On the evening of 18 July 2109, Julian and his comrades struck. An airplat glinted in and out of light and shade in the approaches to the northern suburbs and entered the habitat jungle.
Julian was flying, with four others in the seats behind him. The airplat drifted through the three-dimensional maze, surrounded on all sides by lavishly decorated walls, windows, doors and ceilings and the gardens that hung profusely from almost every roof. After a short while they arrived at Neverdie’s dwelling.
Although lights shone already from most of the surrounding windows, Neverdie’s house was in darkness. Julian parked the airplat on the flat, bare roof, close to the roof door. He got out, stepped to the door and tested it. The door was unlocked.
He had previously had the house cased for alarms in the guise of a magazine interview. Apparently, there was none, which to Julian’s mind was an extraordinary oversight. He beckoned to the others. They padded after him and the group descended into the dim interior.
Julian paused briefly to enjoy the elegance of the rooms. Neverdie certainly had good taste. But for the strangeness of the furniture, which was built to serve his form and not the human, this could have been the home of a cultured, educated Englishman.
They found the alien in the downstairs drawing room, apparently asleep. Julian knew that he would sometimes sleep for a week without waking. He drew a small cylinder from his pocket, releasing from it an invisible gas. To the humans in the room it did nothing; in the Aldebaranian, however, it induced a deep unconsciousness. Neverdie would not wake now.
Julian had learned that trick in the course of his previous medical attendance on Neverdie. They lifted the body on to a stretcher; it was surprisingly light.
Back at the roof door Julian glanced quickly around. He did not think they were observed. Impatiently he waved the team on. In seconds their cargo was safely aboard the airplat.
Nosing out of the habitat region, they flashed into the open air again, and went planing southwards.
At almost the same time Courdon received a call.
Five years ago, sensitive to Julian’s purposefulness, he had taken precautions. Neverdie’s dwelling was bugged.
After all this time the surveillance service was slow to respond to the announcement that uninvited persons were present in the apartments. Following a procedure already laid down, their first move was to contact the administrator.
In his own home, Courdon took the news with astonishment and, at first, disbelief.
“Can you give me a picture of them?”
The surveillance operator spoke calmly. “They have already left the house. We are tracking them in an airplat, flying towards Greenwich. We can pick them up at any time you like.”
“No, not yet. If they have the nerve to kidnap Neverdie then this is a planned conspiracy. Let’s wait to see where they lead us.”
The kidnap party disappeared into the ascending tiers on the south side of the city. Police plats, nosing like fish in an undersea coral bed, cruised after them at a calculated distance.
In the interlocking complexity they soon lost their quarry, but were not worried. In the next few minutes they would find it again, probably at its destination.
And so they did. But in those few minutes they were already too late. They found the airplat, as well as the house where it was parked, deserted. Their reaction was to search the neighbouring buildings and to think in terms of a switch to another airplat. It did not occur to them until some time later to think of an ocean-boat mingling with the river traffic beneath their feet and heading rapidly into the open sea.
Watching from his home, Courdon cursed.
In the Mediterranean, aboard the piano yacht Rudi Dutschke, Julian faced a vacillating situation.
In short his colleagues had got cold feet.
“C’est dangereux, mon ami,” André said glumly. “By now they will be looking for him. What if they should guess he is at sea?”
“How would they guess, you fool?” Julian retorted. “They might think of it as a remote possibility, that’s all. And as for a sea search—well, have you any idea just how many ships are on the oceans at any one time? Damn near a million, I should think.”
“Just the same,” David Aul put in carefully, “we won’t be safe until that creature below decks is washed over the side, or what will be left of him. How long is all this going to take?”
“It will take months at the very least, so stop panicking. And you’re never going to be safe, get that through your head. And for God’s sake try to work up a little backbone!”
I’ll ditch this lot as soon as it’s convenient, he told himself. When it comes to it they’re nothing but a bunch of nuts who get jittery the moment their fantasies start to turn into reality. Except Ursula, no sense in wasting her. She’s got more guts than the rest of them put together. Funny thing about some of these women.
Actually the research to be done on Neverdie was only the first stage. Then would come the problem of learning how to apply the knowledge gained. That would almost certainly take years.
His plan was to pass through the Suez Canal and into the Indian Ocean, where West-European influence was slight and the chances of their being apprehended correspondingly reduced. Once they were finished with Neverdie he would switch to the land for the longer stages of the work. India was a delightfully corrupt place and he knew where he could be kept indefinitely from view of the law, with full research facilities, until his programme was complete.
When he felt he was sufficiently rested, Julian began.
Taking with him David Aul, who was a trained biochemist, he descended to the space amidships that had been equipped to fulfil all the functions he thought would be necessary.
There was enough here to take the alien apart muscle by muscle, nerve by nerve and molecule by molecule.
They both stared at Neverdie as he lay strapped to the operating table. Surrounding him were the electronic pantos that would do all the cutting and manipulating—Julian didn’t trust this job to manual dexterity, and besides he would be working at the cellular and molecular levels. One half of the working area was devoted to biochemical analysis and the mapping of the nervous system. If they found that they needed any extra equipment, Julian was confident that they could get it in India.
“What if it’s something that we can’t find out?” Aul commented.
“I don’t think it will be. I’m more than half certain that Neverdie’s immortality isn’t natural to his species. That just wouldn’t make sense, would it? Any biological organism has to die, otherwise the ecology it lives in couldn’t work. I think he acquired everlasting life by artificial means and if that’s the case then we should be able to find out how.”
Julian flicked a switch and brought the hum of power to the workroom. “To begin with, let’s see if our friend has had a change of heart that would make all our work unnecessary.”
Using a dropper, he administered a few cc’s of a pungent-smelling liquid to an organ just beneath Neverdie’s carapace. The alien, who was strapped upside down to reveal a mass of appendages, opened milky translucent eyes and stirred feebly.
The eyes swivelled and focused on Julian. “You are making a mistake …” the voice diaphragm said weakly.
“It’s you who has made the mistake,” Julian said. “You know what we want: give it and we’ll spare you.”
“No … I cannot.”
Julian paused. “I would like to put a few questions to you,” he said finally. “Are you willing to answer?”
“Yes.”
“First, is the secret of immortality something I could find? I mean, is it an analysable property of your body?”
“Yes.”
“Could it be applied to myself?”
“Yes, more easily than you think.”
Julian’s excitement mounted. “Well, what is it? If you’ll tell me this much, why won’t you tell me the whole thing?”
Neverdie squirmed. “I beg you, do not seek immortality.
Forget your lust, leave me in peace. …”
“I’ve got to!” Julian exclaimed in sudden inspiration. “It concerns some specific substance, or something, that your body contains, doesn’t it? To have it myself I’d have to take it away from you, wouldn’t I?”
Suddenly Neverdie became still, as if in despair. “Your guess is close. But you must abandon your intentions. You do not understand. This is your last chance to leave well alone.”
“I understand that you’re trying to save your own skin. Unfortunately in this universe any item in short supply goes to the strongest party.” He glanced at Aul. “Don’t say anything of this to the others. We have to get in all the facts before revealing anything that might cause trouble.”
Aul nodded, his face clouded.
“Then let’s get to work. Good night, Neverdie. The curtain is falling.”
From a nearby nozzle he released more of the gas that to the alien was an instant anaesthetic. Neverdie’s appendages twitched once. Then he was still again.
They were sailing past the Gulf of Akaba when Courdon finally caught up with them.
Since losing track of the quarry in London, he had frantically been trying to identify and search all vessels that had travelled down the Thames in the following two days. The number ran into thousands. There was nothing to connect the Rudi Dutschke to Julian Ferrg, and it was with great difficulty that he managed to persuade an Israeli coastal patrol to make what was strictly speaking an illegal search.
At the time Julian’s investigations had only reached a rudimentary stage concerned with biochemical analysis using tissue samples sliced from the alien’s inert body. Neverdie was very lucky: no real damage had been done.
So engrossed were Julian and David in their work that they failed to hear the whistle of the patrol craft as it flew overhead. Julian merely looked up with a frown of annoyance as he heard shouting from the deck above, especially the shrill voice of Ursula.
“Get up there and tell them to stop their damned row, David,” he ordered angrily. “I’ll have no arguments on this junket.”
Aul moved to obey. But at that moment the door flew open and the bereted coastguards stood framed there. For long moments they stood, staring at the scene, their tanned faces turning pale.
“What do you want?” Julian shouted in an enraged voice. “Get out of here, damn you! Can’t you see we’re busy?”
The guards unshouldered their arms. The game was up.
At his trial Julian fell back on the perennial refuge of the scoundrel: patriotism.
He had done it all, not for himself, but for humanity. “Even when governments are soft,” he said, “there are some who believe that mankind must advance by whatever means possible. My work, had it been allowed to continue, would have brought incalculable benefits to this planet.”
The audacity of his statements probably did serve to soften his sentence, as had been his intention. His companions were given ten years apiece in a corrective institution. Julian, as the ringleader, was sentenced to fifteen years.
FIVE
On his release, fifteen years later, Julian was forced to make a drastic reappraisal of his position. He was no longer a young man in his early thirties: he was forty-eight. Although he had kept himself fit during his imprisonment and was still lean and active, the sands were running out.
Neither could he hope to repeat the escapade of fifteen years previously. Struggling in his mind was the small thought that his whole venture was madness and that he should return to a normal life, or what was left of it. But the thought, which at an earlier stage in his life would have seemed sensible, quickly died. The coming of Neverdie, he realised, had wrought a transformation in him and the pursuits which once appeared worthwhile now seemed pale and futile. Only one thing was of obsessive importance: to attain the lasting life beside which the present life was but a shadow.
Swimming in impudence, Julian even managed to obtain a final interview with Neverdie. In truth it was a desultory move, a last attempt to gain the alien’s co-operation.
The interview was held in a somewhat strained atmosphere, not because of any feelings held either by Neverdie or by Julian, but because also present were Courdon, the philologist Ralph Reed and two policemen. They bristled with hostility, a mood which Julian could endure without the slightest discomfort.
“You know why I’m here,” Julian said. “I’ve come to ask you once again to give the secret of your long life to humanity.”
“Humanity does not want it. Only you want it,” Neverdie observed.
“Not only me. There are others. How long do you think you can keep it to yourself? At the moment society protects you. But societies change. Don’t you know what risks you run, what danger you will have to fear from men in the future? Why not at least give us the information, even if you can’t give us the means. We might find a way of duplicating the special substance, or biological arrangement, of whatever it is that keeps you alive. That way you’ll save yourself from persecution in future centuries.”
“I shall take my chance,” Neverdie told him in a studiedly neutral tone. “Luckily, beings as ruthless and determined as yourself are rare.”
“Rare, but they exist!” Julian rasped in an outburst of temper. He jumped to his feet, suddenly aware of how Neverdie saw him: as a mayfly, an insignificant, brief creature whom the alien was patiently waiting to see die. It made him feel foolish and despicable.
“You overgrown beetle, one of us will get you!”
Abruptly, he left. Ralph Reed let out a sigh of relief. “What an extraordinary fellow! It’s almost incredible that a surgeon should be so … well, evil. And yet he’s brilliant. They say he’s saved thousands of lives.”
Throughout the interview Courdon had calmly smoked a pipe. He puffed on it, thinking. “Ferrg admits that he doesn’t think of Neverdie as a person—with respect to yourself, Neverdie—and he tries to justify himself that way. But I don’t think he thought of all those whose lives he saved as human, either. Human beings don’t exist for him. They’re just objects to be experimented on.”
“A lot of people think that way, especially in experimental science. But they’re not like Ferrg.”
“No, he’s different. It’s not scientific objectivity with him. It’s something else. Something completely, utterly selfish.”
Outside, as Julian walked towards his airplat, he encountered Ursula Gail.
“I followed you here,” she told him with a knowing smile. “I was curious. What are you planning now?”
“Nothing. To interest you, anyway.”
She pointed to an inn that lay at the bottom of a long, wide, curving sweep of steps. “Come on, let me buy you a drink.”
He allowed her to lead him into the inn. Uneasily he settled with her in a corner, a bottle of white wine before them.
He looked at her. Fifteen years didn’t do much to improve any woman. But she still looked fairly young and she was still beautiful in her particularly exciting kind of way.
“So you’re really not planning another snatch?”
“No.”
“Or a deal with Neverdie?”
“There’s no deal. That’s what I was there about.”
She gave a low, regretful laugh. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t want to be in on any more mad schemes. The others feel the same way too. But unlike them I don’t feel bitter about what you got me into. What’s the use?” She tilted her glass. “As a matter of fact I was looking forward to seeing you. I thought we might—”
She glanced at him familiarly with the same bright, hazel eyes he had known before. Hastily Julian looked away. He pushed himself from the table and stood up.
“Sorry, Ursula, time’s too short. Finish the wine yourself.”
Without looking back he strode out.
One phrase that Julian had used to Neverdie was the kingpin of his strategy.
Societies change. He had already messed up one opportunity. To gain another he had only to forward himself so
me centuries into the future.
The technique of putting the human body into suspended animation, permanently if need be, was already perfected. It was practised on thousands of people with incurable diseases who hoped they could be cured when they awoke. Once initiated, the process required no expenditure of power and assured Julian of personal, self-dependent survival.
He sank most of his assets, which were large, into the time-travelling chamber. He was prepared, if necessary, to pursue Neverdie down the millennia.
There was one risk, of course. The government, with what struck Julian as insane complacency, instead of impounding the alien’s tiny interstellar ship and extracting from it the technology to take mankind to the galaxy, had merely allowed him to store it in a garage beneath his house. It was conceivable that Neverdie would leave Earth before Julian awoke. But he did not think so: the Aldebaranian seemed quite settled, and if what he wrote in his books was true there were not too many places he could go.
With this point in mind, however, Julian pursued his plans in utmost secrecy. His time-vault had two compartments: the suspension chamber which could also serve as living accommodation, and a larger chamber which was virtually a duplicate, except that it was even more elaborate, of what had been aboard the Rudi Dutschke. The vault was of the most durable construction. It could not rust, corrode or weather. It was built of the new type of carbon-bonded material that had properties close to that of diamond but which was too expensive as well as too long-lasting for use in normal construction.
The basic timing mechanisms were of the same material. Julian had an arrangement which was as close to immortality as Earthly technology could make it. The vault and most of its contents—including many of his surgeon’s instruments—would persist and be functional even when London itself had crumbled and vanished. Not that he anticipated such a long tour of duty. He set the timing mechanism in the first instance at five hundred years hence, knowing that in that period even the noblest societies could turn into the most debased.
The centuries passed. The society of West-Europe underwent a number of vagaries, most of which Neverdie predicted and accommodated himself to fairly well. He became an obscure but permanent, little-noticed resident of London. It was an extraordinary fact about the human species (Neverdie had observed it was a fact about most species), that in spite of its avowed interest in the universe at large in the long run it was interested only in its internal affairs. Neverdie was expert at staying out of the way of those affairs.
The Seed of Evil Page 19
