‘I’ll pick out the heart myself,’ Eric decided. ‘So I’ll go back to my office; why don’t you get the ship readied for me?’ He was calm at this point. It was either too late or it wasn’t. He got there in time or he didn’t. Haste, right now, had remote value.
Virgil, as he tapped the vidphone switch for TF&D’s switchboard, said, The 2056 you were in is not the one connected to our world.’
‘Evidently not,’ Eric agreed. And started on the run for the elevator.
THIRTEEN
At the White House roof field Don Festenburg met him, pale and stammering with tension. ‘W-where were you, doctor? You didn’t notify anybody you were leaving Cheyenne; we thought you were somewhere nearby.’ He strode ahead of Eric, toward the field’s nearest in-track.
Carrying the boxed artiforg, Eric followed.
At the door of the Secretary’s bedroom Teagarden appeared, his face constricted with fatigue. ‘Just for the hell of it, where were you, doctor?’
I was trying to end the war, Eric thought. He said merely, ‘How cool is he?’
‘No appreciable metabolism; don’t you think I know how to conduct that aspect of restoration? I’ve got written instructions here which automatically become operative the moment he’s unconscious or dead and can’t be revived.’ He handed Eric the sheets.
At a glance Eric saw the vital paragraph. No artiforg. Under any circumstances. Even if it were the only chance for Moli-nari’s survival.
‘Is this binding?’ Eric asked.
‘We’ve consulted the Attorney General,’ Dr Teagarden said. ‘It is. You ought to know; any artiforg in anybody, can only be inserted with written permission in advance.’
‘Why does he want it this way?’ Eric asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Teagarden said. ‘Will you make an attempt to revive him without use of the artiforg heart which I see you brought? That’s all we’re left with.’ His tone dropped with bitterness and defeat. ‘With nothing. He complained about his heart before you left; he told you – I heard him – that he thought an artery had ruptured. And you walked out of here.’ He stared at Eric.
Eric said, ‘That’s the trouble with hypochondria. You never know.’
‘Well,’ Teagarden said with a ragged sigh, ‘okay – I didn’t realize it either.’
Turning to Don Festenburg, Eric said, ‘What about Freneksy? Does he know?’
With a faint, quivering smirk of nervousness Festenburg said, ‘Of course.’
‘Any reaction from him?’
‘Concern.’
‘You’re not letting any further ‘Star ships in here, I assume.’
Festenburg said, ‘Doctor, your job is to heal the patient, not to dictate policy.’
‘It would help me to heal the patient if I knew that—’
‘Cheyenne is sealed off,’ Festenburg conceded at last. ‘No ship except yours has been permitted to land since this occurred.’
Eric walked to the bed and gazed down at Gino Molinari lost in a tangle of machinery that maintained his temperature and measured a thousand conditions extant deep within his body. The plump, short figure could hardly be seen; the face was completely obscured by a new item, scarcely ever employed up to now, for catching extremely delicate alterations in the brain. It was the brain, at all costs, that had to be protected. Everything could go but the brain.
Everything could go – except that Molinari had forbidden the use of an artiforg heart. So that was that. Medically speaking the clock had been set back a century by this neurotic, self-destructive injunction.
Already, without examining the now-open chest of the man, Eric knew that he was helpless. Outside of the field of org-trans he was probably no more competent a surgeon than Teagarden. Everything in his own career had hung on the possibility of replacing the failing organ.
‘Let’s see that document again.’ He took the paper back from Teagarden, studied it more thoroughly. Surely as wily and resourceful a man as Molinari had imagined some viable alternative to org-trans. It couldn’t end here.
‘Prindle has been notified, of course,’ Festenburg said. ‘He’s standing by, ready to speak over TV when and if it’s certain we can’t revive Molinari.’ His voice was flat, unnaturally so; Eric glanced at him, wondering how he truly felt about this.
‘What about this paragraph?’ Eric said, showing the document to Dr Teagarden. ‘About the activation of the GRS Enterprises robant simulacrum, the one of Molinari used in the video tape. To be put on TV tonight.’
‘What about it?’ Teagarden said, rereading the paragraph. ‘The airing of the tape will be scratched, of course. As far as the robant itself goes I know nothing about it. Maybe Festenburg does.’ He turned questioningly to Don Festenburg.
That paragraph,’ Festenburg said, ‘is senseless. Literally. For instance, what’s a robant doing in cold-pak? We can’t make out Molinari’s reasoning and anyhow we’ve got our hands full. There’re forty-three paragraphs to this damn document; we can’t carry them all out simultaneously, can we?’
Eric said, ‘But you know where—’
‘Yes,’ Festenburg said. ‘I know where the simulacrum is.’
‘Get it out of the cold-pak,’ Eric said. ‘Activate it as per the instructions in this document. Which you already know to be legally binding.’
‘Activate it and then what?’
‘It’ll tell you itself,’ Eric said, ‘from then on.’ And for years to come, he said to himself. Because that’s the whole point of the document. There will be no public announcement that Gino Molinari has died because as soon as that so-called robant is activated it will not be so.
And, he thought, I think, you know it, Festenburg.
They looked at each other silently.
To a Service man Eric said, ‘I want four of you to accompany him while he does it. Just a suggestion, but I hope you take me up on it.’
The man nodded, beckoned to a group of his co-workers; they fell in behind Festenburg, who looked confused and frightened now and in no way self-possessed. He left on his reluctant errand, the group of Secret Service men close behind.
‘What about a further attempt to repair the ruptured aortic artery?’ Dr Teagarden demanded. ‘Aren’t you going to try? A plastic section can still be—’
The Molinari in this time sequence,’ Eric said, ‘has been battered enough. Don’t you agree? This is the moment to retire it; that’s what he wants.’ We’re going to have to face a fact, he realized, that none of us wants to face because it means we’re in for a kind of government – have had a kind of government already – hardly in accord with our theoretical ideas.
Molinari had founded a dynasty consisting of himself.
‘That simulacrum can’t rule in Gino’s place,’ Teagarden protested. ‘It’s a construct and the law forbids—’
‘That’s why Gino refused the use of an artificial organ. He can’t do what Virgil has done, replace each in turn, because by doing so he’d be open to legal challenge. But that’s not important.’ Not now, anyhow. He thought, Prindle isn’t the Mole’s heir and neither is Don Festenburg, however much he’d like to be. I doubt if the dynasty is endless but at least it’ll survive this blow. And that’s quite a lot.
After a pause Teagarden said, ‘That’s why it’s in cold-pak. I see.’
‘And it’ll stand up to any test you care to give it.’ You, Minister Freneksy, anyone including Don Festenburg who probably figured it out before I did, he realized, but couldn’t do anything about it. ‘That’s what distinguishes this solution; even if you know what’s going on you can’t stop it.’ This rather enlarged the concept of political maneuvering. Was he horrified by this? Or impressed? To be honest, as yet he did not know. It was too novel a solution, this collusion of Gino Molinari with himself, behind the scenes. His tinkering with the colossal entity of rebirth in his own inimitable, faster-than-the-eye way.
‘But,’ Teagarden protested, ‘that leaves another time continuum without a UN Secretary. So what’s gained if—’
‘The one which Don Festenburg has gone to activate,’ Eric said, ‘undoubtedly comes from a world in which the Mole was not elected.’ In which he went down to political defeat and someone else became UN Secretary. There no doubt were a number of such worlds, considering the closeness of the original vote in this world.
In that other world the absence of the Mole would have no meaning, because he was simply one more defeated political figure, perhaps even in retirement. And – in a position to be thoroughly rested up and fresh. Ready to tackle Minister Freneksy.
‘It’s admirable,’ Eric decided. ‘I think, anyhow.’ The Mole had known that sooner or later this battered body would die beyond the possibility of reconstruction except by artiforg means. And what good was a political strategist who couldn’t look ahead to his own death? Without that he would have been merely another Hitler, who didn’t want his country to survive him.
Once more Eric glanced over the document which Molinari had presented them. It indeed was airtight. Legally the next Molinari absolutely had to be activated.