Then the phone jangled, and Dan reached out for it, and it was that last small effort that did it. A sledge-hammer blow, from deep within him, sharp agonizing pain, a driving hunger for the air that he just couldn’t pull into his lungs. He let out a small, sharp cry, and doubled over with pain. They found him seconds later, still clinging to the phone, his breath so faint as to be no breath at all.
He regained consciousness hours later. He stared about him at the straight lines of the ceiling, at the hospital bed and the hospital window. Dimly he saw Carl Golden, head drooping on his chest, dozing at the side of the bed.
There was a hissing sound, and he raised a hand, felt the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. Even with that help, every breath was an agony of pain and weariness.
He was so very tired. But slowly, through the fog, he remembered. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead, drenched his body. He was alive. Yet he remembered clearly the thought that had exploded in his mind in the instant the blow had come. I’m dying. This is the end—it’s too late now. And then, cruelly, Why did I wait so long?
He struggled against the mask, sat bolt upright in bed. “I’m going to die,” he whispered, then caught his breath. Carl sat up, smiled at him.
“Lie back, Dan. Get some rest.”
Had he heard? Had Carl heard the fear he had whispered? Perhaps not. He lay back, panting, as Carl watched. Do you know what I’m thinking, Carl? I’m thinking how much I want to live. People don’t need to die—wasn’t that what Dr. Moss had said? It’s such a terrible waste, he had said.
Too late, now. Dan’s hands trembled. He remembered the senators in the oval hall, the people in the gallery, the brave words he had shouted. He remembered Rinehart’s face, and Tyndall’s, and Libby’s. He was committed now. Yesterday, no. Now, yes.
Paul had been right, and Dan had proved it.
His eyes moved across to the bedside table. A telephone. He was still alive, Moss had said that sometimes it was possible even when you were dying. That was what they did with your father, wasn’t it, Carl? Brave Peter Golden, who had fought Rinehart so hard, who had begged and pleaded for universal rejuvenation, waited and watched to catch Rinehart red-handed, to prove that he was corrupting the law and expose him. Simple, honest Peter Golden, applying so naively for his rightful place on the list, when his cancer was diagnosed. And then the auto accident, never definitely linked to Rinehart, but no real accident either. Peter Golden had been all but dead when he had finally whispered his defeat, begging for help and giving Rinehart his pledge of perpetual silence in return for life. They had snatched him from death, indeed. But he had been crucified all the same. The life they had given him had been a living death, which was why in just a few short months he had quietly withdrawn and curled up and died once and for all, in spite of his rejuvenation, loathing himself for his betrayal of all he believed in. And you watched it all, didn’t you, Carl? You and your mother watched him die, inch by inch, and couldn’t find a way to help him. Rinehart had stripped him of everything and found a coward and traitor underneath.
Coward? Why? Was it wrong to want to live? Dan Fowler was dying. Why must it be he? He had committed himself to a fight, yes, but there were others, young men, who could fight. Men like Peter Golden’s son.
But you’re their leader, Dan. If you fail them, they will never win.
Carl was watching him silently, his lean dark face expressionless. Could the boy read his mind? Was it possible that he knew what Dan Fowler was thinking? Carl had understood before. It had seemed sometimes that Carl understood Dan far better than Dan did. He wanted to cry out to Carl now, spill over his dreadful thoughts, but he knew he could not do it.
There was no one to run to. He was facing himself now. No more cover-up, no deceit. Life or death, that was the choice. No compromise. Life or death, but decide now. Not tomorrow, not next week, not in five minutes—
Now.
And there was the flaw, the one thing that even Paul hadn’t known, perhaps the universal flaw: that given the choice, a man will choose life. That life is too dear, that a man loves life—not what he can do with life, but life itself for its own sake—too much to choose to die. There was no choice, not really. A man will always choose life, as long as the choice is really his. Dan Fowler knew that now.
It would be selling himself, as Peter Golden did. It would betray Carl, and Jean, and all the rest. It would mean derision, and scorn, and oblivion for Dan Fowler.
Sorry. But that was the way it had to be—
Had to be?
The pain began again in his chest.
He looked at the telephone on the bedside stand. An easy aim’s length away. Reach out, pick up the receiver, a single call to Dr. Moss. So easy—
As easy as crossing back across the gulf from Death. That flaw—universal? Maybe not. There were others, throughout history, who had chosen the other path when the cause was great enough. Martyrs, all of them. But what comfort to be a living traitor?
He looked again at the telephone as the pain swelled up, almost overwhelmed him. His hand moved toward it, almost involuntarily. “Carl. Carl! Help me! Hold my hand back!”
“Gently, Dan.” Carl held his hand.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know. But I don’t need to hold your hand, do I? Not yours—”
The pain swept higher and this time did not stop. “No, lad, not mine,” Dan breathed, as Carl felt the tension in his arm relax, and his hand go limp. And in the last flickering instant before the darkness, “Thank you, lad.”
Jean Fowler came into the room moments later as Carl Golden wept, silently and fearlessly. She stared at Dan, gray on the bed, and then at Carl. One look at Carl’s face and she knew too.
Carl nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, Jean.”
She shook her head, tears welling up. “But you loved him so.”
“More than my own father.”
“Then why didn’t you make him call?”
“He wanted to be immortal. Always, that drove him. Greatness, power, all the same. Now he will be immortal, because he knew we needed a martyr in order to win. Now we will win. The other way, he knew we would surely lose, and he would live on and on and on and die every day.” He turned slowly to the bed and brought the sheet up gently. “Maybe this is better, who can say? This way he will never die.”
Together they left the quiet room.
Part Two
Psi High
The alien’s ship skimmed down like a shadow from the outer atmosphere and settled gently and silently in the tangled underbrush of a hillside overlooking a bend in the broad river. There was the hiss of scorched leaves, the piping of a small, trapped animal—then silence. It was dusk, with the sunlight just departing the hilltops around; here in the cut leading down to the river the gloom of darkness was settling.
Somewhere across the hills a dog howled mournfully. Night birds made small rustling sounds through the scrub and underbrush. The alien waited, alert and tense, but he was not listening for audible sounds. If his race had ever possessed hearing, it was long since lost; they had no need to hear. Instead he sat with his cold yellow eyes half closed, waiting to feel any flickering touch deep in his mind, any whisper of surprise or wonder or fear that his powerful thought-receptors might pick up from the dark hills around the ship. Because that, above all, was criticaclass="underline" that his arrival here be entirely undetected. Everything depended on that.