Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4

“But. . . why must they hunt you?”

“Why must you hunt gravitic phenomena?”

“To understand it.”

“Which means to end it as a mystery. Cut it down to your size. Conquer it. You happen to be equipped with a rather rarefied type of reason, so you call your conquest understanding. The next guy happens to be equipped with fourteen inches of iron pipe and achieves his conquest with it instead.”

“You’re amazing,” she said openly. “You love your enemies, like—”

“Love thine enemies as thyself. Don’t take any piece of that without taking it all. How much I love people is a function of how much I love Horowitz, and you haven’t asked me about that. Matter of fact, 1 haven’t asked me about that and I don’t intend to. My God, it’s good to talk to somebody again. Do you want a drink?”

“No,” she said. “How much do you love Heri Gonza?”

He rose and hit his palm with his fist and sat down again, all his gentleness folded away and put out of sight. “There’s the exception. You can understand anything humanity does if you try, but you can’t understand the inhumanity of a Heri Gonza. The difference is that he knows what is evil and what isn’t, and doesn’t care. I don’t mean any numb by-rote moral knowledge learned at the mother’s knee, the kind that afflicts your pipe-wielder a little between blows and a lot when he gets his breath afterward. I mean a clear, analytical, extrapolative, brilliantly intelligent knowledge of each act and each consequence. Don’t underestimate that devil.”

“He . . . seems to ... I mean, he does love children,” she said fatuously.

“Oh, come on now. He doesn’t spend a dime on his precious Foundation that he wouldn’t have to give to the government in taxes. Don’t you realize that? He doesn’t do a thing he doesn’t have to do, and he doesn’t have to love those kids. He’s using those kids. He’s using the filthiest affliction mankind has known for a long time just to keep himself front and center.”

“But if the Foundation does find a cure, then he—”

“Now you’ve put your finger on the thing that nobody in the world but me seems to understand—why I won’t work with the Foundation. Two good reasons. First, I’m way ahead of them. I don’t need the Foundation and all those fancy facilities. I’ve got closer to the nature of iapetitis than any of ‘em. Second, for all my love for and understanding of people, I don’t want to find out what I’m afraid I would find out if I worked there and if a cure was found.”

“You mean he’d—he’d withhold it?”

“Maybe not permanently. Maybe he’d sit on it until he’d milked it dry. Years. Some would die by then. Some are pretty close as it is.” She thought of Billy and bit her hand.

“I didn’t say he would do that,” Horowitz said, more gently. “I said I don’t want to be in a position to find out. I don’t want to know that any member of my species could do a thing like that. Now you see why I work by myself, whatever it costs. If I can cure iapetitis, I’ll say so. I’ll do it, I’ll prove it. That’s why I don’t mind his kind of cheap persecution. If I succeed, all that harassment makes it impossible for him to take credit or profit in any way.”

“Who are you going to cure?”

“What?”

“He’s got them all. He’s on trideo right now, a telethon, the biggest show of the last ten years, hammering at people to send him every case the instant it’s established.” Her eyes were round.

“The logician,” he whispered, as round-eyed as she. “Oh, my God, I never thought of that.” He took a turn around the room and sat down again. His face was white. “But we don’t know that. Surely he’d give me a patient. Just one.”

“It might cost you the cure. You’d have to, you’d just have to give it to him, or you’d be the one withholding it!”

“I won’t think about it now,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t think about it now. I’ll get the cure. That first.”

“Maybe my brother Billy—”

“Don’t even think about it!” he cried. “He’s already got it in for you. Don’t get in his way any more. He won’t let your Billy out of there and you know it. Try anything and he’ll squash you like a beetle.”

“What’s he got against me?”

“You don’t know? You’re a Nobel winner—one of the newsiest things there is. A girl, and not bad-looking at all. You’re in the public eye, or you will be by noon tomorrow when the reporters get to you. Do you think for a minute he’d let you or anybody climb on his publicity? Listen, iapetitis is his sole property, his monopoly, and he’s not going to share it. What’d you expect him to do, announce the gift on his lousy telethon?”

“I—I c-called him on his telethon.”

“You didn’t!”

“He pretended the call was from you. But . . . but at the same time he told me ... ah yes, he said, ‘What you got I don’t want. I’m not up here to do you no good.’”

Horowitz spread his hands. “Q.E.D.”

“Oh,” she said, “how awful.”

At that point somebody kicked the door open.

Horowitz sprang to his feet, livid. A big man in an open, flapping topcoat shouldered his way in. He had a long horse-face and a blue jaw. His eyes were extremely sad. He said, “Now just relax. Relax and you’ll be all right.” His hands, as if they had a will of their own, busied themselves about pulling off a tight left-hand glove with wires attached to it and running into his side pocket.

“Flannel!” Horowitz barked. “How did you get in?” He stepped forward, knees slightly bent, head lowering. “You’ll get out of here or so help me—”

“No!” Iris cried, clutching at Horowitz’s forearm. The big man outreached and outweighed the biologist, and certainly would fight rougher and dirtier.

“Don’t worry, lady,” said the man called Flannel sleepily. He raised a lazy right hand and made a slight motion with it, and a cone-nosed needier glittered in his palm. “He’ll be good—won’t you, boy? Or I’ll put you to bed for two weeks an’ a month over.”

He sidled past and, never taking his gaze from Horowitz for more than a flickering instant, opened the three doors which led from the laboratory—a bathroom, a bedroom, a storage closet.

“Who is he? You know him?” Iris whispered.

“I know him,” growled Horowitz. “He’s Heri Gonza’s bodyguard.”

“Nobody but the two of them,” said Flannel.

“Good,” said a new voice, and a second man walked in, throwing off a slouch hat and opening the twin to the long, loose topcoat Flannel wore. “Hi, chillun,” said Heri Gonza.

There was a long silence, and then Horowitz plumped down on his pile of Proceedings, put his chin in his hands, and said in profound disgust, “Ah, for God’s sake.”

“Dr. Horowitz,” said Heri Gonza pleasantly, nodding, “and Dr. Barran.”

Iris said shakily, “I th-thought you were doing a sh-show.”

“Oh, I am, I am. All things are possible if you only know how. At the moment Chitsie Bombom is doing a monologue, and she’s good for two encores. After that there’s a solido of me sitting way up on the flats in the left rear, oh so whimsically announcing the Player’s Pub Players. They have a long one-acter and a pantomime. I’ve even got a ballet company, in case this takes that long.”

“Phony to the eyeballs, even when you work,” said Horowitz. “In case what takes that long?”

“We’re going to talk.”

“You talk,” said Horowitz. “Quickly and quietly and get the hell out of here. ‘Scuse me, Dr. Barran.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” she murmured.