Preferred Risk

by Lester Del Rey

  And I was unable to betray her.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Dr. Lawton, who seemed to be Chief Medical Officer for Anzio Clinic, said grimly: “This wasn’t an accident. It was planned. The question is, why?”

  The expediters had finished driving the rioters out of the clinic itself, and gas guns were rapidly dispersing the few left outside the entrance. At least thirty unconscious forms were scattered around—and one or two that were worse than unconscious.

  I said, “Maybe they were hoping to loot the clinic.” It wasn’t a very good lie. But then, I hadn’t had much practice in telling lies to an officer of the Company.

  Lawton pursed his lips and ignored the suggestion. “Tell me something, Wills. What were you doing down below?”

  I said quickly, “Below? You mean a half an hour ago?”

  “That’s what I mean.” He was gentle, but—well, not exactly suspicious. Curious.

  I improvised: “I—I thought I saw someone running down there. One of the rioters. So I chased after her—after him.” I corrected, swallowing the word just barely in time.

  He nodded. “Find anything?”

  It was a tough question. Had I been seen going in or coming out? If it was coming out—Rena had been with me.

  I took what we called a “calculated risk”—that is, I got a firm grip on my courage and told a big fat and possibly detectable lie. I said, “Nobody that I could find. But I still think I heard something. The trouble is, I don’t know the vaults very well. I was afraid I’d get lost.”

  Apparently it was on the way in that I had been spotted, for Lawton said thoughtfully, “Let’s take a look.”

  We took a couple of battered expediters with us—I didn’t regard them as exactly necessary, but I couldn’t see how I could tell Lawton that. The elevators were working again, so we came out in a slightly different part of the vaults than I had seen before; it was not entirely acting on my part when I peered around.

  Lawton accepted my statement that I wasn’t quite sure where I had heard the noises, without argument. He accepted it all too easily; he sent the expediters scouring the corridors at random.

  And, of course, one of them found the pool of spilled fluorescence from the hypodermic needle I had knocked out of Rena’s hand.

  We stood there peering at the smear of purplish color, the shattered hypodermic, Rena’s gas gun.

  Lawton mused, “Looks like someone’s trying to wake up some of our sleepers. That’s our standard antilytic, if I’m not mistaken.” He scanned the shelves. “Nobody missing around here. Take a look in the next few sections of the tiers.”

  The expediters saluted and left.

  “They won’t find anyone missing,” Lawton predicted, “And that means we have to take a physical inventory of the whole damn clinic. Over eighty thousand suspendees to check.” He made a disgusted noise.

  I said, “Maybe they were scared off before they finished.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll have to check, that’s all.”

  “Are you sure that stuff is to revive the suspendees?” I persisted. “Couldn’t it just have been someone wandering down here by mistake during the commotion and—”

  “And carrying a hypodermic needle by mistake, and armed with a gas gun by mistake. Sure, Wills.”

  The expediters returned and Lawton looked at them sourly.

  They shook their heads. He shrugged. “Tell you what, Wills,” he said. “Let’s go back to the office and—”

  He stopped, peering down the corridor. The last of our expediters was coming toward us—not alone.

  “Well, what do you know!” said Lawton. “Wills, it looks like he’s got your fugitive!”

  The expediter was dragging a small writhing figure behind him; we could hear whines and pleading. For a heart-stopping second, I thought it was Rena, against all logic.

  But it wasn’t. It was a quavery ancient, a bleary-eyed wreck of a man, long past retirement age, shabbily dressed and obviously the sort who cut his pension policies to the barest minimum—and then whined when his old age was poverty-stricken.

  Lawton asked me: “This the man?”

  “I—I couldn’t recognize him,” I said.

  Lawton turned to the weeping old man. “Who were you after?” he demanded. All he got was sobbing pleas to let him go; all he was likely to get was more of the same. The man was in pure panic.

  We got him up to one of the receiving offices on the upper level, half carried by the expediters. Lawton questioned him mercilessly for half an hour before giving up. The man was by then incapable of speech.

  He had said, as nearly as we could figure it out, only that he was sorry he had gone into the forbidden place, he didn’t mean to go into the forbidden place, he had been sleeping in the shadow of the forbidden place when fighting began and he fled inside.

  It was perfectly apparent to me that he was telling the truth—and, more, that any diversionary riot designed to get him inside with a hypodermic and gas gun would have been planned by maniacs, for I doubted he could have found the trigger of the gun. But Lawton seemed to think he was lying.

  It was growing late. Lawton offered to drive me to my hotel, leaving the man in the custody of the expediters. On the way, out of curiosity, I asked: “Suppose he had succeeded? Can you revive a suspendee as easily as that, just by sticking a needle in his arm?”

  Lawton grunted. “Pretty near, that and artificial respiration. One case in a hundred might need something else—heart massage or an incubator, for instance. But most of the time an antilytic shot is enough.”

  Then Rena had not been as mad as I thought.

  I said: “And do you think that old man could have accomplished anything?”

  Lawton looked at me curiously. “Maybe.”

  “Who do you suppose he was after?”

  Lawton said off-handedly. “He was right near Bay 100, wasn’t he?”

  “Bay 100?” Something struck a chord; I remembered following Rena down the corridor, passing a door that was odd in some way. Was the number 100 on that door? “Is that the one that’s locked off, with the sign on it that says anybody who goes in is asking for trouble?”

  “That’s the one. Though,” he added, “nobody is going to get in. That door is triple-plate armor; the lock opens only to the personal fingerprint pattern of Defoe and two or three others.”

  “What’s inside it that’s so important?”

  He said coldly, “How would I know? I can’t open the door.” And that was the end of the conversation. I knew he was lying.

  * * * *

  I had changed my bet with myself on the way. I won it. Rena was in the room waiting for me. She was sound asleep, stretched out on the bed. She looked as sober-faced and intent in her sleep as a little girl—a look I had noticed in Marianna’s sleeping face once.

  It was astonishing how little I thought about Marianna anymore.

  I considered very carefully before I rang for a bellboy, but it seemed wisest to let her sleep and take my chances with the house detective, if any. There was none, it turned out. In fact, the bellboy hardly noticed her—whether out of indifference or because he was well aware that I had signed for the room with an official travel-credit card of the Company, it didn’t much matter. He succeeded in conveying, without saying a word, that the Blue Sky was the limit.

  I ordered dinner, waving away the menu and telling him to let the chef decide. The chef decided well. Among other things, there was a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice.

  Rena woke up slowly at first, and then popped to a sitting position, eyes wide. I said quickly, “Everything’s all right. No one saw you at the clinic.”

  She blinked once. In a soft voice, she said, “Thank you.” She sighed a very small sigh and slipped off the bed.

  I realized as Rena was washing up, comparisons were always odious, but— Well, if a strange man had found Marianna with her dress hitched halfway up her thigh, asleep on his bed, he’d have been in for something. Wha
t the “something” would be might depend on circumstances; it might be a raging order to knock before he came in, it might only be a storm of blushes and a couple of hours of meticulously prissy behavior. But she wouldn’t just let it slide. And Rena, by simply disregarding it, was as modest as any girl could be.

  After all, I told myself, warming to the subject, it wasn’t as if I were some excitable adolescent. I could see a lovely girl’s legs without getting all stirred up. For that matter, I hardly even noticed them, come to think of it. And if I did notice them, it was certainly nothing of any importance; I had dismissed it casually, practically forgotten it, in fact.

  She came back and said cheerfully, “I’m hungry!” And so, I realized, was I.

  We started to eat without much discussion, except for the necessary talk of the table. I felt very much at ease sitting across from her, in spite of the fact that she had placed herself in opposition to the Company. I felt relaxed and comfortable; nothing bothered me. Certainly, I went on in my mind, I was as free and easy with her as with any man; it didn’t matter that she was an attractive girl at all. I wasn’t thinking of her in that way, only as someone who needed some help.

  I came to. She was looking at me with friendly curiosity. She said, “Is that an American idiom, Tom, when you said, ‘Please pass the legs’?”

  * * * *

  We didn’t open the champagne: it didn’t seem quite appropriate. We had not discussed anything of importance while we were eating, except that I had told her about the old man; she evidently knew nothing about him. She was concerned, but I assured her he was safe with the Company—what did she think they were, barbarians? She didn’t answer.

  But after dinner, with our coffee, I said: “Now let’s get down to business. What were you doing in the clinic?”

  “I was trying to rescue my father,” she said.

  “Rescue, Rena? Rescue from what?”

  “Tom, please. You believe in the Company, do you not?”

  “Of course!”

  “And I do not. We shall never agree. I am grateful to you for not turning me in, and I think perhaps I know what it cost you to do it. But that is all, Tom.”

  “But the Company—”

  “When you speak of the Company, what is it you see? Something shining and wonderful? It is not that way with me; what I see is—rows of my friends, frozen in the vaults or the expediters and that poor old man you caught.”

  There was no reasoning with her. She had fixed in her mind that all the suspendees were the victims of some sinister brutality. Of course, it wasn’t like that at all.

  Suspension wasn’t death; everyone knew that. In fact, it was the antithesis of death. It saved lives by taking the maimed and sick and putting them mercifully to sleep, until they could be repaired.

  True, their bodies grew cold, the lungs stopped pumping, the heart stopped throbbing; true, no doctor could tell, on sight, whether a suspendee was “alive” or “dead.” The life processes were not entirely halted, but they were slowed enormously—enough so that chemical diffusion in the jellylike blood carried all the oxygen the body needed. But there was a difference: The dead were dead, whereas the suspendees could be brought back to life at any moment the Company chose.

  But I couldn’t make her see that. I couldn’t even console her by reminding her that the old man was a mere Class E. For so was she.

  I urged reasonably: “Rena, you think something is going on under the surface. Tell me about it. Why do you think your father was put in suspension?”

  “To keep him out of the way. Because the Company is afraid of him.”

  I played a trump card: “Suppose I told you the real reason he’s in the vaults.”

  She was hit by that, I could tell. She was staring at me with wonder in her eyes.

  “You don’t have to speculate about it, Rena. I looked up his record, you see.”

  “You—you—”

  I nodded. “It’s right there in black and white. They’re trying to save his life. He has radiation poisoning. He was a war casualty. It’s standard medical practice in cases like his to put them in suspension for a while, until the level of radioactivity dies down and they can safely be revived. Now what do you say?”

  She merely stared at me.

  I pressed on persuasively: “Rena, I don’t mean to call your beliefs superstitions or anything like that. Please understand me. You have your own cultural heritage and—well, I know that it looks as though he is some kind of ‘undead,’ or however you put it, in your folk stories. I know there are legends of vampires and zombies and so on, but—”

  She was actually laughing. “You’re thinking of Central Europe, Tom, not Naples. And anyway—” she was laughing only with her eyes now—“I do not believe that the legends say that vampires are produced by intravenous injections of chlorpromazine and pethidine in a lytic solution—which is, I believe, the current technique at the clinics.”

  I flared peevishly: “Damn it, don’t you want him saved?”

  The laughter was gone. She gently touched my hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a shrew and that remark wasn’t kind. Must we discuss it?”

  “Yes!”

  “Very well.” She faced me, chin out and fierce. “My father does not have radiation poisoning, Tom.”

  “He does.”

  “He does not! He is a prisoner, not a patient. He loved Naples. That’s why he was put to sleep—for fifty years, or a hundred, until everything he knew and loved grows away from him and nobody cares what he has to say anymore. They won’t kill him—they don’t have to! They just want him out of the way, because he sees the Company for what it is.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Tyranny, Tom,” she said quietly.

  I burst out, “Rena, that’s silly! The Company is the hope of the world. If you talk like that, you’ll be in trouble. That’s dangerous thinking, young lady. It attacks the foundations of our whole society!”

  “Good! I was hoping it would!”

  We were shouting at each other like children. I took time to remember one of the priceless rules out of the Adjusters’ Handbook: Never lose your temper; think before you speak. We glared at each other in furious silence for a moment before I forced myself to simmer down.

  Only then did I remember that I needed to know something she might be able to tell me. Organization, Defoe had said—an organization that opposed the Company, that was behind Hammond’s death and the riot at the clinic and more, much more.

  “Rena, why did your friends kill Hammond?”

  Her poise was shaken. “Who?” she asked.

  “Hammond. In Caserta. By a gang of anti-Company hoodlums.”

  Her eyes flashed, but she only said: “I know nothing of any killings.”

  “Yet you admit you belong to a subversive group?”

  “I admit nothing,” she said shortly.

  “But you do. I know you do. You said as much to me, when you were prevented from reviving your father.”

  She shrugged.

  I went on: “Why did you call me at the office, Rena? Was it to get me to help you work against the Company?”

  She looked at me for a long moment. Then she said: “It was. And would you like to know why I picked you?”

  “Well, I suppose—”

  “Don’t suppose, Tom.” Her nostrils were white. She said coldly: “You seemed like a very good bet, as far as we could tell. I will tell you something you don’t know. There is a memorandum regarding you in the office of the Chief of Expediters in Naples. I do not choose to tell you how I know of it, but even your Mr. Gogarty doesn’t know it exists. It is private and secret, and it says of you, ‘Loyalty doubtful. Believed in contact with underground movement. Keep under close but secret surveillance’.”

  That one rocked me, I admit. “But that’s all wrong!” I finally burst out. “I admit I went through a bad time after Marianna died, but—”

  She was smiling, though still angry. “Are you apologizing to
me?”

  “No, but—” I stopped. That was a matter to be taken up with Defoe, I told myself, and I was beginning to feel a little angry, too.

  “All right,” I said. “There’s been a mistake; I’ll see that it’s straightened out. But even if it was true, did you think I was the kind of man to join a bunch of murderers?”

  “We are not murderers!”

  “Hammond’s body says different.”

  “We had nothing to do with that, Tom!”

  “Your friend Slovetski did.” It was a shot in the dark. It missed by a mile.

  She said loftily: “If he is such a killer, how did you escape? When I had my interview with you, and it became apparent that the expediters were less than accurate, the information came a little late. You could easily have given us trouble—Slovetski was in the next room. Why didn’t he shoot you dead?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to be bothered with my body.”

  “And maybe you are all wrong about us!”

  “No! If you’re against the Company, I can’t be wrong. The Company is the greatest blessing the world has ever known—it’s made the world a paradise!”

  “It has?” She made a snorting sound. “How?”

  “By bringing countless blessings to all of us. Countless!”

  She was shaking with the effort of controlling her temper. “Name one!”

  I swore in exasperation. “All right,” I said. “It ended war.”

  She nodded—not a nod of agreement, but because she had expected that answer. “Right out of the textbooks and propaganda pieces, Tom. Tell me, why is my father in the vaults?”

  “Because he has radiation poisoning!”

  “And how did he get this radiation poisoning?”

  “How?” I blinked at her. “You know how, Rena. In the war between Naples and—the war—”

  Rena said remorselessly, “That’s right, Tom, the war. The war that couldn’t have existed, because the Company ended war—everybody knows that. Ah, Tom! For God, tell me, why is the world blind? Everyone believes, no one questions. The Company ended war—it says so itself. And the blind world never sees the little wars that rage, all the time, one upon the heels of another. The Company has ended disease. But how many deaths are there? The Company has abolished poverty. But am I living in riches, Tom? Was the old man who ran into the vaults?”