The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  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. What 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?”

  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.”