Now Wait for Last Year (16 page)

'Why would Molinari need this?'

Festenburg, scratching his nose, said, 'Several reasons. In case of an attempted assassination – one which failed – this could be exhibited, taking the heat off Gino while he hid out. Or – it could be for the benefit of our sanguine ally; Gino may have it in the back of his mind that some incredibly complex, baroque plan will be necessary, something involving his retirement from office under the pressure they're exerting on him.'

'You're sure this is a robant?' To Eric the thing in the casket looked real.

'I don't even think it is, let alone know.' Festenburg jerked his head and Eric saw that the two Secret Service men had entered the room; obviously it would not be possible to inspect the corpse.

'How long has it been here?'

'Only Gino knows and he won't say; he just smiles slyly. "You wait, Don," he says in his secretive fashion. "I got a big use for it."'

'And if it's not a robant—'

Then it's Gino Molinari lying there ripped apart by machine-gun slugs. A primitive, outmoded weapon but it certainly can kill its victim beyond the possibility of even org-trans repair; you can see that the brain case has been punctured – the brain is destroyed. If it is Gino, then where's it from? The future? There is a theory, having to do with your firm, TF&D. A subsidiary has developed a drug which permits its user to move freely in time. You know about that?' He studied Eric intently.

'No,' Eric admitted. The rumor was more or less new to him.

'Anyhow, here's this corpse,' Festenburg said. 'Lying here day after day, driving me nuts. Perhaps it's from an alternate present in which Gino has been assassinated, driven out of office the hard way by a splinter political group of Terrans backed by Lilistar. But there's a further ramification of this theory, one which really haunts me.' Festenburg's tone now was somber; he was no longer in a joking mood. 'That would imply something about the virile, strutting Gino Molinari who made that video tape; that's not a robant either and GRS Enterprises did not manufacture it because it too is an authentic Gino Molinari from an alternate present. One in which war didn't come about, one perhaps in which Terra didn't even get mixed up with Lilistar. Gino Molinari has gone into a more reassuring world and plucked his healthy counterpart over here to assist him. What do you think, doctor? Could that be it?'

Baffled, Eric said, 'If I knew anything about that drug—'

'I assumed you would. I'm disappointed; that was my reason for bringing you here. Anyhow – there's one other possibility... logically. Suggested by this assassinated corpse, here.' Festenburg hesitated. 'I hate to mention it because it's so bizarre that it makes my other conjectures look tainted by association.'

'Go head,' Eric said tightly.

'There is no Gino Molinari.'

Eric grunted. Good grief, he thought.

'All of them are robants. The healthy one who's on the video tape, the tired, sick one you've met, this dead one here in the casket – that somebody, possibly GRS Enterprises, engineered this to keep the 'Starmen from taking over our planet. So far they've made use of the ill one.' Festenburg gestured. 'And now they've hauled out the healthy one, made the first tape of him. And there may be more. Logically, why not? I've even tried to imagine what other alternatives might be like. You tell me. In addition to the three we know, what's left?'

Eric said, 'Obviously it leaves the possibility of building one with powers above the norm. Beyond the merely healthy.' He thought, then, of Molinari's recovery from one terminal illness after another. 'But maybe we have that already. Have you read the medical file?'

'Yes.' Festenburg nodded. 'And there's one very interesting .quality about it. None of the tests were conducted by any persons now on his medical staff. Teagarden didn't authorize any of them; the tests predate him, and as far as I know, Teagarden, like yourself, has never managed to subject Gino to even a cursory physical exam. Nor do I think he ever will. Nor do I think you ever will, doctor. Even if you're kept around here for years.'

'Your mind,' Eric said, 'is certainly hyperactive.'

'Am I a glandular case?'

'That has no bearing on the matter. But you certainly have spun a lot of ad hoc ideas out of your own head.'

'Based on facts,' Festenburg pointed out. 'I want to know what Gino is up to. I think he's one hell of a smart man. I think he can outthink the 'Starmen any day of the week, and if he had the economic resources and the population behind him that they have, he'd be in the driver's seat, no contest. As it is, he's in charge of one dinky planet and they have a system-wide empire of twelve planets and eight moons. It's frankly a wonder he's been able to accomplish all he has. You know, doctor, you're here to find out what's making Gino sick. I say that's not the issue. It's obvious what's making him sick: the whole darn situation. The real question is: What's keeping him alive? That's the real mystery. The miracle.'

'I guess you're right.' Grudgingly, he had to admit that despite his repellent qualities Festenburg was intelligent and original; he had managed to see the problem properly. No wonder Molinari had hired him.

'You've met the schoolgirl shrew?'

'Mary Reineke?' Eric nodded.

'Christ, here's this tragic, complicated mess, this sick man barely making it through the day with the weight of the world, of Terra itself, on his back, knowing he's losing the war, knowing the reegs are going to get us if by some miracle Lilistar doesn't – and in addition he's got Mary on his back. And the final blistering irony is that Mary, by being a shrew and simple-minded, selfish, demanding, and anything else you want to articulate as a basic character defect – she does have him on his feet; you've seen her get him out of bed and back into uniform, functioning again. Do you know anything about Zen, doctor? This is a Zen paradox, because from a logical standpoint Mary ought to have been the final straw that utterly destroyed Gino. It makes you rethink the entire role of adversity in human life. To tell you the truth, I detest her. She detests me, too, naturally. Our only working connection is through Gino; we both want him to make it.'

'Has she been shown the video tape of the healthy Molinari?'

Festenburg glanced up swiftly. 'A wise thought. Has Mary seen the tape? Yes, maybe or no – check one. Not to my knowledge. But if you suppose my alternate-present theory, and that it's not a robant on that tape, if it's a human being, that magnetic, fire-eating, striving demigod, and if Mary catches sight of it – you can assume the following: the other Molinaris will disappear. Because what you saw on that tape is exactly what Mary Reineke wants — insists — that Gino be.'

It was an extraordinary thought. Eric wondered if Gino was aware of this aspect of the situation; if so, it might explain why he had waited so long to employ this tactic.

'I wonder,' he said to Festenburg, 'how the sick Gino, whom we know, could be a robant, in view of Mary Reineke's existence.'

'How so? Why not?'

'To put it in delicate terms ... wouldn't Mary be somewhat peeved by being the mistress of a product of GRS Enterprises?'

'I'm getting tired, doctor,' Festenburg said. 'Let's write finis to this discussion – you go and fix up your swinkly new conapt which they've donated to you for your loyal services here at Cheyenne.' He moved toward the door; the two top-position Secret Service men stepped aside.

Eric said, 'I'll give you one opinion of my own. Having met Gino Molinari I refuse to believe GRS could construct something so human and—'

'But you haven't met the one they filmed,' Festenburg said quietly. 'It's interesting, doctor. By drawing on himself from the alternates contained in the mishmash of time Gino may have collected an ensemble capable of facing the ally. Three or four Gino Molinaris, forming a committee, would be rather formidable... don't you agree? Think of the combined ingenuity; think of the harebrained, clever, wild schemes they could hatch up working collectively.' As he opened the door he added, 'You've met the sick one and glimpsed the well one – weren't you impressed?'

'Yes,' Eric admitted.

'Would you now vote with those who want to see him sacked? And yet when you try to pin down what he's actually done that's so impressive – it isn't there. If we were winning the war, or forcing back Lilistar's investment of our planet... but we're not. So what is it specifically, doctor, that Gino's done that so impresses you? Tell me.' He waited.

'I – guess I can't say specifically. But—'

A White House employee, a uniformed robant, appeared and confronted Eric Sweetscent. 'Secretary Molinari has been looking for you, doctor. He's waiting to see you in his office; I'll lead the way.'

'Oops,' Festenburg said, chagrined and all at once quite nervous. 'Evidently I kept you too long.'

Without a further exchange Eric followed the robant up the corridor to the elevator. This was probably important; he had that intuition.

In his office Molinari sat in a wheel chair, a blanket over his lap, his face gray and sunken. 'Where were you?' he said, as Eric came into sight. 'Well, it doesn't matter; listen, doctor – 'Starmen have called a conference and I want you to be with me while I attend. I want you to be on hand constantly, just in case. I'm not feeling well and I wish this damn get-together could be avoided or at least postponed for a few weeks. But they insist.' He began to wheel himself from the office. 'Come on. It's going to start any time.'

'I met Don Festenburg.'

'Brilliant rat, isn't he? I put complete faith in our eventual success in him. What did he show you?'

It seemed unreasonable to tell Molinari that he had been viewing his corpse, especially in view of the fact that the man had just now said he did not feel well. So Eric merely said, 'He took me around the building.'

'Festenburg has the run of the place – because of the trust I put in him.' At a bend in the corridor a gang of stenographers, translators, State Department officials, and armed guards met Molinari; his wheel chair disappeared into the corporate body and did not reappear. Eric, however, could still hear him talking away, explaining what lay ahead. 'Freneksy is here. So this is going to be rough. I have an idea what they want, but we'll have to wait and see. Better not to anticipate; that way you do their work for them, you sort of turn on yourself and do yourself in.'

Freneksy, Eric thought with a sensation of dread. Lilistar's Prime Minister, here personally on Terra.

No wonder Molinari felt sick.

The members of Terra's delegation to the hastily called conference occupied seats on one side of the long oak table, and now, on the far side, the personages from Lilistar began to emerge from side corridors and find chairs. As a whole they did not look sinister; they looked, in fact, overworked and harried, caught up, as was Terra, by the strain of conducting the war. Obviously they had no time to spare. They were clearly mortal.

'Translation,' a 'Starman said in English, 'will be done by human agency not by machine, as any machine might make a permanent record, which is contrary to our desires here.'

Molinari grunted, nodded.

Now Freneksy appeared; the 'Star delegation and several members of the Terran rose in a show of respect; the 'Starmen clapped their hands as the bald, lean, oddly round-skulled man took a chair at the center of the delegation and began without preliminaries to open a briefcase of documents.

But his eyes. Eric noticed that, as Freneksy glanced briefly up at Molinari and smiled in greeting, Freneksy had what Eric thought of – and recognized in his practice as – paranoid eyes. Once he had learned to spot this, future identification generally came easy. This was not the glittering, restless stare of ordinary suspicion; this was a motionless gaze, a gathering of the totality of faculties within to comprise a single undisturbed psychomotor concentration. Freneksy did not decide to do this; in fact he was helpless, compelled to confront his compatriots and adversaries alike in this fashion, with this unending ensnaring fixity. It was an attentiveness which made empathic understanding impossible; the eyes did not reflect any inner reality; they gave back to the viewer exactly what he himself was. The eyes stopped communication dead; they were a barrier that could not be penetrated this side of the tomb.

Freneksy was not a bureaucrat and he did not – could not even if he tried – subordinate himself to his office. Freneksy remained a man – in the bad sense; he retained, in the midst of the busy activity of official conduct, the essence of the purely personal, as if to him everything was deliberate and intentional – a contest between people, not one between abstract or ideal issues.

What Minister Freneksy does, Eric realized, is to deprive all the others of the sanctity of their office. Of the security-producing reality of their titled position. Facing Freneksy, they became as they were born: isolated and individual, unsupported by the institutions which they were supposed to represent.

Take Molinari. Customarily, the Mole was the UN Secretary; he as an individual had – and properly so – dissolved into his function. But facing Minister Freneksy, the naked, hapless, lonely man reemerged – and was required to stand up to the Minister in this unhappy infinitude. The normal relative-ness of existence, lived with others in a fluctuating state of more or less adequate security, had vanished.

Poor Gino Molinari, Eric thought. Because facing Freneksy the Mole might as well not have become UN Secretary. And meanwhile Minister Freneksy became even more cold, more lifeless; he did not burn with the desire to destroy or dominate: he merely took away what his antagonist possessed – and left him nothing and nowhere, literally.

It was perfectly clear to Eric, at this point, why Molinari's procession of lethal illnesses had not proved fatal. The illnesses were not merely a symptom of the stress under which he lay; they were simultaneously a solution to that stress.