James Gunn - The Immortals

Over the outer wall came a crane arm. From it dangled a large metal car. When it reached the ground a door opened.

“Come into my presence,” the mansion said.

The car was dusty. So was the penthouse where they were deposited. The vast swimming pool was dry; the cabanas were rotten; the flowers and bushes and palm trees were dead.

In the mirror-surfaced central column, a door gaped at them like a dark mouth. “Enter,” said the door.

The elevator descended deep into the ground. Harry’s stomach surged uneasily; he thought the car would never stop, but eventually the doors opened. Beyond was a spacious living room, decorated in shades of brown. One entire wall was a vision screen.

Marna ran out of the car. “Mother!” she shouted. “Grandmother!” She raced through the apartment. Harry followed her more slowly.

Six bedrooms opened off a long hall. At the end of the hall was a nursery. On the other side of the living room were a dining room and a kitchen. Every room had a wall-wide vision screen. Every room was empty.

“Mother?” Marna said again.

The dining-room screen flickered. Across the huge screen flowed the giant image of a creature who lolled on a pneumatic cushion. It was a thing incredibly fat, a sea of flesh rippling and surging. Although it was naked, its sex was a mystery. The breasts were great pillows of fat, but there was a sprinkling of hair between them. Its face, moon though it was, was small on the fantastic body; in the face, eyes were stuck like raisins.

It drew sustenance out of a tube; then, as it saw them, it pushed the tube away with one balloonlike hand. It giggled; the giggle was godlike.

“Hello, Marna,” it said in the mansion’s voice. “Looking for somebody? Your mother and your grandmother thwarted me, you know. Sterile creatures! I connected them directly to the blood bank; now there will be no delay about blood—”

“You’ll kill them!” Marna gasped.

“Cartwrights? Silly girl! Besides, this is our bridal night, and we would not want them around, would we, Marna?”

Marna shrank back into the living room, but the creature looked at her from that screen, too. It turned its raisin eyes toward Harry. “You are the doctor with the message. Tell me.”

Harry frowned. “You—are Governor Weaver?”

“In the flesh, boy.” The creature chuckled. The chuckle sent waves of fat surging across its body and back again.

Harry took a deep breath. “The shipment was hijacked. It will be a week before another shipment is ready.”

Weaver frowned and reached a stubby finger toward something beyond the camera’s range. “There!” He looked back at Harry and smiled the smile of an idiot. “I just blew up Dean Mock’s office. He was inside it at the time. It’s justice, though. He’s been sneaking shots of elixir for twenty years.”

“Elixir? But—!” The information about Mock was too unreal to be meaningful; Harry didn’t believe it. It was the mention of the elixir that shocked him.

Weaver’s mouth made an O of sympathy. “I’ve disillusioned you. They tell you the elixir has not been synthesized. It was. Some one hundred years ago by a doctor named Russell Pearce. You were planning on synthesizing it, perhaps, and thereby winning yourself immortality as a reward. No—I’m not telepathic. Fifty out of every one hundred doctors dream that dream. I’ll tell you, Doctor—I am the electorate. I decide who shall be immortal, and it pleases me to be arbitrary. Gods are always arbitrary. That is what makes them gods. I could give you immortality. I will; I will. Serve me well, Doctor, and when you begin to age, I will make you young again. I could make you dean of the Medical Center. Would you like that?”

Weaver frowned again. “But no—you would sneak elixir, like Mock, and you would not send me the shipment when I need it for my squires.” He scratched between his breasts. “What will I do?” he wailed. “The loyal ones are dying off. I can’t give them their shots, and their children are ambushing their parents. Whitey crept up on his father the other day; sold him to a junk collector. Old hands keep young hands away from the fire. But the old ones are dying off, and the young ones don’t need the elixir, not yet. They will, though. They’ll come to me on their knees, begging, and I’ll laugh and let them die. That’s what gods do, you know.”

Weaver scratched his wrist. “You’re still shocked about the elixir. You think we should make gallons of it, keep everybody young forever. Now think about it! We know that’s absurd, eh? There wouldn’t be enough of anything to go around. And what would be the value of immortality if everybody lived forever?” His voice changed suddenly, became businesslike. “Who hijacked the shipment? Was it this man?”

A picture flashed on the lower quarter of the screen.

“Yes,” Harry said. His brain was spinning. Illumination and immortality, all in one breath. It was coming too fast. He didn’t have time to react.

Weaver rubbed his doughy mouth. “Cartwright! How can he do it?” There was a note of godlike fear in the voice. “To risk—forever. He’s mad—that’s it, the man is mad. He wants to die.” The great mass of flesh shivered; the body rippled. “Let him try me. I’ll give him death.” He looked at Harry again and scratched his neck. “How did you get here, you four?”

“We walked,” Harry said tightly.

“Walked? I don’t believe it.”

“Ask a motel manager just this side of Kansas City, or a pack of wolves that almost got away with Marna, or a ghoul that paralyzed me. They’ll tell you we walked.”

Weaver scratched his mountainous belly. “Those wolf packs. They can be a nuisance. They’re useful, though. They keep the countryside tidy. But if you were paralyzed, why is it you are here instead of waiting to be put to use on some organ-bank slab?”

“The leech gave me a transfusion from Marna.” Too late Harry saw Marna motioning for him to be silent.

Weaver’s face clouded. “You’ve stolen my blood! Now I can’t bleed her for a month. I will have to punish you. Not now, but later, when I have thought of something fitting the crime.”

“A month is too soon,” Harry said. “No wonder the girl is pale if you bleed her every month. You’ll kill her.”

“But she’s a Cartwright,” Weaver said in astonishment, “and I need the blood.”

Harry’s lips tightened. He held up the bracelet on his wrist. “The key, sir?”

“Tell me,” Weaver said, scratching under one breast, “is Marna fertile?”

“No, sir.” Harry looked levelly into the eyes of the governor of Kansas. “The key?”

“Oh, dear,” Weaver said. “I seem to have misplaced it. You’ll have to wear the bracelets yet a bit. Well, Marna. We will see how it goes tonight, eh, fertile or no? Find something suitable for a bridal night, will you? And let us not mar the occasion with weeping and moaning and screams of pain. Come reverently and filled with a great joy, as Mary came unto God.”

“If I have a child,” Marna said, her face white, “it will have to be a virgin birth.”

The sea of flesh surged with anger. “Perhaps there will be screams tonight. Yes. Leech! You—the obscenely old person with the boy. You are a healer.”

“So I have been called,” Pearce whispered.

“They say you work miracles. Well, I have a miracle for you to work.” Weaver scratched the back of one hand. “I itch. Doctors have found nothing wrong with me, and they have died. It drives me mad.”

“I cure by touch,” Pearce said. “Every person cures himself; I only help.”

“No man touches me,” Weaver said. “You will cure me by tonight. I will not hear of anything else. Otherwise I will be angry with you and the boy. Yes, I will be very angry with the boy if you do not succeed.”