“Judas priest, Harry!” Horner surged to his feet and stood spraddled-legged, as if to fight. “If that’s what’s worrying you, Judas priest, I’ve got money!”
“So have I,” admitted Benrud in a careful voice. “And the lab itself is such a good business, it can afford to pay for me. But can my family
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emotionally afford the months, maybe the year or two, it will take me to die? Can I?”
“Harry,” mumbled Horner, “are you sure? Doctors do make mistakes. I can’t see how”
“I analyzed some of my own sputum, too,” said Benrud.
He went back to his seat. Sleeplessness was now only a taste in his mouth; his mind was a high awareness. He had never before noticed the variations of hue on his own hand, or the feel of his shoes along the carpet. But his back ached and was grateful for the couch.
“Sit down, Jim,” he said.
The big man lowered himself. They were quiet. Horner seemed to grow aware of the cigarette smoldering between his fingers; he swore under his breath and took a hard puff. His free hand raised the whisky glass for a swallow. Benrud heard the gulp across the room.
He smiled. “I’ve never been a sentimentalist, or religious,” he said. “Our life is a result of some chemical accidents a billion years ago, and it’s all we’ve got, and we’re not obliged to keep it if another accident has made it useless.”
Horner wet his lips. “The Golden Gate Bridge?” he asked harshly.
Benrud shrugged. “I’ll find a suitable method.”
“ButI mean”
“Let’s talk business now,” said Benrud. “We can blubber later. Moira inherits my share, of course, but she has no scientific sense whatsoever. You’ll look after her interests, and the children’s, won’t you?”
“Yes,” whispered Horner. “God, yes, I will.”
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“You know,” said Benrud, “I’m actually inclined to believe that. And you’re still in love with her. Why else haven’t you married, all these years? You might make the kids a reasonably good stepfather.”
“Now, wait” began Homer. “Wait, this is no time for” He sat back. “Okay,” he sighed. “Talk as you like, Harry.”
Benrud scowled at his glass. “The trouble is,” he continued, “I’ve misjudged character before. I could so easily misjudge it again. You might make a great husband and a fiend of a stepfather. I’ve never liked to take chances.”
He glanced quickly up at Horner. The heavy face had reddened, and one fist had closed tight. But the man held back speech.
“As you say,” Benrud reminded him, “our very capable staff could maintain the lab without either of us.”
Horner sat up straight again. His tone was cracked in the middle. “What are you getting at?”
Benrud rolled a sip of whiskey on his tongue. Noble stuff, he thought. If the Celts had done nothing else, they had contributed whisky, James Stephens, and Hamilton’s canonical equations. That was enough beauty for any race to give the world.
“When I realized what my trouble was,” he said, “my first act was to make a thorough search for the cause. You remember that, don’t you? I didn’t admit that I was looking for beryllium dust exactly, but I did have every bin and respirator and everything else I could think of checked.
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A good idea in any event. We do keep some deadly things on hand.” He paused. “I didn’t find anything wrong.”
“Well, it must have been some freak accident,” said Horner. He had recovered coolnessif, indeed, he had ever really lost it.
“Methodical people like me seldom have freak accidents,” declared Benrud, “though to be sure the police would have to accept such an explanation, after all this time.”
“But what elseHarry, you know how sorry I am about this, but if you insist on talking about the cause, then what else might have done it?”
“I wondered,” said Benrud. “Then I remembered the time several months ago when I had one of my periodic sore throats, and you urged me to try a spray some Los Angeles chemist was experimenting with, and gave me anatomizer full of it. Cloudy stuff. I wouldn’t have seen colloidal particles.”