She shuddered. “People are . . . are so . . .”
“Don’t say that, whatever it was,” said Horowitz. “We’re living in a quiet time, Doctor, and we haven’t evolved too far away from our hunting and tracking appetites. It probably hasn’t occurred to you that your kind of math and my kind of biology are hunting and tracking too. Cut away our science bump and we’d probably hunt with the pack too. A big talent is only a means of hunting alone. A little skill is a means of hunting alone some of the time.”
“But. . . why must they hunt you?”
“Why must you hunt gravitic phenomena?”
“To understand it.”
“Which means to end it as a mystery. Cut it down to your size. Conquer it. You happen to be equipped with a rather rarefied type of reason, so you call your conquest understanding. The next guy happens to be equipped with fourteen inches of iron pipe and achieves his conquest with it instead.”
“You’re amazing,” she said openly. “You love your enemies, like—”
“Love thine enemies as thyself. Don’t take any piece of that without taking it all. How much I love people is a function of how much I love Horowitz, and you haven’t asked me about that. Matter of fact, 1 haven’t asked me about that and I don’t intend to. My God, it’s good to talk to somebody again. Do you want a drink?”
“No,” she said. “How much do you love Heri Gonza?”
He rose and hit his palm with his fist and sat down again, all his gentleness folded away and put out of sight. “There’s the exception. You can understand anything humanity does if you try, but you can’t understand the inhumanity of a Heri Gonza. The difference is that he knows what is evil and what isn’t, and doesn’t care. I don’t mean any numb by-rote moral knowledge learned at the mother’s knee, the kind that afflicts your pipe-wielder a little between blows and a lot when he gets his breath afterward. I mean a clear, analytical, extrapolative, brilliantly intelligent knowledge of each act and each consequence. Don’t underestimate that devil.”
“He . . . seems to ... I mean, he does love children,” she said fatuously.
“Oh, come on now. He doesn’t spend a dime on his precious Foundation that he wouldn’t have to give to the government in taxes. Don’t you realize that? He doesn’t do a thing he doesn’t have to do, and he doesn’t have to love those kids. He’s using those kids. He’s using the filthiest affliction mankind has known for a long time just to keep himself front and center.”
“But if the Foundation does find a cure, then he—”
“Now you’ve put your finger on the thing that nobody in the world but me seems to understand—why I won’t work with the Foundation. Two good reasons. First, I’m way ahead of them. I don’t need the Foundation and all those fancy facilities. I’ve got closer to the nature of iapetitis than any of ‘em. Second, for all my love for and understanding of people, I don’t want to find out what I’m afraid I would find out if I worked there and if a cure was found.”
“You mean he’d—he’d withhold it?”
“Maybe not permanently. Maybe he’d sit on it until he’d milked it dry. Years. Some would die by then. Some are pretty close as it is.” She thought of Billy and bit her hand.
“I didn’t say he would do that,” Horowitz said, more gently. “I said I don’t want to be in a position to find out. I don’t want to know that any member of my species could do a thing like that. Now you see why I work by myself, whatever it costs. If I can cure iapetitis, I’ll say so. I’ll do it, I’ll prove it. That’s why I don’t mind his kind of cheap persecution. If I succeed, all that harassment makes it impossible for him to take credit or profit in any way.”
“Who are you going to cure?”
“What?”
“He’s got them all. He’s on trideo right now, a telethon, the biggest show of the last ten years, hammering at people to send him every case the instant it’s established.” Her eyes were round.
“The logician,” he whispered, as round-eyed as she. “Oh, my God, I never thought of that.” He took a turn around the room and sat down again. His face was white. “But we don’t know that. Surely he’d give me a patient. Just one.”
“It might cost you the cure. You’d have to, you’d just have to give it to him, or you’d be the one withholding it!”
“I won’t think about it now,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t think about it now. I’ll get the cure. That first.”
“Maybe my brother Billy—”
“Don’t even think about it!” he cried. “He’s already got it in for you. Don’t get in his way any more. He won’t let your Billy out of there and you know it. Try anything and he’ll squash you like a beetle.”
“What’s he got against me?”
“You don’t know? You’re a Nobel winner—one of the newsiest things there is. A girl, and not bad-looking at all. You’re in the public eye, or you will be by noon tomorrow when the reporters get to you. Do you think for a minute he’d let you or anybody climb on his publicity? Listen, iapetitis is his sole property, his monopoly, and he’s not going to share it. What’d you expect him to do, announce the gift on his lousy telethon?”
“I—I c-called him on his telethon.”
“You didn’t!”
“He pretended the call was from you. But . . . but at the same time he told me ... ah yes, he said, ‘What you got I don’t want. I’m not up here to do you no good.’”
Horowitz spread his hands. “Q.E.D.”
“Oh,” she said, “how awful.”
At that point somebody kicked the door open.
* * * *
Horowitz sprang to his feet, livid. A big man in an open, flapping topcoat shouldered his way in. He had a long horse-face and a blue jaw. His eyes were extremely sad. He said, “Now just relax. Relax and you’ll be all right.” His hands, as if they had a will of their own, busied themselves about pulling off a tight left-hand glove with wires attached to it and running into his side pocket.
“Flannel!” Horowitz barked. “How did you get in?” He stepped forward, knees slightly bent, head lowering. “You’ll get out of here or so help me—”
“No!” Iris cried, clutching at Horowitz’s forearm. The big man outreached and outweighed the biologist, and certainly would fight rougher and dirtier.
“Don’t worry, lady,” said the man called Flannel sleepily. He raised a lazy right hand and made a slight motion with it, and a cone-nosed needier glittered in his palm. “He’ll be good—won’t you, boy? Or I’ll put you to bed for two weeks an’ a month over.”
He sidled past and, never taking his gaze from Horowitz for more than a flickering instant, opened the three doors which led from the laboratory—a bathroom, a bedroom, a storage closet.
“Who is he? You know him?” Iris whispered.
“I know him,” growled Horowitz. “He’s Heri Gonza’s bodyguard.”
“Nobody but the two of them,” said Flannel.
“Good,” said a new voice, and a second man walked in, throwing off a slouch hat and opening the twin to the long, loose topcoat Flannel wore. “Hi, chillun,” said Heri Gonza.
There was a long silence, and then Horowitz plumped down on his pile of Proceedings, put his chin in his hands, and said in profound disgust, “Ah, for God’s sake.”
“Dr. Horowitz,” said Heri Gonza pleasantly, nodding, “and Dr. Barran.”
Iris said shakily, “I th-thought you were doing a sh-show.”
“Oh, I am, I am. All things are possible if you only know how. At the moment Chitsie Bombom is doing a monologue, and she’s good for two encores. After that there’s a solido of me sitting way up on the flats in the left rear, oh so whimsically announcing the Player’s Pub Players. They have a long one-acter and a pantomime. I’ve even got a ballet company, in case this takes that long.”
“Phony to the eyeballs, even when you work,” said Horowitz. “In case what takes that long?”
“We’re going to talk.”
“You talk,” said Ho
rowitz. “Quickly and quietly and get the hell out of here. ‘Scuse me, Dr. Barran.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she murmured.
“Please,” said the comedian softly, “I didn’t come here to quarrel with you. I want to end all that. Here and now, and for good.”
“We’ve got something he wants,” said Horowitz in a loud aside to Iris.
Heri Gonza closed his eyes and said, “You’re making this harder than it has to be. What can I do to make this a peaceful talk?”
“For one thing,” said Horowitz, “your simian friend is breathing and it bothers me. Make him stop.”
“Flannel,” said Heri Gonza, “get out.”
Glowering, the big man moved to the door, opened it, and stood on the sill. “All the way,” said the comedian. Flannel’s broad back was one silent mass of eloquent protest, but he went out and shut the door.
Deftly, with that surprising suddenness of nervous motion which was his stock in trade, Heri Gonza dropped to one knee to bring their faces on a level, and captured Iris’s startled hands. “First of all, Dr. Barran, I came to apologize to you for the way I spoke on the telephone. I had to do it —there was no alternative, as you’ll soon understand. I tried to call you back, but you’d already gone.”
“You followed me here! Oh, Dr. Horowitz, I’m sorry!”
“I didn’t need to follow you. I’ve had this place spotted since two days before you moved into it, Horowitz. But I’m sorry I had to strongarm my way in.”
“I yield to curiosity,” said Horowitz. “Why didn’t my locks alarm when you opened them? I saw Flannel’s palm-print eliminator, but dammit, they should have alarmed.”
“The locks were here when you rented the place, right? Well, who do you think had them installed? I’ll show you where the cutoff switch is before I leave. Anyhow—grant me this point. Was there any other way I could have gotten in to talk with you?”
“I concede,” said Horowitz sourly.
“Now, Dr. Barran. You have my apology, and you’ll have the explanation to go with it. Believe me, I’m sorry. The other thing I want to do is to accept, with thanks from the bottom of my heart, your very kind offer of the prize money. I want it, I need it, and it will help more than you can possibly realize.”
“No,” said Iris flatly. “I’ve promised it to Dr. Horowitz.”
Heri Gonza sighed, got to his feet, and leaned back against the lab bench. He looked down at them sadly.
“Go on,” said Horowitz. “Tell us how you need money.”
“The only two things I have never expected from you are ignorance and stupidity,” said Heri Gonza sharply, “and you’re putting up a fine display of both. Do you really think, along with all my millions of ardent fans, that when I land a two-million-dollar contract I somehow put two million dollars in the bank? Don’t be childish. My operation is literally too big to hide anything in. I have city, county, state and federal tax vultures picking through my whole operational framework. I’m a corporation and subject to outside accounting. I don’t even have a salary; I draw what I need, and I damn well account for it, too. Now, if I’m going to finish what I started with the disease, I’m going to need a lot more money than I can whittle out a chip at a time.”
“Then take it out of the Foundation money—that’s what it’s for.”
“I want to do the one thing I’m not allowed to do with it. Which happens to be the one thing that’ll break this horrible thing—it has to!”
“The only thing there is like that is a trip to Iapetus.”
To this, Heri Gonza said nothing—absolutely nothing at all. He simply waited.
Iris Barran said, “He means it. I think he really means it.”
“You’re a big wheel,” said Horowitz at last, “and there are a lot of corners you can cut, but not that one. There’s one thing the government—all governments and all their armed forces—will rise up in wrath to prevent, and that’s another landing and return from any place off earth—especially Iapetus. You’ve got close to four hundred dying kids on your hands right now, and the whole world is scared.”
“Set that aside for a moment.” The comedian was earnest, warm-voiced. “Just suppose it could be done. Horowitz, as I understand it you have everything you need on the iapetitis virus but one little link. Is that right?”
“That’s right. I can synthesize a surrogate virus from nucleic acids and exactly duplicate the disease. But it dies out of its own accord. There’s a difference between my synthetic virus and the natural one, and I don’t know what it is. Give me ten hours on Iapetus and half a break, and I’ll have the original virus under an electron mike. Then I can synthesize a duplicate, a real self-sustaining virus that can cause the disease. Once I have that, the antigen becomes a factory process, with the techniques we have today. We’ll have shots for those kids by the barrel lot inside of a week.”
Heri Gonza spread his hands. “There’s the problem, then. The law won’t allow the flight until we have the cure. We won’t have the cure unless we make the flight.”
Iris said, “A Nobel prize is an awful lot of money, but it won’t buy the shell of a space ship.”
“I’ve got the ship.”
For the first time Horowitz straightened up and spoke with something besides anger and hopelessness. “What kind of a ship? Where is it?”
“A Fafnir. You’ve seen it, or pictures of it. I use it for globe-trotting mostly, and VIP sightseeing. It’s a deepspace craft, crew of twelve, and twelve passenger cabins. But it handles like a dream, and I’ve got the best pilot in the world. Kearsarge.”
“Kearsarge, God yes. But look, what you call deepspace is Mars and Venus. Not Saturn.”
“You don’t know what’s been done to that ship. She’ll sleep four now. I have a lab and a shop in her, and all the rest is nothing but power-plant, shielding and fuel. Hell, she’ll make Pluto!”
“You mean you’ve been working on this already?”
“Man, I’ve been chipping away at my resources for a year and a half now. You don’t know what kind of footsie I’ve been playing with my business managers and the banks and all. I can’t squeak out another dime without lighting up the whole project. Dr. Barran, now do you see why I had to treat you like that? You were the godsend, with your wonderful offer and your vested interest in Billy. Can you astro-gate?”
“I—oh dear. I know the principles well enough. Yes, I could, with a little instruction.”
“You’ll get it. Now look, I don’t want to see that money. You two will go down and inspect the ship tomorrow morning, and then put in everything you’ll need beyond what’s already there. You’ve got food, fuel, water and air enough for two trips, let alone one.”
“God,” said Horowitz.
“I’ll arrange for your astrogation, Dr. Barran. You’ll have to dream up a story, secret project or long solitary vacation or some such. Horowitz, you can drop out of sight without trouble.”
“Oh, sure, thanks to you.”
“Dammit, this time you’re welcome,” said the comedian, and very nearly smiled. “Now, you’ll want one more crew member: I’ll take care of that before flight time.”
“What about the ship? What will you say?”
“Flight test after overhaul. Breakdown in space, repair, return—some such. Leave that to Kearsarge.”
“I freely admit,” said Horowitz, “that I don’t get it. This is one frolic that isn’t coming out of taxes, and it’s costing you a packet. What’s in it, mountebank?”
“You could ask that,” said the comedian sadly. “The kids, that’s all.”
“You’ll get the credit?”
“I won’t, I can’t, I don’t want it. I can’t tie in to this jaunt —it would ruin me. Off-earth landings, risking the lives of all earth’s kids—you know how they’d talk. No, sir: this is your cooky, Horowitz. You disappear, you show up one day with the answer. I eat crow like a hell of a good sport. You get back your directorship if you want it. Happy ending. All the ki
ds get well.” He jumped into the air and clicked his heels four times on the way down. “The kids get well,” he breathed with sudden sobriety.
Horowitz said gently, “Heri Gonza, what’s with you and kids?”
The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4 - [Anthology] Page 21
