Preferred Risk

by Lester Del Rey

  I stammered, “But—but, Rena, the statistical charts show very clearly—”

  “No, Tom,” she said, gentle again. “The statistical charts show less war, not no war. They show less disease.”

  She rubbed her eyes wearily—and even then I thought: Marianna wouldn’t have dared; it would have smeared her mascara.

  “The trouble with you, Tom, is that you’re an American. You don’t know how it is in the world, only in America. You don’t know what it was like after the Short War, when America won and the flying squads of Senators came over and the governments that were left agreed to defederate. You’re used to a big and united country, not little city-states. You don’t have thousands of years of intrigue and tyranny and plot behind you, so you close your eyes and plunge ahead, and if the charts show things are getting a little better, you think they are perfect.”

  She shook her head. “But not us, Tom. We can’t afford that. We walk with eyes that dart about, seeking danger. Sometimes we see ghosts, but sometimes we see real menace. You look at the charts and you see that there are fewer wars than before. We—we look at the charts and we see our fathers and brothers dead in a little war that hardly makes a ripple on the graph. You don’t even see them, Tom. You don’t even see the disease cases that don’t get cured—because the techniques are ‘still experimental,’ they say. You don’t—Tom! What is it?”

  I suppose I showed the pain of remembrance. I said with an effort, “Sorry, Rena. You made me think of something. Please go on.”

  “That’s all of it, Tom. You in America can’t be blamed. The big lie—the lie so preposterous that it cannot be questioned, the thing that proves itself because it is so unbelievable that no one would say it if it weren’t true—is not an American invention. It is European, Tom. You aren’t inoculated against it. We are.”

  I took a deep breath. “What about your father, Rena? Do you really think the Company is out to get him?”

  She looked at me searchingly, then looked hopelessly away. “Not as you mean it, Tom,” she said at last. “No, I am no paranoid. I think he is—inconvenient. I think the Company finds him less trouble in the deepfreeze than he would be walking around.”

  “But don’t you agree that he needs treatment?”

  “For what? For the radiation poisoning that he got from the atomic explosion he was nowhere near, Tom? Remember, he is my father! I was with him in the war—and he never stirred a kilometer from our home. You’ve been there, the big house where my aunt Luisa now lives. Did you see bomb craters there?”

  “That’s a lie!” I had to confess it to myself: Rena was beginning to mean something to me. But there were emotional buttons that even she couldn’t push. If she had been a man, any man, I would have had my fist in her face before she had said that much; treason against the Company was more than I could take. “You can’t convince me that the Company deliberately falsifies records. Don’t forget, Rena, I’m an executive of the Company! Nothing like that could go on!” Her eyes flared, but her lips were rebelliously silent.

  I said furiously: “I’ll hear no more of that. Theoretical discussions are all right; I’m as broadminded as the next man. But when you accuse the Company of outright fraud, you—well, you’re mistaken.”

  We glowered at each other for a long moment. My eyes fell first.

  I said sourly, “I’m sorry if I called you a liar. I—I didn’t mean to be offensive.”

  “Nor I, Tom.” she hesitated. “Will you remember that I asked you not to make me discuss it?”

  She stood up. “Thank you very much for a dinner. And for listening. And most of all, for giving me another chance to rescue my father.”

  I looked at my watch automatically—and incredulously. “It’s late, Rena. Have you a place to stay?”

  She shrugged. “N—yes, of course, Tom. Don’t worry about me; I’ll be all right”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Very sure.”

  Her manner was completely confident—so much so that I knew it for an act.

  I said: “Please, Rena, you’ve been through a tough time and I don’t want you wandering around. You can’t get back to Naples tonight.”

  “I know.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what, Tom?” she said. “I won’t lie to you—I haven’t a place to go to here. I would have had, this afternoon, if I had succeeded. But by now, everything has changed. They—that is, my friends will assume that I have been captured by the Company. They won’t be where I could find them, Tom. Say they are silly if you wish. But they will fear that the Company might—request me to give their names.”

  I said crisply, “Stay here, Rena. No—listen to me. You stay here. I’ll get another room.”

  “Thank you, Tom, but you can’t. There isn’t a room in Anzio; there are families of suspendees sleeping in the grass tonight.”

  “I can sleep in the grass if I have to.”

  She shook her head. “Thank you,” she repeated.

  I stood between her and the door. “Then we’ll both stay here. I’ll sleep on the couch. You can have the bed.” I hesitated, then added, “You can trust me, Rena.”

  She looked at me gravely for a moment. Then she smiled. “I’m sure I can, Tom. I appreciate your offer. I accept.”

  * * * *

  I am built too long for a hotel-room couch, particularly a room in a Mediterranean coastal fleabag. I lay staring into the white Italian night; the Moon brightened the clouds outside the window, and the room was clearly enough illuminated to show me the bed and the slight, motionless form in it. Rena was not a restless sleeper, I thought. Nor did she snore.

  Rena was a most self-possessed girl, in fact. She had overruled me when I tried to keep the bellboy from clearing away the dinner service. “Do you think no other Company man ever had a girl in his room?” she innocently asked. She borrowed a pair of the new pajamas Defoe’s thoughtful expediters had bought and put in the bureau. But I hadn’t expected that, while the bellboy was clearing away, she would be softly singing to herself in the bath.

  He had seemed not even to hear.

  He had also leaped to conclusions—not that it was much of a leap, I suppose. But he had conspicuously not removed the bottle of champagne and its silver bucket of melting ice.

  It felt good, being in the same room with Rena.

  I shifted again, hunching up my torso to give my legs a chance to stretch out. I looked anxiously to see if the movement had disturbed her.

  There is a story about an animal experimenter who left a chimpanzee in an empty room. He closed the door on the ape and bent to look through the keyhole, to see what the animal would do. But all he saw was an eye—because the chimp was just as curious about the experimenter.

  In the half-light, I saw a sparkle of moonlight in Rena’s eye; she was watching me. She half-giggled, a smothered sound.

  “You ought to be asleep,” I accused.

  “And you, Tom.”

  I obediently closed my eyes, but I didn’t stop seeing her.

  If only she weren’t a fanatic.

  And if she had to be a fanatic, why did she have to be the one kind that was my natural enemy, a member of the group of irresponsible troublemakers that Defoe had ordered me to “handle”?

  What, I wondered, did he mean by “handle”? Did it include chlorpromazine in a lytic solution and a plastic cocoon?

  I put that thought out of my mind; there was no chance whatever that her crazy belief, that the Company was using suspension as a retaliatory measure, was correct. But thinking of Defoe made me think of my work. After all, I told myself, Rena was more than a person. She was a key that could unlock the whole riddle. She had the answers—if there was a movement of any size, she would know its structure.

  I thought for a moment and withdrew the “if.” She had admitted the riot of that afternoon was planned. It had to be a tightly organized group.

  And she had to have the key.

  * * * *

  At last,
I had been getting slightly drowsy, but suddenly I was wide awake.

  There were two possibilities. I faced the first of them shakily—she might be right. Everything within me revolted against the notion, but I accepted it as a theoretical possibility. If so, I would, of course, have to revise some basic notions.

  On the other hand, she might be wrong. I was certain she was wrong. But I was equally certain she was no raddled malcontent and if she was wrong, and I could prove it to her, she herself might make some revisions.

  Propped on one elbow, I peered at her. “Rena?” I whispered questioningly.

  She stirred. “Yes, Tom?”

  “If you’re not asleep, can we take a couple more minutes to talk?”

  “Of course.” I sat up and reached for the light switch, but she said, “Must we have the lights? The Moon is very bright.”

  “Sure.” I sat on the edge of the couch and reached for a cigarette. “Can I offer you a deal, Rena?”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “A horse trade. You think the Company is corrupt and your father is not a casualty, right?”

  “Correct, Tom.”

  “And I think the Company is not corrupt and your father has radiation poisoning. One of us has to be wrong, right?”

  “Correct, Tom.”

  “Let’s find out. There are ways of testing for radiation sickness. I’ll go into the clinic in the morning and get the answer.”

  She also lifted up on one elbow, peering at me, her long hair braided down her back. “Will you?”

  “Sure. And we’ll make bets on it, Rena. If you are wrong—if your father has radiation poisoning—I want you to tell me everything there is to tell about the riot today and the people behind it. If I’m wrong—” I swallowed—“if I’m wrong, I’ll get your father out of there for you. Somehow. I promise it, Rena.”

  There was absolute silence for a long time. Then she swung out of the bed and hurried over to me, her hands on mine. She looked at me and again I saw tears. “Will you do that, Tom?” she asked, hardly audible.

  “Why, sure,” I said awkwardly. “But you have to promise—”

  “I promise!”

  She was staring at me, at arm’s length. And then something happened. She wasn’t staring and she wasn’t at arm’s length.

  Kissing her was like tasting candied violets; and the Moon made her lovelier than anything human; and the bellboy had not been so presumptuous, after all, when he left us the champagne.

  CHAPTER IX

  Dr. Lawton was “away from his desk” the next morning. That was all to the good. I was not a hardened enough conspirator to seek out chances to make mistakes, and although I had a perfectly good excuse for wanting to go down into the vaults again, I wasn’t anxious to have to use it. The expediter-officer in charge, though, didn’t even ask for reasons. He furnished me with what I wanted—a map of the vaults and a radiation-counter—and turned me loose.

  Looking at the map, I was astonished at the size of this subterranean pyramid. Lawton had said we had eighty-odd thousand sleepers filed away and that had surprised me, but by the chart I held in my hand, there was space for perhaps ten times that many. It was beyond belief that so much space was really needed, I thought—unless there was some truth to Rena’s belief that the Company used the clinics for prisons…

  I applied myself to the map. And, naturally, I read it wrong. It was very simple; I merely went to the wrong level, that was all.

  It looked wrong as soon as I stepped out of the elevator. An elderly, officious civilian with a British accent barred my way. “You aren’t one of us, are you?”

  I said, “I doubt it.”

  “Then would you mind?” he asked politely, and indicated a spot on the side of the hall. Perhaps I was suggestible, but I obeyed his request without question. It was just as well, because a sort of procession rounded a bend and came down the corridor. There was a wheeled stretcher, with three elderly civilians puttering around it, and a bored medic following with a jar of something held aloft, feeding through a thin plastic tube into the arm of the man on the stretcher, as well as half a dozen others of more nondescript types.

  The man who had stopped me nearly ran to meet the stretcher. He stared into the waxy face and whispered, “It’s he! Oh, absolutely, it is he!”

  I looked and the face was oddly familiar. It reminded me of my childhood; it had a link with school days and the excitement of turning twelve. By the way the four old men were carrying on, however, it meant more than that to them. It meant, if not the Second Coming, at least something close to it.

  By then I had figured out that this was that rare event in the day of a clinic—a revival. I had never seen one. I suppose I could have got out of the way and gone about my conspiratorial business, and it is no credit to me as a conspirator that I did not. But I was fascinated.

  Too fascinated to wonder why revivals were so rare…

  * * * *

  The medic looked at his watch and, with careless efficiency, plucked the tube out of the waxy man’s arm.

  “Two minutes,” he said to one of the civilians. “Then he’ll be as good as he ever was. You’ve got his clothes and release papers?”

  “Oh, definitely,” said the civilian, beaming.

  “Okay. And you understand that the Company takes no responsibility beyond the policy covering? After all, he was one of the first men suspended. We think we can give him another year or so—which is a year more than he would have had, at that—but he’s not what you’d call a Grade A risk.”

  “Certainly,” agreed the civilian. “Can we talk to him now?”

  “As soon as he opens his eyes.”

  The civilian bent over the man, who no longer looked waxy. His face was now a mottled gray and his eyelids were flickering. He had begun to breathe heavily and irregularly, and he was mumbling something I couldn’t understand. The civilian whispered in his ear and the revived man opened his eyes and looked at him.

  It was like seeing the dead come to life. It was exactly that, in fact; twenty minutes before, no chemical test, no stethoscope or probing thumb in the eye socket could have detected the faint living glow in the almost-dead cells. And yet—now he looked, he breathed, he spoke.

  “I made it,” were his first understandable words.

  “Indeed you did!” crowed the civilian in charge, while all of the others murmured happily to each other. “Sir, it is my pleasure to welcome you back to us. You are in Anzio, Italy. And I am Thomas Welbourne, at your service.”

  The faint eyes sparkled. Dead, near-dead or merely decrepit, this was a man who wanted to enjoy life. Minutes out of the tomb, he said: “No! Not young Tommy Welbourne!”

  “His grandson, sir,” said the civilian.

  I had it just then—that face had watched me through a whole year of school. It had been in a frame at the front of the room, with half a dozen other faces. It had a name under it, which, try as I might, I couldn’t recall; but the face was there all the same. It was an easy one to keep in mind—strong though sunken, ancient but very much alive.

  He was saying, in a voice as confident as any youth’s, “Ah, Tommy, I’ve lived to see it! Tell me, have you been to Mars? What is on the other side of the Moon? And the Russians—what are the Russians up to these days?”

  The civilian coughed and tried to interrupt, but the figure on the stretcher went on heedlessly: “All those years gone—what wonders must we have. A tunnel under the Atlantic, I’ll wager! And ships that fly a hundred times the speed of sound. Tell me, Tommy Welbourne! Don’t keep an old man waiting!”

  The civilian said reluctantly, but patiently, “Perhaps it will take a little explaining, sir. You see, there have been changes—”

  “I know it, boy! That’s what I’m asking you!”

  “Well, not that sort of changes, sir. We’ve learned new virtues since your time—patience and stability, things of that sort. You see—”

  The interesting part was over and the glances of the
others in the party reminded me that I didn’t belong here. I stole off, but not before the man on the stretcher noticed me and made a sort of clumsy two-fingered salute of hail and farewell as I left. It was exactly like the gesture in his picture on that schoolroom wall, up next to the presidents and the greatest of kings.

  I found a staircase and climbed to another level of the boxlike clinic.

  The local peasants called the vaults “coolers” or “ice cubes.” I suppose the reason had something to do with the fact that they were cool and rectangular, on the whole—perhaps because, like icebergs, the great bulk of the vaults was below the surface. But whatever you called them, they were huge. And the clinic at Anzio was only one out of hundreds scattered all over the world.

  It was all a matter of viewpoint. To me, the clinics were emblems of the Company’s concern for the world. In any imaginable disaster—even if some fantastic plague struck the entire race at once—the affected population could be neatly and effectively preserved until medicine could catch up with their cures.

  To Rena, they were prisons big enough to hold the human race.

  It was time to find out which of us was right. I hurried through the corridors, between the tiers of sleepers, almost touching them on both sides. I saw the faint purplish gleam where Rena had spilled the fluid, and knelt beside the cocoon that held her father.

  The UV sterilizers overhead made everything look ghastly violet, but in any light, the waxy face under the plastic would have looked dead as death itself. I couldn’t blame Rena for weeping.

  I took out the little radiation counter and looked at it awkwardly. There was nothing complicated about the device—fortunately, because I had had little experience with them. It was a cylinder with a flaring snout at one end, a calibrated gauge at the side, marked in micro-roentgens. The little needle flickered in the green area of the dial. I held it to myself and the reading didn’t change. I pointed it up and pointed it down; it didn’t change.