Zelazny, Roger - Novel 05

by Today We Choose Faces

  After perhaps half a minute, I knew that I had to get up and go on, or I would just lie there losing the benefit of all that adrenalin, growing weaker and sleepier before my pain and fatigue. I pushed myself upright, reeled back. I almost fell as I stooped to retrieve my final grenade from its place at the hip of my armor. Then I turned and faced the building.

  The large metal doors were closed. When I moved to them and tried them, I found that they had been secured. While I had knocked many holes in the building, fires seemed to be burning behind all of them. I backed away, half-expecting an explosion when I tried it, raised my gun and burned away the locking mechanism.

  Nothing happened. No hidden charges.

  I moved forward, opened one of the doors, entered.

  It was a simple lobby, of the sort to be found in office buildings anywhere. Deserted, though. And hot and smoky.

  I stalked ahead, ready to fire at the first movement of anything, wondering about concealed guns, bombs, gas nozzles, hoping they were damaged now or powerless, if present, and going over the plans for the place which I held in my mind.

  My feelings were that he would be downstairs in the brain room. It was the safest as well as the most sensitive place in the entire installation.

  As I worked my way toward the rear of the building in search of a stairwell, Styler's voice came to me over the loudspeaker system:

  "I was not mistaken about you," he said. "I was afraid of you from the first. It is a pity that we could only meet under these circumstances. You possess a quality I admire greatly—your determination. I have never seen such a singlemindedness, such a definition of purpose before. Once you made up your mind to take the contract on me, that was it. You closed it to everything else at that moment, and nothing short of death will stop you now.”

  I dashed through a burning corridor, leaped over a section of fallen wall. Sprinklers soaked me as I went.

  "... We were miscast, you and I, you know? Have you ever considered what would have happened had Othello been faced with Hamlet's problem? He would have dealt with matters as soon as he had spoken with the ghost. There would only have been the one act and no great tragedy. Conversely, the Dane could have resolved the poor Moor's dilemma in a twinkling. It is sad that such things continue to be so. Had I been in your place, I would be in control of COSA by now. They were in terrible shape. Seriously. This assault on Doxford is part of their death throes. Their top management hated one another more than they did their competitors. You could have exploited your ruthless grandfather-image and moved right in, then bullied them into line. You— Oh, hell! It doesn't matter now, I have answers for everybody's problems but my own. If you sat where I sit, knew what I know, you might have been able to stop the war. I didn't, though, so why talk about it? I was still busy weighing alternatives when the bombs were going off. You would have done something ..."

  The door to the stairwell was jammed shut. I burned it and kicked my way through. Smoke billowed out, but I held my breath and plunged ahead.

  "... And I am still thinking, considering the possible ways of handling the present situation ..."

  I groped my way about the first landing, continued on down, my eyes stinging and watering.

  The door at the foot of the stair was locked. I burnt away the lock plate, my head spinning, blood hammering in my temples. Another flaming corridor confronted me. I ran its length, blasted another door and entered a hot but unfired hallway.

  I hurried, cutting my way through several more doorways, expecting an explosion, a round of gunfire, the hiss of gas at any moment The air grew cooler, cleaner, as I proceeded, finally approaching something I considered normal and comfortable. The lights burned steadily, and though there were communication boxes at regular intervals, the only sounds that emerged were those of heavy breathing and whispers, possibly curses, that I could not quite make out. I wondered—had wondered all along— whether he was alone. I had not yet encountered a single human being, living or dead, on Alvo, and while it seemed likely that any others would have headed for his sheltered area when the attack began, the monologue-like quality of Styler's speech would tend to indicate that he was alone and possibly had been so for some time. Where, then, was everybody else? This was a big place, with a supposedly large staff.

  Soon, though, the matter would be resolved. I caught sight of the heavy door that marked the entrance to his sanctuary.

  I approached cautiously, found it to be sealed, as I had expected. I raised my gun and began to burn it.

  The charge gave out before I had finished, though. The lock still held too well.

  I had the grenade, of course. But if I were to use it to blow the door, I would be disposing of my only weapon capable of killing at a distance. The only thing I would have left beside my hands would be a stiletto I had picked up in Sicily. My instructors had laughed when I had insisted on bringing it along. They did not believe in good-luck charms.

  I drew it from my boot, casting the gun aside. I located the grenade.

  "I imagine you expect to be picked up by your associates after you have completed your mission," Styler said, his voice coming from a speaker above the door. "When they fail to come for you, you may begin to wonder whether you have been abandoned or whether perhaps I spoke the truth concerning the war on Earth. I spoke the truth. Then you will look for some means of departing Alvo on your own. You will find that there seems to be none available. You will begin to suspect that you are the only human being on the planet. This will be correct. Then you will wish that you had believed me, for you will realize that with me you slew the solutions to your various dilemmas."

  I backed down the hall, threw the grenade and ducked into a recessed doorway.

  "I have sent everyone else away. You see, I saw this coming months ago. Now, with the war, it is doubtful that any will be returning. The refugees are being sent to those worlds where settlement had already be—"

  The explosion, in that confined area, sounded enormous. I was out of my niche and running before the echoes had died, the vibrations ceased, before all of the rubble had hit the floor.

  If he had indeed sent everyone else offworld, it indicated that there was no one to come pick me up, had I halted at any point in my expedition as he had requested. Therefore, he had simply wanted a stationary target. The hell with him! Any possible beginnings of sympathy quickly vanished.

  I plunged across the blasted threshold, my stiletto low and ready.

  I did not stop moving once I had entered, but took in my surroundings as I made my dash- No splash of Renaissance splendor, as I had half-anticipated. The far wall was the face of an enormous console, the near one housed a multitude of screens, showing various views of the valley and the building's burning interior. The front of the room was separated from the rear by a decorative screen, was carpeted and furnished for full-time residence.

  Styler, looking as he had in the pictures, was seated at a small metal desk, near to the left wall. An elaborate machine, possibly some extension of the behemoth at the rear of the room, jutted from the wall to enclose him on the right. His head was bared, and a mass of leads ran from it to the unit. He was staring at me, and he held a gun in his right hand.

  I did not know how many times I was hit until afterward. I believe the first shot missed me. I am not certain about the second one. It was a small-caliber weapon and he managed to fire it three times before I knocked it aside, plunged my blade into his midsection and watched him sag back into the seat from which he had risen.

  "You will—" he began, then opened and closed his mouth several times, a look of surprise breaking, for an instant, the grimace he had worn.

  His right hand shot out, threw a small switch on the panel at his side. He slumped forward then, across the desk top, twitching.

  On the corner of his desk, near to where I was leaning, breathing heavily, there was a telephone. It began ringing.

  I stared at the thing, fascinated, unable to move. It was ridiculous, absurd, that it shoul
d be ringing. I fought back a wild impulse to laugh, knowing that it would do me no good, that it might take me a long while to stop.

  I had to know. I would always wonder, if I did not find out now.

  I reached out and raised the receiver.

  "—discover possible solace," his voice continued, coming now through the earpiece, "in the building at the other end of this valley."

  I controlled a sudden desire to scream, I maintained my grip on the receiver. With my other hand, I reached out and grasped his shoulder. I pushed him back in the chair. He was either dead or so close to it that it made little difference.

  "The neurons are still firing," came his voice through the phone, "and with my hookup, I can activate anything here that still functions, even though my own vocal cords are now beyond my control. Everything here goes through the formulate*, and its voice is my own.

  "You will have to study what you find in the other building. It will not be easy. You may well fail. The alternative is to spend the rest of your days alone in this place. But there are teaching devices, records, my notes, books. You have nothing but time now, in which you may make the attempt or not, as you choose. So far, I have anticipated everything correctly. I feel that this is about as far as I can go—"

  There came a click, followed by a dial tone,

  I collapsed.

  Here, here, there and again. The years, the clones, the gates ... I learned.

  I studied the materials in what was to become Wing Null. I learned. The alternative was some worse form of madness than the one I already knew. I had to get out of there, try to find Julia, do something.

  Jigsaw and evening star ...

  I got out of there. I never located her grave, if she had one, but I was able to establish that she was not one of those who had made it into the House, whose Wings existed on the outworlds which were not quite ready for man.

  I got out of there. There was a lot of forgetting that I wanted to do, and having had an abundance of time for introspection I could even be specific about it. I possessed the techniques for pinpointing everything I disliked about myself and erasing it from my mind. I decided to do it. I wished it might be done for the whole human race—what was left of it—and decided there might be a way to do that, too. Only it would take more time, a process of moral evolution, with me there to guide it and evolve along with the others, staying only one step behind, as I saw it, to take care of the dirty work, for which I was well suited. This pleased me. I destroyed a portion of myself and soldered pin one in its place. Later ones might be pulled in an emergency, but I wanted Angelo di Negri to stay dead. I hated him. Then I activated the clones, and we could trust us completely.

  We got out.

  Part Two

  1

  As I felt the bullet enter my heart, my first reaction was an enormous bewilderment How—?

  Then I was dead.

  I do not remember screaming, though Missy Vole said I did, and clawing wildly with my right hand. Then I stiffened, relaxed, was still. She was in the best position to know, poor girl, as it happened in her bed.

  A crazy thought ran through my mind just before I died: Pull pin seven ... Why, I had no idea.

  I remember her face, green eyes mostly hidden behind long lashes, pink lips slightly parted in a smile. Then I felt the pain and the bewilderment, not hearing but seeming to have just heard the shot that killed me.

  A doctor was later to tell me that I had sustained no cardiac damage, despite the symptoms I had exhibited, that there was no apparent reason for my experiencing chest pains and blacking out. I was already aware by then that this was the case, and I just wanted to get away from the Dispensary and go direct to Wing 18 of the Library, cubicle 17641, to deal with the aftermath of my passing.

  But they detained me for several hours, insisting that I rest. The fools! If there was nothing wrong with me, why should I rest?

  And I was unable to rest, of course. How could I? I had just been murdered.

  I was quite frightened and very puzzled. How could anyone do such a thing? And, as an afterthought, why should they?

  As I lay there, surrounded by antiseptic whiteness, alternately perspiring and shivering, I knew that I had to go, I wanted to go, to see what had been done to me, to cover it over quickly. But I also experienced a tremendous revulsion and physical fear of the sight, the evidence of the act. This occupied me for a long while, and I made no effort to depart. I was sufficiently rational to realize that I would be useless until these initial feelings had eased.

  So I rode with them, forced myself to think about them. Murder. It was virtually unheard of these days. I could not recall when last a murder had been committed, anywhere, and I was in a better position than most to be aware of such matters. Early conditioning and plenty of violence-aggression surrogation had a lot to do with it, as well as considerable medical expertise when it came to patching up the victim of a pathological outburst. But a cool, premeditated killing, such as mine had been ... No, it had been an awfully long while. Some more cynical ghost of an earlier self whispered in my ear that it just might be that the real cool, premeditated ones were so well done that they did not even look like murder. I quickly banished him to the oblivion he had earned long ago. Or so I thought. With the quality of information maintained on everyone in the House, it was next to impossible.

  It was especially unfortunate that it had to be me. I was now required to do what I had just dismissed as inconceivable in another. That is, find a way of concealing the fact that it had occurred. But after all, I was a special case. I did not really count—

  The chuckle unnerved me, coming as it did from my own throat.

  "Well said, old mole!" I decided within me. "I suppose there is a certain element of irony involved."

  Crap! You have no sense of humor at all, Langet

  "I appreciate the incongruity of my position. But I do not consider murder a laughing matter."

  Not when we are the victim, eh?

  "You employ the wrong pronoun.”

  No, but have it your way. You are as red-handed as any.

  "I am not a killer! I have never murdered anyone!"

  I suppressed the beginnings of another chuckle.

  What about suicide? What about me?

  "A man has the right to do as he would with himself! You? You are nothing! You do not even exist!"

  Then why are you so disturbed? Psychotic, perhaps? No, Lange. I am real. You killed me. You murdered me.

  But I am real. And there will come a time when I will be resurrected. By your own hand.

  "Never!"

  It will be because you will need me. Soon!

  Choking with fury, I rebanished my sire to his well-deserved limbo.

  For several moments I cursed the fact that I was what I was, realizing simultaneously that this, too, was a pathological outburst brought about by the death-trauma. Before very long, it passed. I knew that so long as people remained people, it was necessary that I endure, in whatever form the day required.

  We should be waiting for me to move. I knew that, too. Waiting and covering. The longer it took me to act, the more difficult things could become in the normal course of human surveillance. We all knew that, but we appreciated the scope of my feelings and understood that there would have to be a delay before I could function coherently again.

  I ground my teeth and clenched my hands. This self-indulgence could be costly. It would simply have to be postponed.

  I forced myself to get up and cross the room, to regard the gray-haired, dark-eyed reflection of my fifty-some years in the mirror that hung above the basin. I ran my hands through my hair. I smiled my lopsided smile, but it did not look too convincing.

  "You are a hell of a mess," I told myself, and we nodded agreement.

  I ran the water cold, sluicing the cracked pavements of my face, washed my hands, felt slightly improved. Then, trying hard not to think of anything but the immediate task, I fetched my clothes from the wall-slot and dresse
d. Once I had begun moving, there arose a compulsive need to continue. I had to get out of there. I rang for attention and began pacing. I paused several times at the window and looked out at the small, enclosed park, empty now of all but a few patients and visitors. High overhead, the lights had already entered the dimming cycle. I could see three corkscrewing jackpoles and the wide balconies of an arcaded area far to my left, the glint of enclosure-facings in the shadows to their rear. Traffic on the belts and crossovers was light, and there were no special airborne vehicles in sight.

  A sudden nurse fetched me the young doctor who had said earlier that there was nothing wrong with me. Since we were now in apparent agreement on this point, he told me that I could go home. I thanked him and departed, discovering that I actually felt better as I walked down the ramp and headed for the nearest beltway.

  At first, I did not really care which way I moved. I simply wanted to get away from the Dispensary, with all its smells and reminders of that unfortunate state through which I had so recently journeyed. I slid by enormous medical supply depots, airborne ambulances occasionally passing overhead. Walls, dividers, shelves, pilings, platforms, ramps—all were white and carbolic about me. I edged my way inward and onto the fastest belt. Orderlies, nurses, doctors, patients and relatives of the deceased or ailing slipped by me with increasing speed and good riddance. I hated the place with its caches of medical stores, clinical subdivisions and supervised residences for the recovering and those headed in the other direction. The belt flowed through the corner of a park where such unfortunates waited, on benches and in power chairs, for the day when the black door would open for them. Overhead, birdlike power cranes transported units of people and machinery, to maintain the perpetually recomputed requirements of the shifting people:things:power: space equation, moving with but the faintest clucking amid the great crosshatchery in the sky. I changed belts a dozen or so times, not drawing another easy breath until I was well into the crowded, daylighted Kitchen, with its size and movements and sounds and colors to remind me I was a permanent part of this and not that other.