he got through to McLeod.
"I'm
glad you called," McLeod said immediately. "I've been trying to reach
you all day. The Diman's getting rather impatient; this low gravity is making
him sick, and he wants to get going back to his home world."
"Let me talk to him. Hell be able to
leave right away."
McLeod
nodded and vanished from the screen. The alien visage of Thogran Klaym
appeared.
"I have been waiting for you," the
Diman said. "You promised to call earlier today. You did not."
"I'm
sorry about that," Walton told him. "I was trying to locate the
papers to turn over to you."
"Ah, yes. Has it been
done?"
"No,"
Walton said. "The serum doesn't exist any more. The man who invented it is
dead, and so is the only other man who knew the formula."
There
was a moment of startled silence. Then the Diman said, "You assured me
delivery of the information."
"I
know. But it can't be delivered." Walton was silent a long while,
brooding. "The deal's off. There was a mix-up and the man who had the data
was—was inadvertently executed today."
"Today, you say?"
"Yes. It was an error
on my part. A foolish blunder."
"That
is irrelevant," the alien interrupted peevishly. "Is the man's body
still intact?"
"Why,
yes," Walton said, taken off guard. He wondered what plan the alien had.
"It's in our morgue right now. But-"
The
alien turned away from the screen, and Walton heard him conferring with someone
beyond the field of vision. Then the Diman returned.
"There
are techniques for recovering information from newly dead persons,"
Thogran Klayrn said. "You have none of these on Earth?"
"Recovering
information?" Walton stammered. "No, we don't."
"These techniques exist. Have you such a
device as an electroencephalograph on Earth?" "Of course."
"Then
it is still possible to extract the data from this dead man's brain." The
alien uttered a wistful wheeze. "See that the body comes to no harm. I
will be at your city shortly."
For a moment Walton did not understand.
Then he thought, Of course. It had to happen this way.
He realized the rent in the fabric had been
bound up, his mistakes undone, his conscience granted a reprieve. He felt
absurdly grateful. That all his striving should have been ruined at the last
moment would have been intolerable. Now, all was made whole.
"Thanks," he said with sudden
fervor. "Thanksl"
14
May 2233 . . .
Roy Walton, director of the Bureau of
Population Equalization, stood sweltering in the sun at Nairobi Spaceport,
watching the smiling people file past him into the towering, golden-hulled
ship.
A
powerful-looking man holding a small child in his arms came up to him.
"Hello, Walton," he said in a
majestic basso.
Walton turned, startled. "Priori"
he exclaimed, after a moment's fumbling.
"And
this is my son, Philip," said Prior. "Well both be going as
colonists. My wife's already aboard, but I just wanted to thank you—"
Walton
looked at the happy, red-cheeked boy. "There was a medical exam for all
volunteer colonists. How did you get the boy through this time?"
"Legitimately,"
Prior said, grinning. "He's a perfectly healthy, normal boy. That
potential TB condition was just that—potential. Philip got an A-one health
clearance, so it's New Earth and the wide ranges for the Prior familyl"
"I'm glad for
you," Walton said absently. "I wish I could
"Why can't you?"
"Too much work here," Walton said.
"If you turn out any poetry up there, I'd like to see it."
Prior
shook his head. "I have a feeling 111 be too busy. Poetry's really just a
substitute for living, I'm getting to think. Ill be too busy living up there to write anything."
"Maybe,"
said Walton. "I suppose you're right. But you'd better move along. That
ship's due to blast pretty soon."
"Right.
Thanks again for everything," Prior said, and he and the child moved on.
Walton watched them go. He thought back over
the past year. At
least, he thought, I made one right guess. The boy deserved to live.
The loading continued. One thousand colonists
would go this first trip, and a thousand more the next day, and a thousand and
a thousand more until a billion of Earth's multitudes were on the new world.
There was a great deal of paperwork involved in transporting a billion people
through space. Walton's desk groaned with a backlog of work.
He
glanced up. No stars were visible, of course, in the midday sky, but he knew
that New Earth was out there somewhere. And near it, Dirna.
Some
day, he thought, we'll have learned to control our growth. And
that will be the day the Dirnans
give us back our immortality formula.
A warning siren sounded suddenly, and ship
number one sprang up from Earth, hovered for a few instants on a red pillar of
fire, and vanished. Director Walton looked blankly at the place where the ship
had been, and, after a moment, turned away. Plenty of work waited for him back
in New York.