Robert Silverberg: Master Of Life And Death

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.

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.