'Now for the drink,' Phil said. 'There's a bar around the corner; I noticed it when we were coming in here. Let's go.' He started for the door and Jim Briskin followed, hands deep in his overcoat pockets.
The sidewalk, he discovered, was crowded with people, a mob which waved at him, cheered him; he waved back, noticing that many of them were Whites as well as Cols. A good sign, he reflected as his party moved step by step through the dense mass of people, uniformed Chicago city police clearing a path for them to the bar which Phil Danville had picked out.
From the crowd a red-headed girl, very small, wearing dazzling wubfur lounging pajamas, the kind fashionable with the girls on the Golden Door Moments of Bliss satellite, came hurrying, gliding and ducking toward him breathlessly. 'Mr. Briskin ...'
He paused unwillingly, wondering who she was; and what she wanted. One of Thisbe Olt's girls, evidently. 'Yes,' he said, and smiled at her.
'Mr. Briskin,' the little red-haired girl gasped, 'there's a rume going around the satellite - George
Walt's doing something with Verne Engel, the man from CLEAN.' She caught hold of him anxiously by the arm, stopping him. 'They're going to assassinate you or something. Please be careful.' Her face was stark with alarm.
'What's your name ?' Jim asked.
"Sparky Rivers. I - work there, Mr. Briskin.'
'Thanks, Sparky,' he said. 'I'll remember you. Maybe sometime I can give you a cabinet post.' He continued to smile at her, but she did not smile back. I'm just joking,' he said. 'Don't be downcast.'
'I think they're going to kill you,' Sparky said.
'Maybe so.' He shrugged. It was certainly possible. He leaned forward, briefly, and kissed her on the forehead. Take care of yourself, too,' he said, and then walked away with Phil Danville and
Dorothy Gill.
After a time Phil said, 'What are you going to do, Jim ?'
'Nothing. What can I do ? Wait, I guess. Get my drink.'
'You'll have to protect yourself,' Dorothy Gill said. If anything happens to you - what'll we do then ? The rest of us;.'
Jim Briskin said, 'Emigration will still exist, even without me. You can still wake the sleepers.
As it says in Bach's Cantata 140, "Wachet auf". Sleepers, awake. That'll have to be your watchword, from now on.'
'Here's the bar,' Phil Danville said. Ahead of them, a Chicago policeman held the door open for them, and they entered one at a time.
'It was darn nice of that girl to warn me,' Jim Briskin said.
A man's voice, close to him, said, 'Mr. Briskin ? I'm Lurton Sands, Jr. Perhaps you've been reading about me in the homeopapes, lately.'
'Oh, yes,' Jim said, surprised to see him; he held out his hand in greeting. I'm glad to meet you,
Dr Sands, I want to ...'
'May I talk, please ?' Sands said. 'I have something to say to you. Because of you, my life and the humanitarian work of two decades is wrecked. Don't answer; I'm not going to get into an argument with you. I'm simply telling you, so you'll understand why.' Sands reached into his coat pocket. Now he held a laser pistol, pointed directly at Jim Briskin's chest. 'I don't quite understand what it is about my dedication to the sick that offended you and made you turn against me, but everybody else has, so why not you ? After all, Mr. Briskin, what better life-task could you set yourself than wrecking mine ?' He squeezed the trigger of the pistol The pistol did not fire, and Lurton Sands stared down at it in disbelief. 'Myra, my wife.' He sounded almost apologetic. 'She removed the energy cartridge, obviously. Evidently, she thought I'd try to use it on her.' He tossed the pistol away.
After a pause Jim Briskin said huskily, 'Well, now what, Doctor ?'
'Nothing, Briskin. Nothing. If I had had more time I would have checked the gun out, but I had to hurry to get here before you left. That was quite a heroic speech you made; it'll certainly give most people the impression that you're seeking to alleviate man's problems ... although of course you and I know better. By the way - you do realize you won't be able to awaken all the bibs; you can't fulfill that promise because some are dead. I'm responsible for that. Roughly four hundred of them.'
Jim Briskin stared at him.
'That's right,' Sands said. 'I've had access to Department of Special Public Welfare warehouses.
Do you know what that means ? Every organ I've taken has created a dead human - when the time comes for them to be revived, whenever that may be. But I suppose the trump has to be played sooner or later. doesn't it ?'
'You'd do that ?' Jim Briskin said.
'I did that,' Sands corrected. 'But remember this: I killed only potentially. Whereas, in exchange, I
saved someone right now, someone conscious and alive in the present someone completely dependent on my skill.'
Two Chicago policemen shoved their way up to him; Dr Sands jerked irritably away but they continued to hold onto him, pinning him between them.
Pale, Phil Danville said, 'That - was almost it, Jim. Wasn't it ?' He deliberately stepped between
Jim Briskin and Dr Sands, shielding Briskin. 'History revisited.'
'Yes,' Jim managed to say. He nodded, his mouth dry. Basically he felt resigned. If Lurton Sands did not manage to carry it off then, certainly someone else would, given time. It was just too easy. Weapons technology had improved too much in the last hundred years; everyone knew that, and now the assassin did not even have to be in his vicinity. Like an act of evil magic it could be done from a distance. And the instruments were cheap and available to virtually anyone
- even, as history had shown, some ignorant, worthless smallfry, without friends, funds, or even a fanatical purpose, an overriding political cause.
This incident with Lurton Sands was a vile harbinger.
'Well,' Phil Danville said, and sighed, 'I guess we have to go on. What do you want to drink ?'
'A Black Russian,’ Jim decided, after a pause. 'Vodka and ...'
'I know,' Phil interrupted. His face still ragged with fear and gloom, he made his way unsteadily over to the bar to order.
To Dotty, Jim said, 'Even if they get me, I've done my job. I keep telling myself that over and over again, anyhow. I broke the news about TD's break-through and that's enough.'
'Do you actually mean that ?' she demanded. 'You're that fatalistic about it, about your chances ?'
She stared un-wincingly up into his face.
'Yes,' he said, finally. And well he might be.
I have a feeling, he thought to himself, that this is not the time a Negro is going to make it to the presidency.
His contact within CLEAN came via an individual named Dave DeWinter. DeWinter had joined the movement at its inception and had reported to Tito Cravelli throughout. Now, hurriedly,
DeWinter told his employer the most recent - and urgent - news.
'They'll try it late tonight. The man actually doing it is not a member. His name is Herb
Lackmore or Luckmore. and with the equipment they're providing him he doesn't need to be an accurate shot.' DeWinter added, 'The equipment, what they call a boulder, was paid for by
George Walt, those two mutants who own the Golden Door.'
Tito Cravelli said, 'I see.' There goes my post as Attorney General, he said to himself. 'Where can
I find this Lackmore right now ?'
'In his con apt in Oakland, California. Probably eating dinner; it's about six, there.'
From the locked closet of his office, Tito Cravelli got a collapsible high-powered scope-sight laser rifle, he folded it up and stuffed it into his pocket, out of sight. Such a rifle was strictly illegal, but that hardly mattered right now; what Cravelli intended to do was against the law with any kind of weapon.
But it was already too late to get Lackmore or Luckmore or whatever his name was. By the time he reached the West Coast Lackmore would certainly be gone, on his way east to intercept Jim