One Million Tomorrows M

by Bob Shaw

  The policeman’s eyes widened abruptly. “You were in the Frictionfree place tonight?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Will Carewe. Do you mind telling me what’s so special about…”

  “Stay right where you are until an officer reaches you, Mr. Carewe. Remember we have your retinal patterns.” The commset blanked out, leaving Carewe feeling bewildered. He sat down on the uppermost step and stared down the lonely, unfamiliar street. The radioactivated tattoo watch on his wrist told him that, incredibly, the time was only a little past two in the morning.

  He was opening his pouch to look for a cigarette when the sound of a helicopter reached his ears. Half-expecting it to herald the arrival of the police, he got to his feet and peered into the sky, but the machine was too large to be a personnel carrier. It churned across the city at low altitude, its rotors punishing the night air, shaking the ground Blue lights flashed along the length of its fuselage, chilling Carewe with sudden premonition. He looked south, back the way he had come on foot, and saw a shifting red glow on the horizon. The helicopter was a firefighting machine—and he had a glum certainty about where it was going. Gwynne’s personally created inferno must have burned through the storage bin and allowed red hot bearings to scatter through the plant. Or—another possibility—the little investigator had preset an incendiary device with the intention of destroying the evidence of the murder.

  Carewe was still staring at the bloody smudge in the south when a police car whispered to a halt beside him. A tall, thinly-built funkie in his mid-forties got out. His face was long and sallow, with dark eyes which scowled at Carewe over an incongruously red nose.

  “Prefect McKelvey,” he growled, loping up the steps to open the station door. “Is your name Carewer

  “Yes. This all started with the disappearance of …”

  “Don’t say anything, yet.” McKelvey went inside, switching on lights, and entered a ground-floor office. He sat at a desk and motioned Carewe into a chair opposite. “I hereby notify you that this conversation is being recorded.”

  “That’s good.” Carewe looked around vainly for a microphone or camera. “There are plenty of things I want to go on record with.”

  McKelvey’s face grew longer. “Let’s get started then. You admit having been in the Frictionfree Bearings plant tonight?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “When did you get there and when did you leave?”

  “I left about an hour ago, say one-fifteen, and I was there about twenty minutes—but that’s not the point. I’m here to report the abduction of my wife.”

  “And I am investigating a case of suspected arson,” McKelvey countered.

  “That’s tough,” Carewe said firmly, “because I’m not going to discuss trivialities like that fire until you take some action about my wife.”

  McKelvey sighed and examined each of his fingernails in turn. “You keep talking about your wife,” he said reluctantly. “Does that mean … ?”

  “A one-to-one marriage.” Carewe saw the prefect’s eyes take in his beardless chin, but he had discovered it was no longer important to him whether people thought he was a cool or functional. “And she didn’t walk out because I’m an immortal—somebody took her.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Yes.” Carewe took a deep breath and thought, I hope this costs Barenboim a billion. “The firm I work for has developed a new kind of biostat, one which leaves the male function unimpaired.”

  “What?”

  “The name of the drug is Farma E.80, and I was the first man to try it out.” Carewe decided to censor some of the more painful details about his break with Athene and the deceptions he had fostered. “My wife has since become pregnant—and this makes her an object of considerable interest to certain parties.”

  “Just a minute.” McKelvey had become animated. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “I believe so.”

  McKelvey opened a drawer in his desk and looked at something inside it for a moment. “You were telling the truth,” he said wonderingly. His eyes were filled with a kind of greedy reverence. “Go ahead, Mr. Carewe.

  Carewe told the whole story, dealing with the attempts on his life in Africa, the confirmatory message from Storch, Barenboim’s introduction of Gwynne, and the events leading up to the investigator’s death. The prefect kept glancing at the device concealed in his desk and nodding his head.

  it’s a fascinating story,” he said when Carewe had run out of breath. “You were peaking a bit here and there on the polygraph, but I guess you’re emotionally snarled up in the thing, so it’s my opinion you were telling the truth all the way through.”

  “Thanks. What are you going to do now?”

  “Only trouble is—your story doesn’t hang together. Why should this Barenboim want to kill you or abduct your wife?”

  “How should I know why?” Carewe was indignant. “Can’t you proceed on the facts? It’s obvious that Barenboim tried to have me murdered.”

  “Not all that obvious. Barenboim might have employed Gwynne in good faith.”

  “But …”

  “There’s a lot of money tied up in this thing. A lot of power. Somebody else could have got at Gwynne.” McKelvey stroked the bristles on his chin, rasping them audibly in the quietness of the office.

  “In the name of Christ,” Carewe said bitterly. “Now I see why Barenboim told me not to bother going to the police.”

  McKelvey shrugged. “We’ll have to get hold of Gwynne’s remains. That will establish a death, and if there’s anything left of the laser it will help show felonious intent.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “From what I’ve heard about the extent of the fire— a day or two.”

  “A day or two! What about my wife?”

  McKelvey reached for his computer terminal. “Please try to see this from my viewpoint. The only evidence you have pointing to your wife’s abduction is an unsupported statement from her grandmother to the effect that she was supposed to have received a faked call from you. I’m going to put a tracer on your wife and if it hasn’t produced any results by, say, tomorrow night, then we’ll have something to go on.”

  “I can’t wait that long—I could be dead tomorrow night,” Carewe stated flatly. “Or don’t you believe that somebody’s trying to kill me?”

  McKelvey made an unsuccessful attempt to look like a patient man. “Mr. Carewe—I personally accept that somebody is gunning for you, but as a prefect of the police I can act only on formal evidence. Give me a chance to get some, will you?” He activated the terminal and told it to produce dossiers on Gwynne, Barenboim and the Farma Corporation. When he had finished he went to a wall dispenser and came back with two vaporing cups of cofftea.

  “Thanks,” Carewe said ungraciously. He sipped the hot liquid.

  The prefect grinned confidentially. “While we’re waiting—is this new biostat the real thing? I mean …”

  “I know what you mean. I’m still able, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give you any formal evidence.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” McKelvey laughed nervously. “You know, I almost tied off last year. Just think …” The computer terminal chimed and spat out a compcard. McKelvey put it into a reader. “This is our file on the Farma Corporation.” He studied it for a moment, manipulating the controls, and his brow gradually knotted in a frown.

  “Something wrong?” Carewe prompted.

  “Don’t know. You didn’t say anything about that outfit you work for being short of cash.”

  “That’s impossible. I’m in accounting and I should know.”

  “It’s down here,” McKelvey said doggedly. “According to the file, Farma’s profits have been slipping for three years and this year there’s a projected trading loss of over eight million newdollars.”

  “You’re interpreting wrongly,” Carewe assured him. “Give me the reader.”

  The p
refect looked doubtful. “Information obtained from the computer override network is confidential to the police—but you’ve done me a personal favor coming here.” He stared at Carewe warily and passed the instrument to him. Carewe held it to his eyes and a sense of unreality crept over him as he realized the prefect had made no mistake.

  The molecular level of the compcard he was examining gave a concise analysis of Farma’s financial structure, division by division. Carewe’s own section, the biopoieses division, and one other looked as though they might barely break even in the current year; but the others were heading for disaster. He was going swiftly down the debit columns, trying to grasp the overall picture of Farma’s finances, when one item arrested his gaze. Capital expenditure, maintenance and plant depreciation, Drumheller Laboratory—N$1,650,000.00. He checked back and discovered a smaller capital expenditure charged to the same item in the previous year, but nothing at all in the year before that. There was no mention of the Drumheller Laboratory anywhere in the credit columns. He spun the controls, burrowing deeper into the secrets locked in the card’s coded molecules, but McKelvey snatched the reader from his hands.

  “That’s enough,” the prefect snapped. “What were you going after?”

  “Nothing—I get fascinated by figures.” He decided to keep to himself the information that Barenboim had poured more than two million newdollars into a laboratory which, apparently, had never earned one cent to justify its upkeep. That was significant enough, considering all the circumstances, but the real snapper lay in the fact that the very existence of a Drumheller Laboratory had been kept secret from even the most informed Farma employees. Carewe had a coldly exultant certainty that he now knew where the development work on E.8ad been carried out.

  And that meant he also knew where he could find Athene.

  XV

  It was dawn when Carewe finally left the police station. Obeying McKelvey’s instructions, he took a public bullet direct to Three Springs, then went shopping. Aware that the prefect was likely to have a computer trace on him, he bought some items of food using his credisk. As soon as he had established that he was back in his home community he got down to the serious part of his shopping, the part for which it was necessary to use cash.

  Firearms had not been on sale to the public in the North American continent for well over a century—the bitch society had no use for them—but he was not prepared to tackle Barenboim’s Drumheller stronghold without some kind of weapon. He walked aimlessly around several stores before noticing one which specialized in camping equipment, where he bought a traditionally styled woodsman’s knife, a lightweight axe and a satchel. Carrying his purchases self-consciously, he took a taxi out to his dhome, again paying by credit to demonstrate to McKelvey that he was properly domiciled.

  The dhome was exactly as he had left it, filled with depressing silence, and there were no recorded messages for him on the commset. He ate a light meal, then put the knife and axe into the satchel. As an afterthought he added several candy bars and his binoculars. It was still mid-morning and Drumheller was only two hours’ drive to the north, across the former Canadian border, so there was time to satisfy his craving for sleep. He lay down on a couch and forced himself to relax, wondering if he was being too optimistic in thinking he would lose consciousness when his mind was so crammed with …

  He was awakened by the brilliance of late afternoon sunlight on his face. Shivering slightly, he went to the commset and used its directory bank to get a code for the Drumheller civic services block. When he had recorded the number, he called the monitor of the industrial rating office. After a few seconds the head of a plump young funkie appeared at the set’s projection focus.

  “I’m Will Carewe, costing monitor for the Farma Corporation,” he said crisply. “What is your name, please?”

  “Spinetti.” The young man looked annoyed at Carewe’s tone.

  “Well, I’ve got some bad news for you, Mr. Spinetti. One of the machines you are supposed to be monitoring has sent us a completely ridiculous rating estimate on our Drumheller property. My employer is losing patience with this sort of thing, and he has instructed me to …”

  “Just a minute,” Spinetti cut in, his face darkening. “Why don’t you get your facts straight before you start sounding off? I happen to be very familiar with my programs, and I know that Farma has no property in this area.”

  “Must I spell out evey detail?” Carewe sighed tiredly. “My employer is Mr. Hy Barenboim. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Oh!” Spinetti’s eyes shuttled in concern. “The chemicals laboratory out at Kilo 12.”

  “Kilo 13, I think.”

  “Kilo 12 on Radial Three,” Spinetti gritted. “Do you want to come up here and measure it yourself?”

  “Don’t let this happen again,” Carewe said, and broke the connection, hoping he had not upset Spinetti’s digestion too much. He picked up his satchel, went out to his parked bullet and drove northwards.

  A cloud-torn sun was nearing the horizon when Carewe reached Drumheller and, counting the kilometers, swung out from the city center along Radial Three. Now that he was faced with it, the prospect of breaking into a laboratory which was almost certain to be guarded was more daunting than he had anticipated. His earlier conviction that he had located Athene was beginning to fade rapidly, and had almost vanished when he stopped the bullet on the darkening roadway. The tenuous fingers of the city had been left behind minutes earlier—Kilo 12 had only two buildings set like movie sets against its vista of sere grasslands. One was obviously a warehouse, and the other a long multileveled structure perched on a low rise. A narrow compressed-earth track ran up from the road to a gate in the metal wall which surrounded the building. Carewe watched for signs of activity but the laboratory glinting redly in the setting sun could have been an encampment left by a long-departed civilization.

  He drove further along the road until out of sight from a possible observer on the top of the rise and switched off the bullet’s engine. Ignoring the inquisitive faces which stared at him from passing cars, he slumped down in the seat and waited for the sky to darken behind its lattice of coral-pink condensation trails. The air was cool when he set off up the slope, and breezes searched his body with random, invisible fingers. Corning into view of the laboratory he was reassured to see light streaming from the upper windows, but at the same time became aware of how little cover there was on the approaches. All he could do was hope that Barenboim was not sufficiently security-conscious to have set up heat sensors or infrared scanners.

  The feeling of helpless exposure increased until he was in the lee of the perimeter wall, which proved to be over three meters high. Close examination showed it to be seamless alloy construction, without even a rivet head to offer a foothold. Carewe made an experimental leap to satisfy himself he could not reach the top with his fingers, then walked along the base of the barrier, passing around the rear of the lot and finally drawing near the entrance gate. The wall was featureless and unclimbable the whole way, and the gate— which was closed—appeared equally unpromising. He glared helplessly across the quiet prairie to where the lights of Drumheller shone like scattered embers. Will Carewe, amateur commando, had been thwarted at the first simple obstacle, a construction of sheet alloy which he could probably have cut with a domestic can opener ….

  Seized wom,spiration, he took the axe from his satchel and went to the side of the wall furthest from the road. Close to the corner he swung the axe and it sank cleanly into the pale gray metal with surprisingly little sound. A wait of five minutes produced no sign of alarm within the enclosure, so he returned to the wall and attacked it with cautious economical blows. In a few minutes he had cut a meter-high tongue in the shape of an inverted V which he was able to bend downwards to the ground. There was a cavity wide enough to contain the wall’s uprights, and beyond it another sheet of alloy. The inner skin gave him more trouble because he was unable to make clean swings at it, but working carefully and with
frequent long waits he succeeded in cutting another tongue. Pushing its apex inwards a short distance, he looked through at a dimly lit expanse of concrete bounded at its far edge by a wall of the laboratory building itself. Apparently he had not attracted any attention.

  He tucked the heavy knife into the waist band of his hose and, retaining the axe in his hand, pushed through the wall. The triangular piece of alloy easily bent upwards again to make the opening less noticeable. Carewe was pushing it into place when a sudden glare of light threw his shadow across the wall. He spun, raising the axe, and glimpsed the headlights of a car which must have come through the front entrance. The brilliance of its lights, reflected and channeled down the narrow strip between the laboratory and the outer wall, seemed to fill the entire universe. There was no way, Carewe thought, for the driver to miss seeing him—but the vehicle continued on its curving path and moved out of sight beyond the far end of the building.

  Did that mean he had escaped detection? Or that the driver had been quick witted enough to pretend he had noticed nothing? Carewe slid the axe into the top of his hose at the back and ran to the nearest wall of the laboratory. He gripped a downpipe and scaled it, using instinctive skills nurtured by fear. The flat roof overhung the wall and as he was pulling himself around the projection the axe slid to one side and dropped. It rang loudly on the concrete below. Carewe pressed himself to the roof, then realized the low section he was on was overlooked by windows of the laboratory’s upper story. He scuttled across the roof and crouched in a corner, his head just below the level of the windowsills. Five, ten minutes went by before he began to accept that his presence still had not been discovered. Experiencing a return of the optimism which had prompted him to embark on the mission, he took stock of his surroundings.

  From the elevated position he could see over the wall to the prairie, which faded away to the north in impassive gray-glimmering folds—no menace from that direction. Of the row of windows above his head, one was lit. He crawled until he was underneath it, got to his feet and risked a slanting glimpse inside. The room within was small and its only furniture appeared to be one chair and a folding bed upon which a black-haired woman was lying. Her back was to the window, but Carewe recognized the languorous upthrust of hip immediately—with his eyes, with his mind, with every molecule of his body.