Guilty of willful discorporation. Sentenced to erasure.
Not so bad, perhaps. Peace at last. No more turns of the wheel of karma. Oblivion, nirvana. At-one-ment.
Mark Kaufmann confronted him. The financier showed evidences of strain. His face was different, Noyes noticed immediately. Well, no doubt mine is, too. We’ve all been living on this anvil so long, taking blow after blow.
And there on the couch the daughter sat, Risa, the sexy little minx. She also looked different, older, shrewder, more predatory. They’ll devour me alive. Elena’s told them everything. I’ve been betrayed by all of them. Why is she doing this? Did Roditis turn her down? Why couldn’t he have bedded her? Why would he choose to antagonize her this way? Didn’t he see that by scorning her, he was inviting her to tell the story? I should have let him know that it was through Elena that I had gained access to St. John. But he hustled me off to be blanked while Kravchenko was still running me, and obviously Kravchenko didn’t tell him. And afterward there was no way I could, because I wasn’t supposed to know anything about the discorporation any more.
Kaufmann said, “I believe you’ve been in this apartment before, Mr. Noyes.”
“Well—”
“Recently. Last night, in fact. Isn’t that so?”
“Who gave you that idea?” Noyes said with his last shred of bravado.
“You came here late last evening in the company of Miss Elena Volterra,” Kaufmann said. “At your insistence she admitted you to the bedroom of Martin St. John. There, alone with him, you introduced a small but lethal quantity of a drug known as cyclophosphamide-8 into his metabolism, causing a speedy but horrible discorpor—”
“No!” Noyes screamed. “I didn’t do it! It isn’t so!”
“We have mindpick evidence against you.”
“You don’t! You’re bluffing!”
Kaufmann said, “We have conclusive mindpick evidence of your guilt, Noyes. Enough to persuade the quaestorate to conduct a mindpick examination of your own memory bank, after which they’ll certainly recommend erasure. Of course, if you agree to testify voluntarily, and explain on whose behalf it was that you committed this foul crime, you may receive better treatment from the law.”
Noyes shook. Elena had told him everything, then. As he had expected her to do. He was trapped.
—Might as well make a clean breast of it, Kravchenko advised.
“We’re prepared to recommend every leniency,” said Kaufmann in a soothing voice. “We understand that you were not acting as a free agent when you committed the discorporation of Martin St. John. If you’ll aid us in convicting the motivating force behind this crime—”
Of course, thought Noyes. That’s what you’re after, to nail Roditis! It figures. You don’t care about me any more than anyone else does.
He swayed. Waves of disorientation swept his brain. The world was spinning, the center did not hold, everything was shattering. Six Mark Kaufmanns faced him. Six Risas. His eyes would not focus. It seemed to him he heard Kravchenko’s vicious laughter, rising in volume, becoming a howl of triumph.
The flask of carniphage in Noyes’ breast pocket seemed to blaze against his skin.
Take it, he told himself. You’ve threatened to do it for so long—just self-dramatization, isn’t it? But now, this is the right moment. Pull it out, gulp it down. They’ve got you anyway. He talks of leniency, but he’s lying. You’ll be erased after you’ve been mindpicked. But at least you can save Roditis. There’s no solid evidence against him. Roditis is a bastard, but you owe him your loyalty, you always have, and if you drink the carniphage before Kaufmann gets anything out of you it’ll take Roditis off the hook.
—You’re a bigger fool than I think you are if you can worry about Roditis at a time like this, Kravchenko burst in.
Once again the persona had tapped his thoughts. The last time that had happened, it had signaled imminent ejection.
—Cook Roditis’ goose for him, Kravchenko urged. Tell Kaufmann everything you know. Why not? You don’t owe anything to Roditis except credit for wrecking you.
“No,” said Noyes. “I won’t.”
“You won’t what?” asked Mark Kaufmann.
“I think he’s talking to his persona,” Risa said. “Look at his face! He’s cracking up!”
Noyes made a heavy gargling sound. It was beginning again: Kravchenko rising from captivity, uncoiling, filling his mind, grasping the levers of control.
“Stop it!” Noyes shrieked. “Let me alone! I won’t let you—get out of there—”
He was silent.
Kravchenko said coolly, “If you don’t mind, Kaufmann, we’ll call this inquisition to a halt right now. I’d like to consult my lawyer. And I’ll answer the questions put to me by the quaestors, not by you. Is it understood?”
“It’s a different voice,” said Kaufmann. “A different persona. Calmer—the eyes—”
“Will you excuse me, please?” Kravchenko asked. “You’ve brought me here by abduction, and I intend to make you pay for it, but this kangaroo court is hereby adjourned. Don’t try to prevent me from leaving.”
He walked gracefully toward the door.
Risa burst from her seat. “Dybbuk!” she yelled. “Don’t you see, the persona’s gone dybbuk right in front of us!”
The bedroom door opened. Elena appeared, pale, extending a quivering hand. She looked altogether confused. “Jim?” she said. “Noyes? Which are you? What’s happening?”
“Quiet, Elena!” Kravchenko said.
In that moment Charles Noyes launched a desperate and instantly successful counterattack. Erupting from the corner of his own mind in which Kravchenko had penned him, Noyes sped through the neural wreckage within his skull, taking Kravchenko off guard. They grappled. Kravchenko, not as thoroughly in control as he had believed, was thrown from command, hurled down only moments after his brief triumph.
Noyes sagged to the floor and crouched there.
“Listen to me,” he said, shaping the words with terrible effort. “This is Noyes again. Noyes. See, the right voice? He didn’t quite reach dybbuk. A good try, that’s all. Listen. Are you recording this, Kaufmann?”
“Every word.”
“Good. I’ve been an idiot. I’ve let everyone use me. But no more. My mind’s my own. Last night—Roditis sent me here. John Roditis of Roditis Securities. With orders to kill St. John. So that he could reapply for the Paul Kaufmann persona. I gave St. John a drug—cyclo—cyclophosphamide-8. I confess this of my own—free—will.”
He could not sustain even the crouching position any longer. Now he lay on his left side, half his body limp.
“I repeat: I killed St. John at Roditis’ orders. Mindpick Roditis and you’ll see it’s so. Two favors, please. Don’t let Kravchenko have another carnate trip. You saw—he almost went dybbuk. Did go dybbuk, for a minute. And also—for me—no more trips either. Just sleep. I want to get off the wheel.”
I ought to utter a mantra now, Noyes thought. Go out with a flourish. Om mani padme hum. But why bother?
His hand went into his breast pocket.
He felt Kravchenko fighting him, furiously trying to seize their shared body again. But Noyes held him off. His coordination was almost destroyed, yet he was able to get his hands on the beloved flask of carniphage, fondled so often, so sensually, his constant companion, his dearest friend.
He brought it to his mouth. He bit down.
The flask shattered and its contents spurted down his throat.
Mark Kaufmann stared in shock at the writhing, deliquescing thing on the carpet.
“Carniphage,” he said thickly. “Risa—Elena—don’t look!”
Elena had fled. But Risa was watching the process of decay with somber fascination. Kaufmann did not try to cover her eyes.
Surely Noyes must be dead. The inward rot was nearing the surface; his body was chaos. Yet still it moved, jerking and twitching as it traveled its one-way road to destruction.
Risa said, “W
hy did he confess? He was trying to be defiant at first.”
“He was showing everyone. Roditis. Kravchenko. Right at the end, he finally found a little strength.”
The limbs were flowing into shapelessness. The motions of the body were ceasing.
“Will that confession be any good?” Risa asked.
Mark nodded slowly. “The voiceprints will show that it was really Noyes speaking. The recording will show that he was nearly ejected by a dybbuk, fought back, blurted his story, and killed himself. It’ll be good enough to convince the quaestors that Roditis should be mindpicked.”
“And then?”
“They’ll erase him,” Kaufmann said. He felt little triumph, somehow. He took one more look at the ghastliness on the floor, and then went to put in a call to the quaestors.
15
It was July now. A season of stifling weather had set in, beyond the capacity of the weather controllers to handle, and many people had fled to cooler climes. Risa remained in New York. The trial of John Roditis had just ended, and now there was a great deal for her to do.
Roditis had been found guilty, of course. Noyes’ recorded testimony had induced the quaestorate to seek a mindpick against him, and the motion had been granted. Roditis’ lawyers had undertaken a delaying action based on the ancient constitutional principal of freedom from self-incrimination; but the legality of the mindpick was firmly established, and Roditis was put to the test. His complicity in the deliberate discorporation of Martin St. John was undeniable after that.
The defense tactics shifted. Now the lawyers asserted that, while Roditis and Noyes had undoubtedly conspired to destroy the St. John body, there was no injured party, since St. John was not his own body’s tenant. The only occupant of the body, the persona of Paul Kaufmann, was legally dead and therefore not capable of suffering discorporation.
It was a fine point, and gave the jurists of the quaestorate considerable exercise. It caused a good deal of embarrassment for Francesco Santoliquido, too, since he was responsible for creating the anomaly of the deliberate dybbuk. In the end, the decision went against Roditis, but the charge was reduced from murder to antisocial actions of the first degree. Which, when Roditis was found guilty, resulted in these sentences:
• Forfeiture of citizenship and civic privileges.
• Mandatory destruction of any recorded Roditis personae on file with the Scheffing Institute.
• Erasure of all present personae carried by Roditis, and their return to the soul bank for redistribution to others.
• Five years of corrective therapy, including, if needed, a total reorientation of personality to remove aggressive impulses.
“He’s finished now,” Mark Kaufmann said to his daughter as the verdicts were announced. “He’ll come out of the therapy a broken man—polite, amiable, lacking in purpose and direction. A pleasant nobody. A nothing. A shell.”
“It seems like such a waste,” said Risa. “All that drive—all that energy thrown away—”
“He was too dangerous to remain as he was, Risa. He had a greatness, I’ll admit, but his ambitions weren’t tempered by the moral sense. He was without a governor.”
“And you? And Uncle Paul?”
Kaufmann looked at her sharply. “We have our family traditions. We have our sense of what is honorable. Roditis was a wild beast. Now he’ll be tamed. There’s no comparison between a Roditis and one of us, Risa. None.”
Risa had private reservations about that. She had no wish to anger her father; but it seemed to her that the real difference between the shattered, defeated Roditis and the triumphant Mark Kaufmann was more a matter of luck and diplomacy than of breeding and honor. Roditis had overreached himself, and Mark had destroyed him. But Mark’s methods, though they stopped short at murder, had hardly been gentle.
Roditis disappeared behind the fortress walls of Belle Isle Sanatorium for corrective therapy. No one would ever again see the old John Roditis in public, that man seething with vitality and shrewdness. When Roditis emerged, several years hence, he would still be a wealthy man, but he would be an aimless, smiling ruin, cheerfully acquiescing in the decisions of the court-appointed trustees who managed his financial empire.
A great waste of dynamism, Risa decided.
Perhaps, she thought, such a squandering might be in some way avoided.
On the hottest day of that July heat wave, soon after the sentencing of John Roditis, Risa brought her hopter down in the employee lot of the Scheffing Institute building. She parked it deftly and crossed the sweltering strip of ferroconcrete in a hurry. It was three in the afternoon; the first shift of technicians was about to leave.
Within the building Risa picked up the first telephone she came to and requested to speak to a certain employee. Moments later, his face appeared on the screen.
He looked baffled.
“Hello, Leonards. Remember me?”
He was young, pale, good-looking, pinch lines forming between his eyebrows. He moistened his lips. “M-Miss Kaufmann?”
“That’s right, Leonards. Go to the head of the class.”
He forced an uneasy smile. “Is there something wrong? Can I be of service?”
“No, there’s nothing wrong, and yes, you can be of service. You’re finished working for the day, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. My hopter’s parked in Employee Lot D. Meet me there right away and we’ll take a little trip.”
“But—”
“I’ll be waiting, Leonards!”
He did not disappoint her. He did not dare.
Looking mystified, he entered the hopter, taking his seat beside her as she indicated. The little craft lifted and headed north. Risa said, “You did an excellent job with my transplant, Leonards. Tandy and I are very happy together.”
“That’s good, Miss Kaufmann. Perhaps you could tell me—”
“Where we’re heading? Of course. We’re going uptown. To my apartment.”
He scarcely seemed to believe any of this was happening to him. His posture was rigid; he looked straight ahead, never venturing a glance in her direction. He was terrified of her.
She brought the hopter in for a smooth landing at her home lot. Minutes later, they entered her apartment.
“Take a good look around,” she told him. “It’s nice, isn’t it? Ever been in a place like this before?”
“N-no, Miss Kaufmann.”
“Call me Risa. Why are you so frightened, Leonards? You’re a big, handsome young fellow, aren’t you? A skilled technician, a man with a bright future? Are you married?”
“Yes, Miss Kaufmann.”
“Children?”
“One child. We’re going to have another after my next increment comes through.”
“Fine, Leonards. I’m sure you’re a wonderful family man. And I’m glad to know you’re so virile.” She put her hand to her shoulder, touched a stud. Her light summer clothing fell away in a rustling swirl. She stood before him incandescently nude, and he gaped at the sudden sight.
He backed away from her, shielding his eyes.
“Come here, Leonards,” she said in a husky voice Tandy Cushing had taught her how to use. “You’re not really afraid. You want me, don’t you? Admit it. I’m yours for the taking. The experience of a lifetime. A Kaufmann in your arms. Why run away?”
“Please—I don’t understand—”
She swept up against him. She took his hand and put it to her small breasts. Her own hand traveled expertly over his body. Leonards gasped. Leonards moaned. Leonards shook his head and tried to push her away, but the attempt was not a success.
“I want you, Leonards! What’s your first name?”
“Harry.”
“Harry! Harry! Harry! Love me, Harry!”
She tugged at him and they toppled to the floor. Her lithe body entwined itself with his. Urgently she awakened his desire and banished his timidity.
“Harry,” she whispered. “Harry!”
He ma
de a sound that was half a protest, half an acceptance. And then, with sudden desperate willingness, he pulled her against him.
He was not very good, Risa concluded. But he was appealingly earnest.
When it was over, she slipped away from him and got nimbly to her feet. He lay still, rumpled and glassy-eyed.
“You’ve just committed an act of rape,” Risa told him. “Your helpless victim was a girl of the highest social position, less than seventeen years old. You’ll get your mind blotted out for a crime like that.”
Leonards came to a sitting position, and the color drained from his face a moment, then returned in a crimson rush. “What are you saying?”
“I’m explaining to you the nature of the trouble you’re in. Forcibly entering my hopter while I was visiting the Scheffing Institute, compelling me to bring you here, disrobing me, inducing me through superior strength to submit to sexual violation—oh, it’s bad, Leonards, it’s very bad!”
“I feel like I’m in a dream,” he whispered.
“It’s real enough. I’ll have the quaestors here any minute.”
“Why are you doing this?”
She crouched before him, her face close to his. “Would you like to avoid going to trial? Would you like me to forgive you for your audacity in perpetrating this hideous rape?”
“What do you want from me?”
“A favor,” she said harshly. “A small favor, and I’ll forget all about what happened here today, and leave you with your memories of pleasure.”
“What kind of favor?”
“You’ll have to break the rules of the Scheffing Institute,” she said. “But that’s a much smaller crime than raping a girl my age, and if you’re smart and lucky you’ll get away with it. There’s a certain persona I want, Leonards. Get it for me from the files, just borrow it for a little while tomorrow. And transplant it to me. That’s all I ask. I’ll come to the tower, and you’ll handle the transplant, and we’ll call it quits. But we’ll have to move swiftly, because this particular persona recording is due to be destroyed very soon. All right, Leonards? Do we have a deal?”
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