Verrick was silent. He had finished.
Benteley heard the words with a kind of dull growing surprise. Was that what had happened? Waring was looking at him curiously, waiting for him to speak. Benteley shrugged; he had nothing to say. It was out of his hands entirely.
Cartwright spoke up. “What was Benteley’s job in this project?”
Verrick hesitated. “He was doing substantially the same work as the other class 8–8 people.”
“Was there any difference?”
Verrick was silent a moment. “Not that I can recall.”
“That’s a lie,” Shaeffer said to Judge Waring. “He knows of a difference.”
Verrick nodded reluctantly. “There was one difference,” he admitted. “Benteley asked for and got the initial position. He would have taken the project to its final stage. He was trusted completely.”
“What was that stage?” Judge Waring asked.
“Benteley’s death,” Cartwright answered.
Verrick didn’t contradict him. He examined his papers moodily until finally Judge Waring asked, “Is that true?”
Verrick nodded.
“Did Benteley know?” Judge Waring demanded.
“Not at first. It wasn’t possible to make the information available to him immediately; he had just arrived on the staff. He betrayed me when he found out.” Verrick’s heavy hands gripped his papers convulsively. “He destroyed the project. They all pulled out; they all let me down.”
“Who else betrayed you?” Shaeffer asked curiously.
Verrick’s strong jaw moved. “Eleanor Stevens. Herb Moore.”
“Oh,” Shaeffer said. “I thought Moore was the man Benteley killed.”
Verrick nodded. “Moore was his immediate superior. He was in charge of the project.”
“If Benteley killed Moore, and Moore had betrayed you …” Shaeffer turned to Judge Waring. “It sounds as if Benteley was acting as a loyal serf.”
Verrick snorted. “Moore betrayed me afterwards. After Benteley—” He broke off.
“Go on,” Shaeffer said.
“After Benteley killed him,” Verrick said woodenly, and with difficulty.
“What’s that?” Judge Waring asked testily. “I don’t understand.”
“Tell him what the project was,” Shaeffer suggested mildly. “Then he’ll understand.”
Verrick studied the table in front of him. He dog-eared a paper and finally spoke. “I have nothing more to say.” He got slowly to his feet. “I withdraw the material relating to Moore’s death. That really isn’t relevant.”
“What do you stand on?” Cartwright asked.
“Benteley pulled out and dropped his work. He left the job I assigned him, the job he took on when he swore on to me.”
“Yes,” Verrick agreed. “But he should have stayed. It was his job.”
Cartwright also rose. “I have nothing else to say,” he said to Judge Waring. “I swore Benteley on because I considered him legitimately free of his prior oath to Verrick. I considered the oath broken by Verrick. Benteley was sent to his death without knowledge. A protector isn’t supposed to send a classified serf to involuntary death. If the serf has a classification, he must get that serf’s written agreement.”
Judge Waring’s beard bobbed up and down. “A classified serf must agree. A protector can only destroy his classified serf on an involuntary basis if the serf has broken his oath. In breaking his oath, the serf forfeits his rights but remains his protector’s property.” Judge Waring gathered up his law books and tapes. “The case here rests on one point. If the protector in question broke his side of the oath first, the serf in question was legally within his rights to drop his work and leave. But if the protector did not break his side of the oath prior to the serf’s departure, then the serf is a felon and liable to the death penalty.”
Cartwright moved toward the door. Verrick followed after him, his heavy face dark and brooding, hands shoved deep in his pockets. “That’s it, then,” Cartwright said. “We’ll wait for your decision.”
* * *
Benteley was with Rita O’Neill when the decision came. Shaeffer approached him briefly. “I’ve been scanning old Judge Waring,” he said. “He’s finally made up his mind.”
It was “evening” in the resort. Benteley and Rita were sitting in one of the small side-bars of the resort, two vague shapes in the dim color-twisting shadows that hung around their table. A single aluminum candle sputtered between them. Directorate officials were sitting here and there in the room, murmuring, gazing vacantly ahead, sipping their drinks. A MacMillan moved silently around. “Well?” Benteley said. “What is it?”
“It’s in your favor,” Shaeffer said. “He’ll announce it in a few minutes. Cartwright told me to let you know as soon as possible.”
“Then Verrick has no claim over me,” Benteley said wonderingly. “I’m safe.”
“That’s right.” Shaeffer moved away from the table. “Congratulations.” He disappeared through the entrance and was gone.
Rita put her hand on Benteley’s. “Thank heavens.”
Benteley felt no emotion, only an empty sort of daze. “I guess that settles it,” he murmured. He absently watched a flow of color move up the side of the wall, hover against the ceiling and then re-descend like a fluid spider. It dissolved back into basic swirls and dabs, then formed once more and started its slow crawl back up.
“We should celebrate,” Rita said.
“Yes, I’m where I wanted to be.” Benteley sipped the remains of his drink. “Working for the Directorate. Sworn in to the Quizmaster. This is what I set out for, that day. It seems like a long time ago. Well, I’ve finally arrived.” He gazed down at his glass and was silent.
“How do you feel?”
“Not much different.”
Rita tore apart a match folder and fed the fragments to the metallic candle. “You’re not satisfied, are you?”
“I’m as far from satisfaction as it’s humanly possible to be.”
“Why?” she asked softly.
“I haven’t really done anything. I thought it was the Hills, but Wakeman was right. It isn’t the Hills—it’s the whole society. The stench is everywhere. Getting away from the Hill system doesn’t help me or anybody else.” He pushed his drink angrily away. “I could simply hold my nose and pretend it isn’t there. But that isn’t enough. Something has to be done about it. The whole weak, bright thing has to be pulled down. It’s rotten, corrupt … it’s ready to fall on its face. But something has to go up in its place; something has to be built. Tearing down isn’t enough. I’ve got to help build up the new. It has to be different for other people. I’d like to do something that really alters things. I have to do something that alters things.”
“Maybe you can.”
Benteley looked ahead into the future, from where he was sitting. “How? Where’ll the chance come from? I’m still a serf. I’m still tied down and under oath.”
“You’re young. We’re both young. We’ve got a lot of years ahead of us to do things and plan things.” Rita lifted her glass. “We’ve a whole lifetime to alter the course of the universe.”
Benteley smiled. “Okay. I’ll drink to that.” He raised his own glass and touched hers with a clear clink. “But not too much.” His smile ebbed away. “Verrick is still hanging around. I’ll wait until he leaves to do my drinking.”
Rita finished feeding bits of paper to the white-hot candle flame. “What would happen if he killed you?”
“They’d shoot him.”
“What would happen if he killed my uncle?”
“They’d take away his power card. He’d never be Quizmaster.”
“He won’t be Quizmaster anyhow,” Rita said quietly.
“What’s on your mind?” Benteley roused himself. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t believe he’ll go back empty-handed. He can’t stop at this point.” She glanced up at him, dark-eyed and serious. “It’s not over, Ted. He ha
s to kill somebody.”
Benteley started to answer. At that moment a slim shadow fell over the table. He glanced up, one hand in his pocket, against the cold heel of his gun.
“Hello,” Eleanor Stevens said. “Mind if I join you?”
She sat down quietly facing them, hands folded calmly in front of her, a fixed, mechanical smile on her lips. Her green eyes flashed brightly at Benteley and then at Rita. In the half-shadows of the bar her hair glowed a deep rust red, soft and heavy against her bare neck and shoulders.
“Who are you?” Rita said.
Green eyes dancing, Eleanor leaned forward to light her cigarette from the candle. “Just a name. Not really a person, any more. Isn’t that right, Ted?”
“You better get out of here,” Benteley said. “I don’t think Verrick wants you with us.”
“I haven’t seen Verrick since I got here. Except at a distance. Maybe I’ll leave him. Maybe I’ll just walk off; everybody else seems to be doing it.”
“Be careful,” Benteley said.
“Careful? About what?” Eleanor blew a cloud of gray smoke around Benteley and Rita. “I couldn’t help hearing what you were saying. You’re right.” Her eyes were fixed intently on Rita; she spoke rapidly in a sharp, brittle voice. “Verrick is trying to decide. He wants you, Ted, but he’ll settle for Cartwright if he can’t get you. He’s down in his quarters trying to make up his mind. He used to have Moore around to arrange things in a neat mathematical equation. Assign an arbitrary value of plus 50 for killing Benteley. But minus 100 for being shot in retribution. Assign an arbitrary value of plus 40 for killing Cartwright. But a minus 50 for losing his power card. Both ways he loses.”
“That’s right,” Benteley said warily. “He loses both ways.”
“Here’s another,” Eleanor said brightly. “I thought this one up myself.” She nodded merrily to Rita. “I mean, you thought it up. But I made up the equation. Assign an arbitrary value of plus 40 for killing Cartwright. And then try this: assign a minus 100 by Cartwright for being killed. That takes care of that part; that’s for Reese. Then there’s my own, but that’s not much.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Rita said indifferently.
“I do,” Benteley said. “Look out!”
Eleanor had already moved. On her feet like a silent cat, she grabbed up the aluminum candle and ground the tube of bubbling flame into Rita’s face.
Benteley slammed the candle away; with a tinny grumble it rolled from the table and clanked onto the floor. Soundlessly, Eleanor slipped around the table to Rita O’Neill. Rita sat pawing helplessly at her eyes. Her black hair and skin were smoking and charred; the acrid odor of seared flesh filled the murky air of the bar. Eleanor yanked the woman’s hand away. Something glittered between the girl’s fingers, a jagged scarf-pin that came swiftly up at Rita’s eyes. Benteley hurled the girl away; she clung to him desperately, clawing and stabbing blindly until he shook her loose. Green eyes wild and glazed, she spun away and vanished into the black shadows of the room.
Benteley turned quickly to Rita O’Neill. “I’m all right,” Rita said between clenched teeth. “Thanks. The candle went out and she didn’t get me with the pin. Better try to catch her.”
People on all sides were leaping up and hurrying over. Eleanor had already disappeared from the bar, out into the corridor. A MacMillan medical attendant wheeled efficiently from its emergency locker, into the bar and over to the table. Rapidly, it cleared the people back, Benteley along with the others.
“Go on,” Rita said patiently, her hands over her face, elbows resting against the table. “You know where she’s going. Try to stop her. You know what he’ll do to her.”
Benteley left the bar. The corridor was deserted. He began to run toward the descent lift. A moment later he emerged on the ground level of the resort. A few people stood around here and there. At the far end of the corridor he glimpsed a flash of green and red; he raced forward. He turned a corner—and stopped dead.
Eleanor Stevens stood facing Reese Verrick. “Listen to me,” she was saying. “Don’t you understand? It’s the only way.” Her voice rose in shrill panic. “Reese, for God’s sake believe me. Take me back! I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I left you but I won’t do it again. I’m bringing you this, aren’t I?”
Verrick saw Benteley. He smiled slightly and reached out to take firm hold of Eleanor’s wrist with his iron-hard fingers. “We’re back together. All three of us.”
“You’ve got it wrong,” Benteley said to him. “She didn’t mean to betray you. She’s completely loyal to you.”
“I don’t think so,” Verrick said. “She isn’t worth anything. She’s treacherous, childish. She’s no good.”
“Then let her go.”
Verrick considered. “No,” he said finally. “I’m not going to let her go.”
“Reese!” the girl wailed. “I told you what they said! I told you how you can do it. Don’t you understand? You can do it, now. I made it possible. Take me back, please take me back!”
“Yes,” Verrick admitted, “I can do it. But I had already worked it out.”
Benteley stepped in fast. But this time not fast enough.
“Ted!” Eleanor screamed. “Help me!”
Verrick swept her up and lugged her in three giant strides to a supply-sphincter. Beyond the transparent balloon the dead, bleak surface of the moon stretched out. Verrick lifted the screaming, struggling girl high and with one quick shove, threw her sprawling through the sphincter, outside the balloon.
Benteley stood paralyzed, as Verrick stepped away from the sphincter. The girl stumbled and fell into the rubble and heaps of frigid rock, arms flailing, her breath a frozen cloud hanging from her mouth and nose. She tried to drag herself to her feet; her body half-turned toward the balloon, face distorted, eyes bulging. For one pleading instant she crept like a mashed insect toward Benteley, hands groping, clutching futilely.
Then her chest and visceral cavity burst. Benteley closed his eyes as an expanding mass of rupturing, lashing organs burst into the airless void of the Lunar surface, a sickening explosion of organic parts that immediately solidified to brittle crystals. It was over. The girl was dead.
Numbed, Benteley plucked out his hand weapon. People were racing up the corridor; an emergency alarm was wailing unhappily up and down. Verrick stood unmoving, without any particular expression.
Shaeffer knocked Benteley’s popper from his numb hand. “No good—she’s dead. She’s dead!”
Benteley nodded. “Yes, I know.”
Shaeffer bent to pick up the gun. “I’ll keep this.”
“He’s going to get away with it,” Benteley said.
“It’s legal,” Shaeffer agreed. “She wasn’t classified.”
Benteley moved away. Vaguely, he made his way back to the ramp in the direction of the infirmary. Images of the dead girl drifted around him, mixed with the burning face of Rita O’Neill and the cold dead horror of the moon’s surface. He stumbled onto the ascent ramp and started dully up.
Footsteps and hoarse, heavy breathing sounded behind him. The ramp shuddered under a ponderous weight. Verrick had followed.
“Wait a minute, Benteley,” he said. “I’ll come along with you. I have an arrangement I want to discuss with Cartwright, a business transaction I think he’ll be interested in.”
Verrick waited until Judge Waring, muttering and fumbling with his chair, had finally seated himself. Across from him Cartwright sat straight and white-faced, still coming out of shock.
“How’s your niece?” Verrick asked.
“She’ll be all right,” Cartwright said. “Thanks to Benteley.”
“Yes,” Verrick agreed. “I always thought Benteley had something. I knew he could act when it was necessary. It was her face Eleanor struck for?”
“They can fix her up with artigraft. It didn’t get to her eyes; mostly her skin and hair. It was her eyes the girl was after.”
Benteley
couldn’t stop looking at Reese Verrick. Verrick seemed calm and collected. His breathing had returned to normal; his face had a gray, mottled look but his hands had stopped trembling. It was as if he were recovering his strength from an orgy of sexual passion, a spasm of total release, brief and overwhelming.
“What do you want?” Cartwright asked him. He turned to Judge Waring. “I don’t know what this is about.”
“No,” Judge Waring agreed crossly. “What is this, Reese? What have you got on your mind?”
“I want you to be here,” Verrick said to him. “I have a proposal to offer Cartwright. I want you to hear it out and see that it’s legal.” He got out his massive popper and placed it on the table in front of him. “We’ve come to a dead end. I think nobody will disagree. You can’t kill me, Leon. I’m not an assassin; it would be murder and you’d be liable. I’m here as a guest.”
“You’re perfectly welcome,” Cartwright said tonelessly, not taking his eyes from Verrick.
“I came here to kill Benteley, but I can’t. Stalemate. Stalemate on all sides: you can’t kill me, I can’t kill Benteley, and I can’t kill you.”
Silence.
“Or can I?” Verrick said thoughtfully. He examined his popper. “I think maybe I will.”
Judge Waring spoke up disgustedly. “You’ll be out of the M-game the rest of your life. That’s a stupid thing to do. What’ll it get you?”
“Pleasure. Satisfaction.”
“Will it be any satisfaction to lose your p-card?” Judge Waring demanded.
“No,” Verrick admitted. “But I have my three Hills. That won’t be affected.”
Cartwright didn’t stir. He nodded slightly, following Verrick’s line of reasoning. “At least you’d come out of this alive. You’d be that much ahead of me, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s right,” Verrick agreed. “I wouldn’t be Quizmaster, but neither would you. They’d have to twitch the bottle again.”
Shaeffer entered the room. He glanced at Judge Waring and took a seat. “Leon,” he said to Cartwright, “this is a bluff on his part. The girl took him the idea before he killed her. He doesn’t intend to kill you. He wants to scare you—” Shaeffer’s cold eyes flickered. “Interesting.”