“Ah! Maybe so,” Fred said. “But I’ll be out of here for half an hour. That’s long enough to let the world know how you exercised an illegal special privilege and spared Philip Prior from Happysleep. Wiggle out of that one, then.”
Walton began to sweat.
Fred had him neatly nailed this time.
Someone in security evidently had let him sneak his plea out of the Keep. Martinez? Well, it didn’t matter. By 1500 Fred would be free, and the long-suppressed Prior incident would be smeared all over the telefax system. That would finish Walton; affairs were at too delicate an impasse for him to risk having to defend himself now. Fred might not be able to save himself, but he could certainly topple his brother.
There was no possible way to get a mind-pick request through before 1500; President Lanson himself would have to sign the authorization, and the old dodderer would take his time about it.
Mind-picking was out, but there was still one weapon left to the head of Popeek, if he cared to use it. Walton moistened his lips.
“It sounds very neat,” he said. “I’ll ask you one more time; will you yield Lamarre’s serum to me for use in my negotiations with the Dirnan?”
“Are you kidding? No!” Fred said positively. “Not to save your life or mine. I’ve got you exactly where I want you, Roy. Where I’ve wanted you all my life. And you can’t wriggle out of it.”
“I think you’ve underestimated me again,” Walton said in a quiet voice. “And for the last time.”
He stood up and opened the door of the room. A gray-clad security man hovered outside.
“Will you tell Mr. Martinez I’m ready to leave?” Walton said.
The jetcopter pilot was dozing when Walton reached the landing stage. Walton woke him and said, “Let’s get back to the Cullen building, fast.”
The trip took about ten minutes. Walton entered his office, signaling his return but indicating he wanted no calls just yet. Carefully, thoughtfully, he arranged the various strands of circumstance in his mind, building them into a symmetrical structure.
Di Cassio and the other conspirators would be rounded up by nightfall, certainly. But no time element operated there; Walton knew he could get mind-pick authorizations in a day or so, and go through one after another of them until the whereabouts of Lamarre’s formula turned up. It was brutal, but necessary.
Fred was a different problem. Unless Walton prevented it, he’d be freed on his writ within hours—and when he revealed the Prior incident, it would smash Walton’s whole fragile construct to flinders.
He couldn’t fight habeas corpus. But the director of Popeek did have one weapon that legally superseded all others. Fred had gambled on his brother’s softness, and Fred had lost.
Walton reached for his voicewrite and, in a calm, controlled voice, began to dictate an order for the immediate removal of Frederic Walton from Security Keep, and for his prompt transference to the Euthanasia Clinic on grounds of criminal insanity.
XX
Even after that—for which he felt no guilt, only relief— Walton felt oppressive foreboding hanging over him. Martinez phoned, late that day, to inform him that the hundred landowners had been duly corralled and were being held in the lower reaches of Security Keep.
“They’re yelling and squalling,” Martinez said, “and they’ll have plenty of high-power legal authority down here soon enough. You’d better have a case against them.”
“I’m obtaining an authorization to mind-blast the one named di Cassio. He’s the ringleader, I think.” Walton paused for a moment, then asked, “Did a Popeek ‘copter arrive to pick up Frederic Walton?”
“Yes,” Martinez said. “At 1406. A lawyer showed up here waving a writ, a little while later, but naturally we had no further jurisdiction.” The security man’s eyes were cold and accusing, but Walton did not flinch.
“1406?” he repeated. “All right, Martinez. Thanks for your cooperation.”
He blanked the screen. He was moving coolly, crisply now. In order to get a mind-pick authorization, he would have to see President Lanson personally. Very well; he would see President Lanson.
The shrunken old man in the White House was openly deferential to the Popeek head. Walton stated his case quickly, bluntly. Lanson’s watery, mild eyes blinked a few times at the many complexities of the situation. He rocked uneasily up and down.
Finally he said, “This mind-picking—it’s absolutely necessary?”
“Absolutely. We must know where that serum is hidden.”
Lanson sighed heavily. “I’ll authorize it,” he said. He looked beaten, Washington to New York was a matter of some few minutes. The precious authorization in his hands, Walton spoke to di Cassio via the screener setup at Security Keep, informed him of what was going to be done with him. Then, despite the fat man’s hysterical protests, he turned the authorization over to Martinez with instructions to proceed with the mind-pick.
It took fifty-eight minutes. Walton waited in a bare, austere office somewhere in the Keep while the mind-picking technicians peeled away the cortex of di Cassio’s brain. By now Walton was past all ambivalence, all self-doubt. He thought of himself as a mere robot fulfilling a preset pattern of action.
At 1950 Martinez presented himself before Walton. The little security head looked bleak.
“It’s done. Di Cassio’s been reduced to blubber and bone. I wouldn’t want to watch another mind-picking too soon.”
“You may have to,” Walton said. “If di Cassio wasn’t the right one, I intend to go straight down the line on all hundred-odd of them. One of them dealt with Fred. One of them must know where the Lamarre papers are.”
Martinez shook his head wearily. “No. There won’t need to be any more mind-picking. We got it all out of di Cassio. The transcript ought to be along any moment.”
As the security man spoke, an arrival bin in the office flashed and a packet arrived. Walton broke impatiently for the bin, but Martinez waved him away. “This is my domain, Mr. Walton. Please be patient.”
With infuriating slowness, Martinez opened the packet, removed some closely-typed sheets, nodded over them. He handed them to Walton.
“Here. Read for yourself. Here’s the record of the conversation between your brother and di Cassio. I think it’s what you’re looking for.”
Walton accepted the sheets tensely and began to read:
Di Cassio: You have a what?
Fred Walton:An immortality serum. Eternal life. You know. Some Popeek scientist invented it, and I stole his notebook from my brother’s office. It’s all here.
Di Cassio: Buono! Excellent work. Excellent. Immortality, you say?
Fred Walton:Damned right. And it’s the weapon we can use to pry Roy out of office. All I have to do is tell him he’d better get out of the way or we’ll turn the serum loose on humanity, and he’ll move. He’s an idealist — stars in his eyes and all that. He won’t dare resist.
Di Cassio: This is marvelous. You will, of course, send the serum formula to us for safe keeping?
Fred Walton: Like hell I will. I’m keeping those notes right where they belong —inside my head. I’ve destroyed the notebooks and had the scientist killed. The only one who knows the secret is yours truly. This is just to prevent double-crossing on your part, di Cassio. Not that I don’t trust you, you understand.
Di Cassio: Fred, my boy —
Fred Walton: None of that stuff. You gave me a free hand. Don’t try to interfere now.