The Last Master

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “But am I?” Ett asked. “That was one of the questions I asked you. If I’ve got all this extra intelligence, why don’t I feel it?”

  “Who says you’ve got something you can ‘feel’?” said the other man. “Was there ever a time you were able to ‘feel’ how bright you were? Of course not. The only way you ever knew you had any brains was when you noticed the people around you doing something to show they didn’t have as many as you.”

  Malone snorted. “You offered to work for the EC,“ he went on. ”Wait six months or so, until their people come to you with a problem and you take a look at it and see there’s no real problem there. But you tell them what to do anyway, and they thank you and go away. You’ll wonder if they were just pretending to have a problem, because certainly anyone ought to be able to see what you saw. Then maybe—just maybe—you’ll begin to understand the gap between you and other people, and see what they mean by ‘R-Master.’ But then, even then, you won’t feel any different from the way you felt since you first opened your eyes on this world.”

  He stopped.

  “On the other hand, in these side effects,” he added, “you’ve got a whole fistful of feelings—if body sensations are what you want.”

  “If there’s something extra there in the intelligence area, I ought to be able to sense it,” said Ett stubbornly.

  “Who says it has to be something extra?” growled Malone. “Nobody understands fully what RIV does. They think it’s only an irritant, a superpep pill that makes your thinking machinery whir twice as fast as it’s designed to whir. R-Masters don’t live long, generally; they average about ten years or so after they’ve taken the RIV.”

  “How about you?”

  “I told you I was different.”

  “Why are you?”

  “Who knows?” snarled Malone. “If anyone had the answer to that, I would, being the man concerned and having a Master’s mind to figure things out with. I don’t know why I’m different. I am, though. For one thing, I’ve been a Master forty years and I’ve never needed their medicines. You understand? I didn’t just tough it out, the way you’re doing; I never felt bad at all.”

  “All right,” said Ett. “What’s your advice for me? What should I do?”

  “Why should I give you any advice?” snapped Malone.

  A surge of adrenalin cleared Ett’s head for a moment. “Well, I’ll tell you,” he said, quietly and slowly. “You struck me as a fairly reasonable sort the moment you opened the door. Now, if you’d asked me for advice, I probably would have given it to you, just for the reason that there doesn’t seem any reason not to. It seems to me you’ve got as little reason not to help me as I’d have not to help you.”

  Malone snorted. But the snort died and there was a moment of silence.

  “All right,” he said, after that moment. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. See if you can last a year of it—with this business of yours of not letting them help you with medicines. Then, if you haven’t figured it all out yourself by that time, come back here and I’ll tell you anything I know. And that’s that! End of interview!”

  “If that’s the best you can do,” said Ett.

  He got to his feet. Malone also stood up and led the way back out the way they had come in. Malone himself opened the front door—Ett had seen no sign to indicate that even one other person shared the house with the other man—and Ett stepped back out onto the front steps.

  He turned as the door was about to close behind him.

  “What does MOGOW mean?” he asked.

  Malone almost glared at him.

  “What you were one of once yourself,” he said, back again into the high voice of age, “whether you knew it or not. Man of Good Will!”

  He slammed the door shut. Ett turned and walked back down the long drive, past the unmowed grass, the litter of the lawn and the signs on the trees. The personnel slot on the door was open, and he went through it to find the hovercar with Rico Erm still waiting for him.

  “To the island, Mr. Ho?” Rico said, as the car started up.

  Ett nodded. Now that it was all over, he was too exhausted to talk. He closed his eyes. Against the darkness of the inner eye, lids closed, enormous, glowing letters danced crazily: MAN OF GOOD WILL.

  Chapter Eight

  The trip back to the intercontinental and the ride across to the Caribbean passed in a daze for Ett. He roused only when he had to move from vehicle to vehicle. Finally, when the island was reached, he was conscious of stumbling along under an indigo night sky, soft with tropical moistness and warmth. From the pad on which the intercontinental had landed, Rico and one of the security guards took him up a ramp to a slidewalk, which happily relieved his heavy legs from the effort of transporting him toward a chain of interconnected buildings. The slidewalks carried them eventually through the entrance of one of those buildings, into simulated daylight and a small crowd of waiting people. Among them was Carwell, standing—looming—beside a shorter man with jet-black hair and a bushy black brush of a mustache, that gave him an irritable look. But Carwell and the other man, as well as all but one of the others waiting, evaporated almost immediately from Ett’s consciousness. The one who remained in focus was Alaric.

  “Al!” croaked Ett. “Al, come on with me.”

  Alaric, who had been standing back in the crowd, pushed past other bodies and joined Ett on the still-moving slideway.

  “Stick with me, Al,” said Ett. “I’m making you my chief of security.”

  Al nodded.

  The slidewalk carried them on. They transferred to another moving walkway and ended at last before a door that slid aside to let them into a wide bedroom, which at first seemed open to the tropic night, until a glint of reflected light from the wall illumination panels showed Ett that a transparent roof was overhead. He was helped to an enormous, floating grav bed and dropped onto it.

  “Al!” he called.

  Al loomed up at the side of the bed, pushing his way between Carwell and the man with the black mustache.

  “There you are,” said Ett, with an effort. “Carwell, no one’s to touch me. You know what I told you about drugs. Al, you’re in charge. Get everyone but yourself out of here. I need sleep.”

  “Mr. Ho,” broke in the man with the mustache. “I’m Dr. Hoskides, your physician, assigned by the EC. I won’t be responsible—”

  “Then don’t be. I relieve you of responsibility. Out,” said Ett. “Carwell, Rico—everybody out.”

  “Etter—” began Carwell.

  “Out. Get them out, Al.”

  The faces began to move back from the side of his bed, to vanish from the blurred circle of his vision. He looked at the thickly strewn stars above him and then forced his eyelids closed. It was like trying to go to sleep on a hot stove, but he made an image in his mind of a house in the midst of battle, a house with one secret room. And in that secret room he locked himself, lay down, reached out to the light controls, and turned them downward. Gradually the one illumination panel in the secret room dimmed, and dimmed, and went out…

  At intervals after that he drifted back to waking again and then forced himself back down under the locks and bolts of sleep.

  Finally he came awake beyond all denying, although he lay still for a long time, with his eyes stubbornly closed, trying to hold on to slumber. At last he gave up and opened his eyes. Around him the room was empty, the ceiling overhead was opaqued to a night dimness, and a barely visible Al sat in a tall-backed grav float beside the door.

  “Al?” said Ett.

  The small man got up from his float, walked to the bed, and stood looking down at him.

  “How do you feel?” asked Alaric.

  Ett grimaced. He had forgotten how he felt, but now he remembered.

  “Not good,” he said. “I’ve got a sour taste in my mouth. A headache, and a backache. I feel starved to death and a little sick to my stomach at the same time. But I got some sleep; my head’s clear.”

  “All right,”
said Al. “That’s all right, then.”

  “You kept everybody out?”

  Al nodded.

  “They only tried to come in once or twice. I told them not to push it, and they didn’t.” Al looked down at Ett. “You slept hard. Most of the time you looked dead. I had to take your pulse a couple of times to be sure you were still alive. Every so often, though, you thrashed around like you were fighting sharks.”

  “Maybe I was,” said Ett. He could not remember specific dreams, but in the back of his mind there was the feeling of nightmares. “But it was worth it. As I say, my mind’s clear now. I can think.”

  Al still stood looking down at him.

  “You don’t act much different,” he said.

  “I don’t feel different,” Ett said. “I don’t know—there’s more to this whole business than I ever imagined.”

  “Why did you go take that RIV, anyway?” said Al. “Hell, you hardly saw that brother of yours twice a year before he took it.”

  “I know,” said Ett. “That was one of the reasons.”

  “Anyway,” said Al, “there’s a reason I wanted to see you—once more anyway. To see what it’d done to you. Now I do see. It’s geared up that old responsibility side of you.”

  “Old responsibility side?” Ett stared at the smaller man. “What old responsibility side?”

  “The one you always had,” Al said. “For everything. Women, stray dogs and cats—me, even.”

  Ett took a deep breath and lay looking at the ceiling.

  “I learn something every day,” he said.

  “You didn’t know it showed?” Al said. “You ought to have known.”

  “I didn’t know, period,” said Ett. “Never mind. I suppose I’d better eat something. Food and sleep, that’s what I have to run on, and I’ve had the sleep.”

  “I’ll get it for you,” Al said. “What do you want?”

  “Anything,” said Ett, and grimaced again. “I’m hollow, but nothing I think of seems as if it would taste good. Get me a steak and some orange juice. A lot of orange juice.”

  “Right,” said Al. He went toward the door. “Shall I let any of them in? They all want to see you.”

  “After I’ve eaten. Then—only Carwell,” said Ett.

  Al went out. Ett lay back thinking. As he had said to Al, his mind was clear now. It worked. Whether it was working with some sort of super-speed or supercapacity, there was no way of knowing; but it occurred to him that he had deduced a great deal—a very great deal—in the last day or two, about life and the world. For twenty-four years he had gone on certain assumptions; now, in three days, he had been forced to discover that most of those assumptions either contained errors, or were downright false. If they were false, the world itself could be something he had never guessed. And Wally’s part in it could be something he had not understood at all.

  He had no definite proof of any of this yet. He had no specifics. But the conviction in him was becoming overwhelming, that he had somehow been dealing with the misleading surface of a world—a surface bearing no relation to the reality underneath it.

  The steak and orange juice were brought in by Al and proved at least partly a disappointment. The steak was as tasteless as the breakfast he had last eaten—in Hong Kong—had been. The orange juice, on the other hand, seemed disagreeably acid.

  Nonetheless, the food and drink, once it was down, conquered the slight nausea he had been feeling, and made him feel nourished.

  “I’ll see Carwell, now,” he told Al.

  Carwell came in, looking apologetic and stern at the same time. Ett was lying on his bed surface once more, and Carwell seated his bulk on a grav float at the edge of the bed.

  “How are you feeling?” Carwell asked.

  “Uncomfortable—but awake and fed,” said Ett. “I gather you decided to take me up on my offer to take care of me?”

  “Yes,” Carwell said. “But I don’t know how I or anyone else can do much for you medically if you don’t take advice. Officially—if I actually am your physician, officially—I have to protest the fact you won’t let Dr. Hoskides near you.”

  “Hoskides is the man with the mustache, my EC doctor?”

  “That’s right,” said Carwell. “And an extremely competent physician, as well as being a specialist in your type of case—which I’m not.”

  “What is this?” Ett asked. “The EC speaking even through you?”

  “My ethics as a doctor speaking,” said Carwell. “I’m willing to be your physician; truthfully, it’s a job that intrigues me. But I have to tell you honestly that I think Dr. Hoskides is much better able to take care of you than I am.”

  “All right,” said Ett. “You’ve officially protested, and I’ve officially listened to your protest and filed it. Now, Dr. Hoskides can do anything he wants. I’ll be glad to have him stay around, and you two can talk together, consult or whatever, about me as much as you like. But as far as I’m concerned, I deal with you and you only. Is that situation going to work with you, or is it impossible?”

  “It’s going to have to work,” said Carwell. “There’s no way we can bring pressure on you. Even if you weren’t an R-Master, you’ve got the right of every competent human being on Earth to choose his own physician and medical care.”

  “Good,” said Ett. “Now that that’s settled, would you check me over and tell me what you think?”

  Carwell did.

  “As far as I can tell,” he said at the end of about ten minutes, “you’re normally healthy. Your pulse is a little fast, but your blood pressure is low normal. You seem to be somewhat more tense than when I first checked you out before the RIV injection. What do you feel?”

  “Generally hangoverish,” said Ett. “Slight headache, backache, heavy-bodied…” He ran through a list of minor symptoms.

  Carwell shook his head.

  “Are those the standard reactions for an R-Master?” Ett asked.

  “There is no standard, evidently, from what I can learn,” Carwell said. “It’s different for each Master; all each assigned physician does is try to give his patient as much symptomatic relief as possible without causing him other discomforts.”

  “I see,” said Ett. “You know, there’s an interesting point in connection with that. It occurs to me that the one thing I haven’t got so far has been information.”

  “What do you want to know?” asked Carwell.

  “In your department,” said Ett, “everything that’s known about RIV—its development, its effects on people: how many people take it, what the true percentage of idiots and Masters is—everything. How do you like the idea of being a researcher?”

  “Everybody who goes into medicine thinks about doing research at one time or another,” said Carwell. “I’ve had my own dreams, too. You want me to look into that?”

  “Yes. Tell whoever you have to that you’re doing it for me, but don’t tell them why.”

  “I don’t know why,” said Carwell.

  “You don’t—” Ett caught himself up short. “Of course you don’t. That’s right. Well, go ahead; and remember, while you’re at it, keep what’s-his-name, Hoskides, away from me.”

  “I’ll certainly try,” said Carwell. He went out.

  Ett lay for a second, watching the closed door through which Carwell had just passed.

  “Al,” he said.

  Al came up to the side of the bed.

  “You said something about seeing me once more,” Ett told him. “You weren’t planning to turn around and leave me here?”

  “You won’t want somebody like me around now,” said Al.

  “Why not?”

  Al looked down at him strangely.

  “All right,” Al said, “maybe I wouldn’t want to be around someone who knows I’m that much dumber than he is.”

  “You’ll only be dumber than I am if you make yourself out that way,” said Ett. “Al, nothing about this R-Master business is the way people—people like us—used to think it was. It m
ay not be a matter of intelligence at all.”

  “I don’t get you,” said Al.

  “I don’t get me, either,” said Ett. “I’m all crocked-up from the side effects of this RIV, and to top it off all of a sudden the world seems to be ninety degrees turned from what I thought it was. All I know is I need help. I need someone to back me I can trust. If you go, who’ve I got?”

  Al frowned.

  “You always had an edge,” he said. “You don’t have to be an R-Master now to talk me into something.”

  “Will you hang around awhile and then make up your mind about staying?”

  “Yes,” said Al, after a second. “I can do that, all right.”

  “Thanks,” said Ett. “I mean that. I—oh, hell!”

  “What?”

  Ett laughed.

  “I wanted you to have the Pixie,” he said. “But if I offer her to you now, it’ll sound like I’m trying to pay you for staying.”

  “That’s all right,” said Al. “I’ll take Pixie under any conditions, any time. She’s nothing to you, now, but she’s still a lot to me.”

  Ett shook his head.

  “I’m glad you’ll take her,” he said. “But I haven’t changed that much. That’s one of the things I hope you’ll find out. Anyway—who’s waiting to see me, if anyone?”

  “Mainly that Rico Erm.”

  “Good. Come to think of it,” said Ett, “there’s something I want him to check up on for me. Let him in next.”

  Al opened the door and, putting his head through the opening, said something Ett could not catch. Then the smaller man stood back, and Rico walked in. Ignoring Al, he came directly to Ett.

  “Mr. Ho,” he said, “there’s a large staff involved in running this island. I have to know what you want, so I can give them their orders.”

  “I want absolute privacy, unless I say otherwise,” said Ett. “Especially, I don’t want the security men to follow me around. By the way, Alaric Amundssen, here, is to be put on the payroll—I assume there’s a payroll?”

  Rico nodded.

  “I also want him officially named head of my security staff.”