Methuselah's Children Page 8

  The man looked startled and sat down.

  "Anybody else want to go home?" demanded Lazarus. "Don't let me stop you. But it's time you bird-brained dopes realized that you have been outlawed. The only thing that stands between you and the proctors is Zack Barstow's ability to talk sweet to the Administrator. So do as you like . . . the meeting's adjourned."

  "Look, Zack," said Lazarus a few minutes later, "let's get this straight. Ford is going to use his extraordinary powers to help us glom onto the big ship and make a getaway. Is that right?"

  "He's practically committed to it."

  "Hmmm- He'll have to do this while pretending to the Council that everything he does is just a necessary step in squeezing the 'secret' out of us-he's going to double-cross 'em. That right?"

  "I hadn't thought that far ahead. I-"

  "But that's true, isn't it?"

  "Well . . . yes, it must be true."

  "Okay. Now, is our boy Ford bright enough to realize what he is letting himself in for and tough enough to go through with it?"

  Barstow reviewed what he knew of Ford and added his impressions from the interview. "Yes," he decided, "he knows and he's strong enough to face it."

  "All right. Now how about you, pal? Are you up to it, too?" Lazarus' voice was accusing.

  "Me? What do you mean?"

  "You're planning on double-crossing your crowd, too, aren't you? Have you got the guts to go through with it when the going gets tough?"

  "I don't understand you, Lazarus," Barstow answered worriedly. "I'm not planning to deceive anyone-at least, no member of the Families."

  "Better look at your cards again," Lazarus went on remorselessly. "Your part of the deal is to see to it that every man, woman and child takes part in this exodus. Do you expect to sell the idea to each one of them separately and get a hundred thousand people to agree? Unanimously? Shucks, you couldn't get that many to whistle 'Yankee Doodle' unanimously."

  "But they will have to agree," protested Barstow. "They have no choice. We either emigrate, or they hunt us down and kill us. I'm certain that is what Ford intends to do. And he will."

  "Then why didn't you walk into the meeting and tell 'em that? Why did you send me in to give 'em a stall?"

  Barstow rubbed a hand across his eyes. "I don't know."

  "I'll tell you why," continued Lazarus. "You think better with your hunches than most men do with the tops of their minds. You sent me in there to tell 'em a tale because you knew damn' well the truth wouldn't serve. If you told 'em it was get out or get killed, some would get panicky and some would get stubborn. And some old-woman-in-kilts would decide to go home and stand on his Covenant rights. Then he'd spill the scheme before it ever dawned on him that the government was playing for keeps. That's right, isn't it?"

  Barstow shrugged and laughed unhappily. "You're right. I didn't have it figured out but you're absolutely right."

  "But you did have it figured out," Lazarus assured him. "You had the right answers. Zack, I like your hunches; that's why I'm stringing along. All right, you and Ford are planning to pull a whizzer on every man jack on this globe- I'm asking you again: have you got the guts to see it through?"

  5

  The Members stood around in groups, fretfully. "I can't understand it," the Resident Archivist was saying to a worried circle around her. "The Senior Trustee never interfered in my work before. But he came bursting into my office with that Lazarus Long behind him and ordered me out."

  "What did he say?" asked one of her listeners.

  "Well, I said, 'May I do you a service, Zaccur Barstow?' and he said, 'Yes, you may. Get out and take your girls with you.' Not a word of ordinary courtesy!"

  "A lot you've got to complain about," another voice added gloomily. It was Cecil Hedrick, of the Johnson Family, chief communications engineer. "Lazarus Long paid a call on me, and he was a damned sight less polite."

  "What did he do?"

  "He walks into the communication cell and tells me he is going to take over my board-Zaccur's orders. I told him that nobody could touch my burners but me and my operators, and anyhow, where was his authority? You know what he did? You won't believe it but he pulled a blaster on me."

  "You don't mean it!"

  "I certainly do. I tell you, that man is dangerous. He ought to go for psycho adjustment. He's an atavism if I ever saw one."

  Lazarus Long's face stared out of the screen into that of the Administrator. "Got it all canned?" he demanded.

  Ford cut the switch on the facsimulator on his desk. "Got it all," he confirmed.

  "Okay," the image of Lazarus replied. "I'm clearing." As the screen went blank Ford spoke into his interoffice circuit.

  "Have the High Chief Provost report to me at once-in corpus."

  The public safety boss showed up as ordered with an expression on his lined face in which annoyance struggled with discipline. He was having the busiest night of his career, yet the Old Man had sent orders to report in the flesh. What the devil were viewphones for, anyway, he thought angrily-and asked himself why he had ever taken up police work. He rebuked his boss by being coldly formal and saluting unnecessarily. "You sent for me, sir."

  Ford ignored it. "Yes, thank you. Here." He pressed a stud; a film spool popped out of the facsimulator. "This is a complete list of the Howard Families. Arrest them."

  "Yes, sir." The Federation police chief stared at the spool and debated whether or not to ask how it had been obtained-it certainly hadn't come through his office . . . did the Old Man have an intelligence service he didn't even know about?

  "It's alphabetical, but keyed geographically," the Administrator was saying. "After you put it through sorters, send the-no, bring the original back to me. You can stop the psycho interviews, too," he added. "Just bring them in and hold them. I'll give you more instructions later."

  The High Chief Provost decided that this was not a good time to show curiosity. "Yes, sir." He saluted stiffly and left.

  Ford turned back to his desk controls and sent Word that he wanted to see the chiefs of the bureaus of land resources and of transportation control. On afterthought he added the chief of the bureau of consumption logistics.

  Back in the Families' Seat a rump session of the trustees was meeting; Barstow was absent. "I don't like it," Andrew Weatheral was saying. "I could understand Zaccur deciding to delay reporting to the Members but I had supposed that he simply wanted to talk to us first. I certainly did expect him to consult us. What do you make of it, Philip?"

  Philip Hardy chewed his lip. "I don't know. Zaccur's got a head on his shoulders . . . but it certainly seems to me that he should have called us together and advised with us. Has he spoken with you, Justin?"

  "No, he has not," Justin Foote answered frigidly.

  "Well, what should we do? We can't very well call him in and demand an accounting unless we are prepared to oust him from office and if he refuses, I, for one, am reluctant to do that."

  They were still discussing it when the proctors arrived.

  Lazarus heard the commotion and correctly interpreted it-no feat, since he had information that his brethren lacked. He was aware that he should submit peacefully and conspicuously to arrest-set a good example. But old habits die hard; he postponed the inevitable by ducking into the nearest men's 'fresher.

  It was a dead end. He glanced at the air duct-no, too small. While thinking he fumbled in his pouch for a cigarette; his hand found a strange object, he pulled it out. It was the brassard he had "borrowed" from the proctor in Chicago.

  When the proctor working point of the mop-squad covering that wing of the Seat stuck his head into that 'fresher, he found another "proctor" already there. "Nobody in here," announced Lazarus. "I've checked it."

  "How the devil did you get ahead of me?"

  "Around your flank. Stoney Island Tunnel and through their air vents." Lazarus trusted that the real cop would be unaware that there was no Stoney Island Tunnel. "Got a cigarette on you?"

  "Huh?
This is no time to catch a smoke."

  "Shucks," said Lazarus, "my legate is a good mile away."

  "Maybe so," the proctor replied, "but mine is right behind us."

  "So? Well, skip it-I've got something to tell him anyhow." Lazarus started to move past but the proctor did not get out of his way. He was glancing curiously at Lazarus' kilt. Lazarus had turned it inside out and its blue lining made a fair imitation of a proctor's service uniform-if not inspected closely.

  "What station did you say you were from?" inquired the proctor.

  "This one," answered Lazarus and planted a short jab under the man's breastbone. Lazarus' coach in rough-and-tumble had explained to him that a solar plexus blow was harder to dodge than one to the jaw; the coach had been dead since the roads strike of 1966, his skill lived on.

  Lazarus felt more like a cop with a proper uniform kilt and a bandolier of paralysis bombs slung under his left arm. Besides, the proctor's kilt was a better fit. To the right the passage outside led to the Sanctuary and a dead end; he went to the left by Hobson's choice although he knew he would run into his unconscious benefactor's legate. The passage gave into a hall which was crowded with Members herded into a group of proctors. Lazarus ignored his kin and sought out the harassed officer in charge. "Sir," he reported, saluting smartly, "There's sort of a hospital back there. You'll need fifty or sixty stretchers."

  "Don't bother me, tell your legate. We've got our hands full."

  Lazarus almost did not answer; he had caught Mary Sperling's eye in the crowd-she stared at him and looked away. He caught himself and answered, "Can't tell him, sir. Not available."

  "Well, go on outside and tell the first-aid squad."

  "Yes, sir." He moved away, swaggering a little, his thumbs hooked in the band of his kilt. He was far down the passage leading to the transbelt tunnel serving the Waukegan outlet when he heard shouts behind him. Two proctors were running to overtake him.

  Lazarus stopped in the archway giving into the transbelt tunnel and waited for them. "What's the trouble?" he asked easily as they came up.

  "The legate-" began one. He got no further; a paralysis bomb tinkled and popped at his feet. He looked surprised as the radiations wiped all expression from his face; his mate fell across him.

  Lazarus waited behind a shoulder of the arch, counted seconds up to fifteen: "Number one jet fire! Number two jet fire! Number three jet fire!"-added a couple to be sure the paralyzing effect had died away. He had cut it finer than he liked. He had not ducked quite fast enough and his left foot tingled from exposure.

  He then checked. The two were unconscious, no one else was in sight. He mounted the transbelt. Perhaps they had not been looking for him in his proper person, perhaps no one had given him away. But he did not hang around to find out. One thing he was damn' well certain of, he told himself, if anybody had squealed on him, it wasn't Mary Sperling.

  It took two more parabombs and a couple of hundred words of pure fiction to get him out into the open air. Once he was there and out of immediate observation the brassard and the remaining bombs went into his pouch and the bandolier ended up behind some bushes; he then looked up a clothing store in Waukegan.

  He sat down in a sales booth and dialed the code for kilts. He let cloth designs flicker past in the screen while he ignored the persuasive voice of the catalogue until a pattern showed up which was distinctly unmilitary and not blue, whereupon he stopped the display and punched an order for his size. He noted the price, tore an open-credit voucher from his wallet, stuck it into the machine and pushed the switch. Then he enjoyed a smoke while the tailoring was done.

  Ten minutes later he stuffed the proctor's kilt into the refuse hopper of the sales booth and left, nattily and loudly attired. He had not been in Waukegan the past century but he found a middle-priced autel without drawing attention by asking questions, dialed its registration board for a standard suite and settled down for seven hours of sound sleep.

  He breakfasted in his suite, listening with half an ear to the news box; he was interested, in a mild way, in hearing what might be reported concerning the raid on the Families. But it was a detached interest; he had already detached himself from it in his own mind. It had been a mistake, he now realized, to get back in touch with the Families-a darn good thing he was clear of it all with his present public identity totally free of any connection with the whing-ding.

  A phrase caught his attention: "-including Zaccur Barstow, alleged to be their tribal chief.

  "The prisoners are being shipped to a reservation in Oklahoma, near the ruins of the Okla-Orleans road city about twenty-five miles east of Harriman Memorial Park. The Chief Provost describes it as a 'Little Coventry,' and has ordered all aircraft to avoid it by ten miles laterally. The Administrator could not be reached for a statement but a usually reliable source inside the administration informs us that the mass arrest was accomplished in order to speed up the investigations whereby the administration expects to obtain the 'Secret of the Howard Families'-their techniques for indefinitely prolonging life. This forthright action in arresting and transporting every member of the outlaw group is expected to have a salutary effect in breaking down the resistance of their leaders to the legitimate demands of society. It will bring home forcibly to them that the civil rights enjoyed by decent citizens must not be used as a cloak behind which to damage society as a whole.

  "The chattels and holdings of the members of this criminal conspiracy have been declared subject to the Conservator General and will be administered by his agents during the imprisonment of-"

  Lazarus switched it off. "Damnation!" he thought. "Don't fret about things you can't help." Of course, he had expected to be arrested himself . . . but he had escaped. That was that. It wouldn't do the Families any good for him to turn himself in-and besides, he owed the Families nothing, not a tarnation thing.

  Anyhow, they were better off all arrested at once and quickly placed under guard. If they had been smelled out one at a time, anything could have happened-lynchings, even pogroms. Lazarus knew from hard experience how close under the skin lay lynch law and mob violence in the most sweetly civilized; that was why he had advised Zack to rig it-that and the fact that Zack and the Administrator had to have the Families in one compact group to stand a chance of carrying out their scheme. They were well off . . . and no skin off his nose.

  But he wondered how Zack was getting along, and what he would think of Lazarus' disappearance. And what Mary Sperling thought-it must have been a shock to her when he turned up making a noise like a proctor. He wished he could straighten that out with her.

  Not that it mattered what any of them thought They would all either be light-years away very soon . . . or dead. A closed book.

  He turned to the phone and called the post office. "Captain Aaron Sheffield," he announced, and gave his postal number. "Last registered with Goddard Field post office. Will you please have my mail sent to-" He leaned closer and read the code number from the suite's mail receptacle.

  "Service," assented the voice of the clerk. "Right away, Captain."

  "Thank you."

  It would take a couple of hours, he reflected, for his mail to catch up with him-a half hour in trajectory, three times that in fiddle-faddle. Might as well wait here . . . no doubt the search for him had lost itself in the distance but there was nothing in Waukegan he wanted. Once the mail showed up he would hire a U-push-it and scoot down to-

  To where? What was he going to do now?

  He turned several possibilities over in his mind and came at last to the blank realization that there was nothing, from one end of the Solar System to the other, that he really wanted to do.

  It scared him a little. He had once heard, and was inclined to credit, that a loss of interest in living marked the true turning point in the battle between anabolism and catabolism-old age. He suddenly envied normal short-lived people-at least they could go make nuisances of themselves to their children. Filial affection was not customary among Memb
ers of the Families; it was not a feasible relationship to maintain for a century or more. And friendship, except between Members, was bound to be regarded as a passing and shallow matter. There was no one whom Lazarus wanted to see.

  Wait a minute . . . who was that planter on Venus? The one who knew so many folk songs and who was so funny when he was drunk? He'd go look him up. It would make a nice hop and it would be fun, much as he disliked Venus.

  Then he recalled with cold shock that he had not seen the man for-how long? In any case, he was certainly dead by now.

  Libby had been right, he mused glumly, when he spoke of the necessity for a new type of memory association for the long-lived. He hoped the lad would push ahead with the necessary research and come up with an answer before Lazarus was reduced to counting on his fingers. He dwelt on the notion for a minute or two before recalling that he was most unlikely ever to see Libby again.

  The mail arrived and contained nothing of importance. He was not surprised; he expected no personal letters. The spools of advertising went into the refuse chute; he read only one item, a letter from Pan-Terra Docking Corp. telling him that his convertible cruiser I Spy had finished her overhaul and had been moved to a parking dock, rental to start forthwith. As instructed, they had not touched the ship's astrogational controls-was that still the Captain's pleasure?

  He decided to pick her up later in the day and head out into space. Anything was better than sitting Earthbound and admitting that he was bored.

  Paying his score and finding a jet for hire occupied less than twenty minutes. He took off and headed for Goddard Field, using the low local-traffic level to avoid entering the control pattern with a flight plan. He was not consciously avoiding the police because he had no reason to think that they could be looking for "Captain Sheffield"; it was simply habit, and it would get him to Goddard Field soon enough.

  But long before he reached there, while over eastern Kansas, he decided to land and did so.

  He picked the field of a town so small as to be unlikely to rate a full-time proctor and there he sought out a phone booth away from the field. Inside it, he hesitated. How did you go about calling up the head man of the entire Federation-and get him? If he simply called Novak Tower and asked for Administrator Ford, he not only would not be put through to him but his call would be switched to the Department of Public Safety for some unwelcome inquiries, sure as taxes.