by Bob Shaw
“I’ll blame it on a system failure— should take them about two days to sort that one out.”
“I wish I was mechanical,” he said in wonderment.
“Think of all the fun you’d miss,” Colleen replied wickedly. She moved ahead of him again, easily, the muscles on her sturdy yet shapely legs firming at every step. They took their bearings from the sound of the helicopter and reached the area where they had para-dropped in roughly fifteen minutes. Carewe’s clothes were soaked with dew flung by whipping leaves when they reached the first of the empty aircraft seats. It was lying on its side at the base of a tree. The helicopter hovered patiently above the canopy of foliage which dipped and swayed in the downdraft.
“Where’s my seat?” Colleen said.
Carewe looked around for a moment and pointed up at the seat, still caught at an angle in the branches of the tree. “There you are. Or were.”
She whistled. “You mean I just stepped off from there?”
“Yup. You scared the pants off me.”
“Well, you must admit it’s a new twist. I’ll tell the other girls what to do next time they fly this route.”
Carewe had difficulty in forcing a smile. Colleen was beginning to talk like all the frustrated women he had known, the sort who often ended up joining Priapic Clubs—yet she had seemed so different. The change, hesuddenly realized, had begun when she asked if he was married. He watched with concern as she climbed the tree and swung lithely out to where the seat was perched. She took something from it, raised it to her mouth and he heard her voice faintly above the sound of the copter. A minute later she was back on the ground, tucking her blue shirt into the waistband of her skirt.
“They’re dropping a couple of baskets for us.” Her voice was casual.
“Colleen,” he said quickly, “this might be the last chance we’ll have to talk privately.”
“Could be.”
He caught both her hands. “I’ve been married for ten years, and last night was the first time I broke the contract. The only time.” She tried to pull her hands away but he held on. “But I’m not sure if I have a wife anymore. Something happened. I can’t tell you what it was—but my being in Africa trying to look like a cool and trying to keep from getting murdered are all part of it.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I don’t want you to think I’m scuttling off to a cozy home and a cozy wife after a casual bit of fun. I’m not a casual person.”
“But why are you telling me thatdiv heig>
“Because you’re important to me. I could love you, Colleen.”
Her eyes challenged his. “You think so?”
“I know so.” His words saddened him because they were almost, but not quite, true. He was grateful to Colleen, and gratitude which could not be properly expressed transmuted itself to guilt. “Look, if I find out I no longer have a wife …”
“Don’t say it, Will.” She gave him a wry smile. “Don’t get too noble.”
He released her hands and, by instinctive agreement, they stepped away from each other as two cages came blindly down through the trees from the waiting helicopter.
XI
It was not until he was high above the Atlantic on a west-bound subspacer that Carewe began to relax. Rather than delay his movements by going through the channels to arrange Farma credit, he used his own disk to pay for the flight from Kinshasa to Lisbon, and for the jump from there to Seattle. There had been one uneasy moment in Lisbon when he heard that the flight was going to set him back more than a thousand newdollars—he had an idea his drawing account would not be able to cope. The computer network gave its assent, however, and he remembered the value of the newdollar was exceptionally high in comparison to the escudo that month.
One of the side effects of immortality had been the necessity to redesign the world’s monetary systems. Even without the consequent increase in productivity, the median income for a consumer unit in the U.S.—estimated at $5,000.00 in the mid-20th century and projected at a conservative growth rate of 2.5 percent— would have risen to more than eight million dollars a year in three centuries. The advent of biostats, leading to optimum use of brainpower and resources, had pushed the annual increase in productivity to the region of ten percent and incomes of a billion dollars a year began to be forecast. To prevent the dollar becoming a meaningless unit, its value was redefined as a fixed fraction of the gross national product, calculated on a monthly basis. The other countries of the world adopted similar measures by international agreement and a Unations monetary reservoir was created to absorb disparities among the currencies of various countries.
The subspaoer was biting down into denser levels of air when Carewe, slumped in his seat, made an odd discovery. He had flown something like five thousand miles without once imagining an imminent failure in the aircraft. The possible dangers of aviation were nothing compared with his experiences on the ground during the previous two days—and he had survived those. He had been placed in situations where his life depended on his own efforts, and had been equal to them. The thought filled him with a dull astonishment which still lingered when he got off the skycraft at Seattle. Thanks to the time gain of the east-west flight it was only late afternoon, and he was able to pick up a commuter flight which got him into Three Springs by dusk.
The pastel-colored buildings were darkening, their mirrored windows and view-walls reflecting the copper-and-green sky. The world looked hearteningly familiar once again, and Carewe’s sense of being in danger lessened in intensity. All he needed now was the knowledge that Athene was at home waiting for him, and the African interlude would fade like a dream. He picked up his bullet at the airport garage and drove home slowly. The dhome was in darkness, as he had known it would be, but not until he saw it did he admit his secret hope that Athene would have returned. He let himself in and turned on the lights. She had tidied up carefully before leaving and the interior looked as though it had never been lived in. The air felt sterile.
How did I let it happen? Carewe was appalled at his own stupidity, at his crass mismanagement of the circumstances. With the cloud of E.80 curling safely through his veins, he should have called Barenboim and let him convince Athene of the truth. What he had done was to sacrifice his marriage to protect Farma’s investment—and the sacrifice had been needless because other people appeared to know about E.80, or at least to suspect something. Carewe was tired, and his operative lung was pumping hard as though he had been running, but he decided to go to Athene and put things right again. If necessary he would take her to see Barenboim—but there was a simpler more pleasurable way of proving to her that he was still a functional male….
He crossed to the communicator, gave it the number of the commune in which Katrina Targett—Athene’s mother—lived, then canceled the call before the connection was completed. The commune was less than fifteen kilometers away and he could drive there in a few minutes. It was more than two years since he had been there but he was able to punch the building’s combined communications and grid number into the bullet’s wayfinder and let it call out the route to him as he drove. Full darkness had fallen by the time he pulled up outside the two-story structure, which was of a standard pattern issued to women who wanted to live together on a group basis. It had separate apartments to cater for closely knit mother-and-child relationships and for short-term pairings with itinerant males, but the other aspects of life were largely communal. Carewe disliked the place, mainly—he suspected—because his own mother had continued to live in an individual unit after his father had drifted on to new liaisons.
He found the outer door open and went through it into a rectangular atrium where a slim brunette, apparently in her mid-twenties, was tending a flower garden. She looked as though she might have been Athene’s mother, but Carewe, whose memory for faces was poor, could not be certain.
“Madam Targett?” He went closer. “Are you Athene’s mother?”
She looked up with a sm
ile which did not quite hide the coolness appearing in her gaze as she noticed his hairless chin. “No.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you looked…”
“Like one of the family?” Her voice was deep and warm. “I am. I’m Athene’s grandmother. Who are you?” “Will Carewe. I didn’t realize…”
“Oh, we go back four generations here. There’s a lot of old-fashioned family loyalty among the Targetts.” The woman dropped a seed into the moist earth, turned a hand-held biotrophic projector on it and watched critically while a shoot snaked out of the ground, spread leaves and blossomed.
“That’s…nice,” Carewe said awkwardly. He had always been repelled by the idea of children remaining emotionally fixated on their mothers who themselves were children bound to their own mothers, and so on. Some communes had eight generations of women, reminding him of an endless series of nesting dolls. “The family unit can still be important.”
“Yes.” The woman., who had not introduced herself by name, switched off her projector. She knelt to examine the new flower, hissed with annoyance and pulled it out of the soil. She threw the flower down on the earth where its pale roots waved feebly, like thread-worms. “I made it too tall. When I don’t concentrate I make them too tall.”
“Sorry.” Carewe watched the blindly seeking roots as the woman moved a control on her projector and turned it on the flower again. It blackened and dissolved, returning its constituents to the soil. “Takes all the work and waiting out of gardening, doesn’t it?”
“If you don’t approve, Will—and I can tell you don’t —you should come right out with it.”
“Who said I don’t approve?” Carewe laughed unconvincingly, looking at the stained soil, somehow reminded of the frog he had rescued from death in the Farma parking lot.
The woman sniffed. “Well? Where’s Athene?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”
“How should I know, Will? She left here yesterday right after she got your call.” The woman stood up and peered into Carewe’s face. “You mean she isn’t …”
“I was in Africa yesterday,” he said harshly. “I didn’t call anybody.”
“Then where is she?”
Carewe hardly heard the words, but the question pursued him the whole way back to his home.
A careful search of the dhome yielded nothing in the way of clues—he could not even decide if Athene had visited the place on the previous day. There were no recorded messages, no notes. Nothing. Suddenly short of breath again, he hurried to the communicator and gave it the number of the Farma headquarters. A three-dimensional cartoon of a traditional female secretary appeared at the set’s projection focus.
“I am sorry, caller,” she said in a perky voice, “but it is past normal business hours and the staff of the Faot.Corporation has ceased work for the day. They will be at your service tomorrow morning again promptly at nine-thirty.”
“I have urgent company business with Mr. Barenboim.”
“I will assist you as much as possible. Have you a priority code?”
Carewe gave the intentionally complex coding which was memorized by all of Farma’s senior staff for use in making emergency contacts. The secretary, a vision in the mind of the Farma computer, nodded thoughtfully. “Mr. Barenboim can be reached at the home of Mr. Emmanuel Pleeth until approximately midnight. Shall I connect you?” She faded away, disappointed, into a luminous haze as Carewe switched off. His first impulse had been to call Barenboim, but if Athene’s apparent disappearance had anything to do with the E.80 project he wanted to move as carefully as possible. Communicator link-ups were difficult to tap, but he had no doubt it could be done.
He went back out to his bullet, walking quickly with his newly learned and slightly uncoordinated gait which allowed him to move at a fair speed without the inert lung swinging against his ribs. His knees felt rubbery, a reminder that he had eaten practically nothing in two days. Never having visited Pleeth’s home, he had only the vaguest idea where it was, but the bullet’s way-finder got an address and instructed him on the best way to get there. Half an hour later he swung through the gates of a compact estate about ten kilometers to the north of Three Springs. The house was a low sprawling structure of genuine stone. Warm light spilled from its windows across terraced lawns. The lushness of the vegetation and the unseasonal warmth of the night breeze told of an environmental control system extending over the entire estate. Getting out of his bullet, Carewe looked around him in wonderment, inhaling the scented air. A vice-president of Farma was bound to be in a high-income bracket, but Carewe had not realized just how well the tautly-smiling Pleeth could live. He crossed a patio and was about to reach the main entrance when the door opened. Barenboim hurried out, his hands outstretched towards Carewe, while Pleeth’s pink enigmatic face watched from the doorway.
“Willy! My dear boy!” Barenboim’s eyes sent messages of anxiety from within their bony grottoes. “What are you doing here?”
“I have to talk to you, Hy.” Carewe noted Barenboim’s display of solicitude, understood the other man was making it obvious for his benefit, but was unable to doubleguess the two-centuries-old cool any further.
“Please do—come in and sit down.” Barenboim gripped his arm and led him in as Pleeth moved silently ahead. “I got wind you had been injured and hospitalized in Africa, then there was something about your having disappeared. We were worried.” They entered a large book-lined room in which pools of soft light shone richly on wooden furniture. A small world-globe sat on the central table. Carewe allowed himself to be installed in an easy chair before a convincingly real log fire.
haven’t disappeared,” he said. “But my wife has.*
“A woman can’t disappear these days, Willy. They always leave a clear trail of credit transactions in the …”
“This is serious,” Carewe snapped, discovering to his surprise that the awe which Barenboim used to inspire in him had completely vanished.
“Of course, Willy. I didn’t mean to …” Barenboim glanced at Pleeth, who was standing in a corner of the room listening intently. “Perhaps you’d better tell me what’s been going on.”
“Somebody’s been trying to kill me—and now Athene has disappeared.” Carewe paused to examine Barenboim’s face, then went on to outline the events of the past two days.
“I see,” Barenboim said when he had finished. “And you think it is something to do with the E.80 project?” “What do you think?”
Barenboim’s face was a mask of concern. “I’m sorry to say it, Willy, but I’m inclined to agree with you. This is exactly the sort of thing we’ve been doing our best to avoid.”
“But …” Carewe had been hoping to have his theory dismissed. “If somebody has abducted Athene, what would they do with her?”
Barenboim went to a sideboard and poured a drink. “If you’ve got any ideas about them harming her—forget it. The sort of studies a researcher in biostatics would be interested in all involve maintaining the subject in perfect health.”
“What sort of things?”
“Is Scotch all right?” Barenboim handed the drink to Carewe. “Manny here could give you a better rundown than I, but basically they would want to assure themselves of the normal development of the fetus. That’s pretty important—ever hear of thalidomide?”
“Ah… no.”
“Then there’s the question of heredity. Suppose the child is male—will its cell structure and replication mechanisms be those of a mortal or an immortal? Suppose the male offspring of an E.80 immortal, a functioning male, turned out to be non-functional males?”
“I can’t see that it would change things very much,” Carewe said impatiently.
“Perhaps not, but I’m merely trying to give you some idea of why a rival organization would be interested in studying your wife. These are things we want to know too. The important point is that she will be perfectly safe until we can locate her and get her back.”
“Right!” Carewe swallow
ed his drink and stood up. “I’ll contact the police immediately.”
“I don’t think you should do that,” Barenboim said, and Pleeth moved restlessly in s corner.
“Why not?”
“I’ll be frank about our position, Willy. You’re too hard-headed for me to be anything else and hope to get away with it. If the police are brought in at this stage the whole world will know about E.80 by tomorrow morning. We want to give it to the world but not in such a way that all our rivals will be able to reap the benefits of our…”
“In the meantime thousands of men are tying off every day,” Carewe cut in angrily, thinking of the tribesmen he had forcibly emasculated.
Barenboim shrugged. “It’s better than dying off—but you didn’t let me finish, Willy. You’re entitled to go to the police—and I wouldn’t dream of trying to stop you, in spite of what it would mean to Farma—but I have an alternative to put to you.”
“I’m listening.”
“In my opinion, a really good private agency could find your wife quicker than a horde of well-meaning but noisy police officers, and that way both you and Farma would be better off. I know the right man to undertake the work and I’m prepared to call him this Minute. All I ask is that you give me one week to try it my way. After that, if there are no results, you can bring in the police. What do you say, Willy?”
“Well.” Looking at Barenboim’s eager, concerned face, Carewe’s conviction that he was being manipulated returned to him briefly, but he had to recognize the force of the arguments. “Are you sure you man’s the best?”
“The very best—and I’ll call him right now.”
“There’s no communicator terminal in this room,” Pleeth put in, speaking for the first time. “You can use the set in the main lounge. Through here.”
“That’s the trouble with trad architecture—it’s all appearance and no convenience,” Barenboim sighed. “Pour yourself another drink while we make the call, Willy. I’m sure the host won’t mind. Will you, Manny?”