The Tomorrow File Read online

  Y-4

  The hypersonic wheeled out over the Atlantic, accelerating, gaining altitude so rapidly that G-force pressed us back against the semireclining seats. I viewed the telescreen as the coastline fell away. We circled again, then passed through the sonic wall with a barely perceptible shudder. The plane straightened, headed west for San Diego at a gentler climb. We pulled up our seatbacks. The white-clad stewardess began pushing her cart down the aisle. Paul Bumford returned to his facsimile Times.

  “Nick,” he said, “look at this.”

  I glanced down, then settled back, closed my eyes.

  “I scanned it,” I said. “At breakfast.”

  It was a short item. Only a few lines. . . .

  The corpus of a young ef had been washed ashore near Falmouth, Massachusetts. It had been identified as Martha Wiley, daughter of Dr. Thomas J. Wiley, noted genetic biologist, who had been taken two months previously, charged with subversion and crimes against the state.

  “Probably suicide,” Paul said.

  “Probably,” I agreed, my eyes still closed.

  Then the stewardess paused at our seats. We each took a plasticup of coftea. Paul also took a package of probisks. He dunked them in the hot brown liquid.

  “You’re losing a secretary,” I told him. “I’m taking Maya Leighton onto my staff.”

  “All right. She’ll work out then? With Art Roach?”

  “I think so.”

  “How will you bring them together?”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “How much will you tell her, Nick?” “As little as possible. I don’t think she’ll pry too much. As you said—a good brain.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “Suicide, I mean. For the Tomorrow File. Making suicide illegal.”

  “I agree the numbers are horrendous,” I said. “Especially among the young. But what do you propose—making suicide a capital crime?”

  “I know that’s senseless, Nick. But what if the law decreed capital punishment for the suicide’s immediate family? Wouldn’t that be a deterrent?”

  “No,” I said. “Suicides are usually in a hyperemotional state. Or extremely neurotic or psychotic. Don’t expect them to compute rationally the consequences of their act.”

  “Did you like her, Nick?”

  “Maya? Very much. A puzzle.”

  “How so?”

  “Total surrender. But I can’t compute the reason.”

  “She recognizes it. She suggested it when you asked her to name the ultimate pleasure. So it must be deliberate choice.”

  “That’s what she said. But she may be rationalizing a weakness. We all do it. You are cowardly; I am cautious. You are miserly; I am prudent. You are a spendthrift; I am generous. We all conceal— no, not conceal, but prettify our weaknesses.”

  “What is your weakness, Nick?”

  I laughed.

  “My fatal flaw? I want life to have charm.”

  I closed my eyes again, leaned back, relaxed. I could feel a gentle forward tilt. We had already started letting down for the Pacific.

  “I still think suicide belongs in the Tomorrow File,” Paul said stubbornly. “A law making it illegal. With penalties stiff enough to make would-be suicides think twice.”

  I opened my eyes to stare at him.

  “Why do you feel so strongly about it, Paul?”

  “Because it fits right in with what you’ve suggested—about the government inheriting healthy organs from stopped objects. And all new objects becoming wards of the state, no matter how they were bred. If those suggestions are valid, then suicide becomes a crime against the state. If you stop yourself, you’re destroying government property.”

  “That’s interesting,” I said.

  We came in low over Point Loma. The cabin telescreen showed a

  fine view of the harbor: pleasure boats, tuna fleet, Coast Guard cutters. After the jammed frenzy of the N. Y.-D.C. axis, the Southern California scene was open, yawning, whitewashed in the summer sun. --

  Paul and I splurged, taking one of the new steam-powered cabs to the Strake Hotel in Chula Vista. It was Paul’s first trip to San Diego. I pointed out the DIVRAD Field Office as we drove by. He was impressed by the heroic bronze statue of Linus Pauling in front of the main building.

  “But it’s a small installation, isn’t it, Nick?”

  “Larger than you think. The labs are underground.”

  "We claimed our hotel suite. I flashed Hawkley’s office and confirmed my appointment at 1500. Then we cabbed back to the FO, arriving a little before 1000. They had been alerted to our coming; we were taken directly to Lab 1 where the Chief was waiting for us.

  The San Diego Field Office specialized in molecular and biochemical genetics. Their list of accomplishments was impressive.

  The servers were remarkably young, eager, innovative. They spawned a thousand new ideas annually. Most proved loveless, but it didn’t seem to discourage them. I had noted that about DIVRAD servers: The farther they were removed from the political pressures of New York and Washington, the more freewheeling and creative they became.

  The Chief of the FO was one of my favorites, Nancy Ching, a jolly yellow ef as cute and plump as an Oriental doll. On my last trip to San Diego, Nancy and I had become demented on plum wine and amphetamine, and had used each other with much giggling delight.

  She greeted me with a hot, smeary kiss, grabbed our arms, and dragged us on a whirlwind tour of her labs, chattering incessantly. She spoke a rapid patois of technical jargon and tooty slang. I caught about half of it; Paul seemed to have no trouble at all. In a few moments he was talking in similar fashion. Two of a kind. Suddenly Nancy stopped, tugged me around to face her.

  “Oh, Nick,” she said, “DIROB flashed you just before you arrived. You’re supposed to flash back at once.”

  “Why on earth didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “Because I wanted you to myself. Let her wait—the bitch!”

  I glanced at Paul. He was looking at her admiringly. I knew she had made a friend for life.

  “You can flash from my office on the second floor,” Nancy said. “I’ll give Paul the fast, thirty-cent tour, and then we’ll join you up there. I’ve laid on a gorgeous lunch for you in the conference room.”

  I sat at Nancy’s desk while the FO operator put me through to Washington.

  Angela Berri came on screen.

  “Nick,” she said, “what the hell are you doing out there?” “Good morning, Angela,” I said.

  “Good morning, Nick,” she said. “What the hell are you doing out there?”

  “Showing Paul the scenery.”

  “When are you coming back?” she demanded.

  “I’ll probably return tomorrow morning. Paul will stay on a day or so to learn what’s going on.”

  “I want you in Washington on Friday night. A dinner with the Chief Director and his wife. At their home. It’s important.”

  “It’s awkward,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I have an appointment in Alexandria on Friday. To examine Lewisohn.”

  “Fine. Come over to my place in the evening.”

  “Angela, I’ll have my new secretary with me.”

  “What for?”

  “To take notes.”

  “Nick, when did you ever need notes?”

  “Since I got a new secretary.”

  That thawed her. After she stopped laughing, she said, “Bring her along. We’ll find something for her to do.”

  “Maybe Art Roach can entertain her for the evening,” I said casually.

  “Why not?” she said.

  “Who’ll be there? At the dinner?”

  “Just you, me, the Chief Director and his wife. I’ve got something to discuss with him.”

  “While I keep the wife busy?”

  “Of course. Wear your uniform and decorations.”

  “Where do we stay? At the Alexandria Hospice?”

  She thought a
moment.

  “No,” she said. “Come to my apartment. I can put you up overnight. Separate bedrooms, I presume?” “For whom?” I asked.

  She smiled and switched off.

  I finally found Nancy and Paul in another corridor. They were standing before a closed door, staring through a small square of transparent glass. On the inside, I knew, it would be a mirror.

  “. . . third month,” Nancy was saying as I came up to them. “All vital functions normal. A strong, healthy ef. We decided on a rhesus monkey.”

  “Compatible DNA,” Paul said.

  “You plenty damn smart for a white em,” Nancy said perkily. ‘(Get your call through, Nick?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Nothing important. What have we here?” “Take a look. Fertilization, in vivo, with rhesus sperm. And a new interspecific drug we’ve been working on. Normal gestation period. The object is coming along nicely.”

  I stooped a little to peer through the glass. Lydia Ann Ferguson was sitting on the edge of the bed. Hands folded in her lap. She was staring out through the window, beyond the white bars, at the endless blue sky.

  It came on fast. . . .

  . . . dissecting a frog when I was seven years old. Taking out the heart and putting it carefully aside. Watching gravely while it continued to pump, for minutes in diminishing rhythm.

  ... the look of surprised hurt on a child’s face in Central Park. The string of his helium-filled balloon had slipped from his fingers. The blue balloon floated slowly upward. Then, caught by the wind, it whirled away.

  . . .George Bernard Shaw: “Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

  ... in a darkened car. A street on upper Manhattan. A warm hand touching me. “Please?” she had asked. “Please?”

  I fumbled in my pocket, found the dispenser, popped a spansule. “Nick?” Paul said anxiously. “You all right?”

  “Yes,” I said. I jerked a thumb toward the glass. “Very impressive, Nancy. Now what do we have to do to get something to eat around here?”

  “Right now,” she said. “I warn you, Nick—all my Team Leaders will be there. We’re ganging up to you.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Let me guess. You want more love?” “How on earth did you know?” She giggled.

  It was a delightfully noisy, confused lunch. Almost everything

  served had been grown in the Field Office’s hydroponic beds. The few protein substitutes were made from soy rather than petroleum. I hadn’t had such a flavorful feast in months.

  As we gobbled, we squabbled. The usual kaka: pure versus applied science; the impossibility of an absolute value judgment; action versus speculation; the influence of technology on the future of science; and so forth, and so forth. I had heard it all before. I let Paul attempt to answer their questions and respond to their complaints. It was time he learned to handle, to control, to manipulate these free and sometimes abrasive debates. I thought he did rather well.

  Finally, I glanced at my digiwatch. Almost 1330. I pushed back from the table and stood up. The room quieted. Everyone looked to me.

  “Loysy food,” I said. “About what I’d expect in a dump like this.”

  They laughed delightedly. Strange. The young prefer insults. How old must one be to learn to accept gratitude gracefully?

  “And now,” I continued, “I expect to be presented with the bill. Let me guess. . . .You are against further love being spent on chimerism by transplant. You are in favor of enormous sums of love being spent on chimerism by genetic tinkering. Well, this is my decision. ...”

  They were silent, staring at me expectantly, wide-eyed. . . .

  “My decision,”'I said, “is that Paul Bumford, your new ruler, will make the decision. Good-bye, all. Stay happy.”

  I marched out, to a chorus of groans, boos, laughter, catcalls. Paul came running after me into the corridor.

  “Nick!” he gasped. “You’re not serious?”

  “I’m serious.” I nodded. “It’s your decision. Make it.”

  I changed into civilian clothes at the hotel. 1 took a cab to Hawkley’s office, in a new skyscraper overlooking Balboa Park. The building was as cold and sterile as an operating theater. The offices of Hawkley, Goldfarb & Bensen weren’t much better. They occupied the entire thirty-fourth floor, and appeared to be carved from a single block of white plastisteel. If a robot had taken my hat I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised. It was not encouraging.

  I gave my name to the matronly receptionist. She murmured into an intercom. I stood waiting. In a few moments a knobless panel opened in the wall; the young, blond private secretary came out to collect me.

  “Mr. Flair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Follow me, please.”

  “To the ends of the earth.”

  I had hoped for a dimple. But there was no reaction. I followed her haunches down a long, apparently endless corridor. On both sides of that nightmare alley doors led away to—to what? Offices? Closets? Cells?

  There was no human sound. A slight hum of machinery. Or perhaps I was humming to myself. We went through a door to another, much shorter corridor. At the end, a door. What a door!

  It was oaken, the wood looking as though it had been excavated from primeval ooze and laid out on desert sand to dry and bleach. The outside hinges were unpainted iron, fancifully wrought, fastened to the wood with clumpy studs. There was no hint of plas-tiseal, no sign of any futuristic fakery.

  “I’ll buy the door,” I told the blond ef.

  “He'd never sell it,” she said.

  She bounced her knuckles off the wood. Like rapping the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Then she swung the door outward. It moved with nary a squeak.

  “Mr. Nicholas Flair,” she announced.

  I stepped inside, past her. She disappeared. I heard that massive door thud shut behind me.

  If there had been a single feature of that remarkable room unconvincing or not essential, I would have thought it more stage set than office. But I did not see anything leased, and there was nothing I did not want to own.

  It was obso, of course: pine paneling; curtained windows; maroon velvet drapes; a mahogany desk; shelves of leather-bound law books, glassed in. And brass lighting fixtures with green shades, buff ceiling, watercolors of ancient sailing ships, a table of carved walnut, a liquor cabinet made from a campaign chest: inset hardware and brass corners. Over all, a musty antique odor; paste wax and oil, old wood and polished metal.

  The obso em sitting motionless behind the enormous desk belonged there: fly frozen in amber. He appeared to be ninety, at least. He was not bald, but white hair had thinned to a halo. Keratoses of scalp, temples, backs of hands lying palms down on the black desk blotter.

  Clear, almost colorless eyes. Penetrating stare. A hooked beak, fleshless. Lips that had faded into the surrounding skin. A haze of eyebrows and lashes. The corpus thin to the point of emaciation.

  The voice was shockingly deep, strong, resonant. I had expected a frail whisper.

  “Forgive me for not rising,” he said. He moved a finger toward a thick cane hooked over a corner of the desk. “I move as little as possible.”

  “That’s quite all right, sir,” I said.

  He did not, I noted, ask me to be seated.

  “Sir. ...” I said. And paused.

  He gave me no encouragement. He was stone. Posture, manner unyielding. I knew at once it had been a mistake. Not fatal—but still a waste. ,

  “I am interested in making an investment in the San Diego area, ’ ’ I said rapidly. Determined to speak my piece and leave with as much dignity as I could salvage.

  “Investment?”

  “Yes, sir. Preferably in real estate or industrial properties.” “You have something specific in mind?”

  “Scilla Pharmaceuticals. They are—”

  “I know them,” he said shortly. “No, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  That was clear enough. I turned, took two steps, had my hand on the
huge brass doorknob when he spoke my name for the first time.

  “Mr. Flair,” he trumpeted. “Dr. Nicholas Flair. Deputy Director of something called the Satisfaction Section. Of something called the Department of Bliss. Of something called the Government of the United States of America.”

  I took my hand off the knob, turned back.

  “That is correct,” I said.

  “The name Flair is not unknown in this city,” he said coldly. “I like to know who is coming across the country to see me. It wasn’t difficult to find out.”

  “I didn’t think it would be,” I said. “I admire your thoroughness—if that’s what you want from me.”

  "It isn’t,” he said. "I couldn’t care less what you think of me.” “Then our business is at an end, sir,” I said.

  Again I turned to go. Again his voice stopped me.

  “Your father is wealthy,” he said. “Has a good reputation. You seem to be in no need. You hold a responsible government job.” “So?” I said.

  “Just to satisfy an old man’s curiosity,” he said. Eyes squinting. “Why should a young man in your position want to invest in a drug manufacturer that sells to the government you work for? Shoddy, Mr. Flair. I don’t like shoddy.”

  I looked at him. It was obvious what he thought.

  “My motive is not what you suspect,” I told him.

  “Oh? Then what is your motive?”

  I should have walked out then, of course. But I wanted to make a chip, at least, in that icy superiority.

  “My motive, sir?” I said. “Revenge.”

  If he had been given adrenalin IV, the result could not have been more astonishing. The sunken cheeks flushed. The cold eyes took on a sparkle. He pushed himself upright in his straight-backed chair.

  “Revenge?” he said. “Revenge?”

  I stared at him, astounded by the sudden change in his appearance. He had, literally, come alive. He raised a steady hand, pointed across the room at the polished liquor cabinet.

  “On the lower shelf, young man,” he said. “The squarish decanter and two balloons, please.”

  I hesitated a moment. Then I did as he asked. I brought the bottle and brandy snifters back to his desk. He waved me to a leather armchair. Then he unstoppered the decanter, poured the two glasses one-third full, pushed one of them toward me. His movements were slow but not tremulous. We lifted, nodded, sipped.