To Live Again and The Second Trip (23 page)

“Is it? Why do you carry that flask of carniphage, then?”

“Well—”

“Your suicidal tendencies are well-known. Very well, Charles: here’s your moment. Be of some use. Restore Jim Kravchenko to the world he loves, and remove yourself from the world you hate. While at the same time fulfilling your obligations to Roditis by speaking with St. John. Yes? It is perfect, you see.”

In a stunned silence Noyes contemplated the symmetry of Elena’s proposal. True enough, he had already contracted with himself to swallow the carniphage once he had done this last deed for Roditis. Elena seemed to recognize, somehow, that he had declared himself superfluous. In the long run, what difference did it make which exit he chose? To drink the carniphage would be a petty way of revenging himself on Kravchenko for many slights, but in short order Kravchenko’s persona would be in a new body, and what then of his revenge? This way, at least, he could graciously step aside and deliver up his body to Kravchenko, not for Kravchenko’s sake but for Elena’s.

But yet it was so damned humiliating—to have a woman suggest that he voluntarily let his own persona go dybbuk. Did she really think he was as worthless as that? Yes. Yes, she did. He scowled. Perhaps, he thought, it was time for him to junk his old-line ideals and try a little craftiness. He could always promise to do as Elena wished, and change his mind afterward. The important thing now was to get at St. John.

He said heavily, “You ask a stiff price.”

“I know. But there’s logic to it. Isn’t there?”

“Yes. Yes.” He paced about, clenching his fists. “All right,” he said. “Damn you, yes! Have your Kravchenko!”

“A deal, then?”

“A deal. Where is Martin St. John?”

“He was taken to Mark Kaufmann’s Manhattan apartment.”

Noyes gasped. “I should have known it. But I can’t see him
there,
Elena! I can’t walk right into Mark’s own house and—”

“Mark went to California yesterday on business,” said Elena. “He won’t be back until tomorrow. His daughter’s still in Europe. There’s no one in his apartment but St. John and the servants looking after him. I’ll take you there now.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

She shed her robes with no trace of modesty while he watched, and selected light sprayon garments. They went out. The hopter journey to Manhattan was swift. Noyes felt as though trapped in a dream, with every event converging on a predestined climax with incredible rapidity and ease.

At the door of Kaufmann’s apartment, Elena presented her thumb. The door did not open. She explained, “I don’t have instant-access privileges. The scanner reports that I’m here, and checks to see if there’s any order to bar me. In the absence of a specific order, I can come in.”

“Why all the precaution?”

“Mark sometimes has other women with him,” she said simply, as the door opened.

Noyes had never been in Mark Kaufmann’s home before. It was elegant and spacious, with wings of rooms stretching to the sides and straight ahead. A blank-faced, snub-headed robot appeared. Elena said, “We’re here to visit Mr. St. John.”

The robot ushered them into a bedroom of huge size, dark, decked with brocaded draperies rising from projectors at the baseboards along the floor. Tones of green, cerise, and violet played across the ceiling. Sitting propped up in bed was a weary-looking, blue-eyed young man with light yellow hair, sallow skin, a rounded nose, a weak chin. Noyes paused at the doorway.

He realized, numbed, that he was in the presence of Paul Kaufmann.

There was an electric moment of confrontation. The unprepossessing figure in the bed seemed to take on strength and intensity as though it were flowing to him from some inner reserve. The eyes brightened; the head rose; the chin jutted. Above the bed was mounted a solido portrait of Paul Kaufmann in late middle age, an imperious eagle of a man. Despite the total difference in physical appearance, the man in the bed suddenly had that same imperious look.

“Yes?” he said. “Who are you?” The voice was cracked and unfocused; Paul Kaufmann, only hours into his borrowed body, had not yet mastered it.

“My name is Charles Noyes. I believe you already know Elena Volterra.”

“Noyes? Noyes of Roditis Securities?”

“That’s right,” Noyes said. “You know me?”

“It was my business to know the Roditis organization, yes. Well, what are you doing here? How did you get in? Roditis men don’t belong here.”

“I brought him,” said Elena. “He asked to see you, and I owed him a favor.”

“Take him away,” Kaufmann/St. John snapped. He waved his hand in what was meant as a gesture of dismissal; but his coordination was still poor, and his arm flapped in an awkward overswing that brought it slapping against the headboard.

Elena looked stymied. She did not move.

“Away,” came the petulant command. “Out of here.
Out of here!
I must rest. I’ve been through a great deal. If you knew what it was like to die, to awaken, to enter a strange body…” His words trickled away into incoherence. The Kaufmann dybbuk seemed exhausted by the effort of speaking. The brilliance and intensity vanished from the eyes as though a switch had been thrown; he was resting, regaining his powers.

Elena said doubtfully, “If he doesn’t want to see you—”

“He’ll give me five minutes,” Noyes told her. “Look, wait outside for me, yes? I won’t be with him long.”

She nodded and left the room.

Noyes did not pretend to himself that Elena would fail to comprehend what he was about to do. But he doubted that she would expose him. He closed the door carefully behind her.

Kaufmann/St. John looked harsh and arrogant again. “I order you to leave!”

Approaching the bed, Noyes said quietly, “Just a few minutes. I want to talk. Do you find it very confusing, coming back to the world? You expected to have to fight through to dybbuk, didn’t you? Not to have a body handed to you like this. You know, there was quite a dispute over who was going to be your carnate. Roditis was very anxious to get you. But Santoliquido flimflammed him by finding this empty body. Don’t you agree it might have been more interesting to wake up in Roditis’ skull?”

As he spoke, Noyes steadily drew nearer the bed.

Paul Kaufmann glowered at him. The flaccid muscles of his new face strained with the effort to rise and hurl the intruder from his room. But he could not do it.

“If you don’t leave here at once—”

“Can’t we discuss things peacefully?” Noyes asked. His long fingers enfolded the container of the cyclophosphamide-8 capsule. “Here. Have a drink of water. Let me tell you about a deal Roditis has in mind. A great profit opportunity.”

He picked up a drinking glass in his left hand, filled it halfway with water, and began to bring the concealed capsule toward it. But it was no use. Those strange washed-out blue eyes moved twitchingly, taking in everything. Noyes realized he could not bring off the sleight-of-hand successfully. Kaufmann/St. John would guess what he was trying to do and would put up a fight, clumsily, perhaps, but effectively enough to spill the irreplaceable poison or to get the robot servitors into the room.

Noyes could not afford to be subtle.

He leaned toward the man in the bed. In a low voice he said, “You’ll be better off in a different carnate form.”

“What do you—”

As the lips parted, Noyes shot his hand forward, applied pressure to the lemon-colored box to open it, and sent the deadly capsule into his victim’s mouth. At the same time he pressed two forked fingers of his other hand against Kaufmann/St. John’s Adam’s apple. The man gulped. The capsule went down.

There was scathing fury in the blue eyes.

Kaufmann/St. John flailed impotently at Noyes with weak, badly coordinated arms. His hands wobbled as if about to fly from their wrists. But the face was a study in malevolence; all the full vitality of Paul Kaufmann was harnessed and hurled forth in a crescendo of frustrated rage and vindictive hostility. Clusters of muscles churned and spasmed beneath the surface of his cheeks. Exposed to that blast of hatred, Noyes recoiled, singed by the fire of this incredible old man.

But then, within the minute, the discorporation began.

Noyes watched only the beginning of it. Backing away from the bed, he saw the fire go out, saw the look of puzzlement and anguish appear. Strange internal events were commencing. The floodgates of the ductless glands had opened all at once, pouring forth an impossible mixture of secretions that mingled and reacted violently. The synchrony of heart and lungs was destroyed. The brain itself scorned the messages of its sensory perceptors. Instant by instant, the body of Martin St. John proceeded toward self-destruction.

Noyes fled.

Elena caught hold of him in the corridor outside. “Where are you going? What happened?”

“Get a doctor,” Noyes burst out. “He’s sick—some kind of stroke, I don’t know—”

“What did you do to him?”

“We were just talking. He got angry. And then—”

A wild, screeching groan came from the bedroom, a sound ripped from tortured and disintegrating vocal cords. Elena went in. She emerged only moments later, looking appalled.

“You gave him a poison!” she cried.

“No. I don’t know what happened. While I was with him, suddenly—”

“Don’t lie. Roditis sent you here to kill him. And you told me you just wanted to talk to him!”

“Elena—”

With savage fury she pulled at him, tugging him out of the apartment. She seemed almost berserk with fear and shock. But in the fresh air she calmed; she had had a moment to digest the event, and her control had returned.

“Now we go to my place,” she said. “You tricked me once tonight, Charles, but not again. Now you keep your bargain.”

Noyes was close to collapse. Drenched in sweat, trembling, terrified, he let her shepherd him across to her little apartment in New Jersey. He tumbled wearily onto a couch. Elena stood over him, eyes bright, features rigid with malevolence.

“Now, Mr. Discorporator,” she said, “you’ve done Roditis’ filthy work and made me an accomplice. You owe me something for that. Out of that body now!”

“No,” Noyes said feebly.

“No?
No!
We have a deal! Come, now. Shall I give you a drink? To make it easier? No trickery, Charles!”

Noyes felt Kravchenko hammering vehemently at the fabric of his mind, making a savage attempt to go dybbuk. Desperately Noyes resisted. I won’t do it, he told himself. This is one bargain I won’t keep. They can’t make me destroy myself this way. I’ve got to get out of here, back to Roditis to get blanked, fast.

—You miserable cheater, Charles. You filthy pig!

It was Kravchenko. Noyes was stunned to realize that he had spoken nothing aloud. Kravchenko had tapped right into his flow of interior monolog! That meant the persona had taken a deeper hold than ever before on him, and was now in direct contact with his mind.

“Let’s go, Charles,” Elena said. “Out!”

“No. No, please—”

She seized him by the shoulders and shook him in a wild fury. He tried to push her away, but she was too strong for him; and now he could feel Kravchenko ripping at his brain, uprooting neural connections like saplings, drilling his way through the centers of control. Already it seemed to Noyes that whole sectors of his brain were cut off, that he was being thrust aside, pushed into a single lobe, isolated, undermined—

Ejected.

“No!” he cried. “The deal’s off! I never meant to—”

“—but now I’ve changed his mind for him,” Kravchenko finished.

Elena rose in triumph. “Jim? Jim, that’s you, yes?”

“Yes. Me. God, it’s good to be free!” Kravchenko stretched lavishly. He took a few steps, stumbled, recovered. “The coordination takes a little while to come back, I guess. But to have a body again! To feel! To breathe!”

“He’s really gone?” she asked.

“I’ve rammed him down far out of sight. Nothing left of him but a few shreds, and I’ll hunt those down and pull them out. Free, Elena! After all those years penned up in that sniveling hulk of a man!” He reached for her. His fingers clutched at the taut cones of her breasts, missed aim, got her shoulders instead; with an effort he drew his arms downward.

Softly he said, “I’ve got some other reflexes to test, Elena!”

He found that coordination returned more swiftly than he expected, although not altogether at a satisfactory level. It would take some time, he decided. Time and practice.

As dawn came Elena said, “Now we head for Indiana.”

“What for?”

“So that Roditis can blank you, stupid! As far as the world knows, you’re Charles Noyes, right? And Charles Noyes has discorporated Martin St. John. The memory of that must be wiped from your mind. Come. Come.”

Kravchenko nodded. “You’re right. I’ll have to go to Roditis—bluff it through, let him blank me on the killing. Then I’ll quit him and we’ll go off together, eh?”

“Yes!”

“But why are
you
going to Indiana?” he asked.

Elena gave him a slow, simmering smile. “Do you think I’m going to be apart from you even for an hour, now that I have you again?”

“D
EAD?” MARK KAUFMANN ASKED
. “How could he possibly be dead? The St. John body was in good health. I saw it myself before I went to San Francisco.”

The medic shook his head. “There was a total breakdown of autoimmunity. A civil war inside him, so to speak. No hope whatever of saving him.”

—Murder, Paul’s persona said.

But it did not take any great shrewdness, to see that. Mark said, “Can such a thing happen naturally?”

“Most unlikely. You realize, Mr. Kaufmann, that it’s statistically possible for such a thing to occur, but—”

“Not very probable?”

“No. Not at all.”

“What was it, then? Carniphage?”

“These are not the effects of a carniphage,” said the medic. “However, the poisoner today has an extremely wide choice of drugs. I’ve been running a data check, comparing effects with possible causes, and this is what I’ve come up with.”

He handed Kaufmann a data sheet. It was headed:

CYCLOPHOSPHAMIDES-8

Mark scanned it hastily. “Is this drug easily available?”