Weaver’s eyes bulged. His head swiveled toward the bride. Harry tossed off the veil and swung the looped cord lightly between two fingers. The importance of his next move was terrifying. The first throw had to be accurate, because he might never have a chance for another. His surgeon’s fingers were deft, but he had never thrown a lariat. Christopher had described how he should do it, but there had been no chance to practice.
And if he were dragged within reach of those doughy arms! A hug would smother him.
And in that startled moment, Weaver’s head lifted with surprise and his hand stabbed toward the console. Harry flipped the cord. The loop dropped over Weaver’s head and tightened around his neck.
Quickly Harry wrapped the cord several times around his hand and pulled it tight. Weaver jerked against it, tightening it further. The thin cord disappeared into the neck’s soft flesh. Weaver’s stubby fingers clawed at it, tearing the skin, as his body thrashed on the mattress.
He had, Harry thought, an immortal at the end of his fishing line—a great white whale struggling to free itself so that it could live forever, smacking the pneumatic waves with fierce lunges and savage tugs. For him it became dreamlike and unreal.
Weaver, by some titanic effort, had turned over. He had his hands around the cord now. He rose onto soft, flowing knees and pulled at the cord, dragging Harry forward toward the mattress. Weaver’s eyes were beginning to bulge out of his pudding-face.
Harry dug his heels into the floor. Weaver came up, like the whale leaping its vast bulk incredibly out of the water, and stood, shapeless and monstrous, his face purpling. Then, deep inside, a heart gave up, and the body sagged. It flowed like a melting wax image back to the mattress on which it had spent almost three-quarters of a century.
Harry dazedly unwrapped the cord from his hand. It had cut deep into the skin; blood welled out. He didn’t feel anything as he dropped the cord. He shut his eyes and shivered. After a period of time he never remembered, he heard someone calling him. “Harry!” Marna cried. “Are you all right? Harry, please!”
He took a deep breath. “Yes. Yes, I’m all right.”
“Go to the console,” said the young man who had been Pearce. “You’ll have to find the right controls, but they should be marked. We’ve got to release Marna’s mother and grandmother. And then we’ve got to get out of here ourselves. Marshall Cartwright is outside, and I think he’s getting impatient.”
How did Pearce know? Harry thought dazedly. But he knew the answer. Pearce’s powers did not stop with healing. Allied to-that, perhaps stemming from that, were other perceptions of people and locations, and things, sometimes of thoughts themselves. Christopher, too. He had picked it up.
Harry nodded, but he did not move. It would take a strong man to go out into a world where immortality was a fact rather than a dream. He would have to live with it and its terrifying problems. They would be greater than anything he had imagined.
He moved forward to begin the search.
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Star Science Fiction 4 - [Anthology] Page 18