James Gunn - The Immortals

Silently she climbed out of the car, and it moved away. Sibert didn’t look back.

The old man hobbled down the jetway toward the impatient transport as fast as his ancient arteries would let him go. As soon as he had climbed aboard, the jet taxied toward the end of the runway. Two minutes later it was in the air.

Settled in his seat, Sibert glanced around with doddering curiosity. When he saw Barbara toward the back, he suppressed a sigh of relief. Her eyes met his without changing expression and returned to the paper she was reading.

For the rest of the trip, Sibert didn’t look back—she couldn’t get off.

Although he had spotted nobody at the Joplin airport, he was certain that watchers had been there. When he tottered off the plane at Washington, he was equally unsuccessful in identifying any Institute men.

He settled himself with a sigh in a battered plastic waiting-room chair and watched the ebb and flow of the human tides until he could keep himself still no longer. Nearly an hour had passed and he had not seen anyone who lingered, who had not passed toward the ticket machines or the exit doors.

He got into the next motel transport when it was about to leave, and let it take him to the motel lobby. There he got the number of Maria Cassata’s room from the front-desk computer, made his way up in the elevator and down the hall, and announced himself quietly to the monitor square on the door. Silently Barbara let him in. As soon as the door closed behind him, he straightened his bent back and caught her in his arms. “We made it,” he said gleefully.

She was stiff and unresponsive. “Did we?”

“Of course we did. What’s the matter with you?”

She pushed him away and picked up a newspaper from the table beside her. It was a Joplin paper. The headline read:

LOCAL MAN MURDERED BESIDE OLD TOLLWAY

“You lied to me,” she said without inflection.

He nodded slowly, watching her face, gauging the depth of her disillusionment.

“Why did you kill him?”

“Do you think I wanted to kill him? A nice old guy like that?” Sibert grimaced. “It was the only safe way. I told you how it would be. I couldn’t take the chance he’d raise an alarm before we got away.”

“Yes, you told me.”

“Bobs, I did it for you.”

“Did you?” She closed her eyes and opened them wearily. “Well, maybe you did. But now you’ve got to tell me the truth—you’ve got to stop lying to me—why did we come to Washington?”

Sibert shrugged. “A wild guess, a hunch, an intuition. I tried to put myself in Cartwright’s place. He couldn’t have his kids watched; he couldn’t even keep in touch with them or let them know what they really were. Anything unusual would show up in the Institute’s files or computers, would bring down the full resources of the Institute’s search upon the very persons Cartwright was trying to shield.”

“What has that got to do with Washington?”

“Cartwright’s problem, then, was identical with the Institute’s problem: to locate his kids, who may be scattered all over the United States, or even the world by now. He had to establish his headquarters where he could keep track of nationwide phenomena: that meant Washington. But he had no organization; the very act of organizing would alert the Institute. He had few people he could trust—one person maybe, surely no more than two. Where could he place one man to do what must be done? There’s only one place where one man could be effective: inside the Institute itself. As long as the Institute doesn’t locate any one of Cartwright’s children, the kids are reasonably safe. But if the Institute finds one of them—then Cartwright’s agent can act.”

Barbara nodded slowly. “It sounds logical. What are you going to do?”

“Get in touch with the agent—whoever he is. I’m going to smoke him out, and you’re the smokescreen. I’ll report to the Institute as I promised, and I’ll offer to sell you—for a price. The agent will hear about it; he must be in a position where he’ll hear things. And he’ll get in touch with me.

“Meanwhile, as soon as I leave here, check out. Get a room somewhere else—in a private home, if possible. Use another name. No, don’t tell me what it is. What I don’t know, Locke can’t force out of me. When I want to get in touch with you, I’ll put a personal on the Net. I’ll address it to Leon, for Ponce de León. That will be our signal.”

“Why all the precautions?”

Sibert smiled grimly. “From now on, you’re my insurance. As long as you’re free, they won’t dare kill me.”

As soon as the taxi sagged to a stop in front of the block-square building, Sibert was seized. From the car behind, four men poured out, guns in their hands. Four more came through the building’s entrance.

They went over him thoroughly, swiftly, and found the tiny automatic. They took him directly to Locke’s office through a subterranean passage Sibert had never suspected.

Only Sanders, the file clerk, and Liz, Locke’s secretary, were in the outer office as they passed through. They did not look at him; it was as if he did not exist.

Locke was unchanged, but the office was different. One corner was hidden behind an impenetrable barrier of blazing light. Wordlessly Locke waved his men out of the room.

Sibert straightened his shoulders and smoothed down his rumpled coat. He peered futilely into the hidden corner.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

“To you it doesn’t matter,” Locke said cheerfully. He looked at Sibert steadily. He smiled slowly. “So, the prodigal returns, bearded, weary, but more than welcome, eh? Aged considerably, too. Shall we kill the fatted calf?”

“Depends on whom you’re calling the fatted calf.”

Locke’s face sobered. “What brought you back?”

“Money.”

“What for?”

“Cartwright’s kid.”

“Have you got any proof it’s Cartwright’s kid?”

“As you must know,” Sibert said, unbuttoning his shirt, “I was shot a little over two weeks ago.” He spread his shirt open. The scar in his chest was only a pink dimple. “Enough?”

Locke raised his old, hungry eyes to Sibert’s face. “What do you want?”

“Security: money and a guarantee I’ll stay alive to get the transfusions when I need them.”

“The money is easy. How do you propose to get the other?”

“I want the Cartwright story, the whole thing,” Sibert said evenly; “documents, affidavits, complete. I want it put where nobody can touch it. I want it fixed so that on the day I don’t verify that I’m alive, it gets released to every news outlet in the United States.”

Locke nodded over it, considering. “You’d feel safe, then, wouldn’t you? Anyone would. Then we’d have to keep you alive, no matter who had to die. It would make us all very uncomfortable, but we’d have no choice. If you had Cartwright’s kid.”

“I have.”

“You had,” Locke corrected gently. He touched the arm of his chair. “Bring in the girl.”

Three men brought her into the office. Her blond head was erect; her dark eyes swept the room. Locke nodded. The men left. As the door closed, out of the hidden corner of the room rolled a self-powered wheelchair. Huddled in it was the oldest man Sibert had ever seen. The man was completely bald. His face and head were a wrinkled mass of gray flesh discolored with liver spots. Out of it, faded eyes stared fixedly like marbles dropped into decaying fungus. Saliva drooled uncontrollably from the lax mouth.

The eyes stared at Barbara. In spite of her self-control, she shrank back a little.

“Not yet, Mister Tate,” Locke crooned, as if he were speaking to a small child. “She’ll need a complete physical examination before we can let her give more blood. She’s given a liter recently, and her health comes first. The children, you know.”