“So we’re no different from …” I gestured toward the company assembled; some of them flinched.
“Not much different from our controls, who are people with one Stileman. Slightly less brain mass than you used to have; more convolutions. We can’t tell too much without dissection, though.” He inadequately concealed his enthusiasm over the prospect.
“Until Lorne-Smythe died, entropic brain dysfunction was just a name for something we knew would happen eventually. A disease with no examples. The thousand-year prognosis was an educated guess; no one would have been too surprised if the true figure were five hundred years—or two thousand, for that matter. If Lorne-Smythe is typical, though, our model of the aging brain is drastically wrong.”
He went on to repeat the same things over a couple of times, reinforced by impressive charts and graphs and some grisly holos of autopsies. There were differences between Lorne-Smythe and me that I’d call important. We were close to the same calendar age, but he’d had only seven Stilemans to my nine. He’d had his first one in his seventies; I was only forty-seven for mine.
And I had the protection of the Steering Committee. Maybe.
The meeting was understandably subdued after Reingold finished. Maria took my hand and murmured something; Eric patted me on the shoulder. Otherwise, people avoided me, since I had been singled out as the oldest there. As if they could catch the brain death if I sneezed.
Briskin made a discreet signal and walked toward the balcony. I followed him a minute later, trying to look reasonably nonchalant. What’ll it be, Charlie? Months, or centuries?
There was a light rain falling, but it wasn’t cold enough to be uncomfortable. There was no one else outside.
“Frightening business,” Briskin said. I didn’t say anything. “Though perhaps it … need not affect you.”
“What, it was faked?”
“Not really. Lorne-Smythe did die of entropic brain dysfunction. But not because he was old. Not because of a polo accident.”
“You mean, your people—”
“Allow me not to say just now. I don’t know everything about it, and I’m not authorized to tell you all of what I do know.”
The castle view that had been so tritely pretty in the setting sun was equally trite now in its gothic menace: sickly bluish light from the obscured full moon showing angry breakers awash over the jagged black cliff base, the castle visible only in vague outline, save for one pale glowing window.
Briskin waved a cigarette alight and cupped it against the mist. A trick of the breeze enveloped me in smoke, and I coughed reflexively. He apologized.
I should have been more careful, more circumspect. But there was an overwhelming feeling of unreality about it, an actual physical feeling, as if my feet weren’t quite touching the ground, as if my head were impossibly light and large. Maybe the wine and slivovitz had something to do with it; maybe the nicotine and whatever else was in Briskin’s smoke. But instead of nodding sagely and letting Briskin finish his speech, this is what I said:
“Look. In words of one syllable, answer me this: Did your Steering Committee kill Geoffrey Lorne-Smythe?”
He took a long drag on the cigarette, and the red glow reflected from his cupped palm showed most of his face, but his expression revealed nothing.
“Surely you can answer yes or no.”
“No,” he said. “I can’t answer.”
He wanted me to be afraid then, and I should have been. Instead, I was annoyed. “What about the Russian, then? Popov. Everybody knows it was no accident. Did you—”
“Who have you been talking to?” His voice was suddenly harsh, commanding.
“Lamont Randolph, for one.” I laughed recklessly. “Getting so that immortals have a shorter life expectancy than ’phems.”
“You think we did that, too.”
“I don’t know what the hell to think. You’ve never told me anything specific, just vague innuendos of vast power and wealth.”
“I tell you exactly what—”
“And what that Texan lady said about the Stileman Foundation applies even more to your secret outfit. It wouldn’t be hard to kill Randolph if you thought he was dangerous. To have him killed by some third party.”
Briskin nodded slowly, started to say something, then turned and walked back inside.
The feeling of unreality persisted. Real life isn’t like this. Secret organizations don’t arrange assassinations and make them look like accidents and suicides.
I leaned back against the cold metal railing, looking into the brightly lit room. The Texan lady was deep in grim discussion with Kamachi. A trickle of cold water ran down my back.
Who was I kidding? I knew Kamachi had killed, for extreme business reasons. Maybe the Texan had, too; she implied it. Even if this Steering Committee was nothing more than a bunch of fantasizing power brokers with delusions of world conquest, they could certainly take care of me, permanently.
Too comfortable for too long. Not creature comforts, but complacency in my view of the universe, where I fitted into it, how things worked and my measure of control over them.
And a short memory. My first million had been in marijuana, illegal at the time, running it by boat or plane from the Caribbean islands into the southern states of America. A criminal then, I knew of people who would murder anyone for a fee. Satisfaction and confidentiality guaranteed. Sliding scale, depending on the customer’s assets and the victim’s accessibility.
Jim Nicholson, a guy we called Smiley, claimed to do that for a living. One drunk night he told us how much he’d charge to “mortalize” each of us. I was the cheapest victim, twenty-five hundred dollars. Easy to set up. My carrying a gun didn’t count. I was too trusting, he said.
And maybe a little stupid, too.
Maria stepped out on the balcony and slid the door shut behind her. She shivered, and I slipped my jacket over her bare shoulders. The lacy black Italian dress flattered her delicate figure but couldn’t have helped much against the weather.
“Find out anything useful from Sir Charles?”
“Yeah. I owe you an apology.”
“How so?”
“Sir Charles’s bunch, the Steering Committee. They’re about as bad as you were afraid they would be.”
She turned and looked back into the room. “Wonder where he went?”
“Just stepped out to round up a death squad.”
She looked at me curiously. “I wouldn’t joke about it. What did he say?”
“He was careful not to say anything specific. Just scare the hell out of me with pregnant silences.”
“What did you ask him?”
“Well … whether his committee had killed Lorne-Smythe—”
“Dallas!”
“—and Lamont Randolph, and Popov.”
She turned to look into the room again. “How could a person make millions of pounds without knowing when to keep his mouth shut?”
“I guess he got to me. Or the whole situation got to me. I had to know.”
“He’ll get to you, all right.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a small black caller. “Where’s your bodyguard?”
“Back in London.” They’re not legal in Yugoslavia.
“Mine’s offshore. Is there anything back at the hotel that you can’t live without?”
“No, but …” She pushed the call button. “You actually think they—”
“I came prepared for the worst, Dallas. Maybe Sir Charles did, too.”
“In case I didn’t pass muster. Held my mouth wrong.”
“You can’t afford to be sarcastic.” The caller whispered, and she spoke some rapid Italian into it, a dialect I couldn’t follow. “Eric’s probably in danger, too, by association. The three of us are going to casually wander out, go down to the quay, and hire a random water taxi. My bodyguard’s waiting for us off Lopud Island, about a kilometer north of it.”
“And from there?”
“We’ll discuss that later.” She opened the door and pu
shed me through.
Sir Charles was still missing. We separated Eric from a conversation and steered him toward his coat as I whispered, “Maria thinks the shit has hit the fan.” He didn’t need any details.
It took us less than ten minutes to walk from Zor’s place to the public quay. We got in the first taxi on line and asked the driver to take us to the Lafodia Hotel on Lopud. The idea was to let him call in that destination and then, before we arrived, to pay a good-size bribe to have him swing around to the other side of the island.
We made stilted small talk for a few minutes, and then Maria reached by me to tap on the plastic partition behind the driver’s head. We were a minute or so away from the island. The driver dropped the taxi down to a hovering idle, turned on the inside light, slid the partition open, and turned to face us.
Without changing expression, he brought out a large-bore pistol and shot Eric point-blank in the face.
I’m no fighter but I’ve been an athlete for a century and, so soon after rejuvenation, have the reflexes of a nervous rattlesnake. Without thinking, I’d grabbed the pistol barrel instantly, felt the shock as he fired, yanked it from his grasp, reversed it, and fired back. His chest and throat exploded in a bloom of blood and shredded flesh. The taxi stalled and fell to the water.
Eric was just gone. The blast had disintegrated him from the neck up. I’d seen death before, even violent death, but nothing like this. His hands were twitching open and closed. Blood jetted from a neck artery, splashing against the roof and rear window of the cab. His shoulders worked as if he were trying to express something.
Then the blood stopped spurting, and the body relaxed into death. I turned to Maria.
She seemed paralyzed, eyes wide in a glazed stare, not looking at either of the dead men. Her skin was so pale as to be almost blue. The front of her elegant dress was spattered with dots and streaks of crimson, and so was her hair.
She unsnapped her purse and slowly brought the caller to her lips. “There has been an accident,” she said in slow Italian, in a monotone. “We’re on the water, on the other side of the island.”
I looked at the weapon in my hand. It was what American police call a crowdpleaser, a sort of hand-size sawed-off shotgun. Past three or four feet, the pellets evaporate harmlessly. At close range it has the force of a hand grenade.
From the elbow down, my arm was dripping blood.
“Is it still loaded?” Maria asked in a weirdly calm voice. “I mean, how many shots does it have left?” With some difficulty I found an ejecting lever and chipped a thumbnail pushing it in the wrong direction. Then the cassette slid out and I held it up to the light. Three shells. I slid it back in and stuck the weapon in my waistband. Wiped my hand on the upholstery.
The taxi rocked in the gentle waves. The only sound was blood dripping. “Poor Eric,” I said, to say something.
“It’s over for him,” she said, and looked out the window.
I had the odd sensation of knowing that I should feel sick, but feeling almost okay, in spite of everything. Even somewhat elated, light-headed. Maybe some soldiers feel this way once they give up all hope of survival. I didn’t know whether I had hours left, or minutes, or days. But I had no doubt they were going to get me. And Maria. Maybe we would make it a harder job than they expected.
A light approached from the other side of the island and became two headlights as it drew closer. I put my hand on the pistol butt. “Is that your guy?”
She nodded and carefully opened the door on her side. An emergency air bag was keeping us well out of the water. She waved into the headlights, and the other vehicle, a Mercedes limo, pulled up alongside.
Her bodyguard wasn’t a “guy.” She was a big woman, blond and deep-voiced. She croaked “Dio Cristo!” when she saw the carnage, then helped both of us transfer from one bobbing vehicle to the other. After a whispered conference with Maria, she produced a handgun and fired at the air bag. It deflated with a loud sigh. The taxi tipped up and slid into the dark water, its headlights visible for a few seconds.
“—To your home, my lady?” the bodyguard asked.
“—No. Head for Rome—no … Palermo. I have to think.” The limo surged forward, and we both sank back into the overstuffed cushions. “—Turn off the lights, if it’s not too unsafe.” In the last of the light I saw tears starting.
They agreed that it would be ridiculous to make long-range plans. The first order of business was to sink out of sight. Sicily seemed marginally safer than Rome, as a jumping-off place to get to the States. (The United States would be their best bet since Dallas’s Americanness was too conspicuous; they could disguise his famous face, but he’d still stand out too much in the European underworld.)
The bodyguard, Cleta, left them in a run-down seaside motel a couple of dozen kilometers outside Palermo. Before dawn she returned with changes of clothing for both of them, suitcases, American passports, rather roundabout tickets to the Conch Republic, and US$47,000. She’d had to sell the Mercedes for less than half what it would have been worth in a legal transaction. Maria thanked her and gave her ten grand severance pay and hush money, and promised to rehire her when this all blew over.
It was never going to blow over, of course. That’s a problem when your enemies are immortal. There was no place on Earth where they could be safe.
Area and Population of the Worlds
POPULATION [est., millions]
CONTINENT
Area (1,000 sq. mi.)
% of Earth
1900
1950
2000
2050
2075
North America
9,400
16.2
106
219
380
410
420
South America
6,900
11.9
38
111
258
600
880
Europe
3,800
6.6
400
530
720
750
790
Asia
17,250
29.8
932
1,418
2,433
3,015
3,224
Africa
11,700
20.2
118
199
390
570
630
Oceana
3,300
5.7
6
13
30
50
73
Antarctica
4,400
9.3
—
—
>0.1
0.1
0.2
Earth
57,850
—
1,600
2,490
4,211
5,395
6,017
Off Earth:
area
(2075.0, actual numbers)
Cislunar space
—
1,390
Moon
4,890
436
Mars
18,700
129
Novysibirsk
*
110,000†
*Ceres has a diameter of 640 miles; the other asteroids are 360 miles or less in diameter.
†Estimates range from 85,000 to 150,000.
Source: Rand McNally & Co.
Maria
I think Dallas wanted to go to the Conch Republic because that was the last place he had worked as an actual criminal. Supposedly he would know how to act and so forth … though the fact that a hundred years had passed since his experience might dilute its value—like Jesse Jim time-traveling to join the Al Capone gang, or something.
We both were still numb with the shock of Eric’s sudden death; the sudden transformation of this thing from hypo
thetical fancy to brutal fact, when we boarded the economy flight out of Palermo. It was a weekender “gasbag,” Dallas’s choice as the least likely mode of transport for a couple of rich people running for their lives. Also grotesquely inappropriate for a somber or a careful mood.
A chatty hostess on the floater bus that carried us up to the tethered gasbag described the thousand-and-one delights that awaited us there: four “gourmet” restaurants; live entertainment; all kinds of gambling, perfectly legal. She didn’t have to mention the drugs and prostitution, also legal. Or at least not illegal, in the airspace no-man’s-land between countries.
Our room was a tiny cubicle, mostly bed and mirrors, expensive. The real economy passengers didn’t invest in them, figuring to stay up the full twenty-four hours, taking advantage of the ship’s diversions (of course, they would make enough by sensible gambling to pay for everything).
We sat on the bed for a few minutes and watched Palermo recede. “Shall we go try our luck?” I said. “The tables will open once we’re seven miles out.”
“You go without me, hon. I want to rest awhile.” Short, prearranged conversation, working on the assumption that the rooms were bugged. The fine old Family that obviously ran the ship wouldn’t be above filing people’s pillow talk for future reference.
Dallas would have to spend the whole trip in the tiny room and other safe places, if I could find some. The woman sitting next to us on the bus had gushed about how much he looked like Dallas Barr. A little of that could go a long way toward guaranteeing us a welcoming committee at the other end.
My job on this first expedition was to scout out places where we might safely talk, or where Dallas could at least stretch his legs unobserved. And bring back something to eat.
It was hard to concentrate even on the simple task of walking from place to place, asking myself, “Would he be seen here?/could we talk here?,” because my mind kept reeling back to that moment of terrible violence. So abrupt, so senseless, so evil. And now Dallas and I will end that way, too. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil. For Thou art with me. Thou art with me.