Farmer, Philip José - Traitor to the Living (12 page)

While drinking his coffee, he turned on the morning news. The caster had nothing to add to yesterday's report but promised that the evening news would have an hour's special on the implications.

Carfax ate his breakfast in the motel restaurant and went back to his room to make his calls. At nine he was at the Big Sur Center Power and Light Company.

Mr. Weissman, the accounting office manager, remembered that Rufton Carfax's bills had been extraordinarily high. Yes, the professor had had equipment installed to handle his massive power requirements. For the six months preceding his death, he had used eight to nine dk-watt-hours per day. The consumptions had been made after midnight, due to the company's requests.

It would have strained it to supply them during the day. Carfax thanked Mr. Weissman and left.

His next stops were at the offices of the two trucking companies which might have delivered special equipment to his uncle. Both, as it turned out, had done so.

Their records showed that they had brought in a large console and a number of modules. The console had come from an electrical supply house in Los Angeles, and the modules and some parts had been shipped out by two electronic firms in Oakland. Carfax thanked them and visited the three electrical-parts stores. Two had records of vacuum tubes and other components purchased by the professor. None of the tubes, however, seemed large enough to handle the power that his uncle required.

Carfax wondered if his uncle had picked these up himself in San Francisco or Los Angeles. Or perhaps he had gotten them from Western's store. He made a long-distance call to the store. Its manager required that he give identification, which he did, and he gave the name of a friend of his, the first one he could pick out of his mind.

The manager said he would look up the records. Would Mr. Comas mind holding the line or would he rather call back? Carfax said he'd wait. Five minutes later, just as Carfax's patience was about down to its last thread, the manager spoke.

"Mr. Comas?"

"Still here, though barely."

"There is no record of any sale to Rufton Carfax."

"You're sure?"

The manager's voice chilled. "Of course. I'm aware that Professor Carfax was Mr. Western's uncle, and I would have remembered any purchase by him."

Carfax thanked him and hung up the phone. The manager might or might not be telling the truth. Whatever the case, Carfax could not find out. He had no intention of breaking into the store and searching through the records. He wasn't a TV private eye, reckless of consequences if caught. Besides, if Western wanted to cover his tracks, he would have no trouble doing so.

His hopes of quickly identifying all the parts and modules of his uncle's machine had not been strong.

Now they died. Nevertheless, he would gather all he could and see what he had.

He spent the rest of the day talking to Rufton Carfax's closest colleagues and his neighbors. None of them had heard anything about the experiments or the machine itself. All agreed that he was an amiable man; his colleagues said that he was a good teacher and researcher, a combination not common in universities.

The following day, Gordon took a hovercraft to Oakland, where he got a list of the parts ordered by his uncle and blueprints of the cabinet. He took the 101 INTO express to Los Angeles and got a list of parts from the store there. Then he phoned Mrs. Webster.

Her secretary said that she was in conference. But she had a phone number for him.

Carfax wrote it down and said, "Is Mrs. Webster

O.K.? I mean, has she recovered her eyesight?"

The secretary looked surprised. "I didn't know that there was anything wrong with her eyes."

Mrs. Webster had made a quick recovery. Her blindness was due solely to hysteria, which was what he had supposed.

"Give her my regards," he said.

He left his credit card in the slot and spoke the number which the secretary had given him. Patricia's face appeared on the screen.

"You're back so soon!"

"Speedy Carfax," he said. "But it didn't take you long to find an apartment."

"It's a motel. I still haven't found a place. We may have to go to Santa Susana. A new complex is going up there."

"Too far off," he said. "O.K. where are you?"

She gave him a Burbank address and then said, "Didn't you speak to Mrs. Webster?"

"No. Why?"

"Her secretary just called me. She said that Mrs. Webster wanted to speak to you right away."

"I must have just missed her," he said. "I'll call her back and then I'll come right out."

Mrs. Webster looked healthy but excited. "Gordon, I have some startling news for you! It may be just what you're looking for!"

"I need a break," he said. "What is it?"

"I think you'd better come out here. I don't want to tell you over the phone."

He said he'd be there quickly if he could find a taxi and if not he'd take the MT. He phoned Patricia and told her there had been a change of plans. Two minutes later, he had a cab, and fifteen minutes later, he was ushered into Mrs. Webster's office. He sat down before her desk and said, "Judging from your big round eyes, you must have something big."

She lit a Kenyan, puffed several times and said, "I was just talking to a client, a Robert Minion. Ever heard of him?"

Carfax shook his head.

"Well, he's a strange young man, a millionaire and very eccentric, very shy. He's been tremendously interested in the occult since he was a boy, and when his mother died, he came to me.

"You raise your eyebrows? You're wondering if we had any success in evoking her? Three times, though Mrs. Mifflon wasn't able to shape the plasm into a satisfactory form and the few words she could transmit were of a rather silly nature. But then she was a silly, selfish woman in life.

"You smile? You shouldn't. You know I'm not a charlatan. Anyway, when Western announced he had a scientific means for communicating with the dead, Robert went to him. But he was terribly embarrassed, poor boy, because he thought I might think he was betraying me. He came to me first and explained, or tried to explain, why he was going to Western. I told him to go ahead; I didn't mind. But I did warn him to be careful.

Science has its charlatans, too.

"He apparently had several successful sessions with MEDIUM. Successful, I mean, in that he had full communication with his mother. But they did not, of course, reassure him. His mother was desperately unhappy, and he could do nothing for her.

"Then he joined the Pancosmic Church of the Embu-Christ. He found their premise very comforting. You know, that the embu is only a sort of purgatory."

Carfax nodded and said, "Yes, I know. After the dead have undergone 'purification' in their electronic state, they proceed to the next world, where they are restored to their physical bodies. And their bodies and minds are improvements over the ones they had while in this world, and everybody is happy forever after.

There's not the slightest bit of evidence for that premise, but when did people ever let lack of data interfere with their religious theories?"

"Or, if there is data, when did the nonreligious ever consider it?" Mrs. Webster said. "Let's not argue about that. It's irrelevant to what I have to tell you. Robert did not stop using MEDIUM after he joined the church. For one thing, he wanted to convert his mother to the church's faith; he thought she'd feel better if she believed that she was only in a purgatory. And then, several days before Western's house was blown up, Western approached Mifflon with a strange offer."

She paused, drew more smoke in, expelled it, and said, "He wanted to sell Robert insurance."

"Insurance?" Carfax said. "You mean life insurance?"

"Exactly that, though not the kind that's being peddled by anybody else. It is, in a way, the only genuine life insurance offered."

"You don't mean Western'!! guarantee that Mifflon won't die?"

"In a way. Western calls it repossession insurance."

Carfax said nothing. He felt even more stunned than when he had heard the announcement the previous evening that MEDIUM was a power source.

"To be brief. Western said that he could bring Robert back from the dead. He will do this by providing a body for Robert which he can take over. Or possess, to use a time-honored term. The premiums are two hundred thousand dollars a year. These are to be paid while the client is living. The client will name one of Western's agents as his heir, and when the client is in his new body, half of the estate will be returned to him through legal means. The premiums thereafter will be ten percent of the client's yearly income."

"But ... the body to be possessed?" Carfax said.

"How is Western going to arrange that?"

"Western refused to say. He just told Robert not to worry about the details. And he swore Robert to secrecy. He said that if Robert let it out, he would have no way of proving it and would probably end up in an insane asylum. Or in a worse state, he said. I suppose he meant he'd be dead with no chance at a live body.

"Oh, yes, the payments aren't made under the table.

They are receipted as payment for sessions with MEDIUM. That way, the IRS can't make any trouble."

After a long silence, Carfax said, "Surely Western must have offered some proof that he could bring about this repossession? Most millionaires are shrewd; they want assurance that they're not giving their money away. Unless Mifflon is the only client, of course. He doesn't sound as if he's very stable."

"He's not, if having a conscience makes one unstable. And he's not the only client. Western said he'd introduce him to a man who had come back from the dead."

"How many are there walking among us?"

"I don't know. Robert told him he'd think about it, but he wouldn't say a word to anybody. He worried about it; he wants to live forever, which is practically what Western offers, but he couldn't stand the idea of stealing another man's body. So, after days of wrestling with himself, he came to me. He said that he hated himself because he was breaking his promise to Western. But he just had to tell me. The greater evil cancelled the lesser."

"And what did you tell him?"

"To put off a final answer until I thought of what to do. I promised him to have an answer in a few days." Carfax thought that Mifflon had adopted Mrs. Webster as his mother, but he saw no reason to comment.

"If this is true," he said slowly, "then Western is as rotten as Patricia says he is. And we have our first real break. The only question is, what do we do about it?"

"I don't know," she said. "What does this do to your theory that the sembs are alien entities?"

"It shatters it to hell. Unless . .. unless those sembs are not humans but are taking over humans. After all, they can behave like humans, so why couldn't they fool Mifflon? How would he know whether or not he was talking to a human who'd come back or a semb that'd come over?"

He remembered, with a shudder, how the semb that was supposed to be his uncle had seemed to expand, to leave the machine, to swoop at him. Had it been trying to invade and conquer him?

He sat up straighter and said, "That's it!"

"What?" Mrs. Webster said.

"That's why uncle Rufton lied! He had to, otherwise Western wouldn't let him come back! He had to agree to go along with his own murderer! That is, if it really was my uncle."

"In either case, what can you do?"

"I don't know, but I'll think of something. I think the first thing to do is to get Mifflon to require that Western let him talk to this repossessor or whatever you want to call him. He can report back to us, and we can go from there. Do you think he could carry it off?"

"I'll ask him," she said, and she reached for the viewphone button.

Mrs. Webster turned the phone off.

"He's either not there or he's told his secretary to say he's not in. He told me he was going straight home, and I can't imagine why he wouldn't speak to me."

"If he has an uneasy conscience, he may be sorry he told you about Western's offer," Carfax said. "I hope he wasn't foolish enough to confess to Western that he'd broken his promise."

"Oh, no, he wouldn't do that!" Mrs. Webster said.

"Besides, he's hardly had time!"

"One phone call would do it."

He stood up. "I have an uneasy feeling about this. I think I'll go to Minion's house. What's the address?"

The estate was in North Pacific Palisades, half a mile from the ocean. Once it had been embedded in a score or so of great houses surrounded by acres of broad lawns, woods, and sculptured gardens. Now it was the lone survivor. The others had been sold to apartment-building developers who had erected a dozen high-rises and were building a dozen more. Dust thrown up by bulldozers was thick in the air, coating with gray the grass, trees, and high stone walls surrounding the Mifflon grounds. The mansion itself, on the highest part of the grounds, had been white but was now khaki.

Carfax spoke into the box outside the iron grille gate. The voice that came from it was thick with Bantu pronunciation. It was also heavy with skepticism.

"I have no record of an appointment with a Mr, Carfax, sir."

"He's forgotten again," Carfax said.

There was a pause as the servant considered the well-known absent-mindedness of his employer. At least, according to Mrs. Webster it was well-known.

"Let me speak to Mr. Mifflon," Carfax said. "He'll remember then."

"Sorry, sir, he's not here."

"He told me he would be," Carfax said. "Let me speak to the secretary, then."

"She isn't here either, sir."

"Where can I call them?"

"Sorry, sir, that is confidential."

"He's going to lose a lot of money if I can't talk to him!" Carfax shouted.

"Sorry, sir. I'm forbidden to give out such information."

"Four million dollars will go down the drain!"

There was a long pause, then the servant said, with awe congealing his voice, "Four million dollars, sir?" "Probably more!"

"But I'd lose my position, sir."

"Some rules are made to be broken," Carfax said. "If the situation demands."