Methuselah's Children Page 10

  Lazarus haggled with McFee over terms, not because he wanted to save money but because failure to do so would have been out of character. They finally reached a complicated three-cornered deal in which McFee bought the I Spy for himself, Lazarus delivered clear title to it unmortgaged and accepted McFee's unsecured note in payment then purchased the freighter by endorsing McFee's note back to him and adding cash. McFee in turn would be able to mortgage the I Spy at the Commerce Clearance Bank in Luna City, use the proceeds plus cash or credit of his own to redeem his own paper-presumably before his accounts were audited, though Lazarus did not mention that.

  It was not quite a bribe. Lazarus merely made use of the fact that McFee had long wanted a ship of his own and regarded the I Spy as the ideal bachelor's go-buggy for business or pleasure; Lazarus simply held the price down to where McFee could swing the deal. But the arrangements made certain that McFee would not gossip about the deal, at least until he had had time to redeem his note. Lazarus further confused the issue by asking McFee to keep his eyes open for a good buy in trade tobacco . . . which made McFee sure that Captain Sheffield's mysterious new venture involved Venus, that being the only major market for such goods.

  Lazarus got the freighter ready for space in only four days through lavish bonuses and overtime payments. At last he dropped Luna City behind him, owner and master of the City of Chillicothe. He shortened the name in his mind to Chili in honor of a favorite dish he had not tasted in a long time-fat red beans, plenty of chili powder, chunks of meat . . . real meat, not the synthetic pap these youngsters called "meat." He thought about it and his mouth watered.

  He had not a care in the world.

  As he approached Earth, he called traffic control and asked for a parking orbit, as he did not wish to put the Chili down; it would waste fuel and attract attention. He had no scruples about orbiting without permission but there was a chance that the Chili might be spotted, charted, and investigated as a derelict during his absence; it was safer to be legal.

  They gave him an orbit; he matched in and steadied down, then set the Chili's identification beacon to his own combination, made sure that the radar of the ship's gig could trip it, and took the gig down to the auxiliary small-craft field at Goddard. He was careful to have all necessary papers with him this time; by letting the gig be sealed in bond he avoided customs and was cleared through the space port quickly. He had no destination in mind other than to find a public phone and check in with Zack and Ford-then, if there was time, try to find some real chili. He had not called the Administrator from space because ship-to-ground required relay, and the custom of privacy certainly would not protect them if the mixer who handled the call overheard a mention of the Howard Families.

  The Administrator answered his call at once, although it was late at night in the longitude of Novak Tower. From the puffy circles under Ford's eyes Lazarus judged that he had been living at his desk. "Hi," said Lazarus, "better get Zack Barstow on a three-way. I've got things to report."

  "So it's you," Ford said grimly. "I thought you had run out on us. Where have you been?"

  "Buying a ship," Lazarus answered. "As you knew. Let's get Barstow."

  Ford frowned, but turned to his desk. By split screen, Barstow joined them. He seemed surprised to see Lazarus and not altogether relieved. Lazarus spoke quickly:

  "What's the matter, pal? Didn't Ford tell you what I was up to?"

  "Yes, he did," admitted Barstow, "but we didn't know where you were or what you were doing. Time dragged on and you didn't check in . . . so we decided we had seen the last of you."

  "Shucks," complained Lazarus, "you know I wouldn't ever do anything like that. Anyhow, here I am and here's what I've done so far-" He told them of the Chili and of his reconnaissance of the New Frontiers. "Now here's how I see it: sometimes this weekend, while the New Frontiers is sitting out there with nobody inboard her, I set the Chili down in the prison reservation, we load up in a hurry, rush out to the New Frontiers, grab her, and scoot. Mr. Administrator, that calls for a lot of help from you. Your proctors will have to look the other way while I land and load. Then we need to sort of slide past the traffic patrol. After that it would be a whole lot better if no naval craft was in a position to do anything drastic about the New Frontiers-if there is a communication watch left in her, they may be able to holler for help before we can silence them."

  "Give me credit for some foresight," Ford answered sourly. "I know you will have to have a diversion to stand any chance of getting away with it. The scheme is fantastic at the best."

  "Not too fantastic," Lazarus disagreed, "if you are willing to use your emergency powers to the limit at the last minute."

  "Possibly. But we can't wait four days."

  "Why not?"

  "The situation won't hold together that long."

  "Neither will mine," put in Barstow.

  Lazarus looked from one to the other. "Huh? What's the trouble? What's up?"

  They explained:

  Ford and Barstow were engaged in a preposterously improbable task, that of putting over a complex and subtle fraud, a triple fraud with a different face for the Families, for the public, and for the Federation Council. Each aspect presented unique and apparently insurmountable difficulties.

  Ford had no one whom he dared take into his confidence, for even his most trusted personal staff member might be infected with the mania of the delusional Fountain of Youth . . . or might not be, but there was no way to know without compromising the conspiracy. Despite this, he had to convince the Council that the measures he was taking were the best for achieving the Council's purpose.

  Besides that, he had to hand out daily news releases to convince the citizens that their government was just about to gain for them the "secret" of living forever. Each day the statements had to be more detailed, the lies more tricky. The people were getting restless at the delay; they were sloughing off the coat of civilization, becoming mob.

  The Council was feeling the pressure of the people. Twice Ford had been forced to a vote of confidence; the second he had won by only two votes. "I won't win another one-we've got to move."

  Barstow's troubles were different but just as sticky. He had to have confederates, because his job was to prepare all the hundred thousand members for the exodus. They had to know, before the time came to embark, if they were to leave quietly and quickly. Nevertheless he did not dare tell them the truth too soon because among so many people there were bound to be some who were stupid and stubborn . . . and it required just one fool to wreck the scheme by spilling it to the proctors guarding them.

  Instead he was forced to try to find leaders whom he could trust, convince them, and depend on them to convince others. He needed almost a thousand dependable "herdsmen" to be sure of getting his people to follow him when the time came. Yet the very number of confederates he needed was so great as to make certain that somebody would prove weak.

  Worse than that, he needed other confederates for a still touchier purpose. Ford and he had agreed on a scheme, weak at best, for gaining time. They were doling out the techniques used by the Families in delaying the symptoms of senility under the pretense that the sum total of these techniques was the "secret." To put over this fraud Barstow had to have the help of the biochemists, gland therapists, specialists in symbiotics and in metabolism, and other experts among the Families, and these in turn had to be prepared for police interrogation by the Families' most skilled psychotechnicians . . . because they had to be able to put over the fraud even under the influence of babble drugs. The hypnotic false indoctrination required for this was enormously more complex than that necessary for a simple block against talking. Thus far the swindle had worked . . . fairly well. But the discrepancies became more hard to explain each day.

  Barstow could not keep these matters juggled much longer. The great mass of the Families, necessarily kept in ignorance, were getting out of hand even faster than the public outside. They were rightfully angry at what had been
done to them; they expected anyone in authority to do something about it-and do it now!

  Barstow's influence over his kin was melting away as fast as that of Ford over the Council.

  "It can't be four days," repeated Ford. "More like twelve hours . . . twenty-four at the outside. The Council meets again tomorrow afternoon."

  Barstow looked worried. "I'm not sure I can prepare them in so short a time. I may have trouble getting them aboard."

  "Don't worry about it," Ford snapped.

  "Why not?"

  "Because," Ford said bluntly, "any who stay behind will be dead-if they're lucky."

  Barstow said nothing and looked away. It was the first time that either one of them had admitted explicitly that this was no relatively harmless piece of political chicanery but a desperate and nearly hopeless attempt to avoid a massacre . . . and that Ford himself was on both sides of the fence.

  "Well," Lazarus broke in briskly, "now that you boys have settled that, let's get on with it. I can ground the Chili in-" He stopped and estimated quickly where she would be in orbit, how long it would take him to rendezvous. "-well, by twenty-two Greenwich. Add an hour to play safe. How about seventeen o'clock Oklahoma time tomorrow afternoon? That's today, actually."

  The other two seemed relieved. "Good enough," agreed Barstow. "I'll have them in the best shape I can manage."

  "All right," agreed Ford, "if that's the fastest it can be done." He thought for a moment. "Barstow, I'll withdraw at once all proctors and government personnel now inside the reservation barrier and shut you off. Once the gate contracts, you can tell them all."

  "Right. I'll do my best."

  "Anything else before we clear?" asked Lazarus. "Oh, yes-Zack, we'd better pick a place for me to land, or I may shorten a lot of lives with my blast."

  "Uh, yes. Make your approach from the west. I'll rig a standard berth marker. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Not okay," denied Ford. "We'll have to give him a pilot beam to come in on."

  "Nonsense," objected Lazarus. "I could set her down on top of the Washington Monument."

  "Not this time, you couldn't. Don't be surprised at the weather."

  As Lazarus approached his rendezvous with the Chili he signaled from the gig; the Chili's transponder echoed, to his relief-he had little faith in gear he had not personally overhauled and a long search for the Chili at this point would have been disastrous.

  He figured the relative vector, gunned the gig, flipped, and gunned to brake-homed-in three minutes off estimate, feeling smug. He cradled the gig, hurried inside, and took her down.

  Entering the stratosphere and circling two-thirds of the globe took no longer than he had estimated. He used part of the hour's leeway he had allowed himself by being very stingy in his maneuvers in order to spare the worn, obsolescent injection meters. Then he was down in the troposphere and making his approach, with skin temperatures high but not dangerously so. Presently he realized what Ford had meant about the weather. Oklahoma and half of Texas were covered with deep, thick clouds. Lazarus was amazed and somehow pleased; it reminded him of other days, when weather was something experienced rather than controlled. Life had lost some flavor, in his opinion, when the weather engineers had learned how to harness the elements. He hoped that their planet-if they found one!-would have some nice, lively weather.

  Then he was down in it and too busy to meditate. In spite of her size the freighter bucked and complained. Whew! Ford must have ordered this little charivari the minute the time was set-and, at that, the integrators must have had a big low-pressure area close at hand to build on.

  Somewhere a pattern controlman was shouting at him; he switched it off and gave all his attention to his approach radar and the ghostly images in the infra-red rectifier while comparing what they told him with his inertial tracker. The ship passed over a miles-wide scar on the landscape-the ruins of the Okla-Orleans Road City. When Lazarus had last seen it, it had been noisy with life. Of all the mechanical monstrosities the human race had saddled themselves with, he mused, those dinosaurs easily took first prize.

  Then the thought was cut short by a squeal from his board; the ship had picked up the pilot beam.

  He wheeled her in, cut his last jet as she scraped, and slapped a series of switches; the great cargo ports rumbled open and rain beat in.

  Eleanor Johnson huddled into herself, half crouching against the storm, and tried to draw her cloak more tightly about the baby in the crook of her left arm. When the storm had first hit, the child had cried endlessly, stretching her nerves taut. Now it was quiet, but that seemed only new cause for alarm.

  She herself had wept, although she had tried not to show it. In all her twenty-seven years she had never been exposed to weather like this; it seemed symbolic of the storm that had overturned her life, swept her away from her cherished first home of her own with its homey old-fashioned fireplace, its shiny service cell, its thermostat which she could set to the temperature she liked without consulting others-a tempest which had swept her away between two grim proctors, arrested like some poor psychotic, and landed her after terrifying indignities here in the cold sticky red clay of this Oklahoma field.

  Was it true? Could it possibly be true? Or had she not yet borne her baby at all and this was another of the strange dreams she had while carrying it?

  But the rain was too wetly cold, the thunder too loud; she could never have slept through such a dream. Then what the Senior Trustee had told them must be true, too-it had to be true; she had seen the ship ground with her own eyes, its blast bright against the black of the storm. She could no longer see it but the crowd around her moved slowly forward; it must be in front of her. She was close to the outskirts of the crowd; she would be one of the last to get aboard.

  It was very necessary to board the ship-Elder Zaccur Barstow had told them with deep solemnness what lay in store for them if they failed to board. She had believed his earnestness; nevertheless she wondered how it could possibly be true-could anyone be so wicked, so deeply and terribly wicked as to want to kill anyone as harmless and helpless as herself and her baby?

  She was struck by panic terror-suppose there was no room left by the time she got up to the ship? She clutched her baby more tightly; the child cried again at the pressure.

  A woman in the crowd moved closer and spoke to her. "You must be tired. May I carry the baby for a while?"

  "No. No, thank you. I'm all right." A flash of lightning showed the woman's face; Eleanor Johnson recognized her-Elder Mary Sperling.

  But the kindness of the offer steadied her. She knew now what she must do. If they were filled up and could take no more, she must pass her baby forward, hand to hand over the heads of the crowd. They could not refuse space to anything as little as her baby.

  Something brushed her in the dark. The crowd was moving forward again.

  When Barstow could see that loading would be finished in a few more minutes he left his post at one of the cargo doors and ran as fast as he could through the splashing sticky mud to the communications shack. Ford had warned him to give notice just before they raised ship; it was necessary to Ford's plan for diversion. Barstow fumbled with an awkward unpowered door, swung it open and rushed in. He set the private combination which should connect him directly to Ford's control desk and pushed the key.

  He was answered at once but it was not Ford's face on the screen. Barstow burst out with, "Where is the Administrator? I want to talk with him," before he recognized the face in front of him.

  It was a face well known to all the public-Bork Vanning, Leader of the Minority in the Council. "You're talking to the Administrator," Vanning said and grinned coldly. "The new Administrator. Now who the devil are you and why are you calling?"

  Barstow thanked all gods, past and present, that recognition was one-sided. He cut the connection with one unaimed blow and plunged out of the building.

  Two cargo ports were already closed; stragglers were moving through the other two. Bars
tow hurried the last of them inside with curses and followed them, slammed pell-mell to the control room. "Raise ship!" he shouted to Lazarus. "Fast!"

  "What's all the shootin' fer?" asked Lazarus, but he was already closing and sealing the ports. He tripped the acceleration screamer, waited a scant ten seconds . . . and gave her power.

  "Well," he said conversationally six minutes later, "I hope everybody was lying down. If not, we've got some broken bones on our hands. What's that you were saying?"

  Barstow told him about his attempt to report to Ford.

  Lazarus blinked and whistled a few bars of Turkey in the Straw. "It looks like we've run out of minutes. It does look like it." He shut up and gave his attention to his instruments, one eye on his ballistic track, one on radar-aft.

  7

  Lazarus had his hands full to jockey the Chili into just the right position against the side of the New Frontiers; the overstrained meters made the smaller craft skittish as a young horse. But he did it. The magnetic anchors clanged home; the gas-tight seals slapped into place; and their ears popped as the pressure in the Chili adjusted to that in the giant ship. Lazarus dived for the drop hole in the deck of the control room, pulled himself rapidly hand over hand to the port of contact, and reached the passenger lock of the New Frontiers to find himself facing the skipper-engineer.

  The man looked at him and snorted. "You again, eh? Why the deuce didn't you answer our challenge? You can't lock onto us without permission; this is private property. What do you mean by it?"

  "It means," said Lazarus, "that you and your boys are going back to Earth a few days early-in this ship."

  "Why, that's ridiculous!"

  "Brother," Lazarus said gently, his blaster suddenly growing out his left fist, "I'd sure hate to hurt you after you were so nice to me . . . but I sure will, unless you knuckle under awful quick."

  The official simply stared unbelievingly. Several of his juniors had gathered behind him; one of them sunfished in the air, started to leave. Lazarus winged him in the leg, at low power; he jerked and clutched at nothing. "Now you'll have to take care of him," Lazarus observed.