Now Wait for Last Year

  “Yes,” Eric murmured. “Had there been a history of heart trouble with this patient?”

  “Not until two weeks ago,” Teagarden said. “When he had a mild attack. Then of course dorminyl was administered, twice daily. And he seemed to recover. But now—”

  “What’s the relationship between this man’s angina and the Secretary’s pain?”

  “ ‘Relationship’? Is there one?”

  “Doesn’t it seem strange? Both men develop severe abdominal pains at about the same time—”

  “But in the case of McNeil, here,” Teagarden said, leading Eric to the bed, “the diagnosis is unmistakable. Whereas with Secretary Molinari no such diagnosis as angina can be made; the symptoms are not there. So I don’t see the relationship.” Teagarden added, “Anyhow this is a very tense place, doctor, people get sick here regularly.”

  “It still seems—”

  “In any case,” Teagarden said, “the problem is simply a technical one; transplant the fresh heart and that’s that.”

  “Too bad we can’t do the same upstairs.” Eric bent over the cot on which the patient McNeil lay. So this was the man who had the ailment which Molinari imagined he had. Which came first? Eric wondered. McNeil or Gino Molinari? Which is cause and which effect—assuming that such a relationship exists, and that is a mighty tenuous assumption at best. As Teagarden points out.

  But it would be interesting to know, for instance, if anyone in the vicinity had cancer of the prostate gland when Gino had it … and the other cancers, infarcts, hepatitis, and whatever else as well.

  It might be worth checking the medical records of the White House staff, he conjectured.

  “Need me to assist in the org-trans?” Teagarden asked. “If not I’ll go upstairs to the Secretary. There’s a White House nurse who can help you; she was here a minute ago.”

  “I don’t need you. What I’d like is a list of all the current complaints among members of the local entourage; everyone who’s in physical contact with Molinari from day to day, whether these people are staff members or frequent official visitors—whatever their posts are. Can that be done?”

  “With the staff, yes,” Teagarden said. “But not with visitors; we have no medical files on them. Obviously.” He eyed Eric.

  “I have a feeling,” Eric said, “that the moment a fresh heart is transplanted to McNeil here the Secretary’s pains will go away. And later records will show that as of this date the Secretary recovered from severe angina pectoris.”

  Teagarden’s expression fused over, became opaque. “Well,” he said, and shrugged. “Metaphysics, along with surgery. We’ve obtained a rare combination in you, doctor.”

  “Would you say that Molinari is empathic enough to develop every ailment suffered by every person around him? And I don’t mean just hysterically; I mean he genuinely experiences it. Gets it.”

  “No such empathic faculty,” Teagarden said, “if you can bring yourself to dignify it by calling it a faculty, is known to exist.”

  “But you’ve seen the file,” Eric pointed out quietly. He opened his instrument case and began to assemble the robant, self-guiding tools which he would need for the transplant of the artificial heart.

  7

  After the operation—it required only half an hour’s labor on his part—Eric Sweetscent, accompanied by two Secret Service men, set off for the apartment of Mary Reineke.

  “She’s dumb,” the man to his left said, gratuitously.

  The other Secret Service man, older and grayer, said, “ ‘Dumb’? She knows what makes the Mole work; nobody else has been able to dope that out.”

  “There’s nothing to dope out,” the first—youthful—Secret Service man said. “It’s just the meeting of two vacuums and that’s the same as one big vacuum.”

  “Yeah, some vacuum. He rises to the UN Secretaryship; you think you or anybody else you know could do that? Here’s her conapt.” The older Secret Service man halted and indicated a door. “Don’t act surprised when you see her,” he told Eric. “I mean, when you see she’s just a kid.”

  “I was told,” Eric said. And rang the bell. “I know all about it.”

  “ ‘You know all about it,’ ” the Secret Service man to his left mocked. “Good for you—without even seeing her. Maybe you’ll be the next UN Secretary after the Mole finally succumbs.”

  The door opened. An astonishingly small, dark, pretty girl wearing a man’s red silk shirt with the tails out and tapered, tight slacks stood facing them. She held a pair of cutical scissors; evidently she had been trimming and improving her nails, which Eric saw were long and luminous.

  “I’m Dr. Sweetscent. I’ve joined Gino Molinari’s staff.” He almost said your father’s staff; he caught the words barely in time.

  “I know,” Mary Reineke said. “And he wants me; he’s feeling lousy. Just a minute.” She turned to look for a coat, disappearing momentarily.

  “A high school girl,” the Secret Service man on Eric’s left said. He shook his head. “For any ordinary guy it’d be a felony.”

  “Shut up,” his companion snapped, as Mary Reineke returned wearing a heavy, blue-black, large-button, navy-style jacket.

  “Couple of smart guys,” Mary said to the Secret Service men. “You two take off; I want to talk to Dr. Sweetscent without you sticking your big fat ears into it.”

  “Okay, Mary.” Grinning, the Secret Service men departed. Eric was alone in the corridor with the girl in the heavy jacket, pants and slippers.

  They walked in silence and then Mary said, “How is he?”

  Cautiously, Eric said, “In many ways exceptionally healthy. Almost unbelievably so. But—”

  “But he’s dying. All the time. Sick, but it just goes on and on—I wish it would end; I wish he’d—” She paused thoughtfully. “No, I don’t wish that. If Gino died I’d be booted out. Along with all the cousins and uncles and bambinos. There’d be a general housecleaning of all the debris that clutters up this place.” Her tongue was amazingly bitter and fierce; Eric glanced sharply at her, taken aback. “Are you here to cure him?” Mary asked.

  “Well, I can try. I can at least—”

  “Or are you here to administer the—what do they call it? The final blow. You know. Coup something.”

  “Coup de grace,” Eric said.

  “Yes.” Mary Reineke nodded. “Well? Which did you come for? Or don’t you know? Are you as confused as he is, is that it?”

  “I’m not confused,” Eric said, after a pause.

  “Then you know your duty. You’re the artiforg man, aren’t you? The top org-trans surgeon … I read about you in Time, I think. Don’t you think Time is a highly informative magazine in all fields? I read it from cover to cover every week, especially the medical and scientific sections.”

  Eric said, “Do—you go to school?”

  “I graduated. High school, not college; I’ve got no interest in what they call ‘higher learning.’ ”

  “What did you want to be?”

  “What do you mean?” She eyed him suspiciously.

  “I mean what career did you intend to enter?”

  “I don’t need a career.”

  “But you didn’t know that; you had no way of telling you’d wind up—” He gestured. “Be here at the White House.”

  “Sure I did. I always knew, all my life. Since I was three.”

  “How?”

  “I was—I am—one of those precogs. I could tell the future.” Her tone was calm.

  “Can you still do it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then you don’t need to ask me why I’m here; you can look ahead and see what I do.”

  “What you do,” Mary said, “isn’t that important; it doesn’t register.” She smiled then, showing beautiful, regular, white teeth.

  “I can’t believe that,” he said, nettled.

  “Then be your own precog; don’t ask me what I know if you’re not interested in the results. Or not able to accept them. This
is a cutthroat environment, here at the White House; a hundred people are clamoring to get Gino’s attention all the time, twenty-four hours a day. You have to fight your way through the throngs. That’s why Gino gets sick—or rather pretends to be sick.”

  “ ‘Pretends,’ ” Eric said.

  “He’s a hysteric; you know, where they think they have illnesses but really don’t. It’s his way of keeping people off his back; he’s just too sick to deal with them.” She laughed merrily. “You know that—you’ve examined him. He doesn’t actually have anything.”

  “Have you read the file?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then you know that Gino Molinari has had cancer at three separate occasions.”

  “So what?” She gestured. “Hysterical cancer.”

  “In the medical profession no such—”

  “Which are you going to believe, your textbooks or what you see with your own eyes?” She studied him intently. “If you expect to survive here you better become a realist; you better learn to detect facts when you meet up with them. You think Teagarden is glad you’re here? You’re a menace to his status; he’s already begun trying to find ways to discredit you—or haven’t you noticed?”

  “No,” he said. “I haven’t noticed.”

  “Then you haven’t got a chance. Teagarden will have you out of here so fast—” She broke off. Ahead lay the sick man’s door and the two rows of Secret Service men. “You know why Gino has those pains actually? So he can be pampered. So people will wait on him as if he’s a baby; he wants to be a baby again so he won’t have grownup responsibilities. See?”

  “Theories like that” Eric said, “sound so perfect, they’re so glib, so easy to say—”

  “But true,” Mary said. “In this case.” She pushed past the Secret Service men, opened the door, and entered. Going up to Gino’s bed, she gazed down at him and said, “Get on your feet, you big lazy bastard.”

  Opening his eyes, Gino stirred leadenly. “Oh, it’s you. Sorry, but I—”

  “Sorry nothing,” Mary said in a sharp voice. “You’re not sick. Get up! I’m ashamed of you; everybody’s ashamed of you. You’re just scared and acting like a baby—how do you expect me to respect you when you act like this?”

  After a time Gino said, “Maybe I don’t expect you to.” He seemed depressed more than anything else by the girl’s tirade. Now he made out Eric. “You hear her, doctor?” he said gloomily. “Nobody can stop her; she comes in here when I’m dying and talks to me like that—maybe that’s the reason I’m dying.” He rubbed his stomach gingerly. “I don’t feel them right now. I think that shot you gave me did it; what was in that?”

  Not the shot, Eric thought, but the surgery downstairs on McNeil. Your complaint is gone because an assistant cook on the White House staff now has an artiforg heart. I was right.

  “If you’re okay—” Mary began.

  “Okay,” Molinari sighed. “I’ll get up; just leave me alone, will you, for chrissake?” He stirred about, struggling to get up from the bed. “Okay—I’ll get up; will that satisfy you?” His voice rose to a shout of anger.

  Turning to Eric, Mary Reineke said, “You see? I can get him out of bed; I can put him back on his feet like a man.”

  “Congratulations,” Gino murmured sourly as he shakily rose to a standing position. “I don’t need a medical staff; all I need is you. But I notice it was Dr. Sweetscent here who got rid of my pains, not you. What did you ever do but bawl me out? If I’m back up it’s because of him.” He passed by her, to the closet for his robe.

  “He resents me,” Mary said to Eric. “But underneath he knows I’m right.” She seemed perfectly placid and sure of herself; she stood with her arms folded, watching the Secretary as he tied the sash of his blue robe and got on his deerskin slippers.

  “Big-time,” Molinari muttered to Eric, jerking his head at Mary. “She runs things—according to her.”

  “Do you have to do what she says?” Eric inquired.

  Molinari laughed. “Sure. Don’t I?”

  “What happens if you don’t? Does she make the heavens fall?”

  “Yes, she pulls down everything.” Molinari nodded. “It’s a psionic talent she has … it’s called being a woman. Like your wife Kathy. I’m glad to have her around; I like her. I don’t care if she bawls me out—after all, I did get out of bed and it didn’t hurt me; she was right.”

  “I always know when you’re malingering,” Mary said.

  “Come with me, doctor,” Molinari said to Eric. “There’s something they’ve set up for me to watch; I want you to see it too.”

  Trailed by Secret Service men, they crossed the corridor and entered a guarded, locked room which Eric realized was a projection chamber; the far wall consisted of a permanent vidscreen installation on a grand scale.

  “Me making a speech,” Molinari explained to Eric as they seated themselves. He signaled and a video tape began to roll, projected on the large screen. “It’ll be delivered tomorrow night, over all the TV networks. I want your opinion on it in advance, in case there’s anything I should change.” He glanced slyly at Eric, as if there was more he was not saying.

  Why would he want my opinion? Eric wondered as he watched the image of the UN Secretary fill the screen. The Mole in full military regalia as C-in-C of Terra’s armed forces: medals and arm bands and ribbons and, above all, the stiff marshal’s hat with its visor partly shielding the round, heavy-jowled face so that only the lower part, the grimy chin, was visible with its disconcertingly harsh scowl.

  And the jowls, unaccountably, were not flabby; they had become, for no reason which Eric could conjure up, firm and determined. It was a rocklike, severe face which showed on the screen, stern and strengthened by an inner authority that Eric had not seen before in the Mole … or had he?

  Yes, he thought. But it had been years ago, when the Mole had first taken office, when he had been younger and there had not been the crushing responsibility. And now, on the screen, the Mole spoke. And his voice—it was the old original voice from past times; it was exactly as it had all been, a decade ago, before this terrible, losing war.

  Chuckling, Molinari said from the deep, foam-rubber chair in which he lounged beside Eric, “I look pretty good, don’t I?”

  “You do.” The speech rolled on, sonorous, even containing, now and then, a trace of the awesome, the majestic. And it was precisely this which Molinari had lost: he had become pitiable. On the screen the mature, dignified man in military garb expressed himself clearly in a voice that snapped out its sentences without hesitancy; the UN Secretary, in the video tape, demanded and informed, did not beg, did not turn to the electorate of Terra for help … he told them what to do in this period of crisis. And that was as it should be. But how had it been done? How did the pleading, hypochondriacal invalid, suffering from his eternal half-killing complaints, rise up and do this? Eric was mystified.

  Beside him Molinari said, “It’s a fake. That’s not me.” He grinned with delight as Eric stared first at him and then at the screen.

  “Then who is it?”

  “It’s nobody. It’s a robant. General Robant Servant Enterprises made it up for me—this speech is its first appearance. Pretty good, like my old self, makes me feel young again just to watch it.” And, Eric saw, the UN Secretary did seem more his old self; he had genuinely perked up as he sat watching the simulacrum on the screen. The Mole, above and beyond everyone else, was taken in by the ersatz spectacle; he was its first convert. “Want to see the thing? It’s top secret, of course—only three or four people know about it, besides Dawson Cutter of GRS Enterprises, of course. But they’ll keep it confidential; they’re used to handling classified material in the process of war-contract letting.” He thumped Eric on the back. “You’re getting let in on one of the secrets of state—how does that feel? This is the way the modern state is run; there’s things the electorate doesn’t know, shouldn’t know for their own good. All governments have functioned this way,
not just mine. You imagine it’s just mine? If you do you’ve got a lot to learn. I’m using a robant to make my speeches for me because at this point I don’t—” he gestured—“present quite the proper visual image, despite the make-up technicians who work me over. It’s just an impossible job.” Now he had become dour, no longer joking. “So I gave up. I’m being realistic.” He settled back in his chair, moodily.

  “Who wrote the speech?”

  “I did. I can still put together a political manifesto, depicting the situation, telling them how we stand and where we’re going and what we’ve got to do. My mind is still there.” The Mole tapped his big bulging forehead. “However, I naturally had help.”

  “ ‘Help,’ ” Eric echoed.

  “A man I want you to meet—a brilliant new young lawyer who acts as confidential adviser to me, without pay. Don Festenburg, a whiz; you’ll be as impressed as I was. He has a knack of remolding, condensing, extracting the substance and presenting it in a few distilled sentences … I always had a tendency to run on at excessive length; everybody knows that. But not anymore, not with Festenburg around. He programmed this simulacrum—he’s really saved my life.”

  On the screen his synthetic image was saying commandingly, “—and gathering up the collective éclat of our several national societies, we as Terrans present a formidable association, more than just a planet but admittedly less, at the moment, than an interplanetary empire on the order of Lilistar … although perhaps—”

  “I—would prefer not to have a look at the simulacrum,” Eric decided.

  Molinari shrugged. “It’s an opportunity, but if you’re not interested or if it distresses you—” He eyed Eric. “You’d rather retain your idealistic image of me; rather imagine that the thing talking up there on the screen is real.” He laughed. “I thought a doctor, like a lawyer and a priest, could withstand the shock of seeing life as it is; I thought truth was your daily bread.” He leaned toward Eric earnestly; under him his chair squeaked in protest, giving under his excessive weight. “I’m too old. I can’t talk brilliantly anymore. God knows I’d like to. But this is a solution; would it be better just to give up?”