by Mark Clifton
Obviously, Howard Kennedy was one who had not been oppressed by opinion control. As sometimes happens in a tradition-bound and expiring civilization, here was a man who seemed to have stepped directly out of a past era, the era of bold pioneers who were unafraid to explore; who had not sold the birthright of man’s rise to the stars for a mess of security.
Somehow he had not been crushed, in spite of the many attempts. Joe did not know too many details; his own interests had been far removed from the industrial world; but he did recall the many congressional investigations when some farmer boy congressman decided this would be a way to get his name in headlines; the underground rumblings of lawsuits among industrial titans; the charges of trusts and cartels flaring into headlines one day and not even followed up in the back pages on the next.
No one had been able to get Howard Kennedy, bring him to heel, make him conform to the all pervading grayness of mediocrity. He was a giant in stature and as yet they had not been able to bind him to the dirt with thousands of tiny ropes.
This was the man who, a few days previously, had dared to come out in favor of Bossy in an editorial.
And this was the man whose attorneys had somehow learned with extraordinary speed about Mabel; had stepped in and taken over her case even before Joe and Carney had been able to get Mabel’s own attorney out of bed.
This was the man who now held Mabel, somewhere, like the high trump card in a game. Obviously, the editorial had been a bid to Billings and Hoskins: “Come, let us negotiate, I am interested and will be fair.”
Now, characteristic of his operations, Kennedy held the high trump, and could afford to wait in the certain knowledge that they would have to come. In some way, he had connected the phenomenon of Mabel’s rejuvenation with Bossy.
The negro starter, who controlled the battery of elevators and winking red lights, had been watching Joe indulgently, taking him for just another job applicant. He approached now and spoke with florid but sincere courtesy.
“May I help you, sir?” From the moment of application, Kennedy’s men were treated as something very special, set apart from the common herd of man, and thereby from the first day developed a fierce and single-minded loyalty.
“Which is Mr. Kennedy’s personal office?” Joe asked.
The starter’s eyes blinked twice. Then he smiled indulgently. This was a green one, indeed, to think he had to see the big boss himself just to get a clerk’s job somewhere.
“You sure you don’t want the personnel department, sir?” he asked.
“I want to see Mr. Kennedy, personally,” Joe said with a smile, “and not about a job.”
Without further hesitation, the starter walked him over to a closed elevator, and punched a signal. The doors opened immediately.
The Eighth Floor Receptionist was not so indulgent. Jim, the starter, was too easily impressed. He let every Tom, Dick, and Harry come to the executive offices. She regarded Joe with the politely hostile stare which receptionists everywhere have perfected for the caller without appointment.
“Mr. Kennedy?” she asked incredulously. “Which Mr. Kennedy?”
“Mr. Howard Kennedy.”
“But which Mr. Howard Kennedy?”
The girl’s voice betrayed just a hint of the triumph it always gave her to spring this befuddling question on the uninitiated.
Joe could not resist the temptation to send a sudden, horrifying shaft of doubt into the neat complacency of her mind. Suddenly, without knowing why, she realized this young man was a Very Important Person. And she had been dangling him like a fish on a line. And just the other day, when she had thought a certain king was just a salesman who had got past the starter—
She began a hurried tactical withdrawal from her position.
“You mean Mr. Howard Kennedy, II?” she asked helpfully. “You’re a personal friend? A fraternity brother? Someone—”
“Of course not,” Joe said coldly. “I’m afraid Junior couldn’t help.”
“I’ll get Mr. Kennedy’s secretary,” the girl gasped. She forgot the intercom on her desk. She forgot the page boy standing close by, waiting to run errands. She all but ran down one of the halls which branched off the reception room.
In less than a minute she was back. An older woman accompanied her; a serene and unhurried woman with streaks of silver in her beautifully coiffured hair. She appraised Joe calmly, and Joe knew she had instantly catalogued him as a total stranger. And probably he was not a king.
“I had to see the young man who could make Betty forget the years of training she’s had,” she said to Joe with a smile.
The receptionist, a step behind her, blushed furiously.
“But Mrs. Williams—” she faltered.
“It’s all right, Betty,” the secretary assured her. “In such an emergency—”
She turned to Joe.
“Now, young man, I understand you wish to see Mr. Kennedy, Senior, at once, and without an appointment. That is a virtual impossibility. Surely you must realize—”
She, too, faltered to a stop when Joe, instead of apologizing for brashness, picked up a pad from the receptionist’s desk, tore off a sheet, and wrote on it one word: Bossy. He handed the sheet to the secretary.
“Here is my ticket to the holy of holies,” Joe said with a smile.
She took the note, coldly to show her displeasure at his quip, and prepared to be disdainful.
“Bossy,” she repeated slowly.
“Bossy—” She did not even blink.
“Please be seated,” she said gravely. “I’m sure Mr. Kennedy will want to break off his conference. He has been expecting…someone—”
Howard Kennedy’s office was the largest and brightest Joe had ever seen. One entire wall was in glass, and it looked out across the city toward the rising arc of the Bay Bridge, which was now a ghostly shadow in the morning fog which hung over the water.
Mrs. Williams seated Joe in front of the great desk.
“Mr. Kennedy is on his way from the conference room,” she said. She left him alone, and closed the door firmly behind her.
The huge desk, where Joe sat, was symbolic of the man. The entire top was a slab of glareless glass almost three inches thick. A simple pen set and a pad of ruled yellow note paper were the only items on the desk. There was not even a telephone.
The thick rug and the three walls blended with the glass wall in a harmony of soft blue. There were no pictures or decorations on the wall of any kind. There were no trophies, no photographs of the occupant in football uniform, none of the symbols through which the average executive expressed his determination not to mature beyond the age of sophomore.
Joe heard a door open softly behind him, but he did not turn around. He knew Kennedy had come in, and was studying him. And this was no time for ethics. Joe penetrated, unobtrusively. The mind he encountered reminded him of hammered steel. It was a mind of unmeasured strength, an orderly mind thoroughly under control. And it was the mind of a man who had lived for a long time.
He heard footsteps brush by his chair, and then he saw Howard Kennedy move with an incredibly light, sure step around the end of the desk. Even without precognition, Joe would have recognized the tall, spare figure, the jutting hawk nose, the craggy chin, the totally bald head.
Kennedy’s glance took Joe apart and snapped him back together again. His conclusions were not bad—for a psiblind.
“You’re the student,” Kennedy said in a soft, dry voice. “Carter, isn’t it? Joe Carter?”
Joe nodded.
Kennedy smiled, a little wryly, a little disappointedly.
“I had thought it would be Dr. Hoskins, or even Dr. Billings,” he said frankly. “I’m sorry they didn’t trust me enough to come.”
“I came,” Joe said without any inflection.
Kennedy put both elbows on the desk and leaned across it toward Joe.
“Look here, young man,” he said with an disarming smile, “are you sure you know what you’re mixed up in? Oh, don’t misunderst
and me,” he smiled again. “I know that students sometimes get very loyal to their teachers, and that’s a good thing, but there’s such a thing as carrying it too far, being made a cat’s-paw.”
It was a good speech, well calculated to undermine him with doubt. It might have succeeded if it had not been so far from the mark. His smile was the tolerant, and a little regretful, one of the man with fifty years of empire building behind him toward the student who has read a half dozen books and now feels himself fully equipped to compete. His mind was a reflection of his face. If there were a trace of guile there, then it was of such long practice that it had become part of him.
“I think, sir,” Joe said respectfully, “we should not start out by misunderstanding where we stand, or who is in the arena.”
Kennedy’s eyes opened a little wider.
“Hm-m-m,” he said, and leaned back in his chair. “It appears all of us misinterpreted the situation. We have assumed, all along, you were a dupe. Actually you were indicted only because it was hoped that you could give us information if you were apprehended first. Mr. Carter, I apologize. None of us have paid much attention to you.”
“That is not like you, or your organization,” Joe said easily.
“Why haven’t you come before? No doubt you read my interview about Bossy?”
“Yes, sir. We did. Professor Hoskins wanted to come then, and Dr. Billings would have agreed. But I convinced them we were not ready. We had a…a certain test to make.”
“And you have made it?”
“You know we have, Mr. Kennedy. You have Mabel.”
Kennedy nodded in appreciation.
“That’s out of the way then,” he said. “I’ll not waste time with denying it, or asking for particulars on how you did find out. I like to get right to the point. As you say, I have Mabel—and you have Bossy.”
“Why do you want Bossy, Mr. Kennedy?”
Joe was delighted with the speed at which Kennedy formulated and rejected answer after answer. And deep in his mind, as if it occupied a shrine set apart from everything else, the real answer lay like a jewel. It was not power, not even immortality as such, at least not these things for their own sake. Kennedy had thought, in starting this interview, to have everything his own way. Two misty minded professors and a boy; Kennedy had thought these were his opponents. Should he now let Kennedy know, so that they would not waste time talking protection, sanctuary and some little job in some obscure corner?
“You want Bossy for the same reason you built Kennedy Enterprises,” Joe said crisply.
There was a flurry of excitement in the old man’s mind that the thrust had been so true. There was a tinge of fear—not for any rational reason, but only because it was his own secret carefully kept all these years.
“Shall I tell you why you want Bossy?” Joe asked. He was treading on dangerous ground. A man does not take kindly to a revealment of his innermost secrets. But Kennedy was not a dealer and trader for nothing.
“If you think you can,” he challenged. No matter what wild idea the young man advanced, he could throw back his head and laugh, then scourge him with some remarks of pity.
“It was rather surprising that a history major would become so preeminent an industrialist,” Joe began, then added dryly. “You see, I looked you up.”
Kennedy sat silently, looking at his fingernails. This young man really was astute.
“It occurred to you that the cycle of civilization, being born and dying, again and again, might be escaped.”
Reluctantly, Kennedy nodded his head.
“Along with a great many others you recognized that opinion control always precedes the death throes. You saw the dark ages coming. You saw it had already descended upon Russia whose tactics we were imitating so diligently, even while we fought her so bitterly. So you conceived an idea.”
Kennedy raised his head and smiled quizzically, as if he could afford the luxury of being amused at himself. At least the young man was being merciful with euphemisms.
“You conceived of building an island in a sea of chaos. You built power and you built wealth. Mr. Kennedy, you know as well as I that such a thing is not very difficult if one dedicates himself completely to that purpose. Your idea was to set up laboratories, foundations, all kinds of grants under your protection, where men could continue, at least secretly, to think. You thought to preserve our civilization, in spite of the efforts of the pressure groups to destroy it. And now you want Bossy to further that purpose.
“You want immortality because you know that empires dissipate and die when the strength has gone out of them—as will yours, after you die.”
“You are a…a very shrewd young man,” Kennedy said, almost with a gasp. “But you forget that I will not really die. I have a son.”
“Junior?” Joe showed a suppressed smile.
The last defense was down. Every man has his Achilles heel, an area where he is defenseless, where he cannot bluff and bargain. Carter had gone directly, without hesitation, to the very center of the shrine, and even exposed the worm which would chew away its foundation and send it toppling. When he spoke, he was not sure whether he was bargaining or pleading for understanding.
“Do you think that was a bad ideal?”
“I think it was a very admirable one,” Joe said sincerely.
Kennedy’s face lighted with a warm smile, almost a grin of companionship.
“Then we should have no trouble in arriving at terms,” he said with a vast relief. And was totally unprepared for Joe’s next remark.
“Mr. Kennedy,” Joe said, after a moment’s reflection, “I came here prepared to bargain. I never had any intention of selling Bossy to you, or even permitting you to have any say about Bossy’s uses. I intended to ask for your legal protection—I recall that you were indicted twenty-three times one year—and for a grant where we could go on working without oppression. I took this stand because I assumed your motives would be selfish; that you would agree to almost any terms, knowing fully well that you could twist them around to your own devices any time you chose. And that it would be up to me to thwart you while I still held you to your bargain.”
Kennedy began to chuckle. How he would like for his son to have the temper and shrewdness of this young man.
“But now,” Joe said, and cut the chuckle short, “I’m afraid I don’t have anything to bargain with.”
Kennedy sat upright in his chair.
“You have Bossy,” he said harshly.
“Bossy is not what you think,” Joe answered, “First, I am quite sure that Bossy cannot give you immortality.”
“There’s Mabel.”
“Second, your island in chaos is seeded with the same destruction it finds all around it. Tell me,” Joe said, but it was a rhetorical question. He already knew the answer. “You had men, many men, working on Project Bossy back at the university, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Kennedy nodded.
“And since then you have been trying to duplicate it in your own laboratories here in town.”
“Yes.” Kennedy’s eyes were wary.
“And they are failing.”
Kennedy slumped in his chair.
“Bossy can only give the right answers when the right questions are asked,” Joe said softly. “Your men, for all the protection you give them, are a product of our times. They do not know the right questions to ask—and neither do you, Mr. Kennedy.”
“Name your price, young man. Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”
“First, of course, there’s the quashing of the indictments.”
“Done.”
“A place for all three of us to work, unhampered. Your people to take care of the public reactions, turn them favorable to Bossy, keep these immortality seekers off our necks.”
“Done.”
“Those are just preliminaries. Here comes the price.”
“Name it.”
“Give up your dream.”
Kennedy sat with his chin pressing against
his chest. For a full five minutes he sat as if he were asleep—more, as if his heart had stopped beating. He turned in his chair, then, and looked out of the huge window at the city beyond.
“That price I am not prepared to pay,” he said, without looking at Joe.
“Think back, Mr. Kennedy,” Joe prompted. “Think back through all the eras of history—the major ones, the tiny obscure ones known only to scholars. Can you think of a man, ever, who was capable of fashioning the future development of mankind to suit his own idea of it—no matter how noble that ideal may have been? Wouldn’t that be just another form of opinion control—no matter how splendid the conception?”
Kennedy did not turn around.
“It takes a great deal of faith in mankind to keep from directing it the way we think it should go,” he said at last.
Joe said nothing.
“I will have to think it over,” Kennedy said, after another long pause. “As for your preliminary conditions, they’re granted anyway. Bossy would have great usefulness in minor things. I’ll be amply repaid. As for the price, the real price you ask—I’d never quite thought of it that way before.”
He did not see what this would have to do with immortality, for his scientists had told him, in accounting for Mabel, that a way had been found for cell renewal and regrowth. They, along with everyone, had been alerted by the police after the three thefts of plasma. They had been expecting some new biology manifestation. They had all known that Bossy was in the area. It had not been too difficult to reason from the news about Mabel back to Bossy. But cell renewal could have nothing to do with his ideal of what was best for man.
“I will have to think it over,” he said again after a long pause.
He whirled around then, and his face became alight with the thing he knew best—the way to get things done. He punched a concealed button at the corner of his desk. Almost instantly, the door opened and Mrs. Williams came through. There was no curiosity in her expression, but her eyes could not conceal it.
“Mr. Carter has arranged for Bossy to come under our protection,” Kennedy said with a slight smile, knowing that she would interpret it correctly that he had been unable to buy Bossy outright. “Mr. Carter and his associates are to have every protection—from any source whatever, including myself. Mr. Carter is to have any or all of the resources of this entire organization at his disposal.”