Synthetic Men Page 18

  "But how can I help you?" frowned Bacon. "All men must face that fear."

  "But not as I know it! I, who have so much to make life worth the living." Thaddeus rubbed his sweaty palms on his velvet-clad thighs, his brown young face set. Abruptly, he blurted: "They say you possess the secret of immortality, Friar. Is that true?"

  "They say many things of me," muttered the philosopher.

  Carlyle leaned toward him. "That doesn't answer my question," he snapped. "I have heard that you added twenty years to your own life by magic!"

  Bacon stared strangely at him. "You believe that I could save you from death?"

  "Implicitly!" Carlyle replied. "If you wished to!"

  For the first time, Bacon stirred from the chair. His eyes flashed briefly to a brass-bound chest, near his pallet of straw. Then he stopped with his back to the wall, staring at the young nobleman.

  "But even if I could do this—!" he frowned. "You do not know what immortality means. Perhaps it would be worse than death!"

  "If so, I could easily put an end to my immortality," retorted the other.

  Roger Bacon did not speak for long seconds. Then: "They speak true of me. I do possess this secret. But to release it would mean one more atom of misery thrown upon the world."

  With his first words, Thaddeus had hunched forward, teeth shining behind drawn lips, eyes glittering. "Has the world been good to you?" he shot at him. "Do you owe it any consideration?"

  "None," the Gray Friar muttered. "Tell me; what month is this?"

  "November, Friar," the younger man replied frowningly.

  "November!"

  In Bacon's mournful syllables lay all the bitter coldness of the winter itself. "November, Anno Domini twelve hundred and eighty-seven. Nine years since I was thrown into this place of stone and despair. The world has little loved me, my friend, and I hold no love for the world. Inopem me copia fecit—abundance made me poor. Abundance of foresight and inventiveness that might have made the world over."

  The monk had paced to the window through which he got his only small view of the world. Now he swung back. "Yes, my Lord Monfort. I will do what you ask!"

  Carlyle lurched forward to grasp his arm. "Friar," he breathed. "I only dared hope. But if you do what you promise, I will see that you are freed within the year!"

  "Dominus vobiscum!" Bacon said, tiny lights shining in his eyes. He crossed to the massive chest and opened it. Digging around for a moment among hundreds of curious objects the like of which Carlyle had never seen, he at last returned to the table with two shining articles in his hand.

  "I told you this would bring a certain amount of grief to the world," he said, when Carlyle was seated beside him on a stool. "I say it again. For each lifetime you add to your own, another must die. And always it shall be a woman ... a woman whose love you have won."

  Carlyle stared at the philosopher with a mixture of hope and horror in his face.

  "You must understand," said the Gray Friar, "that the life-spirit, as I call it, is not so deeply rooted in a woman as a man. You hear often of a woman dying of a broken heart, yet never of a man. This is because the woman simply wills her spirit to leave her. It will be your task to cause a woman to give you her life-spirit because she loves you sufficiently."

  "Yes, Friar," Thaddeus whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs.

  Bacon placed in his palm a tiny crystal heart dependent from a silver chain. It was crudely carved, yet alight with unholy brilliance.

  "You will give this to the woman to wear. You yourself will wear this plain silver band I now give you. The process may take days or weeks. When you are with her, cause your own ring to be always touching the crystal heart. Gradually she will grow weaker, while your own strength increases boundlessly. When she dies ... you will have earned perhaps seventy years more of life."

  "Must it be this way?" Thaddeus groaned, staring horrified at the baubles.

  "It is the only way," Bacon murmured. "If at any time you decide that you prefer death to immortality, destroy either the heart or the ring and you will not long survive it. Old age will come swiftly."

  Thaddeus got to his feet, his stomach a lump of ice in him. He suddenly felt a necessity to get into the open air, where he could think. Hastily he muttered:

  "I will do as you say, Friar Bacon. Thank you for what you have done. I will see that you are freed as soon as possible."

  Wise old Roger Bacon knew the struggle that was going on within the young lord, and he made no attempt to prolong the visit. "Pax vobiscum," he nodded soberly. "The Lord guide you in this."

  "Th-thank you, Friar!" Thaddeus faltered, and hastily fumbled at the door and left.

  For a month the crystal heart and the ring lay untouched in a small chest in his treasure-room. Then his old fears and nightmares drove him to take them out. He had become accustomed to the grisly demands and they no longer loomed so blackly in his mind. Pictures of himself as an ancient ruin with the skin hanging loosely from all his bones helped in this.

  For a long time Thaddeus had known that the young daughter of Lord Cartwright secretly loved him. Tremblingly, one night, he bestowed on her the gift of death ... in the form of a tiny crystal pendant. Within a month the girl was dead.

  And Thaddeus Carlyle ... in his body surged and leaped such strength as he had never dreamed of. He felt he must live forever. His friends began to change, growing wrinkled and less virile, but never he. Soon he saw he must change his abode, lest men suspect him.

  It was ninety years before the need came upon him to renew the life-spirit in his body. He found a dark-eyed girl in Seville on one of his journeys whom he nominated for his second victim. It was easier, this time. Before she was laid away that old feeling of boundless youth was his again.

  And so Thaddeus Carlyle saw kings change and nations dissolve, saw a German named Gutenberg print the first book and an Englishman named William Shakespeare write the most perfect prose ever devised. Saw wars and tragedy and comedy, and grew sick with the seeing. Gladly would he have given it up, had he the courage.

  Down the corridors of time he passed, seeking death as many seek wealth. In peace and war, he was ever in the most dangerous occupations. When aviation came in, he was one of the first and most reckless pilots. Then space travel merged from dreams into reality.... Carlyle became a test pilot, taking on million-mile journeys any craft with a rocket tube and a steering device. To his disgust, he always came back.

  He had not the courage to shatter the crystal heart and grow old swiftly. He who had condemned so many beautiful women to death was now chained to something worse—eternal life.

  II

  "Mr. Carlyle! Mr. Carlyle. Are you all right?"

  Thaddeus Carlyle came out of his revery with a start, to hear the shrill rasping of the televis on his desk. His hand snapped the instrument on.

  "Sorry, Mrs. Loomis," he muttered. "I must have been napping."

  The face of his middle-aged secretary looked relieved. "Captain Wolfe is here," she told him. "About the new secretary, you know."

  "Send them in," Carlyle grunted.

  He swore softly to himself. Too often lately he had dozed off at the wrong times. He was due for another replenishment, and he cursed his luck that it had to come now. Tomorrow he was leaving in his giant salvage ship, the Friar Bacon, for the newly-discovered sargasso off the orbit of Pluto. Nor could the trip be postponed.

  But the renewal of his life-spirit could not wait either. He was a little too tired at night, a little too slow to react. But the certainty was in him that he would not survive the trip to the new salvage fields, with its attendant rigors.

  Captain Wolfe, chief officer of the Friar, entered with a small, dark-haired young person at his side.

  "You're in luck, Chief!" he grinned. "I told you I'd find an A-1 secretary for you, and I think I've got her. Miss Holland, meet Thaddeus Carlyle—and don't say you haven't heard of him. Mr. Carlyle, this is Ann Holland."

  The two exchang
ed acknowledgments, and Carlyle drew up chairs. "We'll have to be brief," he said. "I've got a thousand things to attend to before night. Now—you have the report from the company doctor?"

  Ann Holland took a folded slip from her purse and tendered it to the owner of Salvage Lines, Incorporated. Carlyle took the opportunity to appraise her swiftly. He hardly need to scan the physician's report to know her health was boundless. It glowed in the soft rose color of her cheeks, the sparkle of her dark eyes. Her brown hair was carefully combed back from a smooth forehead.

  The report bore out his supposition. Carlyle questioned her briefly about her qualifications as a stenographer and secretary. Everything was satisfactory, and the references she had to show were excellent.

  Carlyle handed back the papers. "I think I'm lucky to get so well-spoken of a secretary on such short notice," he smiled.

  "I know darned well you are, Chief!" Larry Wolfe laughed. "I had to fight every officer in Ann's company to make them let her go."

  Ann Holland laid a hand on his arm. "I think I had a little to do with my quitting, too," she reproved. "I can't tell you how I've been fascinated by the stories of your salvage trips, Mr. Carlyle. And, of course, hearing Larry talk of his work with you—"

  Thaddeus's dark eyes opened wider. "Oh—Then you have known each other previously?" he queried.

  Blond Larry Wolfe held up the girl's left hand, showing the sparkling diamond on the third finger. "Three years previously," he laughed. "We're going to be married after this trip."

  Against the flash of resentment and disappointment that struck him, Thaddeus Carlyle brought a smile to his lips. "That's fine," he said. "Congratulations, both of you."

  What he didn't voice was the strain of remorse coursing through his mind: "Fine, hell! It's bad enough preying on unattached girls. But the fiancee of your chief officer—"

  Nevertheless, it was too late to change. Mrs. Loomis couldn't go because she was married. Besides, she was old. There wasn't much life to be stolen from her.

  "Of course, you'll be wanting to know the type of work you're to do," he got out. "Frankly, it will be more tedious than adventuresome. I've been considering doing a book on the navigation conditions obtaining in the sargassos. You'll take dictation from me most of the time we're in the salvage field. I'll want the notes neatly typed up when we return. That's about all, except that the pay will be seventy-five dollars a week. Satisfactory?"

  "Perfectly!" Ann breathed, and put her hand out to retrieve the papers from the desk. As she did so, Carlyle's brown, strong fingers picked up the references and tendered them. For an instant their fingers met....

  Ann's eyes went suddenly wide, and they flashed up to lock with Carlyle's. She started, as if from a chill. It seemed as if a strong current flowed from his body into hers ... and yet, had she but known, the phenomenon was exactly an opposite one. By now, Carlyle's parasitical work was second nature to him, hardly requiring the jewel and ring.

  It struck the girl that his eyes were the strangest ones she had ever gazed into. They were so clear she seemed to look through them and far past him. Clear—but yet somehow they were filled with wisdom. It was as though she was looking into vast, forgotten depths of time.

  Abruptly, she recalled herself. Her hand drew swiftly away from his.

  "Thank you so much," she murmured. "We're leaving at six, I think you said? I'll be ready."

  When they were in the outer office, Larry Wolfe took her arm. He was more than happy at the prospect of having the girl along on the long trip.

  "Drive you home?" he suggested.

  A frown scored Ann's brow. "No, thanks, Larry," she murmured. "I've got some things to buy uptown. Then I want to go home and rest. I feel a little tired."

  Thaddeus Carlyle stood at his window and watched the last bit of loading being done out on the field. The Friar Bacon, with her six tiny salvage ships in their bulging hangars growing out of the mother ship's shell, like pilot fish clinging to the body of a shark, was nearly ready for the trip. Carlyle sighed and wished again that he had time to linger a few weeks before leaving.

  But it was out of the question. Even a man who possesses immortality must earn his living, and salvaging treasure ships from space was Carlyle's way of doing it. Right now that living was threatened by the savage competition of Brand Haggard, owner of another salvage outfit.

  Haggard cared little for the ethics of the business. He'd double-cross, steal, murder, lie, to gain his ends. It was such tactics that had put Carlyle in his present hole.

  Coming in on his last expedition, he had found the sargasso off Pluto and duly registered it with the Universal Salvage Commission, applying at the same time for exclusive salvage rights. But Haggard had used his crooked political affiliations to get in on the pie. Carlyle had had to share the rights with him. Now it was a bitter fight to be the first in the field, for the first ship there gutted the most treasure from the wrecked space vessels.

  A delay of three weeks or a month would mean the Friar Bacon returned with empty holds. And that might mean ruin for Carlyle. Lately, salvage pickings were getting smaller and smaller. He intended to get into another business for his next lifetime.

  The question of the girl still lay like a bitter pellet in his mind, but with an effort he shelved his remorse. He decided to return to his packing. There were two more things to be stowed away in his private lockers. One was a plain silver ring, and the other was a little crystal heart.

  At six o'clock the next morning the Friar Bacon rested in its deep starting-tube in the center of the field. At seven o'clock it had proceeded so far on its journey that Earth was but a silver quarter hanging in the sky behind it.

  Larry Wolfe was on the bridge. His engineer's eyes sparkled as he regarded the instruments. Fuel—brimming over; speed—one-quarter; retarding gravity quotient—three percent. Ideal conditions, and an ideal ship. He had faith in the Friar Bacon, and in its owner. He knew about Brand Haggard, but it didn't worry him particularly, with the best of materials and men to work with.

  Larry was on the point of inching the speed up a trifle when a bell began to tinkle. Swiftly he twisted in his seat. Immediately he saw what had aroused the alarm. A ship was coming up fast, behind them. Haggard already! he thought. He stabbed at the buzzer to Carlyle's quarters.

  The hard, brown features of the ship's owner snapped into view on the televis. "Yes?" was the metallic query.

  "Ship approaching, sir!" Larry clipped. "I think it's Haggard's Martian. Shall I give her the gun?"

  "No, let him come up with us. No use racing yet. We'd just strain the seams before they've heated properly."

  "But if he beats us to the fields, sir!"

  Thaddeus Carlyle's eyes crinkled. "He won't, Wolfe. I registered a false location with the Commission! He'll either go hell-for-leather out toward Uranus or he'll pace us. Either way, I'm not worrying."

  "Very good, sir." Larry Wolfe turned from the instrument to his controls. "Hard as nails!" he chuckled to himself. "He wouldn't hurry for the devil himself. You'd think he'd lived five hundred years, the way he thinks of all the angles and beats hell out of every other ship in the fleet. He's too smart for one man."

  That very night, trouble boarded the Friar Bacon. In a way, it was Larry Wolfe's fault.

  Coming off duty eight hours after they left, he hurried to Ann Holland's stateroom near Carlyle's suite, eager to hear how she had enjoyed her first day aboard a space-liner.

  He found her tired and curiously subdued.

  "Excitement get you?" he asked her.

  Ann's eyes flashed as she thought of the thousand new things she had seen. "A little, I guess," she admitted. "But, Larry, it's wonderful! Such a feeling of freedom, so many strange things to be seen. Here we are darting through space like a liner plowing the Atlantic!"

  "You'll get over that pretty soon," Larry grinned. "Then you'll be like the rest of us space-sailors, cursing our luck that man can't push his darned ships along at the speed of light." />
  "I don't think I ever will," the girl mused. "They build these ships just like Swiss watches, don't they? Every beam and girder machined by hand, every nut and bolt a masterpiece. I went over the whole ship with Thad. I feel like an authority already!"

  She laid her head against the cushioned back of the chair, glancing through drowsy eyes out the port-hole. With her face turned away from Larry's, she did not see the swift bolt of jealousy that shot through him.

  "Thad?" he echoed. "That's funny, Ann. I've never been allowed to get that familiar with him myself. It's always 'Chief' or 'sir' to us crew members."

  The girl's eyes widened a little; then she shrugged her slim shoulders. "I don't know how I happened to call him that. He seems to be a person so very likeable you can't be formal with him."

  "I hadn't noticed it," Larry Wolfe snapped.

  Ann sat up wearily, brushed stray hair back from her ear. "Oh, now, Larry," she reproved him. "Are you going to start acting like a high-school boy the minute we start?"

  The young ship officer's jaw had set like cement. "What'd you do all day? Talk, I suppose?"

  "Yes, we talked! For eight hours! I don't know where the time went, but I do know I've never had a better time in my life!"

  She said it defiantly, and in the wake of the angry words grew a high wall of pride between them. Ann made one final effort at conciliation.

  "Larry, do you have to be like this?" she pleaded. "I'm wearing your ring, isn't that enough?"

  Larry stood up. "That's exactly it," he snapped. "You're wearing my ring and the men are going to be watching pretty damn closely when they see you hobnobbing constantly with Carlyle. Oh, don't get me wrong; he's a fine fellow and I think the world of him. But I'm going to ask you not to be with him any more than your work requires!"

  Ann's fingers tugged at the diamond ring, and suddenly she was handing it to him. "Then here's something for you to mull over, Mr. Larry Wolfe," she said frigidly. "While we're on the trip you can just pretend that you've never met me before. I won't have your jealousy preventing me from doing a good job."