Zelazny, Roger - Novel 05 (7 page)

 
          
 
"You will have to study what you find in
the other building. It will not be easy. You may well fail. The alternative is
to spend the rest of your days alone in this place. But there are teaching
devices, records, my notes, books. You have nothing but time now, in which you
may make the attempt or not, as you choose. So far, I have anticipated
everything correctly. I feel that this is about as far as I can go—"

 
          
 
There came a click, followed by a dial tone,

 
          
 
I collapsed.

 
          
 
Here, here, there and again. The years, the
clones, the gates ... I learned.

 
          
 
I studied the materials in what was to become
Wing Null. I learned. The alternative was some worse form of madness than the
one I already knew. I had to get out of there, try to find Julia, do something.

 
          
 
Jigsaw and evening star ...

 
          
 
I got out of there. I never located her grave,
if she had one, but I was able to establish that she was not one of those who
had made it into the House, whose Wings existed on the outworlds which were not
quite ready for man.

 
          
 
I got out of there. There was a lot of
forgetting that I wanted to do, and having had an abundance of time for
introspection I could even be specific about it. I possessed the techniques for
pinpointing everything I disliked about myself and erasing it from my mind. I
decided to do it. I wished it might be done for the whole human race—what was
left of it—and decided there might be a way to do that, too. Only it would take
more time, a process of moral evolution, with me there to guide it and evolve
along with the others, staying only one step behind, as I saw it, to take care
of the dirty work, for which I was well suited. This pleased me. I destroyed a
portion of myself and soldered pin one in its place. Later ones might be pulled
in an emergency, but I wanted Angelo di Negri to stay dead. I hated him. Then I
activated the clones, and we could trust us completely.

 
          
 
We got out.

 
          
 
As I felt the bullet enter my heart, my first
reaction was an enormous bewilderment How—?

 
          
 
Then I was dead.

 
          
 
I do not remember screaming, though Missy Vole
said I did, and clawing wildly with my right hand. Then I stiffened, relaxed,
was still. She was in the best position to know, poor girl, as it happened in
her bed.

 
          
 
A crazy thought ran through my mind just
before I died: Pull pin seven ... Why, I had no idea.

 
          
 
I remember her face, green eyes mostly hidden
behind long lashes, pink lips slightly parted in a smile. Then I felt the pain
and the bewilderment, not hearing but seeming to have just heard the shot that
killed me.

 
          
 
A doctor was later to tell me that I had
sustained no cardiac damage, despite the symptoms I had exhibited, that there
was no apparent reason for my experiencing chest pains and blacking out. I was
already aware by then that this was the case, and I just wanted to get away
from the Dispensary and go direct to Wing 18 of the Library, cubicle 17641, to
deal with the aftermath of my passing.

 
          
 
But they detained me for several hours,
insisting that I rest. The fools! If there was nothing wrong with me, why
should I rest?

 
          
 
And I was unable to rest, of course. How could
I? I had just been murdered.

 
          
 
I was quite frightened and very puzzled. How
could anyone do such a thing? And, as an afterthought, why should they?

 
          
 
As I lay there, surrounded by antiseptic
whiteness, alternately perspiring and shivering, I knew that I had to go, I
wanted to go, to see what had been done to me, to cover it over quickly. But I
also experienced a tremendous revulsion and physical fear of the sight, the
evidence of the act. This occupied me for a long while, and I made no effort to
depart. I was sufficiently rational to realize that I would be useless until
these initial feelings had eased.

 
          
 
So I rode with them, forced myself to think
about them. Murder. It was virtually unheard of these days. I could not recall
when last a murder had been committed, anywhere, and I was in a better position
than most to be aware of such matters. Early conditioning and plenty of
violence-aggression surrogation had a lot to do with it, as well as
considerable medical expertise when it came to patching up the victim of a
pathological outburst. But a cool, premeditated killing, such as mine had been
... No, it had been an awfully long while. Some more cynical ghost of an
earlier self whispered in my ear that it just might be that the real cool,
premeditated ones were so well done that they did not even look like murder. I
quickly banished him to the oblivion he had earned long ago. Or so I thought.
With the quality of information maintained on everyone in the House, it was next
to impossible.

 
          
 
It was especially unfortunate that it had to
be me. I was now required to do what I had just dismissed as inconceivable in
another. That is, find a way of concealing the fact that it had occurred. But
after all, I was a special case. I did not really count—

 
          
 
The chuckle unnerved me, coming as it did from
my own throat.

 
          
 
"Well said, old mole!" I decided
within me. "I suppose there is a certain element of irony involved."

 
          
 
Crap! You have no sense of humor at all,
Langet

 
          
 
"I appreciate the incongruity of my
position. But I do not consider murder a laughing matter."

 
          
 
Not when we are the victim, eh?

 
          
 
"You employ the wrong pronoun.”

 
          
 
No, but have it your way. You are as
red-handed as any.

 
          
 
"I am not a killer! I have never murdered
anyone!"

 
          
 
I suppressed the beginnings of another
chuckle.

 
          
 
What about suicide? What about me?

 
          
 
"A man has the right to do as he would
with himself! You? You are nothing! You do not even exist!"

 
          
 
Then why are you so disturbed? Psychotic,
perhaps? No, Lange. I am real. You killed me. You murdered me.

 
          
 
But I am real. And there will come a time when
I will be resurrected. By your own hand.

 
          
 
"Never!"

 
          
 
It will be because you will need me. Soon!

 
          
 
Choking with fury, I rebanished my sire to his
well-deserved limbo.

 
          
 
For several moments I cursed the fact that I
was what I was, realizing simultaneously that this, too, was a pathological
outburst brought about by the death-trauma. Before very long, it passed. I knew
that so long as people remained people, it was necessary that I endure, in
whatever form the day required.

 
          
 
We should be waiting for me to move. I knew
that, too. Waiting and covering. The longer it took me to act, the more
difficult things could become in the normal course of human surveillance. We
all knew that, but we appreciated the scope of my feelings and understood that
there would have to be a delay before I could function coherently again.

 
          
 
I ground my teeth and clenched my hands. This
self-indulgence could be costly. It would simply have to be postponed.

 
          
 
I forced myself to get up and cross the room,
to regard the gray-haired, dark-eyed reflection of my fifty-some years in the
mirror that hung above the basin. I ran my hands through my hair. I smiled my
lopsided smile, but it did not look too convincing.

 
          
 
"You are a hell of a mess," I told
myself, and we nodded agreement.

 
          
 
I ran the water cold, sluicing the cracked
pavements of my face, washed my hands, felt slightly improved. Then, trying
hard not to think of anything but the immediate task, I fetched my clothes from
the wall-slot and dressed. Once I had begun moving, there arose a compulsive
need to continue. I had to get out of there. I rang for attention and began
pacing. I paused several times at the window and looked out at the small,
enclosed park, empty now of all but a few patients and visitors. High overhead,
the lights had already entered the dimming cycle. I could see three
corkscrewing jackpoles and the wide balconies of an arcaded area far to my
left, the glint of enclosure-facings in the shadows to their rear. Traffic on
the belts and crossovers was light, and there were no special airborne vehicles
in sight.

 
          
 
A sudden nurse fetched me the young doctor who
had said earlier that there was nothing wrong with me. Since we were now in
apparent agreement on this point, he told me that I could go home. I thanked
him and departed, discovering that I actually felt better as I walked down the
ramp and headed for the nearest beltway.

 
          
 
At first, I did not really care which way I
moved. I simply wanted to get away from the Dispensary, with all its smells and
reminders of that unfortunate state through which I had so recently journeyed.
I slid by enormous medical supply depots, airborne ambulances occasionally passing
overhead. Walls, dividers, shelves, pilings, platforms, ramps—all were white
and carbolic about me. I edged my way inward and onto the fastest belt.
Orderlies, nurses, doctors, patients and relatives of the deceased or ailing
slipped by me with increasing speed and good riddance. I hated the place with
its caches of medical stores, clinical subdivisions and supervised residences
for the recovering and those headed in the other direction. The belt flowed
through the corner of a park where such unfortunates waited, on benches and in
power chairs, for the day when the black door would open for them. Overhead,
birdlike power cranes transported units of people and machinery, to maintain
the perpetually recomputed requirements of the shifting people:things:power:
space equation, moving with but the faintest clucking amid the great
crosshatchery in the sky. I changed belts a dozen or so times, not drawing
another easy breath until I was well into the crowded, daylighted Kitchen, with
its size and movements and sounds and colors to remind me I was a permanent
part of this and not that other.

 
          
 
I ate in a small, brightly lit cafeteria. I
was very hungry, but after the first minute or so the food became tasteless and
its chewing and swallowing mechanical. I kept glancing at the other diners.
Unbidden, the thought came into my mind: Could it be one of them? What does a
murderer look like?

 
          
 
Anybody. It could be anybody . •. anybody with
a motive and a capacity for violence, neither of which appears on a person's
face. My inability to think of anyone possessing these qualities did not alter
the fact that they had been exercised a few hours earlier.

 
          
 
My appetite vanished.

 
          
 
Anybody.

 
          
 
It was a hell of a time to go paranoid, but I
felt the sudden need to move again, to get away. Everything about me had
assumed a sinister aspect. The casual gestures and glances of the other diners
grew menacing. I felt my muscles tense as a fat man with a tray passed behind
me. I knew that if he bumped my chair or brushed against me I would leap to my
feet, screaming.

 
          
 
As soon as the aisle was clear I got up. It
was all I could do to keep from running as I headed back to the beltway. Then I
simply rode for a time, mindlessly, not wanting to be in a crowd, but not
wanting to be alone either. I heard myself cursing softly.

 
          
 
There was of course a place where there would
be people, where I could be unafraid. I felt fairly certain of that. There was
an easy way to find out, but my mood might be communicable and I wanted to keep
it to myself until it went away. The easiest thing to do was simply to go
there—to the scene of the murder.

 
          
 
I decided that I wanted a drink first. But I
was not about to order one in this Wing. Why? Again the irrational. I had been
discomfitted in my own chambers.

 
          
 
I followed the overheads, belting to the
nearest subway station.

 
          
 
Finally, I saw in the distance the towering
wall with its changing pattern of lighted numbers and letters. I disembarked at
the station and studied the departures. A small number of people trickled
through the incoming gates and others stood about or sat in the bleachers,
keeping an eye on the board. Studying the thing, I learned that Gate 11 would
take me to the Cocktail Lounge of Wing 19 in six minutes. I entered the cage at
11—there was no line—and presented my card for scanning. There came a humming
followed by a click, after which the meshed door in the rear opened.

 
          
 
I passed through and headed up the ramp to the
waiting area by the Gate. There were three men and a girl there. The girl had
on a nurse's uniform. One of the men—an old codger in a power chair—might have
been in her care, though she was standing quite a distance from him. He gave me
a brief, sharp look and a faint smile, as though he might be interested in
striking up a conversation. I glanced away, still feeling antisocial, and moved
to a position far to his left and forward. Of the other two men, one stood near
the Gate, his face partly hidden by the paper he was reading, and the other
paced, briefcase in hand, his eyes on the clock.