“You admit you went on weekends with Mr. Bahr?”
“Certainly.”
“That he was intimate with you?”
“You mean that he slept with me?”
“That’s what I mean,” Braelow said, beginning to color.
“So have other men,” Libby said, “according to you. You ran a regiment through this courtroom to prove it. Who was in bed with me doesn’t matter. What matters is who got me pregnant. It was not Bahr.”
Braelow turned back to the table, confused. “All right,” Bahr said angrily, “you’ve messed around long enough.” He stood up and strode to the center of the room, glaring at Libby, raising his head to the cameras. He knew the eyes that were watching him, now, but he didn’t care any longer; all he could see was her face, her eyes watching him with hatred; all he could feel now was the violent, overpowering urgency to break her, to beat her down and pound her into the ground. He didn’t care if all the world was watching, she couldn’t do what she was doing to him and get away with it. “Now,” he said, his voice thick with repressed anger, “let’s straighten out a few simple facts. I know what you’ve turned into in the last few weeks—that’s why I’m involved in this filthy affair—but just for the record let’s talk about the year 2022. That is when you became pregnant, right?”
“In March, to be exact,” Libby said.
“And you recall I was on a special assignment in California during most of that month?”
“Yes, I recall.”
“You recall that I phoned you every night, from California?”
“Very clearly.”
“Specifically, did you not plead with me to come back to New York, because you were . . . lonesome?”
“I didn’t use those exact words,” Libby said.
“Did you arrange to meet me at the ski resort in Sun Valley, and did you not fly out there?”
“Yes.”
“We were together for two week ends?”
“Yes.”
“And it was during this time that you became pregnant?”
“Well, a woman has to calculate backwards, but I’m certain I became pregnant during that ten days in Sun Valley.”
“Then it couldn’t have been anybody but me,” Bahr said, and stepped back triumphantly.
Libby’s answer was mocking laughter. “So I led you to believe . . . .”
“You slut!” Bahr screamed, and smashed his hand across her face. She fell out of the chair, and Bahr reached down, grabbed her by the shoulder, drawing his fist back savagely.
Someone seized his wrist, twisted it and threw him off balance, and he was glaring into Alexander’s face. Suddenly Bahr remembered the cameras. He gripped the table edge. “You’re a dead man,” he said to Alexander, in a voice so low only Alexander could hear. Then he shrugged loose from Alexander’s grip and turned back to Libby. The 3-V lens caught a closeup of his face, hideous with the anger of death, facing Libby’s scornful mask.
Then Libby was turning to the judge, speaking in a voice that carried to the farthest corner of the courtroom, to every person there, to every microphone. “He could never have been the father of my child.” She looked around the room, drawing full attention, and then looked at Bahr, and made a slow, deliberate gesture. There was a gasp from the courtroom; as Libby spoke, facing directly into the 3-V lenses, her mouth twisted in contempt.
“He is a fraud,” she said, “a magnificent fake. Julian Bahr is impotent.”
Epilogue . . . .
It had been predictable, and yet unpredictable; he had headed for the border, and then, abruptly, the BRINT patrol had lost him, and it was almost an hour before they realized that he had doubled back, that he had never intended to go to the border at all.
Emergency Director Harvey Alexander arrived in his Volta just as the BRINT men were breaking down the door to Libby’s apartment. “The guard,” he groaned, “my god, didn’t she even have a guard?”
“She did have,” MacKenzie told him. “The guard was killed by a silent stunner. A couple of DIA men who were still loyal to him blocked our way up here for fifteen minutes.” The BRINT man put a hand on Alexander’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We thought Bahr would try to get across the border when he slipped away from our patrol.”
In the dark hallway the axe-blows on the door shredded the silence, and finally the door crashed in. Two BRINT men pushed through inside, stunners ready. Alexander tore away from the aides who tried to restrain him, and followed them in.
They were too late. Alexander saw her on the floor, and he turned white, and closed his eyes with a sudden dizzy feeling of pain and loss.
Her face had been beaten to jelly, the flesh and bones mashed beyond recognition as if some blunt heavy maul had been used. She was naked, until they put a sheet over her. Even in death her body was twisted in agony.
Julian Bahr sat in darkness in the next room. The BRINT men surrounded him with drawn guns, but it was a needless gesture. He sat dull and silent, staring at the floor, and his hands were broken and swollen and bloody.
Later, as they were strapping Bahr onto a stretcher, Alexander half listened to the aide speaking into his ear. “. . . rounded up most of the top DIA men, except those who got to the Southern Continent. No question about your confirmation in the appointment. The engineering people at White Sands have pledged loyalty.”
He nodded, but he was not hearing. He knew that presently he would have to think about it. There was so much work to be done. The frontier had been reopened; gradually, the pace would have to be slowed, the starvation economy improved, Project Tiger converted from a crash war operation to a long-range program of progress that would ultimately take men out to the stars. He would not have to do it alone; he would have able hands helping him. There was MacKenzie and a dozen, a hundred, men like MacKenzie.
There were other details, and soon he would have to begin thinking about them, but now he could think only of Julian Bahr, and Libby Allison. Bahr was there, but Bahr did not see him. He did not see Alexander weeping silently and alone over Libby’s body, nor turning back to the world and the overwhelming task he had undertaken—to hold the reins of power in firm and dedicated hands.
Julian Bahr would not see the great spaceships rise, months and years later, nor would he see his son grow tall and strong. He did not die, but still he was not alive; something had broken within him. The world changed, the days went by, but he did not see, nor understand, for the eyes of Julian Bahr were the eyes of a madman.
But someday, Alexander hoped, Bahr’s son would see . . . and understand.