One Million Tomorrows M

by Bob Shaw

  Athene!

  He tapped the window instinctively and froze, belatedly wondering if there was anyone else in an unseen corner of the room. Athene lifted her head slightly and relaxed again. Carewe waited several heart-pounding seconds and tapped more loudly, watching Athene’s reaction. She raised her head, sat up and turned in his White coronas of shock flared around her eyes, then she was at the window, her hands pressed to the glass. Her lips moved silently and a heady exultation filled Carewe—once he and his wife were out of the room they could be through the perimeter wall and out on the open grasslands in a matter of seconds.

  He slipped his knife out, reversed it and drove the haft against the glass. It connected with an unnervingly loud report which jarred his wrist, but the tough glass remained intact. He tried again, and this time the knife almost flew from his numbed fingers. Athene covered her mouth with trembling fingers and her gaze flickered towards the door of the room. Dismayed by the resilient strength of the glass, Carewe put the knife away and had reached for his axe before remembering it had fallen to the ground. He gestured vaguely to Athene, ran to the edge of the roof and swung his legs over. His feet were unable to find the downpipe, but there was no time to be cautious. He pushed himself off into space, threshing for balance, and landed heavily already groping for the axe. The pipe he had climbed was less than a meter away, but the axe was nowhere to be seen. Cursing its perversity, he began to search a wider area.

  “It’s over here, Willy.” The voice was cool and amused, as only that of a two-centuries-old immortal could be.

  Carewe lurched to his feet, breathing hoarsely, and forced his eyes to a reluctant focus.

  The portly, highly fashionable figure of Hy Barenboim looked incongruous against the bleak surround of the-perimeter wall. His eyes watched intently from their bony lairs, and his right hand held a flashlight in a way that left no doubt it was a weapon.

  “Hy,” Carewe said. “I had a feeling you’d show up.” “Then it was mutual, dear boy.” Barenboim gestured with his flash. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Just a minute—I hurt myself when I made that drop.” Carewe winced and slid his hand inside his tunic. It came to rest on the handle of the knife.

  “You should have known better than to attempt such undignified heroics,” Barenboim drawled. “Now move.”

  “Why not kill me here? Or is it too public?” Carewe eased the knife upwards till it lay in his hand.

  “The exact location of your demise is a small matter,” Barenboim said coldly. He switched on his flash and directed the spot at Carewe’s face.

  “My eyes,” Carewe whimpered. He twisted his head away from the light and in the same movement brought the knife out from under his tunic. Barenboim gasped as Carewe, taking the single chance open to him, hurled the heavy knife with all his adrenal-boosted strength. It hit Barenboim square in the throat, handle first, and he fell back against the wall, still holding the flashlight. Carewe closed in before the laser sword could be turned in his direction. He caught Barenboim’s right wrist, forcing the flash away, and drove his fist into the ballooning stomach, once, twice, three times …

  Carewe came to his senses when he discovered he was having to hold Barenboim up to keep hitting him. He let the other man fall and stood back, suddenly realizing he had done his best to kill Barenboim. His reaction on seeing the knife strike the wrong way had been one of savage disappointment and anger. He felt vaguely that his sense of shock should have been greater, but his taste for introspection seemed to have vanished somewhere on the long road to Nouvelle Anvers, Idaho Falls and Drumheller.

  Kneeling beside the unconscious man, he picked up the dual-purpose flashlight, then opened Barenboim’s pouch and took out all the keys he could find. He ran down the narrow strip of concrete to the front of the laboratory. A roadcar, the one in which Barenboim must have arrived, was parked in the forecourt and the gates were now lying open. Carewe ran to the laboratory door and found it locked—which suggested the building was empty except for Athene. He tried several keys until he got the door open. The lobby beyond was empty, but he hesitated—he had merely assumed Barenboim had no lieutenants inside.

  Carewe examined the flashlight, which was still lit. Moving the slide backwards extinguished, and pushing it forward restored the light. He pointed the flash at the ground and edged the slide further forward. There was a springy resistance, then the concrete surface exploded into sputtering lava. He hefted the flashlight respectfully and ran on into the laboratory block, no longer worried about meeting opposition. There were staircases on both sides, but the one on the right seemed most likely to lead him to Athene. He sprinted up it and along a corridor which stretched the length of the building. At the far end he found a shorter transverse corridor with six doors in its outermost wall. Estimating the position of Athene’s room, he tried a door. It was locked, but he could sense her presence within.

  “Athene,” he called.

  “Will!” Her voice was faint. “Oh, Will—is it really

  your

  “You bet,” he shouted. The fourth key he tried opened the door and—with no perceptible lapse of time—she was in his arms. “Easy, easy, easy,” he whispered, trying to damp out the trembling of her body with the strength he had discovered in his own.

  “Will.” Abruptly she pushed him to arm’s length. “You’ve got to get away from here. You don’t know what those two are really like.” Her eyes hunted over his face and his throat constricted when he saw the left eyelid was almost closed, a familiar signal of stress.

  “That’s the whole idea, hon. Let’s go.” He took her hand and they ran. Carewe felt as though carried along by a powerful wind; he could scarcely feel his feet touching the floor. They sped down the stairs through the door and out into the night air. “We’ll take Barenboim’s roadcar,” he snapped.

  They tumbled into it and slammed the door. Carewe experienced a moment of panic as he tried key after key in the ignition lock, but at last he found one which fitted. The turbine spun up instantly. Without waiting to swith fn the lights, he slewed the car across the forecourt in a wallowing turn and fired it through the open gateway like a rocket. Something large moved in the darkness beyond the gate. He had a split-second to realize it was another car coming in, then there was a rending impact. Carewe felt his own vehicle climb skywards for an instant and he had a crazy hope he was going to drive right over the streamlined contours of the other car. Athene screamed as the universe tilted sideways, and her voice was lost in the bomb-burst of the car smashing into the hillside.

  The impact balloons, exploding out of the dashboard under the force of their gas bottles, saved Carewe’s life. But as he sat trapped by their insistent pressure— and looked up at the pink, triumphant face of Manny Pleeth—he found himself wishing he had died.

  XVI

  “Before they come out of there,” Barenboim said, breathing heavily and still clutching his stomach, “get me my flash. Our young friend took it before he made his dash.”

  Pleeth nodded and worked his hands between the plastic skins of the impact balloons. He groped around on the vehicle’s front shelf for a moment and withdrew the flashlight, the thin line of his mouth curving tightly with pleasure.

  “That’s better. I hadn’t realized guinea pigs could be so dangerous.” Barenboim took the flash. “Would this mess have been noticed down on the road?”

  Pleeth shook his head. “Don’t think so. We both had our lights off.”

  “That’s something in our favor.” Barenboim walked around his own car, inspecting it critically. Carewe felt Athene stir beside him in response to Barenboim’s changing position, like iron filings disturbed by a magnet. He tried to reach her hand.

  “The steering gear is gone,” Barenboim said, halting beside Pleeth. “Can you find a line somewhere and tow my car inside the gate?”

  “Should be some in the store.”

  “Good. You take care of that while I escort our guests back inside.” Barenboim tou
ched a release valve at the side of the car and gas hissed out of the balloons, causing their skins to wrinkle and pop. As soon as he could move, Carewe climbed out of the vehicle and helped Athene to come through the same door. The one at her side was too badly crumpled to open. Barenboim, standing well clear of Carewe and with his flashlight at the ready, pointed towards the lab. Carewe shrugged, put his arm around Athene’s shoulders and began to walk. Inside the lobby he headed for the right hand stair.

  “Not that way—we’re going down to the basement.” Barenboim indicated a door below the staircase. Carewe opened it and ushered Athene down a single flight of steps to a large basement which was fitted out as a high-temperature laboratory. The center was occupied by what he tatively identified as an electron furnace. It was ringed by tele-microscopes, servo hands and heat shield projectors.

  “Will,” Athene whispered, “you shouldn’t have come here. He’s going to kill us.”

  Carewe tried vainly to think of a reassuring lie. “It looks that way,” he said sadly.

  “But I thought you of all people would have been … Aren’t you afraid, Will?”

  “Scared stiff would be a better way to put it.” Carewe wished he could explain something to her about his discovery that living in fear, as he had always done, was a little like being already dead—but he had an idea it would sound ridiculous. And, being Athene, perhaps she already understood.

  “Athene,” he said desperately, “I let you down ….” “Don’t, Will, don’t.” Her eyes became lenses of tears as she pressed her hand over his lips.

  “This is too much,” Barenboim commented in a bored voice. “Spare me the reconciliation scene, please.”

  “Hy,” Carewe said slowly, “I’m very sorry I wasn’t good enough to split you open when I threw that knife. But in a way it doesn’t matter much. You see, you don’t really exist—so there was no need for me to kill you.” He watched Barenboim’s eyes as he spoke, and derived a spare satisfaction from the realization that for the very first time he had made contact with the other’s glacial mind. During their entire previous relationship, he now understood, Barenboim had been using him with exactly the same detachment he would have had in cutting a laboratory animal to shreds to further an experiment. Suddenly he felt almost as old as Barenboim.

  Barenboim’s womanly lips twitched once, then stretched into a smile. “Good stuff, Willy,” he said. “Very deep.”

  Keeping the flash trained on Carewe, he went to a wall-mounted control panel and threw a series of switches. Eight electron guns ringing the furnace began to glow with pinkish light, which dimmed slightly as the heat shield projectors set up their floor-to-ceiling barriers. The force fields they created were vastly intensified versions of the tenuous screens used in weather control, designed to contain the hellish sun-like environment which was being created at the heart of the furnace. Exhaust grilles mounted in the ceiling directly above the furnace carried the excess heat away to an exchanger system for use in warming the rest of the building.

  “You’re too late,” Carewe said, as Athene buried her face in his shoulder, “I’ve already been to the police— I told them everything I know about you.”

  “Which isn’t very much.” Barenboim adjusted a vernier.

  “They know you tried to have me murdered in Africa and at Idaho Falls.”

  “Correction, Willy. They know somebody tried to murder you—but with Gwynne conveniently out of the way there is no provable connection. And what possible motive could I have had?”

  “Money,” Carewe said. “They know that the Farma Corporation is headed for a spectacular bust.”

  Barenboim’s face clouded for an instant. “I think, Willy, that I was guilty of an error of judgment when I selected you. I don’t know how you managed to defeat Gwynne, and all along you’ve shown an unexpected tenacity—but you still can’t explain how disposing of you would solve any financial problems I might have.”

  “I was hoping you would tell me that.”

  “I’ll bet you were.” Barenboim’s joviality had returned as he made a final adjustment on the control panel and moved away from it. “I believe it’s customary on tridi thrillers for the villain to make a full explanation at this stage, but just to show you how inhuman I am I don’t think I’ll play the game. How’s that for a touch of vindictiveness?”

  “Not bad,” Carewe conceded, shifting his weight slightly. Barenboim’s reactions had been a little slow in their earlier encounter, and his only hope lay in making an unexpected lunge for the flash. “But I wonder what inspired it. You’re proud of being inhuman, so it must have been … ah … my reference to your incompetence in business?”

  “Incompetence!” Barenboim sounded genuinely angry.

  “What else would you call it?” Carewe disengaged himself slightly from Athene. “When a man with two centuries of experience allows a viable concern like Farma to go bust …”

  “Farme” Barenboim snapped. “Farma is a triviality, Willy. Within the next few hours, I, personally, will earn myself one billion newdollars—do you call that incompetence?”

  “I … The strain of maintaining an artificial conversation brought sweat out on Carewe’s forehead. Moving as casually as possible he stepped away from Athene. “I don’t see …”

  “Of course you don’t. You didn’t even see that E.80 —the miracle biostat you fired into your thick skin— was all a hoax. You didn’t see that I was setting you up, Willy. You and your wife.”

  “Setting us up?” Carewe glanced at Athene, whose face was almost luminescent in its pallor. “But …”

  “I invented the E.80 story, Willy. And I didn’t keep it a secret, as you imagined. I leaked just enough information to a Eurasian group to convince them …”

  “To hell with that,” Carewe snarled, a sense of premonin pounding inside his skull. “What did you do to me and Athene?”

  Barenboim regained his self-control and smiled frostily. “Of course, Willy, I’d forgotten that your peculiar emotional fixation would unbalance your view of the operation.”

  Carewe took one step towards him, heedless of the laser. “What about me and Athene?”

  “You were guinea pigs, man. And to demonstrate the efficiency of E.80 you had to produce a litter. Your shot of E.80 was nothing but plain water—your wife’s was something entirely different”

  “Such as?”

  “Didn’t you notice anything out of the ordinary in her behavior after that shot?”

  Carewe thought back to the three days at Lake Orkney—Athene had burned with a white heat which no normal system could have sustained. “You mean …”

  “It was rather an expensive aphrodisiac, Willy, but it was necessary to drive your wife into an early pregnancy.” Barenboim smiled again. “And surely there must have been considerable fringe benefits for you.”

  Carewe turned to his wife. “Athene, I …” His voice faltered.

  “It’s all right, Will.”

  He faced Barenboim again and walked forward on rigid legs. “You’d better kill me now,” he whispered. “Otherwise …”

  Barenboim shrugged and leveled the flashlight. His thumb pushed the slide forward.

  “Hold it,” a voice called from the stair. “What are you doing, Hy?” Manny Pleeth leaned over the handrail, his pink-stained eyes triangulated on Barenboim’s face.

  “What does it look like?”

  “It looks like murder—and I never agreed to that.” Pleeth descended the remaining steps and advanced across the laboratory, his cigar-like gold ornament swinging at his chest. Carewe’s mind, locked in an icy stasis, picked out an incongruous detail of the scene—Athene was backing away from Pleeth, the man who was arguing for her life.

  “Come now, Manny.” Barenboim spoke tiredly. “I thought you were a realist.”

  “No killing!”

  “Manny—in a few hours from now you and I are going to receive one billion newdollars.” Barenboim kept the flash centered on Carewe’s chest. “In exchang
e for that one billion newdollars we are going to hand over a formula which is worth precisely nothing. When our clients discover the truth they ae going to be angry. Have I made it simple enough for you thus far?”

  “I never agreed to murder.”

  Barenboim continued smoking with elaborate, insulting precision. “Anticipating our clients’ anger, and their subsequent and very natural desire for revenge, you and I have arranged to disappear. To do that successfully we need a lead of several days. How far do you think we’d get in today’s world with our friends shouting their heads off?”

  “We could tie them up and drug them.”

  “True, but somebody else could untie and undrug them. Did you know Willy has already been to the police?”

  Pleeth’s plastic-smooth face turned towards Carewe. “But why?”

  “Because your partner”—Carewe stressed the word— “has been trying for days to have me killed. You’re in pretty deep, Manny.”

  “Perfectly correct,” Barenboim said briskly. “Even Willy realizes it’s too late for you to indulge in scruples, Manny. Now …”

  Athene, who had backed in the direction of the stair, gave a tremulous sob, and Barenboim swung the flash in her direction. Carewe sprang forward, but he was too slow—Pleeth cut in before him and stood directly between the laser and Athene.

  “All right,” Pleeth said quickly. “I agree that Carewe has to be silenced. But not the woman. Let’s …take her with us.”

  “What’s happened to you, Manny?”

  “But she’s pregnant!” The words seemed to tear Pleeth’s throat.