Дэймон Найт - Orbit 4

“I’ll buy you two thousand acres of your very own and you can fence out the hunters and tame all the varmints.”

“I’d like that!” She lifted her head and looked into his face. “How did you know?”

Andrew, holding her in his arms, smiled dreamily out at the meadow. “I seem to know a lot of things all of a sudden. Maybe I never had time before.”

And without a backward glance, there under the pine trees, he left the dinghy and slipped into the welcoming sea.

That evening after dinner, Paul came in, listened to his heart and said he was doing very well.

“Sit down,” said Andrew.

Ema was sitting on the edge of the bed beside him. Paul sat down in the chair. “It’s time,” he said cryptically.

“Well,” said Andrew, “I feel it’s time, anyway.” He glanced gratefully at Erna. “I doublecrossed you, Paul.”

“That was too long ago to think about,” said Paul.

“No. I mean, I did it again. I said I’d give you half of everything I had. Why didn’t you ask about it? Why didn’t you insist on seeing it legalized before you went through with this?”

Paul looked at him in silence.

“Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway,” Andrew went on. “I’ve been thinking about a great many things. I regret so much. Half of what I have is more than you’d ever need. But I want to reestablish what we had, what I wrecked thirty-five years ago. I know I' can trust you, but I want you to know you can trust me, now. I thought we could work out some way for you to be joint owner with me of everything. It belongs to you probably more than it does to me, anyway.”

“It won’t work,” said Paul.

“Yes, it will,” said Andrew. “I’ve been going over it in my mind and I’ve a good idea how to go about it. I’m going to bring my lawyers up here and we’ll put the whole thing on paper once and for all. I know you aren’t interested in money, but don’t tell me you’d turn down unlimited funds for your laboratory.”

Paul smiled his habitual thin smile. “It would be very nice, but it won’t work.” He glanced at Andrew wearily, with a touch of his old irony. “You see, Andrew, your personality has changed. Oh, I’m almost certain you’re the same entity, but there are dozens of significant little differences that make you a human being instead of a monster.”

“I suppose I should be grateful . .

“But there are ramifications,” Paul continued. “I mean, you haven’t asked how you can prove your identity. Can you make your lawyers believe you’re a sixty-eight-year-old man? Will they believe you?”

Andrew blinked at him. “We’ll do it by mail,” he said.

Paul took his notepad and pencil from his breast pocket. He laid them carefully on the table beside Andrew. “Sign your name.”

Still gazing at him in bewilderment, Andrew picked up the pad, curled his fingers around the pencil. Then he bent his head and concentrated on the absurdly difficult task of writing his name. A childish scrawl met his eyes. He looked up at Paul, startled. “But I’ll learn to write again! A little practice . .

“Certainly.” Paul nodded. “But the difference between your present personality and your—‘late’—personality, would make any graphologist testify against your claim.” He paused, then added softly. “And then, doubtless many of your associates are quick men to grasp an opportunity. Can you trust them not to find it to their interest to deny your identity?”

Slowly, Andrew leaned back on his pillow. It was true enough. The high ridges of industrial finance had their quota of predators. Even as he digested his predicament, he felt the slow stirring of his own old instinct, rousing to prowl again. And with it came the old cunning: you bare your fangs when you have power, but while you’re jockeying for it, you go quietly, head down. “Well,” he said. He glanced at Erna who was watching him with wide-eyed concern. So sweet, so desirable. But that would have to wait awhile. “What’ll I do?” He lifted his hands and looked at them. “No fingerprints that are any use. But they’re good again, Paul. Can you give me a job here for a while?”

Paul smiled suddenly, with relief, it seemed. “That’s an idea. Then it really would be like old times.” He rose. “Well, we have to get up to the barn. I’m delighted with the way you’ve come along, Andrew. And very happy with the way you’ve taken this turn of events.”

“You did what you said you would,” said Andrew. “I’m the luckiest man in history. And if I hadn’t tried to cheat you, I wouldn’t have cheated myself, would I?”

Paul sighed. “I admit it. It was my breaking point. The idea of letting you cut yourself oft without a penny was irresistible. But now I’m genuinely sorry, Andrew.”

“Forget it.”

Ema slipped off the bed and followed Paul out, touching Andrew’s hand as she passed. He listened to their footsteps going down the corridor, then the soft closing of the door as they left the building to go up to the barn. After that, he lay still, thinking and thinking, while contempt and rage slowly accumulated force. At last he snaked quietly out of bed and stood barefoot on the floor, his entire being poised, cold, feral.

Work for you again! Work for you! Why, you stupid vindictive old ass! To annihilate the fruits of a lifetime for a moment’s spite! You dried-up academician! You might be satisfied to spend sixty years with your eyes plastered to a microscope but I have other fish to fry. And this time I won’t waste fifteen years getting started.

He knew they would be at the barn for an hour at least. He slipped down the corridor, past the operating room, into the laboratory. It was dark, save for one small light above Paul’s desk. In a moment his eyes adjusted as he went softly and slowly down the long aisle, examining Paul’s equipment as he went, touching things here and there, recognizing, remembering as the knowledge seeped back with his other reviving powers. Halfway down the long continuous bench, he stopped. There, in a glass cabinet, in front of several rows of similar little vials, was the one with the darning needle stuck through the cork. He looked at it impassively.

“Will he be all right?”

Erna’s voice. He froze.

“Are you in love with him?”

At the sound of Paul’s voice, Andrew realized he was listening to an open intercom between the laboratory and the barn. He looked about for it, then spotted it a little to his left where he had passed it in the dark.

“Guess I am”

Now he could hear, faintly in the background, the nicker of a horse and the intermittent whining of a dog. He relaxed and turned back to the cabinet, his eyes fixing on the vial.

A chuckle from Paul. “He’s going to make it”

“How can you be sure?”

It was worth millions, that vial. Untold millions. Every fortune in the world would come tumbling into his lap. The idle rich, politicians, athletes, movie stars . . .

“The rats, Erna.”

Stealthily, Andrew slid open the door of the cabinet. His hands closed over the vial. Then he paused, assessing the other little bottles ranked on the shelves. Did they all contain the same fluid?

“Which ones? The first two died”

“Ah, but they served their purpose! If they hadn’t remembered the maze after processing, we never would have suspected we had preserved the same entity.”

Andrew turned the vial in his fingers. Well, then. Perhaps I shall work for you awhile, after all. Long enough to observe, to learn. I can go whenever I’m ready.

“But the next four rats forgot the maze and had to learn it all over again. It’s been so in every case, Erna. The ones that remember the maze are the ones whose blood production fails after a few weeks. It’s as if the entity had to make a massive realignment to survive. Em happy to say Andrew's a changed man.”