The Perfect Host (35 page)

Bentow looked at his elaborate wrist watch. He knew all this, but it didn’t hurt to check again while he waited.

“Well, first of all he sets up a yell,” Ford continued. “There are screechers all around the plant; if you’ve ever heard one once you’ll never forget it. Then he automatically shuts the door to this station and starts blowers to change the air.”

“Shuts the door? But suppose someone is in here?”

“There’s a push-button outside the door, but the phone.”

“Oh yes,” said Bentow. “I noticed it. It has a light over it.”

“That’s right. Well, when I come in here I push it. The light lights, and if anything should happen in here the door will stay open until I can get out and push the button. If I should be hurt, someone else will be along but quick, fish me out, and close the door. But if no one is here, the door will close as soon as the alarm starts.”

“Ah,” said Bentow. “And suppose you forget to push the button when you first come in?”

“You
don’t
forget,” said Ford grimly.

The overhead horn sounded a series of five beeps again.

“My report,” said Ford.

“Don’t mention that I’m here,” said Bentow swiftly. “This is a little irregular, you know.”

“More irregular for me than for you,” said Ford. “I’m working. Don’t worry, I won’t.” He went out.

Bentow shifted the guns in his side pockets tensely, and leaned back against the bulkhead. “I’m working,” he muttered under his breath.

Why should Auckland Ford work? he wondered. The man was
brilliant; had been ever since his youth, when, as the winner of a talent search, he had done that phenomenal job on heat-transfer devices. A lot of that work was built into this very plant—the slow viscous flow of Fordium, as it was called, from the pile jackets to the mercury boilers was Ford’s development. The heavy stuff was incredibly stable, and absorbed little radiation from the hellish fury of the piles. It transferred plenty of heat and a negligible amount of radiation to the boilers.

Ford was a wealthy man—one of the wealthiest in this part of the world. But what did he do with his money? Gave it away, a lot of it. The rest moldered in banks, awaiting yet another of his fantastically generous impulses. The charity called Providence had benefited, no one knew how much, from Ford’s gifts.

Providence, with its subsidies of pure science, or applied science in any field which furthered the humanities—such as a lie-detector which was now accepted by the courts; nine specialized cancer cures, a bombardment technique which preserved food in cellophane jackets without refrigeration, and so on and on.

And now, according to the word that Ford’s pretty but slightly stupid daughter had dropped, Ford was going to will everything he owned to Providence, as soon as Julius, his attorney, returned from the coast, which would be this week. And what did he, Bentow, want with that empty-headed doll without her enormous inheritance?

Bentow glanced around the bare room. There were the two huge mercury trunks. There was Ikey, the detector, who would start to yell when one part of mercury vapor in two billion of air showed itself. He would like very much to impair Ikey’s efficiency, but did not dare. Ikey would be one of the first things inspected after the “accident.”

Aside from the pressure indicators, there was very little else in the room, except a spanner or two and a small first-aid kit. Bentow nodded in satisfaction.

Ford came in, his long gray eyes going immediately to the gauges. Apparently satisfied, he turned to Bentow.

“Anything else you wanted to know?” he asked.

“Only one thing I wanted to be sure of. If there’s a leak and the doors close, how long do they stay closed?”

“Twelve hours, as a matter of safety. The boiler lines are diverted as soon as three others can be slowed down and this boiler’s output diverted to them.”

“During that time, you say the blowers will be replacing the air in here,” Bentow said. “Does the alarm keep on sounding until the concentration is down below one part in two billion?”

“Gosh, no!” grinned Ford. “We’d be out of our minds if it did. No—as soon as the door closes, the alarm is shut off, except for light signals which indicate which station has the trouble. Unless, of course, the concentration continues to rise. Then Ikey sounds off again.”

“I see,” said Bentow, who had known it before, but was glad of the final check. “One more thing—and this is just personal curiosity; don’t answer me unless you want to. But why do you work here?”

Ford smiled, and his cool gaze pinioned Bentow. “I wouldn’t really expect you to understand,” he said quietly. “It’s just that I found out very early that there is nothing that can destroy a human being but excess. Alcohol won’t hurt you, drunkenness will. Work won’t hurt you, exhaustion will. And so on through everything a man eats, thinks, drinks, and breathes.

“And there is such a thing as too much success and too much money,” he went on. “You don’t believe that, I know. I’ve worked all my life. I don’t live a Spartan existence—that’s an extreme—but I haven’t let myself get soft. My company pension comes due soon, and it’ll be enough. I’m getting rid of everything else. I don’t need it. I have my home and my lab and a lot of things to interest me. That’s all I want. But there are thousands of other people who want and need my surplus money; they can have it. It’ll do them good and it could only harm me—like any excess.”

“It really is true, then, that you’re turning over everything you have to Providence?” Bentow questioned.

“That’s right. Did Dorcas tell you?”

“Yes. But why Providence?”

Ford laughed. “I don’t know why I tell you this. No one else knows. Providence is mine. I founded it.”

Bentow’s eyes popped, and Ford laughed again.

“But that must have taken millions!” Bentow gasped.

“I just had some good ideas.” Ford’s eyes speared into Bentow. “I know what you’re thinking. That money meant so much rich living, so much yachting, so much social climbing—not for me, Bentow. I’m a working man.”

Bentow’s eyes glowed strangely. “I think you’re crazy.”

Ford shrugged. “You would. You have never learned the meaning of ‘enough.’ ”

“Does Dorcas feel the same way you do?”

“She doesn’t feel,” said Auckland Ford positively. “Easy come, easy go—she’s always been a happy, or slap-happy, child. Maybe some day she’ll get a jolt big enough to give her some sense. I don’t believe in jolting people who are close to me, personally. It’s useless to talk sense to your intimates. They’ll only listen to strangers.” He shrugged. “Dorcas is
good
,” he said. “Sooner or later, that will show up.”

Bentow took the gun from his left jacket pocket. A corner of his mind appreciated the fact that his jacket now fell to its correct cut.

Ford said, in surprise, “That’s mine!”

“Dorcas took me on an extensive tour of your laboratory,” said Bentow. “These long evenings at home, when you’re on the night shift—”

“That gun will never be good for anything,” said Ford. “Not as a weapon, anyway. Industrially it might have some use—if anyone wants a tool that will penetrate fifty inches of molyb steel with a hole a thousandth of an inch in diameter.”

“What about this one?” Bentow drew the other, and the sartorial corner of his mind heaved a satisfied sigh.

“I don’t deal in weapons,” said Ford. “Can’t say I’m crazy about the idea of your just picking these up.”

“No one knows I’ve got them—not even Dorcas,” said Bentow. “This one,” he added persistently. “A paralysis device, isn’t it?”

“That’s what it turned out to be,” said Ford glumly. I was fooling
with subsonics for anaesthetic purposes. I suppose you know the police now carry that one as standard equipment. Causes a temporary derangement of the motor centers. What the deuce are you doing with it?”

Bentow smiled. “Only this,” he said, and pressed the thumb-stud.

Ford stood stiffly, almost as he always stood. But now his mouth opened slowly, his tongue protruded and began to oscillate violently. His long, narrow eyes widened until they were almost perfectly round. His hands curled, tensed, straightened, stiffened. He overbalanced slowly, like a tall tree just sawed through, fell to lean stiffly a moment against the bulkhead, and then jackknifed to the floor.

“I know you can hear me,” said Bentow smugly, putting away the paralysis gun. “You just can’t move. Don’t worry, that will only last two or three minutes. I wish I could be here to see what the great Brain will do then. The place will be full of mercury vapor, and that so carefully designed hermetically sealed door will be closed. Pound against it all you wish—no one will hear you. The phone’s outside, the door controls are outside, and no one will know you’re here.”

He paused, cocking his shining head to one side as if listening.

“Oh,” he said, pretending the other had spoken. “You want to know why? Well, Mr. Brilliant Scientist, it seems that you are about to leave all of your considerable fortune to a thing called Providence, with the bland idea that I shall be able to support your dear daughter on my wages in the manner to which she has become accustomed. My dear Mr. Ford, I intend to do much better than that—with the money which she will now inherit!”

He still held the other gun. He walked over the trunk duct marked “HP” for “High Pressure” and fired twice. There was no sound—simply a line of blue light so fine it was almost invisible.

“Those,” he said, putting the gun in his pocket, “will be attributed to pressure leakage. Because you were afraid that this thing would be used as a weapon, you have kept its performance characteristics secret, and I assure you that all of your records will be destroyed before I go on my honeymoon.

“I must go now.” An ugly smirk was on his face. “I am sincerely sorry that I cannot stay to see what you do when you come out of
the paralysis. I would, but I can’t think of jeopardizing the health of your future, if post-mortem, son-in-law.”

He waved his hand jauntily and stepped into the generator room. He called back, “What amuses me most in this dramatic situation is that you are being killed by two of your own inventions, in a plant which is possible because of a third. A happy suicide to you!”

He stood tensely by the doorway. Turning, he pushed the button there. The light went out. Then he sprinted to the corner and down the generator room to the administrative corridor.

There he waited until there came a harrowing mechanical scream which went on and on and on. A red light flared over the door of the station he had just left, and its ponderous door slid shut with a clang. Through the clamor of the screecher he could hear the pound of running feet. He turned and sprinted up the corridor to his office. The light still burned there.

He opened the closet and took out his overcoat. With one arm into it, he went to the door which gave on to the general offices and opened it a crack. There were voices outside.

“A leak,” someone said out there. It was old Zeitz, the night watchman. “Stay right here, Sam. There was a blowoff out Hancord oncet where they phonied up an alarm to get the guards outen the offices, so’s they could steal secret files. You stay right here till I git back, and’ grab anyone thet come in, no matter who.”

“I got you,” said a bass voice.

Peering around the door, Bentow could see the shadowy hulk of the younger guard, and knew immediately that his, Bentow’s, kind of brains would be useless against that particular one hundred and ninety pounds.

Bentow shucked out of his coat and put it away. He was not going to go out into the generator room, with guards and techs converging on Condenser Station No. 48, and he couldn’t leave while that big guard was out there. His office was soundproof; he would simply pretend to be working late until all of the excitement died away, or express profound regret about the whole thing if someone came in accidentally.

Not that anyone would. In a technological emergency, no one would dream of calling the public relations office, even during office hours.

He settled back into his swivel chair, and smiled.

A half an hour later he screamed when Auckland Ford tottered into his office.

Ford, with his long face flushed and his once-clear eyes shot with blood, smiled a ghastly smile. Bentow screamed again, tried to huddle away, upset his swivel chair and cowered in a sobbing heap in the corner.

Men poured in, to catch Ford as he fell, to snatch the sodden Bentow to his feet and hold him.

From a deep easy-chair, with solicitous technicians around him, Ford glared redly at Bentow. “Well, Bentow, did you hear it?” he said.

“Hear what?” quavered Bentow.

Jackson, the swarthy plant super, said, “He means the screecher, when it gave his code call.”

“This office is soundproof,” said Bentow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ford’s breath took on a wheeze. Jackson said, “I’ll tell you, Bentow. Ford doesn’t want to go to the hospital until he knows you’ve been told what happened. Can’t say I blame him.” His lips curled. He went on, “He found himself locked in that cell with the vapor concentration mounting. He’d been knocked down by a paralyzer but—” awe entered his voice—“that didn’t keep his brain from working. When he could move again he found himself in a real spot.”

“I’d have written your name on the floor,” rasped Ford at Bentow, “but I didn’t have anything to write with. Not even a spanner would make an impression on the stuff.”

“You rest easy,” said a guard, with his hand on Ford’s shoulder.

“Yeah, I’ll tell it,” said Jackson. He turned back to the sweating Bentow. “He tried to write on the floor, first of all, and lost minutes at it. When I
think
of it!” he exploded. “All of us milling around outside, and the door closed, and none of us dreaming that there might be anyone inside! The screecher giving the alarm, and then dying
out and all of us nodding at each other and saying, ‘Well, we’ll get to her at noon tomorrow.’ And all the while he—”

He thumbed over his shoulder at Ford, who grinned weakly.

“The medicine chest,” Ford whispered. “Only thing there was in the place.” He laughed horribly. “I took a—” He began to cough.