At once he stalked from the cabin and down the corridor until he reached the locked control booth; he rapped on it with his steel knuckles and after an interval the heavy reinforced bulkhead door opened.
“Yes, Mr. Eldritch.” The young blond-haired pilot, nodding with respect.
He said, “Send out a message.”
The pilot produced a pen and poised it over his notepad mounted at the rim of the instrument board. “Who to, sir?”
“To Mr. Leo Bulero.”
“To Leo… Bulero.” The pilot wrote rapidly. “Is this to be relayed to Terra, sir? If so–”
“No. Leo is near us in his own ship. Tell him–” He pondered rapidly.
“You want to talk with him, sir?”
“I don’t want him to kill me,” he answered. “That’s what I’m trying to say. And you with me. And whoever else is on this slow transport, this idiotically huge target.” But it’s hopeless, he realized, Somebody in Felix Blau’s organization, carefully planted on Venus, saw me board this ship; Leo knows I’m here and that’s it.
“You mean business competition is that tough?” the pilot said, taken by surprise; he blanched.
Zoe Eldritch, his daughter in dirndl and fur slippers, appeared. “What is it?”
He said, “Leo’s nearby. He’s got an armed ship, by UN permission; we were lured into a trap. We never should have gone to Venus. Hepburn-Gilbert was in on it.” To the pilot he said, “Just keep trying to reach him. I’m going back to my cabin.” There’s nothing I can do here, he said to himself, and started out.
“Hell,” the pilot said, “you talk to him; it’s you he’s after.” He slid from his seat, leaving it pointedly vacant.
Sighing, Barney Mayerson seated himself and clicked on the ship’s transmitter; he set it to the emergency frequency, lifted the microphone, and said into it, “You bastard, Leo. You’ve got me; you coaxed me out where you could get at me. You and that damn fleet of yours, already set up and operating before I got back from Prox– you had the head start.” He felt more angry than frightened, now. “We’ve got nothing on this ship. Absolutely nothing to protect ourselves with–you’re shooting down an unarmed target. This is a cargo carrier.” He paused, trying to think what else to say. Tell him, he thought, that I’m Barney Mayerson and that Eldritch will never be caught and killed because he’ll translate himself from life to life forever? And that in actuality you’re killing someone you know and love?
Zoe said, “Say something.”
“Leo,” he said into the microphone, “let me go back to Prox. Please.” He waited, listening to the static from the receiver’s speaker. “Okay,” he said, then. “I take it back. I’ll never leave the Sol system and you can never kill me, even with Hepburn-Gilbert’s help, or whoever it is in the UN you’re operating in conjunction with.” To Zoe he said, “How’s that? You like that?” He dropped the microphone with a clatter. “I’m through.”
The first bolt of laser energy nearly cut the ship in half.
Barney Mayerson lay on the floor of the control booth, listening to the racket of the emergency air pumps wheezing into shrill, clacking life. I got what I wanted, he realized. Or at least what Palmer said I wanted. I’m getting death.
Beyond his ship Leo Bulero’s UN-model trim fighter maneuvered for the placing of a second, final bolt. He could see, on the pilot’s view-screen, the flash of its exhausts. It was very close indeed.
Lying there he waited to die.
And then Leo Bulero walked across the central room of his compartment toward him.
Interested, Anne Hawthorne rose from her chair, said, “So you’re Leo Bulero. There’re a number of questions, all pertaining to your product Can-D–”
“I don’t produce Can-D,” Leo said. “I emphatically deny that rumor. None of my commercial enterprises are in any way illegal. Listen, Barney; did you or did you not consume that–” He lowered his voice; bending over Barney Mayerson, he whispered hoarsely. “You know.”
“I’ll step outside,” Anne said, perceptively.
“No,” Leo grunted. He turned to Felix Blau, who nodded. “We realize you’re one of Blau’s people,” Leo said to her. Again he prodded Barney Mayerson, irritably. I don’t think he took it,” he said, half to himself. “I’ll search him.” He began to rummage in Barney’s coat pockets and then in his inside shirt. “Here it is.” He fished out the tube containing the brain-metabolism toxin. Unscrewing the cap he peered in. “Unconsumed,” he said to Blau, with massive disgust. “So naturally Faine heard nothing from him. He backed out.”
Barney said, “I didn’t back out.” I’ve been a long way, he said to himself. Can’t you tell? “Chew-Z,” he said. “Very far.”
“Yeah, you’ve been out about two minutes,” Leo said with contempt. “We got here just as you locked yourself in; some fella–Norm something–let us in with his master key; he’s in charge of this hovel, I guess.”
“But remember,” Anne said, “the subjective experience with Chew-Z is disconnected to our time-rate; to him it may have been hours or even days.” She looked sympathetically in Barney’s direction. “True?”
“I died,” Barney said. He sat up, nauseated. “You killed me.”
There was a remarkable, nonplused silence.
“You mean me?” Felix Blau asked at last.
“No,” Barney said. It didn’t matter. At least not until the next time he took the drug. Once that happened the finish would arrive; Palmer Eldritch would be successful, would achieve survival. And that was the unbearable part; not his own death–which eventually would arrive anyhow–but Palmer Eldritch’s putting on immortality. Grave, he thought; where’s your victory over this–thing?
“I feel insulted,” Felix Blau complained. “I mean, what’s this about someone killing you, Mayerson? Hell, we roused you out of your coma. And it was a long, difficult trip here and for Mr. Bulero–my client–in my opinion a risky one; this is the region where Eldritch operates.” He glanced about apprehensively. “Get him to take that toxic substance,” he said to Leo, “and then let’s get back to Terra before something terrible happens. I can feel it.” He started toward the door of the compartment.
Leo said, “Will you take it, Barney?”
“No,” he said.
“Why not?” Weariness. Even patience.
“My life means too much to me.” I’ve decided to halt in my atoning, he thought. At last.
“What happened to you while you were translated?”
He rose to his feet; he barely made it.
“He’s not going to say,” Felix Blau said, at the doorway.
Leo said, “Barney, it’s all we’ve come up with. I’ll get you off Mars; you know that. And Q-type epilepsy isn’t the end of–”
“You’re wasting your time,” Felix said, and disappeared out into the hail. He gave Barney one final envenomed glance. “What a mistake you made, pinning your hopes on this guy.”
Barney said, “He’s right, Leo.”
“You’ll never get off Mars,” Leo said. “I’ll never wangle a passage back to Terra for you. No matter what happens from here on out.”
“I know it.”
“But you don’t care. You’re going to spend the rest of your life taking that drug.” Leo glared at him, baffled.
“Never again,” Barney said.
“Then what?”
Barney said, “I’ll live here. As a colonist. I’ll work on my garden up top and whatever else they do. Build irrigation systems and like that.” He felt tired and the nausea had not left him. “Sorry,” he said.
“So am I,” Leo said. “And I don’t understand it.” He glanced at Anne Hawthorne, saw no answer there either, shrugged, then walked to the door. There he started to say something more but gave up; with Felix Blau he departed. Barney listened to the sound of them clanking up the steps to the mouth of the hovel and then finally the sound died away and there was silence. He went to the sink and got himself a glass of water.
After a time Anne said, “I understand it.”
“Do you?” The water tasted good; it washed away the last traces of Chew-Z.
“Part of you has become Palmer Eldritch,” she said. “And part of him became you. Neither of you can ever become completely separated again; you’ll always be–”
“You’re out of your mind,” he said, leaning with exhaustion against the sink, steadying himself; his legs were too weak, still.
“Eldritch got what he wanted out of you,” Anne said.
“No,” he said. “Because I came back too soon. I would have had to be there another five or ten minutes. When Leo fires his second shot it’ll be Palmer Eldritch there in that ship, not me.” And that’s why there is no need for me to derange my brain metabolism in a hasty, crackpot scheme concocted out of desperation, he said to himself. The man will be dead soon enough… or rather it will be.
“I see,” Anne said. “And you’re sure this glimpse of the future that you had during translation–”