Master of Life and Death

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. “I’ll 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 brain. 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:

Walton let the transcript slip from his numb hands to the floor.

“My God,” he said softly. “My God!”

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 Happysleep 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 Happy-sleep 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 responsibilities. 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 Dirnan’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. He’ll be able to leave right away.”

McLeod nodded and vanished from the screen. The alien visage of Thogran Klayrn appeared.

“I have been waiting for you,” the Dirnan 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 Dirnan 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 Dirnan 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. “Thanks!”

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. “Prior!” he exclaimed, after a moment’s fumbling.

“And this is my son, Philip,” said Prior. “We’ll 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 family!”

“I’m glad for you,” Walton said absently. “I wish I could go.”

“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 I’ll be too busy. Poetry’s really just a substitute for living, I’m getting to think. I’ll 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.