Дэймон Найт - Orbit 4

“Sit down,” said Paul, seating himself behind the desk. “I’m sorry we’re rather primitive here. Take that crate,”

Andrew sat down uncomfortably. It had been years since his flesh had had to accommodate itself to such makeshifts.

“Well,” said Paul, “it’s been along time.”

Able to see him clearly at last, Andrew clenched his jaws in surprise. It must be true, then, the incredible rumor his investigators had brought him. Paul had not changed at all. His thin dark hair, perpetually on the brink of baldness, was the same. The round child’s face had no dewlaps, no wrinkles. The beanpole body was still taut and narrow. Andrew’s hand crept surreptitiously under his coat. His tailor had again altered his measurements two months previously in London.

“Yes, a long time,” said Andrew. “What are you doing away out here?”

“Cheap land. Cheap labor. I have one girl here in the lab and a man up at the barn for the heavy work. Local people. I never had much money to operate with, you know.”

Was it a cut at him? Andrew felt for his cigar case, extended it and, when Paul shook his head, fumbled one out for himself.

Paul watched him light it. “I see your hands mended quite nicely. I didn’t think you’d ever be able to use them again.”

Andrew held them out for him to see. The palms and fingers, clear to the tips, were scar tissue, hard and white. The other memento of their last day of partnership. Scars on his hands and a fortune in his pocket.

“A whole beaker of acid,” said Paul. “It’s amazing you have hands at all.”

“I was preoccupied that day.”

“It was even convenient for you, wasn’t it. It gave your departure such logical urgency.”

“It ruined me for working,” said Andrew. He flexed his hands, stiffly, clumsily.

“Fortunately, you don’t need them for work,” said Paul and smiled thinly. “Tell me, how did you manage to find me?”

“It took me three years.”

“You must want something very badly.”

“You know what I want,” said Andrew.

Paul was silent, gazing at his desk-top. Andrew watched him narrowly. What was going on in his mind? Was that satisfaction, to have Andrew come seeking him out at last? Or was it perhaps caution, after what had happened so long ago?

“Now look,” said Andrew bluntly. “I’m not skillful at working people around. Power does that to you, I suppose. You get used to giving orders.”

“You have a great deal of power, haven’t you?’

“Yes. Now, I regret that thirty-five years have gone by since we worked together. But I make no apologies. You and I were different kinds of men. You were after knowledge. You’ve got it. I was after power. I’ve got it. You know yourself that in order to get what you wanted, you had to eliminate a lot of things from your life. I imagine you’ve had to slice your ethics pretty thin sometimes. So have I.”

“What have ethics to do with it?” asked Paul.

“You’re right,” said Andrew. A cloud of fragrant cigar smoke drifted between them. “Men like you and me operate on a different code. We have no families, no private lives. We each had one goal and everything else was sacrificed.”

“You mean that when you sacrificed me, it was according to your code.”

“In a manner of speaking. But you had what you wanted when you discovered that formula. It was of no further use to you. On the other hand, it was of great use to me. I’ve built an empire with it. At the time I had no money to either buy or lease that formula from you. Now, however, it’s a different story. Perhaps I can make it up to you.”

Paul’s spectacles flashed as he turned his head away. “That is not what you have come here for.”

Andrew lipped his cigar in silence for a moment. “All right,” he said at last. “My investigators picked up rumors of your work. At first I doubted the whole thing. Then I put my secretary on it and his report seemed to confirm the rumors. Now that I see you myself, I have to believe them.”

“What do you want?”

“Look at me. And look at you. We’re both sixty-eight years old.”

“Well, the exercise of power is rather hard on the organism, I should think. I lead a quiet life.”

What did he want? To see the rich man crawl? Andrew studied him in silence for a moment. “My investigators tell me you have found a way to lengthen the life-span indefinitely. To reverse the aging process.”

“Science is always the subject of wild rumors. You know that.”

“They have seen your eight-year-old monarch butterfly and your ten-year-old shrew.”

That got to him. The pause lengthened as Paul fingered his lower lip. At last he said, “Which of my assistants was indiscreet?”

Andrew gave a grunt of amusement. “Money talks. I heard it from my checkbook.”

Paul stood up and went to the window. Outside, the meadow shimmered in the sun, the insects chittered and buzzed.

Andrew leaned forward on the crate. “I’m prepared to give you half of everything I possess.”

Paul smiled. “You said yourself that money was not my goal.”

“No, but knowledge is power, they say. Maybe we’re not so different after all.”

Paul turned toward him. It was impossible to see his face against the light pouring in through the window. “We’re entirely different,”“ he said. “I would never have allowed that formula to get out of my hands. I knew from the beginning it would be put to a lethal use—”

“But this isn’t lethal!”

“Oh, think, man! The planet is already staggering under its superfluous populations. Nobody deserves to live indefinitely. Why, death by superannuation is the only thing that frees us from pampered dictators in all walks of life—of whom you are one, more than likely. What makes you think that you should live forever? Do you contribute something so precious to the world?”

“Do you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then what’s the use? Why did you involve yourself in this?”

“Curiosity.” He could hear the smile in Paul’s voice.

“Then it’s futile!”

Paul’s narrow shoulders lifted in a shrug. “In the last analysis, it’s all futile. All ultimates are ultimate nothing, from the human point of view. We pass our tiny span with tiny games—bridge or biology, it makes little difference.”

“Nevertheless,” said Andrew, “I don’t believe you’d look the way you do in the natural course of time.”

“As I said, I lead a quiet regular life. I’ll probably outlive you by a good many years.”

Andrew lapsed into silence again and a strange little sensation came over him. He had felt it before. Ephemeral as a spiderweb, it closed over him and left its small stickiness, its impalpable repulsiveness. It was the sense of approaching death. He felt like a child, ready to cry out in wild anger and rebellion. It was not fair! Here he was with unlimited opportunities. It took years to reach such a position and what good was it if time was about to run out? It was so preposterous, so badly arranged, so paradoxical. Why should life be so idiotically perverse? And there stood that prim ass with the secret in his skull, presuming to withhold it.

“You’ve become quite a moralist, haven’t you,” he said ironically. “Fit to judge the whole world!”

“I’m not judging you, Andrew-.”

“If you have the means to keep me alive and you don’t use it, that constitutes a judgment.”

“Why should I give it to you and not someone else?”

“Because I know you.”

“I know lots of people.”

“Because I know you can.”

“Now you’re tempting me, Andrew.” Paul sat down again at his desk, pressing his hands flat on the top of it. “My two vulnerable points. Curiosity and a logical aversion for you.”