Beyond This Horizon (11 page)

“What are their plans?”

“I don’t know in detail…yet. But the sense of it is this: they’ve got no use at all for the present genetic policy. Nor for democratic freedom. They want to set up what they call a ‘scientific’ state, with the ‘natural’ leaders running things. They are the ‘natural’ leaders, self appointed. They have a great contempt for guys like you—synthesists—who help to maintain this present ‘backward’ state. When they are in control they intend to go all out for biological experimentation. They say that a culture should be an organic whole, with the parts specialized according to function. True men—supermen—sitting on top (that’s themselves) and the rest of the population bred to fit requirements.”

Mordan smiled slowly. “I seem to have seen all this before.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. The Empire of the Great Khans. They’ve got an answer for that one. The Khans were fools and did not know what they were up to. These boys know how. This is strictly 100% homegrown and any resemblance between it and the policies of the Khans is purely due to your lack of appreciation.”

“So…” Mordan said nothing more for a long time. Hamilton became impatient.

“Well?”

“Felix, why do you tell me this?”

“Why? So you can do something about it!”

“But why should you want anything done about it? Wait a moment…please. You told me the other day that life is not worth living, as it is. If you go along with these people, you could make of life anything you want it to be. You could redesign the world to a pattern of your own choosing.”

“Hmm! I’d have some opposition. They have their own plans.”

“You could change them. I know you, Felix. In any group, it’s a foregone conclusion that you will dominate if you choose to. Not in the first ten minutes, but in the course of time. You must have known that. Why didn’t you seize the opportunity?”

“What makes you think I could do anything of the sort?”

“Now, Felix!”

“All right! All right! Suppose I could. But I didn’t. Call it patriotism. Call it anything you like.”

“As a matter of fact it’s because you approve of our culture as it is. Isn’t that true?”

“Maybe. In a way. I never did say that I disliked the way things were being run. I just said that I couldn’t see any sense to any manner of life, in any final absolute terms.” Hamilton was feeling slightly bewildered. He had approached this interview feeling romantically heroic and expecting to be patted on the back for having unmasked the villains. But Mordan failed to get excited at the proper places, and insisted on discussing purely philosophical matters. It threw him off stride. “In any case, I don’t want to see those conceited young punks running things. I can’t see them building a Utopia.”

“I see. Have you any more to tell me? Very well, then—” Mordan began to stir in the fashion of one about to leave.

“Hey, wait a minute!”

“Yes?”

“Look, I—The fact is, since I am already on the inside, I thought I might do a little amateur sleuthing. We could arrange some way for me to report to you, or to someone.”

“Oh, so that’s it. No, Felix, I could not approve that.”

“Why not?”

“Too dangerous for you.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I do. Your life is very valuable, from my professional point of view.”

“
That?
Hell’s delight—I thought I made it clear that there is no chance, simply none at all, of me co-operating in the genetic program.”

“You did. But so long as you are alive and fertile, I am bound to take into account the possibility that you might change your mind. I can’t let you risk your life, therefore.”

“Well! How are you going to stop me? You can’t coerce me—I know the law.”

“No…no, it’s true that I can’t prevent you from risking your valuable life, but I can remove the danger, and shall. The members of the Survivors Club will be picked up at once.”

“But, but—look, Claude. If you do that today, you haven’t a full case against them. The proper thing to do is to wait until we know all about them. Arresting this one group might mean that a hundred or a thousand others would simply take cover more thoroughly.”

“I know that. It’s the chance the government will have to take. But we won’t risk your germ plasm.”

Hamilton threw out his hands. “Damn it, Claude. This is blackmail. That’s what it is—blackmail! It’s sheer coercion.”

“Not at all. I do not plan to do a thing…to you.”

“But it is, just the same.”

“Suppose we compromise.”

“How?”

“Your life is your own. If you want to lose it, playing Fearless Frank, you may. My interest is in your potentialities as an ancestor. My professional interest, that is. Personally, I like you and prefer that you live a long and happy life. But that’s beside the point. If you would deposit in the plasm bank a few million of your gametes, then I would be willing not to interfere.”

“But that’s just what I was saying! You are trying to blackmail me into co-operating.”

“Not so hasty. The life cells you leave with me would not be stirred into being without your consent. They would remain in escrow and you could break the escrow at will—unless you are killed in this adventure. In that case, I will use them to continue the genetic policy.”

Hamilton sat down again. “Let’s get this straight. You wouldn’t touch them, if I don’t get knocked over. No tricks?”

“No tricks.”

“When it’s over, I can withdraw them. Still no tricks?”

“Still no tricks.”

“You wouldn’t frame me into a position where I would be darned near certain to be killed, I suppose? No, you wouldn’t do that. All right, I agree! I’ll bet my ability to stay alive when the shooting starts against your chance to use my deposit.”

When Mordan returned to his office, he sent for his chief technician. He caused her to leave the building with him, found a suitable bit of neutral ground where there was no chance of being overheard—a bench in a deserted corner of North roofpark—and told her of his talk with Hamilton.

“I suppose you told him that all this about the Survivors Club was no news to us.”

“No,” Mordan said judiciously, “no, I can’t say that I did. He didn’t ask me.”

“Mmmm… You know, chief, you are as crooked as a random incidence curve. A sophist.”

“Why, Martha!” Nevertheless his eyes twinkled.

“Oh, I’m not criticizing. You’ve talked him into a position whereby we stand a much better chance of getting on with the work. Just the same, you did it by letting him think that we didn’t already know all about this pipsqueak conspiracy.”

“We don’t know ‘all about it,’ Martha. He’ll be useful. He has already dug up one significant fact. There is a leak in our own office.”

“Um, yes. That’s why you dragged me away from the clinic. Well, there’ll be some changes made.”

“Not too hastily. We’ll assume that you can trust any of the women. This scheme, by its nature, is masculine. Women are not a part of it and their interests aren’t considered. But be wary of the men on the staff. I think you had better handle the deposit of Hamilton’s plasm yourself—today. Better keep an eye on the women, though.”

“I shall. Honest, chief, don’t you think you should have told him what he was getting into?”

“You forget that it’s not my secret.”

“No, I suppose not. Just the same, he’s much too good stock to risk in such games. Why do you think they recruited him?”

“He thinks it’s because he’s a handy man with a gun and rich as well. But I think you have answered your own question—he’s star-line stock. He’s good breeding material. The ‘Survivors’ aren’t entirely fools.”

“Oh ho! I hadn’t thought of that. Well, I still say it’s a damn shame to risk him in such business.”

“Public custodians must not permit themselves the luxury of personal sentimentality, Martha. They have to take the long view.”

“Hmmm… There is something a little terrifying about a man with too long a view.”

“We don’t speak the same lingo”

H
AMILTON FELIX discovered that a conspirator can be a busy person, especially if he is also engaged in counter-conspiracy. He tried to present a convincing picture to McFee Norbert and his other associates in the Survivors Club of an enthusiastic neophyte, anxious in every way to promote the cause. Indoctrination classes, dull in themselves but required before advancement in the organization could be expected, took a good deal of time. He endured these patiently, trying his best to maintain actually the frame of mind of romantic acceptance during instruction, in order that his questions and reactions in general would arouse no suspicion.

In addition to lessons in the principles of the New Order new members were assigned tasks to perform. Since the organization was ruled with an absolute from-the-top-down discipline, the reasons for the tasks were never explained nor were questions permitted. The assigned job might actually have significance to the conspiracy, or it might simply be a test, with every person concerned in the matter actually a brother clubmember. The recruit had no way of knowing.

Hamilton saw what happened to one candidate who neglected to take the instruction seriously.

He was tried in the presence of the chapter. Attendance on the part of junior members was compulsory. McFee Norbert acted as prosecutor and judge. The accused was not represented by spokesman, but was permitted to explain his actions.

He had been directed to deliver in person a specific message to a specific person. This he had done, but recognizing the man to whom he had been sent as one he had seen at the club, he had revealed himself. “You had not been told that this man was one in whom you could confide?” McFee persisted.

“No, but he—”

“Answer me.”

“No, I had not been told that.”

McFee turned to the company present and smiled thinly. “You will note,” he stated, “that the accused had no means whatsoever of knowing the exact status of the man he was to contact. He might have been a brother we suspected and wished to test; he might have been a government operative we had unmasked; the accused might have been misled by a chance resemblance. The accused had no way of knowing. Fortunately the other man was none of these things, but was a loyal brother of superior rank.”

He turned back to the accused. “Brother Hornby Willem, stand up.” The accused did so. He was unarmed.

“What is the first principle of our doctrines?”

“The Whole is greater than the parts.”

“Correct. You will understand, then, why I find it necessary to dispense with you.”

“But I didn’t—” He got no further. McFee burned him down where he stood.

Hamilton was part of the task group which took the body and spirited it to a deserted corridor, then disposed it so that it would appear to have become deceased in an ordinary private duel, a matter of only statistical interest to police monitors. McFee commanded the group himself and earned Hamilton’s reluctant admiration for the skill with which he handled the ticklish matter. Hamilton won McFee’s approval by the intelligent alacrity which he showed in carrying out his orders.

“You are getting ahead fast, Hamilton,” he said to him when they had returned to the clubroom. “You’ll be up with me soon. By the way, what did you think of the object lesson?”

“I don’t see what else you could have done,” Hamilton declared. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

“‘You can’t make an—’ Say, that’s a good one!” McFee laughed and dug him in the ribs. “Did you make it up, or hear it somewhere?”

Hamilton shrugged. He promised himself that he would cut off McFee’s ears for that dig in the ribs—after all this was over.

He reported the matter in detail, through devious channels, to Mordan, including his own part as an accessory before and after the fact. Getting his reports to Mordan occupied a good portion of his time and thoughts. Neither of his secret lives could be permitted to show above water. His daily conduct had to conform, superficially, with his public
persona
; it was necessary to continue his social life as usual, see his agent when his affairs required it, be seen in public in his habitual manner. It is not necessary to enumerate the varied means by which he found safe channels of communication to Mordan in the midst of this pattern; the methods of intrigue have varied little through the millennia. One example will suffice; Mordan had provided him with a tube address to which (he maintained) messages might be safely sent. He dare not assume that it was safe to stat a letter over his own telephone, but he could and did assume that a public phone picked at random could be used for dictation recording. The spool containing his report would then be consigned at once to the anonymity of the postal system.

Longcourt Phyllis took up much of his free time. He freely admitted that the woman intrigued him; he did not admit even to himself that she represented anything more than diversion to him. Nevertheless he was quite likely to be found waiting for her at the end of her working day. For she was a working woman—four hours a day, seven days a week, forty weeks a year, as a practical psycho-pediatrician in the Wallingford Infant Development Center.

Her occupation disturbed him a little. Why anyone should voluntarily associate day after day with a mob of yelling, sticky little brats was beyond him. She seemed normal otherwise—normal but stimulating.

He was too preoccupied to take much interest in the news of the world these days, which was why he did not follow the career of J. Darlington Smith, the “Man from the Past”, very closely. He was aware that Smith had been a news sensation for a few days, until crowded out by lunar field trials, and a report (erroneous) of intelligent life on Ganymede. The public soon filed him away with the duckbill platypus and the mummy of Rameses II—interesting relics of the past no doubt, but nothing to get excited about. It might have been different if his advent had been by means of the often discussed and theoretically impossible time-travel, but it was nothing of the sort—simply an odd case of suspended animation. A sight-sound record from the same period was just as interesting—if one were interested.

Hamilton had seen him once, for a few minutes, in a newscast. He spoke with a barbarous accent and was dressed in his ancient costume, baggy pantaloons described by the interlocutor as “plus fours” and a shapeless knitted garment which covered his chest and arms.