Master of Life and Death, Robert Silverberg [ready player one ebook TXT] 📗

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 But the director of Popeek did have one weapon that legally superseded all others.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.

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 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 it's 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 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 Happysleep order, and I meant it. Really. Unless there was a slip-up, 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 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