Читать книгу Dead Center! - Cyril M. Kornbluth - Страница 4

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The chilled-steel muzzle of the old-fashioned automatic swerved not an inch as Angel Maclure spoke: “I’m at your service, gentlemen. What can I do for you?”

“Put that gun down,” advised the shorter man easily. “We just didn’t want any fuss. You have our blasters—we won’t try anything.”

Maclure grinned and lowered his pistol. “Right,” he said. “I wasn’t sure whether you’d mistaken me for a banker or somebody who deserved killing.” He gestured at the blasters which he had wrenched from his assailants’ hands. “Pick ’em up, boys.” They did, and pocketed the deadly little tubes. “Now what did you want?”

The shorter, softer-spoken man began: “Excuse my friend—he’s new in our service. He doesn’t realize that we should have asked you first and then pulled the tubes. Understand?”

“All forgiven,” said Maclure shortly. “I just didn’t expect to be jumped two minutes after I get off a liner. It usually takes months before the police hear that I’m around. What’s the service you mentioned?”

“Let’s wait before I tell you anything,” said the shorter man. He smiled confidingly. “You’ll find out enough to blow your top off. Now, Mr. Maclure, you’re supposed to come with us—whether of your own free will or by force. Understand?”

“Sure. Call me Angel. What’s your tag?”

Maclure walked off down the street, flanked by the other two. He knew that their pocketed hands fingered blaster tubes, and that a false move might cost him a foot or arm. But he was interested by the distinctly peculiar set-up he had seemingly blundered into. The last year he had spent on Venus doing a big engineering job—barracks and installation—for one of the wildcat land promoter outfits. The new scar on his jaw he had acquired when he had stormed into the company offices with a pay-slip that he wanted cashed in full. He still carried the scar, but he had got his due amount, and with it a bit of interest lying in the back of the blasted safe. His trip to Earth again had been in quest of some much-needed relaxation; he had not taken kindly to being jumped by two strangers.

The shorter man hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of me. Baldur Gaussman.”

“Yeah?” asked Angel, impressed. “You did that first floating weather-station on Uranus, didn’t you?”

“That’s right,” said Gaussman. He halted before a curtained taxi. “We get in here,” he said quietly. And they did.

As the taxi took off Angel didn’t even try to figure out the direction they were taking; he knew that the involved loops and spins would hopelessly confuse him. He faced Gaussman quizzically. “This must be something awfully big,” he said. “I mean using high-grade extra-terrestrial engineers for muscle-men on a simple pick-up job. Unless I guess wrong this is concerned with some pretty high finance.”

The taller man took out his blaster again. “Don’t try anything this time,” he said thickly. “And don’t get nosey before you’re supposed to. You can get hurt doing that.”

“Yeah?” asked the Angel, mildly eyeing him. “That struck home? Okay, pal.” He turned again to Gaussman. “You must have been in this for several years, whatever it is,” he said.

“That’s right. My last job in the open was for Pluto Colony Corporation. I handled their mining in full.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re here,” he said. As he spoke the muffled hum of the plane stopped abruptly and Angel felt it being swung about by a ground crew or turntable. He grinned.

“As I figure it,” he said, “we’ve come about seventy-three miles due East after swinging around four times to throw my sense of direction off the track. I think we’re in the heart of the New York financial district, on about the twentieth floor of a very high building.”

“I’ll be damned!” exclaimed Gaussman, open-mouthed. “How did you do that?”

“Long years of training at the hands of my late beloved father, rest his martinet soul,” said Angel. “You behold the only practical, authentic superman. No short cuts, no royal road—just hard work and development of everything I was born with. Let’s go.” He gestured at the door, which had opened to reveal a dim, luxurious corridor.

“Okay,” said the taller man. “Hand over your gun.” Maclure obeyed, smiling. “When I pass in front of the metal-detector,” he said, “remember the eyelets in my shoes. They’re a beryllium alloy.”

“That’s all right,” said Gaussman. “We use an X-ray.”

“Oh,” said Angel shortly. “Then I might as well tell you now that I have a saw in my shoe and a gas-capsule in my zipper.” He produced them and handed them over as he got out of the taxi.

“Thanks,” said Gaussman. He pointed. “Through that door, Angel. You go in alone.”

As the door—heavy as a bank-vault’s—closed ponderously behind him, Maclure instinctively recoiled at the terribly moist heat of the room he was in. In the dim red glow that came from the ceiling he could see little curls of steam in the air. His clothes were sopping wet. Absently he wiped his face with a soaked handkerchief.

A voice rang through the air—a thin, feeble whisper, magnified over a PA system. Normally it would be so faint that one could not even strain to hear it. It was the voice of an old man—a man so terribly old that intelligible speech was almost lost to him. It said: “Sit—there, Angel Maclure.” A boxy chair glowed for a moment, and the young man sat. He was facing a soft sort of wall, which was red beneath the ceiling lights—a dull, bloody dried red. It slid aside slowly and in absolute silence.

This room was certainly the quietest place in all the world, Maclure thought. He could hear not only his heartbeat but the little swish of air passing through his bronchial tubes and the faint creaking of his joints as he moved his hand. These were sounds which the most elaborate stethoscope could bring out but faintly. Perhaps it was the quiet of the room, he thought, and perhaps it was the faint and mysterious aura which the figure, revealed by the sliding wall, diffused.

It was the shape of a man—had been once, that is. For it was so terribly old that the ordinary attributes of humanity were gone from its decrepit frame. It could not move, for it was seated with legs crossed and arms folded over the shrivelled breast, these members held in place by padded clamps. The dully-glowing tangle of machinery about it bespoke artificial feeding and digestion; a myriad of tiny silvery pipes entering into its skin must have been man-made perspiration ducts. The eyes were lost behind ponderous lenses and scanning devices, and there was a sort of extended microphone that entered the very mouth of the creature. Sound-grids surrounded it in lieu of ears that had long since shrivelled into uselessness.

The lips unmoving, the creature spoke again: “You know me?” it whispered penetratingly.

Maclure dredged his memory for a moment, following the clue of the high, crusted brow of the creature. “You must be Mr. Sapphire, it seems,” said Angel slowly.

“Excellent,” whispered the creature. “I am Mr. Sapphire—of Planets Production Corporation, Extra-terrestrial Mines. Amusements Syndicate, Publishers Associated—can you complete the list?”

“I think so,” said Angel. “In spite of the very clever management it’s almost obvious—after a rather penetrating study—that there is one fountainhead of finance from which springs almost all the industry and commerce and exchange in the system today. I had not suspected that you were at the head and still alive. One hundred and eighty years, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” whispered the creature. “One hundred and eighty years of life—if this is it. Now, Maclure, you do not know why I called you. It is because I am a proud man, and will not be humiliated by death. I shall live, Maclure. I shall live!” The voiceless whisper was still for a moment.

“And,” suggested Angel, “you want me to help you?”

“Yes. I followed your childhood in the hands of your father. I saw you at twelve the equal of men four times your age, physically and mentally their actual equal. And I know that after the death of your father you chose to disappear. I knew you would do this, Maclure, for a while. It was your intention to slip into the way of the world and forget that you were the infinite superior of your fellows. Well—you succeeded, in your own mind, at least. You are well on the way to forgetting that to those around you you are as a man among apes. That is so of all men except you—and me.”

Angel grinned bitterly. “You struck it,” he said. “I think you and I stand alone in the world. I was the victim of my father’s ambition. What are you?”

“Life eternal,” sounded the voiceless whisper. “To watch the world and its aspects—to mould it as I will, and eventually—destroy it! Destroy it and fashion another! Maclure, medicine has done all for me that it can. I am the final example of the surgical art. Once my brain was transplanted into a youthful body, but even I could not stand the shock. I died, and was revived only with the greatest difficulty.

“Three times since then I have died. The last time it took three hours to revive me. Ten minutes more and I would never have lived again. Under the laws of nature I can last no longer. And so you must come to my rescue.”

“How am I to do that?” demanded Angel.

“For me,” breathed Mr. Sapphire, “you will suspend these laws. Do not interrupt. I can give you only a few minutes more before I retire for a treatment.

“All creation is in motion, we know. So we are taught. Earth moves about the sun, sun about the great hub of the galaxy, the galaxy in a mighty circle about its own directrix—space itself, ‘ether,’ so called, is like a mighty ball rolling and tumbling through unimaginable chaos. To this outside of space we cannot attain, for to go to the end of space is to return to the starting point.

“But there is another locus in space—wholly unique, wholly at variance with any other time-and-space sector that may be marked off. Can you conceive of it?”

Angel, his brows closely knit, shot out: “The vortex! The hub around which space revolves—space at rest and absolutely without motion!”

With the faintest suggestion of mockery in his voice Mr. Sapphire whispered, “The celebrated superman has it. Utterly unique and lawless—or perhaps with laws of its own? At any rate it must be obvious that the limitations which bind matter in space are removed in this vortex of Dead Center.”

“And I am to find it and release a certain amount of matter, your body, from certain restrictions, that is, human decrepitude?” countered Angel.

“That is it. You will work for me?”

“Damn right I will,” exploded Angel. “And not for your money or anything you have to offer—but just for the kick of finding your quiet spot and doping it out!”

“That,” whispered Mr. Sapphire, “is how I had estimated it.” The wall began to slide back into place again, hiding his shriveled body and tangle of machinery, when he spoke again: “Use the metal tab lying on that table.” He was gone.

Angel looked about, and as a table lit up with a little flash, he picked a tag of some shiny stuff from it and pocketed the thing. He heard the ponderous door grind open behind him.