Preferred Risk by Edson McCann (most read book in the world txt) 📕

I switched to another channel. Local damage! Local to the face of the Earth!

I tried all the channels; they were all the same.

The Company had evidently decided to lie to the human race. Keep them in the dark—make each little section believe that only it was affected—persuade them that they would be under for, at most, a few weeks or months.

Was that, I wondered, Defoe's scheme? Was he planning to try somehow to convince four billion people that fifty years were only a few weeks? It would never work—the first astronomer to look at a star, the first seaman to discover impossible errors in his tide table, would spot the lie.

More likely he was simply proceeding along what must always have been his basic assumption: The truth is wasted on the people.

Zorchi said with heavy irony, "If my guest is quite finished with the instrument, perhaps he will be gracious enough to permit me to resume Aïda."

I woke Rena and told her about the evacuation. She said, yawning, "But of course, Tom. What else could they do?" And she began discussing breakfast.

I went with her, but not to eat; in the dining hall was a small television set, and on it I could listen to the same repeat broadcasts over and over to my heart's content. It was—in a way—a thrilling sight. It is always impressive to see a giant machine in operation, and there was no machine bigger than the Company.

The idea of suspending a whole world, even piecemeal, was staggering. But if there had been panic at first in the offices of the Company, none of it showed. The announcers were harried and there was bustle and strain, but order presided.

Those long lines of vehicles outside the window; they were going somewhere; they were each one, I could see by the medallion slung across each radiator front, on the payroll of the Company.

Perhaps the trick of pretending to each section that only it would be affected was wise—I don't know. It was working, and I suppose that is the touchstone of wisdom. Naples knew that something was going on in Rome, of course, but was doubtful about the Milanese Republic. The Romans were in no doubt at all about Milan, but weren't sure about the Duchy of Monaco, down the Riviera shore. And the man on the street, if he gave it a thought at all, must have been sure that such faraway places as America and China were escaping entirely.

I suppose it was clever—there was no apparent panic. The trick took away the psychological horror of world catastrophe and replaced it with only a local terror, no different in kind than an earthquake or a flood. And there was always the sack of gold at the end of every catastrophe: Blue Bolt would pay for damage, with a free and uncounting hand.

Except that this time, of course, Blue Bolt would not, could not, pay at all.

By noon, Benedetto was out of bed.

He shouldn't have been, but he was conscious and we could not make him stay put—short of chains.

He watched the television and then listened as Rena and I brought him up to date. Like me, he was shocked and then encouraged to find that Millen Carmody was in the vaults—encouraged because it was at least a handle for us to grasp the problem with; if we could get at Carmody, perhaps we could break Defoe's usurped power. Without him, Defoe would simply use the years while the world slept to forge a permanent dictatorship.

We got the old man to lie down, and left him. But not for long. Within the hour he came tottering to where we were sitting, staring at the television. He waved aside Rena's quick protest.

"There is no time for rest, my daughter," he said. "Do not scold me. I have a task."

Rena said worriedly, "Dear, you must stay in bed. The doctor said—"

"The doctor," Benedetto said formally, "is a fool. Shall I allow us to die here? Am I an ancient idiot, or am I Benedetto dell'Angela who with Slovetski led twenty thousand men?"

Rena said, "Please! You're sick!"

"Enough." Benedetto wavered, but stood erect. "I have telephoned. I have learned a great deal. The movement—" he leaned against the wall for support—"was not planned by fools. We knew there might be bad days; we do not collapse because a few of us are put out of service by the Company. I have certain emergency numbers to call; I call them. And I find—" he paused dramatically—"that there is news. Slovetski has escaped!"

I said, "That's impossible! Defoe wouldn't let him go!"

"Perhaps Slovetski did not consult him," Benedetto said with dignity. "At any rate, he is free and not far from here. And he is the answer we have sought, you understand."

"How?" I demanded. "What can he do that we can't?"

Benedetto smiled indulgently, though the smile was strained. His wound must have been giving him hell; it had had just enough time to stiffen up. He said, "Leave that to Slovetski, Thomas. It is his métier, not yours. I shall go to him now."

Well, I did what I could; but Benedetto was an iron-necked old man. I forbade him to leave and he laughed at me. I begged him to stay and he thanked me—and refused. Finally I abandoned him to Rena and Zorchi.

Zorchi gave up almost at once. "A majestic man!" he said admiringly, as he rolled into the room where I was waiting, on his little power cart. "One cannot reason with him."

And Rena, in time, gave up, too. But not easily. She was weeping when she rejoined me.

She had been unable even to get him to let her join him, or to consider taking someone else with him; he said it was his job alone. She didn't even know where he was going. He had said it was not permissible, in so critical a situation, for him to tell where Slovetski was.

Zorchi coughed. "As to that," he said, "I have already taken the liberty of instructing one of my associates to be ready. If the Signore has gone to meet Slovetski, my man is following him...."

So we waited, while the television announcers grew more and more grim-lipped and imperative.

I listened with only half my mind. Part of my thoughts were with Benedetto, who should have been in a hospital instead of wandering around on some dangerous mission. And partly I was still filled with the spectacle that was unfolding before us.

It was not merely a matter of preserving human lives. It was almost as important to provide the newly awakened men and women, fifty years from now, with food to eat and the homes and tools and other things that would be needed.

Factories and transportation gear—according to the telecasts—were being shut down and sealed to stand up under the time that would pass—"weeks," according to the telecast, but who needed to seal a tool in oil for a few weeks? Instructions were coming hourly over the air on what should be protected in each home, and how it was to be done. Probably even fifty years would not seriously damage most of the world's equipment—if the plans we heard on the air could be efficiently carried out.

But the farms were another matter. The preserving of seeds was routine, but I couldn't help wondering what these flat Italian fields would look like in fifty untended years. Would the radiocobalt sterilize even the weeds? I didn't think so, but I didn't know. If not, would the Italian peninsula once again find itself covered with the dense forests that Caesar had marched through, where Spartacus and his runaway slaves had lurked and struck out against the Senators?

And how many millions would die while the forests were being cleared off the face of the Earth again to make way for grain? Synthetic foods and food from the sea might solve that—the Company could find a way. But what about the mines—three, four and five thousand feet down—when the pumps were shut off and the underground water seeped in? What about the rails that the trains rode on? You could cosmoline the engines, perhaps, but how could you protect a million miles of track from the rains of fifty years?

So I sat there, watching the television and waiting. Rena was too nervous to stay in one place. Zorchi had mysterious occupations of his own. I sat and stared at the cathode screen.

Until the door opened behind me, and I turned to look.

Rena was standing there. Her face was an ivory mask. She clutched the door as her father had a few hours before; I think she looked weaker and sicker than he.

I said, for the first time, "Darling!" She stood silent, staring at me. I asked apprehensively, "What is it?"

The pale lips opened, but it was a moment before she could frame the words. Then her voice was hard to hear. "My father," she said. "He reached the place where he was meeting Slovetski, but the expediters were there before him. They shot him down in the street. And they are on their way here."

XVI

It was quick and brutal. Somehow Benedetto had been betrayed; the expediters had known where he had come from. And that was the end of that.

They came swarming down on us in waves, at least a hundred of them, to capture a man, a girl and a cripple—Zorchi's servants had deserted us, melting into the hemp fields like roaches into a garbage dump. Zorchi had a little gun, a Beretta; he fired it once and wounded a man.

The rest was short and unpleasant.

They bound us and gagged us and flew us, trussed like game for the spit, to the clinic. I caught a glimpse of milling mobs outside the long, low walls as we came down. Then all I could see was the roof of the copter garage.

We were brought to a tiny room where Defoe sat at a desk. The Underwriter was smiling. "Hello, Thomas," he said, his eyes studying the bruise on my cheek. He turned toward Rena consideringly. "So this is your choice, eh, Thomas?" He studied Rena coolly. "Hardly my type. Still, by sticking with me, you could have had a harem."

Bound as I was, I started forward. Something hit me in the back at my first step, driving a hot rush of agony up from my kidneys. Defoe watched me catch my breath without a change of expression.

"My men are quite alert, Thomas. Please do not try that again. Once is amusing, but twice would annoy me." He sighed. "I seem to have been wrong about you, Thomas. Perhaps because I needed someone's help, I overestimated you. I thought long ago that beneath your conditioning you had brains. Manning is a machine, good for taking orders. Dr. Lawton is loyal, but not intelligent. And between loyalty and intelligence, I'll take brains. Loyalty I can provide for myself." He nodded gravely at the armed expediters.

Zorchi spat. "Kill us, butcher," he ordered. "It is enough I die without listening to your foolish babbling."

Defoe considered him. "You interest me, Signore. A surprise, finding you revived and with Wills. Before we're finished, you must tell me about that."

I saw Zorchi bristle and open his mouth, but a cold, suddenly calculating idea made me interrupt. "To get dell'Angela out as an attendant, I needed a patient for him to wheel. Zorchi had money, and I expected gratitude when I revived him later. It wasn't hard getting Lawton's assistant to stack his cocoon near Benedetto's."

"Lawton!" Defoe grimaced, but seemed to accept the story. He smiled at me suddenly. "I had hopes for you, then. That escape was well done—simple, direct. A little crude, but a good beginning. You could have been my number one assistant, Thomas. I thought of that when I heard of the things you were saying after Marianna died—I thought you might be awaking."

I licked my lips. "And when you picked me up after Marianna's death, and bailed me out of jail, you made sure the expediter corps had information that I was possibly not reliable. You made sure the information reached the underground, so they would approach me and I could spy for you. You wanted a patsy!"

The smile was gleaming this time. "Naturally, until you could prove yourself. And of course, I had you jailed for the things you said because I wanted it that way. A pity all my efforts were wasted on you, Thomas. I'm afraid you're not equipped to be a spy."

It took everything I had, but this time I managed to smile back. "On which side, Defoe? How many spies know you've got Millen Carmody down in Bay—"

That hit him. But I didn't have time to enjoy it. He made a sudden gesture, and the expediters moved. This time, when