The Immortals (30 page)

“I'm all right,” she said.

Harry scratched his left elbow where the transfusion needle had been inserted. “I don't understand—you and Pearce—you brought me back from that—but—”

“Don't try to understand,” she said. “Just accept it.”

“It's impossible,” he muttered. “What are you?”

“The governor's daughter.”

“What else?”

“A Cartwright,” she said bitterly.

His mind recoiled. One of the Immortals! He was not surprised that her blood had counteracted the poison. Cartwright blood was specific against any foreign substance. He thought of something. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” she said. She looked down at her slender figure. “We mature late, we Cartwrights. That's why Weaver sent me to the Medical Center—to see if I was fertile. A fertile Cartwright can waste no breeding time.”

There was no doubt: She hated her father. She called him Weaver. “He will have you bred,” Harry repeated stupidly.

“He will try to do it himself,” she said without emotion. “He is not very fertile; that is why there are only three of us—my grandmother, my mother, and me. Then, too, we have some control over conception—particularly after maturity. We don't want his children, even though they might make him less dependent on us. I'm afraid”—her voice broke—“I'm afraid I'm not mature enough to prevent conception.”

“Why didn't you tell me before?” Harry demanded.

“And have you treat me like a Cartwright?” Her eyes glowed with anger. “A Cartwright isn't a person, you know. A Cartwright is a walking blood bank, a living fountain of youth, something to be possessed, used, guarded, but never really allowed to live. Besides”—her head dropped—“you don't believe me. About Weaver.”

“But he's the governor!” Harry exclaimed. He saw her face and turned away. How could he explain? You had a job and you had a duty. You couldn't go back on those. And then there were the bracelets. Only the governor had the key. They couldn't go on for long linked together like that. They would be separated again, by chance or by force, and he would die.

He got to his feet. The forest reeled for a moment, and then settled back. “I owe you thanks again,” he said to Pearce.

“You fought hard to preserve your beliefs,” Pearce whispered, “but there was a core of sanity that fought with me, that said it was better to be a whole man with crippled beliefs than a crippled man with whole beliefs.”

Harry stared soberly at the old man. He was either a real healer who could not explain how he worked his miracles, or the world was a far crazier place than Harry had ever imagined. “If we start moving now,” he said, “we should be in sight of the mansion by noon.”

As he passed the dwarf, he looked down, stopped, and looked back at Marna and Pearce. Then he stooped, picked up the misshapen little body, and walked toward the road.

The helicopter was beside the turnpike. “It would be only a few minutes if we flew,” he muttered.

Close behind him Marna said, “We aren't expected. We would be shot down before we got within five miles.”

Harry strapped the dwarf into the helicopter seat. The ghoul stared at him out of hate-filled eyes. Harry started the motor, pressed the button on the autopilot marked
Return,
and stepped back. The helicopter lifted, straightened, and headed southeast.

Christopher and Pearce were waiting on the pavement when Harry turned. Christopher grinned suddenly and held out a rabbit leg. “Here's breakfast.”

They marched down the turnpike toward Lawrence.

*  *  *

The governor's mansion was built on the top of an L-shaped hill that stood tall between two river valleys. Once it had been the site of a great university, but taxes for supporting such institutions had been diverted into more vital channels. Private contributions had dwindled as the demands of medical research and medical care had intensified. Soon there was no interest in educational fripperies, and the university died.

The governor had built his mansion there some seventy-five years ago when Topeka became unbearable. Long before that it had become a lifetime office—and the governor would live forever.

The state of Kansas was a barony—a description that would have meant nothing to Harry, whose knowledge of history was limited to the history of medicine. The governor was a baron, and the mansion was his keep. His vassals were
the suburban squires; they were paid with immortality or its promise. Once one of them had received an injection, he had two choices: remain loyal to the governor and live forever, barring accidental death, or die within thirty days.

The governor had not received a shipment for nearly four weeks. The squires were getting desperate.

The mansion was a fortress. Its outer walls were five-foot-thick prestressed concrete faced with five-inch armor plate. A moat surrounded the walls; it was stocked with piranha. An inner wall rose above the outside one. The paved, unencumbered area between the two could be flooded with napalm. Inside the wall were concealed guided-missile nests.

The mansion rose, ziggurat fashion, in terraced steps. On each rooftop was a hydroponic farm. At the summit of the buildings was a glass penthouse; the noon sun turned it into silver. On a mast towering above, a radar dish rotated.

Like an iceberg, most of the mansion was beneath the surface. It went down through limestone and granite a mile deep. The building was almost a living creature; automatic mechanisms controlled it, brought in air, heated and cooled it, fed it, watered it, watched for enemies and killed them if they got too close. . . .

It could be controlled by a single hand. At the moment it was.

The mansion had no entrance. Harry stood in front of the walls and waved his jacket. “Ahoy, the mansion! A message for the governor from the Medical Center. Ahoy, the mansion!”

“Down!” Christopher shouted.

An angry bee buzzed past Harry's ear and then a whole flight of them. Harry fell to the ground and rolled. In a little while the bees stopped.

“Are you hurt?” Marna asked quickly.

Harry lifted his face out of the dust. “Poor shots,” he said grimly. “Where did they come from?”

“One of the villas,” Christopher said, pointing at the scattered dwellings at the foot of the hill.

“The bounty wouldn't even keep them in ammunition,” Harry said.

In a giant, godlike voice the mansion spoke: “Who comes with a message for me?”

From his prone position, Harry shouted, “Doctor Harry Elliott. I have with me the governor's daughter, Marna, and a leech. We're under fire from one of the villas.”

The mansion was silent. Slowly then a section of the inside wall swung open. Something flashed into the sunlight, spurting flame from its tail. It darted downward. A moment later a villa lifted into the air and fell back, a mass of rubble.

Over the outer wall came a crane arm. From it dangled a large metal car. When it reached the ground a door opened.

“Come into my presence,” the mansion said.

The car was dusty. So was the penthouse where they were deposited. The vast swimming pool was dry; the cabanas were rotten; the flowers and bushes and palm trees were dead.

In the mirror-surfaced central column, a door gaped at them like a dark mouth. “Enter,” said the door.

The elevator descended deep into the ground. Harry's stomach surged uneasily; he thought the car would never stop, but eventually the doors opened. Beyond was a spacious living room, decorated in shades of brown. One entire wall was a vision screen.

Marna ran out of the car. “Mother!” she shouted. “Grandmother!” She raced through the apartment. Harry followed her more slowly.

Six bedrooms opened off a long hall. At the end of the hall was a nursery. On the other side of the living room were a dining room and a kitchen. Every room had a wall-wide vision screen. Every room was empty.

“Mother?” Marna said again.

The dining-room screen flickered. Across the huge screen flowed the giant image of a creature who lolled on a pneumatic cushion. It was a thing incredibly fat, a sea of flesh rippling and surging. Although it was naked, its sex was a mystery. The breasts were great pillows of fat, but there was a sprinkling of hair between them. Its face, moon though it was, was small on the fantastic body; in the face, eyes were stuck like raisins.

It drew sustenance out of a tube; then, as it saw them, it pushed the tube away with one balloonlike hand. It giggled; the giggle was godlike.

“Hello, Marna,” it said in the mansion's voice. “Looking for somebody? Your mother and your grandmother thwarted me, you know. Sterile creatures! I connected them directly to the blood bank; now there will be no delay about blood—”

“You'll kill them!” Marna gasped.

“Cartwrights? Silly girl! Besides, this is our bridal night, and we would not want them around, would we, Marna?”

Marna shrank back into the living room, but the creature looked at her from that screen, too. It turned its raisin eyes toward Harry. “You are the doctor with the message. Tell me.”

Harry frowned. “You—are Governor Weaver?”

“In the flesh, boy.” The creature chuckled. The chuckle sent waves of fat surging across its body and back again.

Harry took a deep breath. “The shipment was hijacked. It will be a week before another shipment is ready.”

Weaver frowned and reached a stubby finger toward something beyond the camera's range. “There!” He looked back at Harry and smiled the smile of an idiot. “I just blew up Dean Mock's office. He was inside it at the time. It's justice, though. He's been sneaking shots of elixir for twenty years.”

“Elixir? But—!” The information about Mock was too unreal to be meaningful; Harry didn't believe it. It was the mention of the elixir that shocked him.

Weaver's mouth made an O of sympathy. “I've disillusioned you. They tell you the elixir has not been synthesized. It was. Some one hundred years ago by a doctor named Russell Pearce. You were planning on synthesizing it, perhaps, and thereby winning yourself immortality as a reward. No—I'm not telepathic. Fifty out of every one hundred doctors dream that dream. I'll tell you, Doctor—I
am the electorate. I decide who shall be immortal, and it pleases me to be arbitrary. Gods are always arbitrary. That is what makes them gods. I could give you immortality. I will; I will. Serve me well, Doctor, and when you begin to age, I will make you young again. I could make you dean of the Medical Center. Would you like that?”

Weaver frowned again. “But no—you would sneak elixir, like Mock, and you would not send me the shipment when I need it for my squires.” He scratched between his breasts. “What will I do?” he wailed. “The loyal ones are dying off. I can't give them their shots, and their children are ambushing their parents. Whitey crept up on his father the other day; sold him to a junk collector. Old hands keep young hands away from the fire. But the old ones are dying off, and the young ones don't need the elixir, not yet. They will, though. They'll come to me on their knees, begging, and I'll laugh and let them die. That's what gods do, you know.”

Weaver scratched his wrist. “You're still shocked about the elixir. You think we should make gallons of it, keep everybody young forever. Now think about it! We know that's absurd, eh? There wouldn't be enough of anything to go around. And what would be the value of immortality if everybody lived forever?” His voice changed suddenly, became businesslike. “Who hijacked the shipment? Was it this man?”

A picture flashed on the lower quarter of the screen.

“Yes,” Harry said. His brain was spinning. Illumination and immortality, all in one breath. It was coming too fast. He didn't have time to react.

Weaver rubbed his doughy mouth. “Cartwright! How can he do it?” There was a note of godlike fear in the voice. “To risk—forever. He's mad—that's it, the man is mad. He wants to die.” The great mass of flesh shivered; the body rippled. “Let him try me. I'll give him death.” He looked at Harry again and scratched his neck. “How did you get here, you four?”

“We walked,” Harry said tightly.

“Walked? I don't believe it.”

“Ask a motel manager just this side of Kansas City, or a pack of wolves that almost got away with Marna, or a ghoul that paralyzed me. They'll tell you we walked.”

Weaver scratched his mountainous belly. “Those wolf packs. They can be a nuisance. They're useful, though. They keep the countryside tidy. But if you were paralyzed, why is it you are here instead of waiting to be put to use on some organ-bank slab?”

“The leech gave me a transfusion from Marna.” Too late Harry saw Marna motioning for him to be silent.

Weaver's face clouded. “You've stolen my blood! Now I can't bleed her for a month. I will have to punish you. Not now, but later, when I have thought of something fitting the crime.”

“A month is too soon,” Harry said. “No wonder the girl is pale if you bleed her every month. You'll kill her.”

“But she's a Cartwright,” Weaver said in astonishment, “and I need the blood.”

Harry's lips tightened. He held up the bracelet on his wrist. “The key, sir?”

“Tell me,” Weaver said, scratching under one breast, “is Marna fertile?”

“No, sir.” Harry looked levelly into the eyes of the governor of Kansas. “The key?”

“Oh, dear,” Weaver said. “I seem to have misplaced it. You'll have to wear the bracelets yet a bit. Well, Marna. We will see how it goes tonight, eh, fertile or no? Find something suitable for a bridal night, will you? And let us not mar the occasion with weeping and moaning and screams of pain. Come reverently and filled with a great joy, as Mary came unto God.”

“If I have a child,” Marna said, her face white, “it will have to be a virgin birth.”