Chapter 19

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 maybes.

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 faintly 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 gently.

“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 building 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 live 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 soft-hearted dope I grew up with. You aren’t.”

“Possibly.” Walton wished he had taken that benzolurethrin 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’ll 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, I’ll 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.”

“I’ll 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. “I’ll ask you one more time: will you yield Lamarre’s serum to me for use in my negotiations with the Dirnan?”

“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.