Heldenfeld shouted, banging his fist on the table: "I don't care ifhe's Gauss and Riemann and Lorenz and Poincare and Minkowski andWhitehead and Einstein, all collapsed into one! The man is a stinkingtraitor, not only to us, but to all scientists and all sciences! If hedoesn't shoot himself, hand him over to the United States, and let themshoot him! Why do we go on arguing?"
* * * * *
Lowiewski was smiling, now. The panic that had seized him in the hallwaybelow, and the desperation when the cigarette pack had been opened, hadleft him.
"Now I have a modest proposal, which will solve your difficulties," hesaid. "I have money, papers, clothing, everything I will need, outsidethe reservation. Suppose you just let me leave here. Then, if there isany trouble, you can use this fiction about the indiscreet underlings,without the unnecessary embellishment of my suicide--"
Rudolf von Heldenfeld let out an inarticulate roar of fury. For aninstant he was beyond words. Then he sprang to his feet.
"Look at him!" he cried. "Look at him, laughing in our faces, for thedupes and fools he thinks we are!" He thrust out his hand towardMacLeod. "Give me the pistol! He won't shoot himself; I'll do it forhim!"
"It would work, Dunc. Really, it would," Heym ben-Hillel urged.
"No," Karen Hilquist contradicted. "If he left here, everybody wouldknow what had happened, and we'd be accused of protecting him. If hekills himself, we can get things hushed up: dead traitors are goodtraitors. But if he remains alive, we must disassociate ourselves fromhim by handing him over."
"And wreck the prestige of the Team?" Lowiewski asked.
"At least you will not live to see that!" Suzanne retorted.
Heym ben-Hillel put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands."Is there no solution to this?" he almost wailed.
"Certainly: an obvious solution," MacLeod said, rising. "Rudolf has juststated it. Only I'm leader of this Team, and there are, of course, jobsa team-leader simply doesn't delegate." The safety catch of the Berettaclicked a period to his words.
"No!" The word was wrenched almost physically out of Lowiewski. He, too,was on his feet, a sudden desperate fear in his face. "No! You wouldn'tmurder me!"
"The term is 'execute'," MacLeod corrected. Then his arm swung up, andhe shot Adam Lowiewski through the forehead.
For an instant, the Pole remained on his feet. Then his knees buckled,and he fell forward against the table, sliding to the floor.
* * * * *
MacLeod went around the table, behind Kato Sugihara and Farida Khourogluand Heym ben-Hillel, and stood looking down at the man he had killed. Hedropped the automatic within a few inches of the dead renegade'soutstretched hand, then turned to face the others.
"I regret," he addressed them, his voice and face blank of expression,"to announce that our distinguished colleague, Dr. Adam Lowiewski, hascommitted suicide by shooting, after a nervous collapse resulting fromoverwork."
Sir Neville Lawton looked critically at the motionless figure on thefloor.
"I'm afraid we'll have trouble making that stick, Dunc," he said. "Youshot him at about five yards; there isn't a powder mark on him."
"Oh, sorry; I forgot." MacLeod's voice was mockingly contrite. "It wasDr. Lowiewski's expressed wish that his remains be cremated as soonafter death as possible, and that funeral services be held over hisashes. The big electric furnace in the metallurgical lab will do, Ithink."
"But ... but there'll be all sorts of formalities--" the Englishmanprotested.
"Now you forget. Our contract," MacLeod reminded him. "We stand upon ourcontractual immunity: we certainly won't allow any stupid bureaucraticinterference with our deceased colleague's wishes. We have a regularM.D. on our payroll, in case anybody has to have a death certificate tokeep him happy, but beyond that--" He shrugged.
"It burns me up, though!" Suzanne Maillard cried. "After the spaceshipis built, and the Moon is annexed to the Western Union, there will bepublicity, and people will eulogize this species of an Iscariot!"
Heym ben-Hillel, who had been staring at MacLeod in shocked unbelief,roused himself.
"Well, why not? Isn't the creator of the Lowiewski functiontransformations and the rules of inverse probabilities worthy ofeulogy?" He turned to MacLeod. "I couldn't have done what you did, butmaybe it was for the best. The traitor is dead; the mathematician willlive forever."
"You miss the whole point," MacLeod said. "Both of you. It wasn't aquestion of revenge, like gangsters bumping off a double-crosser. And itwasn't a question of whitewashing Lowiewski for posterity. We are theMacLeod Research Team. We owe no permanent allegiance to, noracknowledge the authority of, any national sovereignty or anycombination of nations. We deal with national governments as withequals. In consequence, we must make and enforce our own laws.
"You must understand that we enjoy this status only on sufferance. Thenations of the world tolerate the Free Scientists only because they needus, and because they know they can trust us. Now, no responsiblegovernment official is going to be deceived for a moment by this suicidestory we've confected. It will be fully understood that Lowiewski was atraitor, and that we found him out and put him to death. And, as acorollary, it will be understood that this Team, as a Team, is fullytrustworthy, and that when any individual Team member is found to beuntrustworthy, he will be dealt with promptly and without publicscandal. In other words, it will be understood, from this time on, thatthe MacLeod Team is worthy of the status it enjoys and theresponsibilities concomitant with it."
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