Barrington Bayley - The Seed of Evil

“First, is the secret of immortality something I could find? I mean, is it an analysable property of your body?”

“Yes.”

“Could it be applied to myself?”

“Yes, more easily than you think.”

Julian’s excitement mounted. “Well, what is it? If you’ll tell me this much, why won’t you tell me the whole thing?”

Neverdie squirmed. “I beg you, do not seek immortality. Forget your lust, leave me in peace….”

“I’ve got to!” Julian exclaimed in sudden inspiration. “It concerns some specific substance, or something, that your body contains, doesn’t it? To have it myself I’d have to take it away from you, wouldn’t I?”

Suddenly Neverdie became still, as if in despair. “Your guess is close. But you must abandon your intentions. You do not understand. This is your last chance to leave well alone.”

“I understand that you’re trying to save your own skin. Unfortunately in this universe any item in short supply goes to the strongest party.” He glanced at Aul. “Don’t say anything of this to the others. We have to get in all the facts before revealing anything that might cause trouble.”

Aul nodded, his face clouded.

“Then let’s get to work. Good night, Neverdie. The curtain is falling.”

From a nearby nozzle he released more of the gas that to the alien was an instant anaesthetic. Neverdie’s appendages twitched once. Then he was still again.

They were sailing past the Gulf of Akaba when Courdon finally caught up with them.

Since losing track of the quarry in London, he had frantically been trying to identify and search all vessels that had travelled down the Thames in the following two days. The number ran into thousands. There was nothing to connect the Rudi Dutschke to Julian Ferrg, and it was with great difficulty that he managed to persuade an Israeli coastal patrol to make what was strictly speaking an illegal search.

At the time Julian’s investigations had only reached a rudimentary stage concerned with biochemical analysis using tissue samples sliced from the alien’s inert body. Neverdie was very lucky: no real damage had been done.

So engrossed were Julian and David in their work that they failed to hear the whistle of the patrol craft as it flew overhead. Julian merely looked up with a frown of annoyance as he heard shouting from the deck above, especially the shrill voice of Ursula.

“Get up there and tell them to stop their damned row, David,” he ordered angrily. “I’ll have no arguments on this junket.”

Aul moved to obey. But at that moment the door flew open and the bereted coastguards stood framed there. For long moments they stood, staring at the scene, their tanned faces turning pale.

“What do you want?” Julian shouted in an enraged voice. “Get out of here, damn you! Can’t you see we’re busy?”

The guards unshouldered their arms. The game was up.

At his trial Julian fell back on the perennial refuge of the scoundrel: patriotism.

He had done it all, not for himself, but for humanity. “Even when governments are soft,” he said, “there are some who believe that mankind must advance by whatever means possible. My work, had it been allowed to continue, would have brought incalculable benefits to this planet.”

The audacity of his statements probably did serve to soften his sentence, as had been his intention. His companions were given ten years apiece in a corrective institution. Julian, as the ringleader, was sentenced to fifteen years.

FIVE

On his release, fifteen years later, Julian was forced to make a drastic reappraisal of his position. He was no longer a young man in his early thirties: he was forty-eight. Although he had kept himself fit during his imprisonment and was still lean and active, the sands were running out.

Neither could he hope to repeat the escapade of fifteen years previously. Struggling in his mind was the small thought that his whole venture was madness and that he should return to a normal life, or what was left of it. But the thought, which at an earlier stage in his life would have seemed sensible, quickly died. The coming of Neverdie, he realised, had wrought a transformation in him and the pursuits which once appeared worthwhile now seemed pale and futile. Only one thing was of obsessive importance: to attain the lasting life beside which the present life was but a shadow.

Swimming in impudence, Julian even managed to obtain a final interview with Neverdie. In truth it was a desultory move, a last attempt to gain the alien’s co-operation.

The interview was held in a somewhat strained atmosphere, not because of any feelings held either by Neverdie or by Julian, but because also present were Courdon, the philologist Ralph Reed and two policemen. They bristled with hostility, a mood which Julian could endure without the slightest discomfort.

“You know why I’m here,” Julian said. “I’ve come to ask you once again to give the secret of your long life to humanity.”

“Humanity does not want it. Only you want it,” Neverdie observed.

“Not only me. There are others. How long do you think you can keep it to yourself? At the moment society protects you. But societies change. Don’t you know what risks you run, what danger you will have to fear from men in the future? Why not at least give us the information, even if you can’t give us the means. We might find a way of duplicating the special substance, or biological arrangement, of whatever it is that keeps you alive. That way you’ll save yourself from persecution in future centuries.”

“I shall take my chance,” Neverdie told him in a studiedly neutral tone. “Luckily, beings as ruthless and determined as yourself are rare.”

“Rare, but they exist!” Julian rasped in an outburst of temper. He jumped to his feet, suddenly aware of how Neverdie saw him: as a mayfly, an insignificant, brief creature whom the alien was patiently waiting to see die. It made him feel foolish and despicable.

“You overgrown beetle, one of us will get you!”

Abruptly, he left. Ralph Reed let out a sigh of relief. “What an extraordinary fellow! It’s almost incredible that a surgeon should be so… well, evil. And yet he’s brilliant. They say he’s saved thousands of lives.”

Throughout the interview Courdon had calmly smoked a pipe. He puffed on it, thinking. “Ferrg admits that he doesn’t think of Neverdie as a person—with respect to yourself, Neverdie—and he tries to justify himself that way. But I don’t think he thought of all those whose lives he saved as human, either. Human beings don’t exist for him. They’re just objects to be experimented on.”

“A lot of people think that way, especially in experimental science. But they’re not like Ferrg.”

“No, he’s different. It’s not scientific objectivity with him. It’s something else. Something completely, utterly selfish.”

Outside, as Julian walked towards his airplat, he encountered Ursula Gail.

“I followed you here,” she told him with a knowing smile. “I was curious. What are you planning now?”

“Nothing. To interest you, anyway.”

She pointed to an inn that lay at the bottom of a long, wide, curving sweep of steps. “Come on, let me buy you a drink.”

He allowed her to lead him into the inn. Uneasily he settled with her in a corner, a bottle of white wine before them.

He looked at her. Fifteen years didn’t do much to improve any woman. But she still looked fairly young and she was still beautiful in her particularly exciting kind of way.

“So you’re really not planning another snatch?”

“No.”

“Or a deal with Neverdie?”

“There’s no deal. That’s what I was there about.”