Traitor to the Living

by Philip José Farmer

  "What did you say?" he shouted.

  "I'm your uncle, Gordon."

  And he was dead.

  21.

  Carfax got out of jail the next day on bond, and that only because Chang had vouched for him. The cells of the Bonanza Circus jail were crowded with pro-Westernites and anti-Westemites. The overflow had gone to a number of Nevada prisons. One newspaper article said that every jail in Nevada was packed to capacity with those arrested at Megistus and at the ambush, but that was an exaggeration.

  The public outcry was hysterical. The followers of Western demanded that the "vicious murderers" be given a quick trial and hung, preferably at a televised execution. Those opposed to Western demanded that the "martyrs," the "public benefactors," be released immediately with thanks from the American public. Some letters to the editor even suggested that the stormers of Megistus should be given the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  Western's body was claimed by the chief divine of the PanCosmic Church of the Embu-Christ (a distant relative). The public funeral in Los Angeles, attended by 500,000 mourners, was marred by a number of riots and injuries and deaths. The body was not released, however, before a thorough post-mortem had been done on Western. Langer received the secret report on this and showed it to Carfax. Particular attention had been given to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Langer had asked the pathologists to note anything unusual, though he did not tell them why he wanted the information. The report, however, indicated that Western had had a healthy brain, that there was no degeneration beyond that to be expected from a man his age.

  "I was hoping that they would find some changes which they could not explain," Langer said to Carfax.

  "Something that would have resulted, perhaps, from the occupation of the brain by a semb. Apparently possession doesn't cause physiological changes."

  Carfax had told only Langer about Western's last words. The senator had decided to keep it a secret for the time being.

  I don't understand it," Langer said. "Western, or your uncle, I mean, would not have lied. He was dying and knew it, so what would he gain by lying? But how did Rufton Carfax come to possess Western's brain?"

  "I don't know," Carfax said. "I doubt that it could have been accidental. I can't say that it couldn't have happened accidentally. I don't know enough about the mechanics of semb transference. Maybe Western was going to place Uncle Rufton in a man's brain and something slipped up, and Uncle Rufton possessed Western instead. But if that happened, why didn't my uncle say so? What was to keep him from telling the public?

  "I think, however, that there are some people, or at least one person, who could tell us. He is among those found in the subbasement."

  Carfax was referring to the twenty employees who had taken refuge in a secret underground complex deep beneath Building Four. They had survived the fire, which had completely destroyed the building above the surface. They had then gone through a tunnel which led to an exit behind the hangar on the airstrip. They might have escaped unnoticed if a National Guardsman had not glimpsed one of them as he fled toward the hills beyond the plateau. A chase had rounded up twenty, all of whom had been put in jail. With the exception of a few, such as Pat, everybody present at the scene had been arrested. Most of them were being held as material witnesses while a grand jury was being formed.

  "Of course," Carfax added, "we don't know we caught everybody. A few may have escaped. The people who were in the subbasement swear that nobody did. But they might be lying."

  If only a MEDIUM were available, the truth might be ascertained. MEDIUM had burned, and the schematics needed to build another one had also gone up in flames. Two of the men who had hidden in the subbasement were physicists who might be able to rebuild MEDIUM. They, however, denied that possibility, claiming that they had no overall knowledge of the machine.

  Carfax thought that they were lying and that they intended to put together another as soon as they got their freedom.

  "If they should," Langer said, "they'll find themselves in a legal battle which will tie them up for years. Western left no will, so it looks as if any rights to MEDIUM should go to Patricia."

  "I find it difficult to believe that he made no will," Carfax said. "I've got an uneasy feeling about that. I think when this situation is cleared up, a will will suddenly show up. And whoever gets the inheritance is the man to check out."

  "Every one of the twenty is being investigated right now," Langer said. "We're checking them out in every detail. But it's going to take time and money."

  Neither of them expected quick action. For one thing, just picking a grand jury seemed almost impossible. Where, in this country where everybody was so fiercely partisan about MEDIUM, could an unprejudiced person be found? The process of selecting unbiased jurors had lasted three weeks and was far from over, despite the pressure to form one quickly. In the meantime, those jailed were released on bail. Rexter died two days after gaining his freedom, gunned down by four masked men who disappeared immediately after. Jones and Dennis, two of the employees who had taken refuge in the subbasement, were blown apart by a bomb concealed in their car. Their eighteen fellows were at once jailed for their own protection, but they protested so vehemently about violation of their civil rights that they had to be released again.

  "You'd think they'd be so scared they'd want to be locked up," Carfax said to Langer. "Yet they don't seem to be worried."

  "What do you suspect?" Langer said.

  "Well, for one thing, we don't really know that the two men who were in that car were Jones and Dennis. There wasn't enough left of either for a positive identification. Even the teeth were splintered."

  "You think they might not have been Jones and Dennis?"

  "The possibility is worth looking into."

  "Why would they want to be thought dead?"

  "For one thing, the anti-MEDIUM nuts won't be looking for them. But I doubt that's it. It wouldn't be worth it to Jones and Dennis to murder two men. No, the stakes would have to be as high as they can get for them to kill two innocents."

  There was a silence, broken when Langer said, impatiently, "Well?"

  "Maybe one of them, Jones or Dennis, is Western."

  Langer sat down as if the strength had drained from his knees.

  "Are you serious? Forgive that question. Of course you are. But why would he have traded bodies with your uncle?"

  "I think it must have been a last-minute act. He wasn't sure that his hiding place wouldn't be found out. And he knew that he would be killed if he was found. What better way to throw everybody off the track than to become Dennis or Jones and put my uncle in the starring role? My uncle wouldn't be able to talk then, and everybody would believe that Western was dead."

  "I should have thought of that," Langer said.

  "You have a lot on your mind," Carfax said. "Of course, that may not be quite the way it happened."

  "Which means what?" Langer said sharply.

  "Maybe Western figured that we would guess correctly, and so Dennis and Jones disappeared just to throw us even more off the track. Or maybe he's one of the eighteen left. Or maybe he got away into the hills."

  "But he would think that your uncle died before he could reveal anything. No one except you and I know that he managed to get out a few words. So why would Western go to all the trouble of covering his tracks when no one is looking for him?"

  "Western was no scientific genius, but he was a very thorough and crafty man. He knows the details of his death, as reported by the news media, but he may have wondered how much of it was true. What if Rufton had managed to say something revealing? Then we would still be looking for him, for Western that is. So he got out while he could. I think that we should make comparisons of Dennis's arid Jones's speech rhythms with those of Western's, if they're available. We should have done it while they were still around, but then we thought that Western was no longer alive."

  Langer gave the order to locate and check the spectrograms. Three hours later,
his specialists reported back.

  Langer swore and threw a book across the room.

  "We had him in our hands, and now he's gone! Because we were stupid, stupid, stupid!"

  "Not stupid, unthinking," Carfax said. "Well, it's safe to assume that those two men blown up were not Jones and Dennis."

  "Not Dennis, anyway," Langer said. "He, Western that is, may have killed Jones to cut off all knowledge of his identity. Jones may have been, must have been, the only one who knew of the switch."

  The explosion in the car had taken place at 23:16 in the garage by Jones's house. This was in a suburban development, Minerva Hills, northeast of Altadena, California. The neighbors had poured out into the street after recovering from their shock, but they had seen no strangers, no speeding cars. Doubtless, Dennis-Western and Jones had left some time before the bomb had gone off. Langer sent out a large crew of detectives to comb the whole suburb, and they interviewed every one of the potential eyewitnesses in Minerva Hills. This took two weeks, at the end of which they had failed to find a single person who had seen anything that might conceivably be a suspicious stranger or a getaway vehicle.

  Langer set in motion the most massive manhunt in the history of the United States. Every police department in the country was provided with photographs, finger and eye and voice prints of Dennis and Jones, and descriptions of their physical appearances and personal habits. The F.B.I, was also looking for them, although there was no evidence that any federal crime had been committed. The president had been informed of Langer's suspicions and had ordered the F.B.I. to join the hunt. In addition, Langer was employing thirty private agencies.

  None of the bulletins issued to the police hinted that Dennis might be Western. This was known to only three men: Langer, Carfax, and the president of the United States.

  At the end of a month, when the results had been zero, Langer purchased a half hour of prime time on all ten of the main channels. Dennis's and Jones's photographs and descriptions were given, and the reward for any information leading to the apprehension of either was raised to one million dollars.

  "Even the most fanatical Westemite should be tempted by that," Langer told Carfax.

  "I don't know about that," Carfax said. "Western can promise more than money. Immortality."

  "And how can he do that without a MEDIUM?"

  Carfax forgot to light his cigar. The match burned while he stared, and he remembered it only when it scorched his fingers. He swore and then he said, "Why didn't I think of that before?"

  "What?"

  "Wherever he is, he isn't Just going to sit around and hope that the cops don't find him. He knows that he's going to be located, sooner or later. But he can't be identified if he's no longer Dennis. And how can he make sure that he isn't in Dennis's body? He builds another MEDIUM, and then he makes a switch!"

  "That seems possible," Langer said. "But how can knowing that help us?"

  "Look. My investigations at Big Sur Center identified a number of the electrical parts, the type of circuit boards used, and the construction of the console and cabinet. The MEDIUM in Megistus was burned, and many of the parts were melted or destroyed. But at least a quarter of them were identified. Put all this together, and you have a partial reconstruction of MEDIUM. It's not nearly enough to recreate one. But we know at least half of the stuff that Western will have to order if he wants to put together another MEDIUM. And that includes some very large vacuum tubes not usually needed by private individuals.

  "You get a list from every electrical parts supplier and console and cabinet maker in the United States.

  And Canada. A list for everything sold in the country since Western disappeared. Run the lists through a computer. It'll tell you where the parts Western needs have been shipped. Go to that address, and you'll find Dennis. I mean. Western."

  "Do you have any idea of the time and money that'll take?"

  "I know your personal fortune has suffered," Carfax said. "You can get the help of the federal government for this. The president ought to be able to ram through that project."

  "I hope so. The pro-Western congressmen are likely to take notice and start asking questions. And if Western finds out what we're up to, he'll take off again."

  "You can't afford not to take a chance."

  "All right," the senator said. "I'll put through a call to the president now. Excuse me."

  The senator closed the doors of the next room behind him. He would be using a private line, so there was nothing untoward if Carfax used the phone in this room. He punched the number of the phone in his house in Busiris, and after three rings Patricia answered.

  "I'm sorry. Pat," he said, "but I've been too busy to return your call this morning. Langer is working my tail off. Unofficially, I'm his most-private secretary. So what's up?"

  "Nothing, except that I miss you very much," she said. "And I want to make sure that you will be coming home in two weeks."

  He hesitated and then said, "I'm not sure now. Things may break all of a sudden."

  "You mean about those two men, Dennis and Jones?"

  "You know I can't discuss that over the phone."

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "You don't sound sorry."

  "I am sorry. For myself. I miss you very much, and I'm terribly lonely. I've joined the Women's League of Voters and the Lakeview Art Lecture Series, I read a lot and see a lot of TV, and I've made a few friends. Women, of course. But that's not enough. And when it's time to go to bed, well... "

  "Not so well?" he said. "Maybe you should come back to Washington. We still wouldn't see much of each other. I'm working an eighteen-hour day or more, but we'd see each other now and then. It might be better than a complete severance."

  "No, it'd be worse," she said. "And I don't like Washington."

  "If this thing breaks right, we might be with each other all the time," he said. "We could have a normal life. Provided I could find a teaching position, that is.

  I'm probably blackballed. Still, Langer has enough weight to fix that."

  "Oh, I hope so," she said. "I don't like to complain, Gordon, but I am going out of my mind."

  "Look, I'll be there in a week, maybe more, if this works out all right. I can't promise for certain, but I'm not so indispensible that I can't be given a vacation. If things get bad enough, I can quit. I won't, not until this matter is settled. But I'm Just waiting for the day that I can get out of here. I don't like this any better than you do, you know."

  "But you're busy and useful, and I'm not. I want you here so I can be busy and useful taking care of you, being a good wife."

  "I know," he said. "But it won't be long. Look, I have to punch out now. The senator is coming back."

  "I love you," she said.

  "I love you, too, very much," he said. "Goodby. But not for long, I hope."

  Langer entered, stopped, and said, suspiciously, "Who was that?"

  "Patricia. She needs to hear my voice now and then."

  "Anybody giving her any trouble?"

  "No. She lives in a conservative neighborhood, all staunch anti-MEDIUMites. But she doesn't have much in common with them."

  "We ought to hear from NIC by tomorrow," Langer said. "It has a complete inventory of every electrical part sold from five years ago up to the past forty-eight hours. The specialists will be setting up the scan as soon as they get the data, and that's being rushed to them. I told Harrison, he's head of NIC, that I'd like to have the results by breakfast."

  Which means you'll get it then or there'll be hell to pay. Carfax thought.

  "As soon as we know the address, we close in," Lan ger said. "This time, there'll be no escape. I'll have every road blocked, every possible avenue of escape sealed up. But we won't go storming in like a conquering army. I don't want him to have the slightest idea he's about to be caught. I want it to be a complete surprise!

  I want to take him alive. He's going to be put on trial, and the whole rotten story is going to be made public. By the t
ime I'm through with him, he won't have a follower in the world."

  "The whole story?" Carfax said. "You don't mean everything involved in his case? You're going to tell everything that we did?"

  Langer looked surprised. He turned away for a moment to fix himself a drink. Carfax watched his broad back and wondered what would happen to him and Patricia if the events in the Mifflon house became public.

  Was Langer going to let the defense probe deeply enough to expose the connections between Langer and the massacre of Megistus? Not very likely.

  Langer turned again and said, "Don't be a fool, Gordon. There are some things I did which would ruin my career if they were known. They were done for the best of causes, the salvation of humanity. I have no feeling of guilt about them. Western can make accusations, but he can't prove anything. And I can prove everything about him."

  Carfax looked at his wristwatch and said, "I'd like to go to bed, if you have no further need of me. It's going to be a short night and a long day tomorrow. If NIC comes up with anything, that is."

  "It will," Langer said. "Good night, Gordon."

  Carfax said goodnight and went down the hall to his room. He thought he'd have trouble sleeping, but he passed into a dreamless state almost at once. Suddenly, the phone was ringing. He rose up, startled, and punched the button, and Langer's face appeared.

  His red hair" was tangled, and there were dark rings under his eyes. However, he looked almost satanically happy.

  "Get dressed and get right down here," he said.

  "We'll have breakfast on the plane."

  "What's the name and address?" Carfax said.

  "Albert Samsel. A house on a farm near Pontiac, Illinois. He purchased the farm two years ago but only moved in recently. The description of Samsel fits Dennis, and the parts were delivered to him."

  "It sounds too easy," Carfax said. "But then we haven't caught him yet, have we?"

  22.

  The jet bomber carried Langer, his two bodyguards, Carfax, and three tough-looking men from an unnamed agency. It took an hour from takeoff at Washington to the time its wheels touched the pavement of the airport at Busiris, Illinois. The party immediately transferred to a car which was speedily escorted through Busiris and across the Illinois River by motorcycle cops. It headed east on U.S. Route 24, a divided six-lane highway, and turned north on U.S. Route 66, a divided twelve-lane highway. Pontiac was fifty-five kilometers from Busiris; the entire trip from the airport, which was in the country west of Busiris, to Pontiac took forty-five minutes.