Dr. Moss spread his hands. “I’m not beefing. The Criterion Committee does the choosing.”
“Rinehart’s criteria!” Dan Fowler exploded.
“But Rinehart doesn’t decide for himself. There all sorts of wise men and women on that committee, people trained in every area of knowledge, working themselves sick to pick out the best choices each year.”
Fowler looked at him. “Yes, working to pick out who shall live and who shall not live. Well, who is wise enough for that job? You don’t know very much about people, Doctor. Nor about politics. Who do you think set the figure at five hundred a year? The Hoffman Center? The committee? No. Rinehart set the number. Who has consistently maneuvered to hold down appropriations so the center couldn’t handle more than five hundred? Rinehart has, seven times, now. The committeemen are good people, but they want to live, too, and their chairman is a vulture. For decades he’s used the Criterion Committee as his own personal weapon. Built power with it. Got it in a strangle hold he never intends to let go.” The senator leaned across the desk, his eyes bright with anger. “I haven’t time to stop for a Retread now, because finally, at last, I can stop Walter Rinehart, if only I can live a few more weeks. I can break him, free the Criteron Committee from his control, or any one man’s control, now while there’s still a chance, and throw rejuvenation open to everybody instead of to five hundred chosen ones a year. I can stop Rinehart because I’ve dug at him and dug at him for twenty-nine years, and shouted and screamed and fought and made people listen, and now, finally, I have him boxed into a corner that he can’t get out of. And if I fumble now it’ll all be down the drain, finished, washed up. And if that happens, nobody will ever be able to stop him.”
There was silence in the little examining room. Then Dr. Moss spread his hands. “The Hearings are that critical, eh?”
“I’m afraid they are.”
“But why does it have to be your personal fight? Why can’t someone else do it?”
“Anyone else would fumble it. Anyone else would foul it up. Senator Libby fouled it up once, disastrously, years ago. Rinehart’s lived for a hundred and nineteen years, and he’s been learning new tricks every year. I’ve only lived fifty-six years so far, but I’m onto his tricks. I can beat him.”
“But why you?”
“Somebody’s got to do it. My card is on top.”
On the desk a telephone buzzed. Dr. Moss answered, then handed Dan the receiver. A moment later the senator was grinning like a cat, struggling into his overcoat and scarf. “Sorry, Doc. I know what you tell me is true, and I’m no fool. If I really have to stop, I’ll stop.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“Not tomorrow. One of my lads is back from Ironstone Colony with the key to the whole thing in his head. We’ve got hard work to do tomorrow, but I think I can get the Hearings rescheduled a bit sooner, say next week. When they’re over with, I’ll be in, scout’s honor. Meanwhile, keep your eye on the TV. Ill be seeing you, lad.”
The door clicked shut behind him, leaving a faint blue cloud of cigar smoke in his wake. Dr. David Moss stared at it gloomily. “I hope so,” he said softly to himself, “I truly hope so.”
A white Volta two-wheeler was waiting for him outside. Jean Fowler drove off with characteristic contempt for the laws of gravity after her father had piled in. Carl Golden was there, looking thinner, more gaunt and hawklike than ever before, his brown eyes sharp under his shock of black hair. Dan clapped him on the shoulder, and shot a dark look at his daughter, relegating her to some private Fowler limbo, which was where she belonged and would remain until Dan got excited about something and forgot how she’d betrayed her ailing father to Dr. Moss, a matter of fifteen minutes at the most. Jean Fowler knew her father too well to worry about it. She squinted out the window at the afternoon traffic as the car squealed around the cloverleaf onto the Boulevard Freeway, its stabilizing gyros whining, and then buzzed across the river toward town. “Confound it, boy,” Dan was saying, “you could at least have flashed a signal that you were coming. Jean spotted you on the passenger list, and I had to do back-flips to get old MacKenzie to reschedule the Hearings for next week instead of two months from now.”
Carl scowled. “I thought the dates were all set.”
Dan chuckled. “They were. But it was you we had to wait for, and with you back with the true story on Armstrong why delay?” He didn’t mention the doctor’s urgent warning.
Carl Golden shook his head. “I don’t like the switch in dates, Dan.”
“Well, Dwight MacKenzie didn’t like it either, but he’s still setting the committee’s business calendar, and he couldn’t find a good solid reason why the Hearings shouldn’t be rescheduled. And I think our good friend Senator Rinehart is probably wriggling on the stick right now, just on the shock value of the switch. Always figure in the shock value of everything you do, my boy; it pays off more than you’d ever dream.”
“I still don’t like it. I wish you hadn’t done it.”
“But why? Look, lad, I know that with Ken Armstrong dead we had to change our whole approach. It’s going to be trickier, without him, but it might even work out better. The Senate knows what’s been going on between Rinehart and me. So does the President. They know elections are coming up next June. They know I want a seat on the Criterion Committee before elections, and they know that to get a seat I’ve got to unseat Rinehart. They know I’ve shaken him up, that he’s scared of me. Okay, fine. With Armstrong here to tell how and why he was chosen for Retread back in ’87, what he had to pay Rinehart to get the nod, we’d have had Rinehart running for his life—”
“But you don’t have Armstrong here,” Carl cut in flatly, “and that’s that.”
“No, I don’t, but believe me, before I get through with him, Rinehart’s going to wish I did. I needed Armstrong badly. Rinehart knew that, and had him taken care of. It was fishy, it stank from here to Mars, but Rinehart covered it up fast and clean. Well, it was wasted effort. With the stuff you got from the Ironstone Colony files we can charge Rinehart with murder, and the whole Senate knows his motive already. He didn’t dare let Armstrong testify.”
Carl was shaking his head sadly.
“Well, what’s wrong?”
“You aren’t going to like this, Dan, but I’m afraid Rinehart had nothing to do with Kenneth Armstrong’s death.”
Fowler gaped at him. “Nothing to do with it!”
“Nothing. Armstrong committed suicide.”
Dan Fowler sat back hard. “Oh, no.”
“Sorry.”
“Ken Armstrong? Suicided?” Dan shook his head helplessly, groping for words. “I—I—oh, Carl, you’ve got to be wrong. I knew Ken Armstrong.”
“No, I’m not wrong. There are plenty of things that are very strange about that Mars colony, but Armstrong’s death was suicide. Period. Even Barness couldn’t believe it at the time and still doesn’t know why.”