"Get up," said Mario. Ebery rose to his feet, docile, glassy-eyed. Mario took him through the back door, up in the elevator, up to Level 900, the Chateau d'lf.
"Sit down, don't move," said Mario. Ebery sat like a barnacle.
Mario made a careful reconnaissance. This time of night Mervyn Alien should be through for the day.
Alien was just finishing a transposition. Mario watched as he pushed the two recumbent forms into the outer waiting room, and then he trailed Alien to his living quarters, watched while he shed his clothes, jumped into a silk jerkin, ready for relaxation or sport with his flower-pretty blonde girl.
The coast was clear. Mario returned to where Ebery sat "Stand up, and follow me."
Back down the secret corridors inside the ventilation ducts, and now the laboratory was empty. Mario lifted a hasp, pulled back one of the pressed-wood wall panels.
"Go in," he said. "Lie down on that couch." Ebery obeyed. Mario wheeled him across the room to the racked putty-colored brainmolds, wheeled over another couch for himself. He held his mind in a rigid channel, letting himself think of nothing but the transposition.
He set the dials, kicked in the foot pedal, as Alien had done. Now to climb on the couch, push one more button. He stood looking at the recumbent figure. Now was the time. Act. It was easy; just climb on the couch, reach up, push a button. But Mario stood looking, swaying slightly back and forth.
A slight sound behind him. He whirled. Thane Paren watched him with detached amusement. She made no move to come forward, to flee, to shout for help. She watched with an expression-quizzical, unhuman. Mario wondered, how can beauty be refined to such reckless heights, and still be so cold and friendless? If she were wounded, would she bleed? Now, at this moment, would she run, give the alarm? If she moved, he would kill her.
"Go ahead," said Thane. "What's stopping you? I won't interfere."
Mario had known this somehow. He turned, looked down at his flaccid body. He frowned.
"Don't like its looks?" asked Thane. "It's not how you remember yourself? You're all alike, strutting, boastful animals."
"No," said Mario slowly, "I thought all I lived for was to get back my body. Now I don't know. I don't think I want it. I'm Ebery the industrialist. He's Mario, the playboy."
"Ah," said Thane raising her luminous eyebrows, "you like the money, the power."
Mario laughed, a faint hurt laugh. "You've been with those ideas too long. They've gone to your head. There's other things. The stars to explore. The galaxy-a meadow of magnificent jewels. ... As Ebery, I can leave for the stars next week. As Mario, I go back to the Oxonian Terrace, play handball."
She took a step forward. "Are you-"
He said, "Just this last week a physicist burst through whatever the bindings are that are holding things in. He made it to Pluto in fifteen minutes. Ebery wouldn't listen to him. He's so close to dead right now, you couldn't tell the difference. Ebery would say he's crazy, jerk the whole project. Because there's no evidence other than the word of two men."
"So?" asked Thane. "What will you do?"
"I want my body," said Mario slowly. "I hate this pig's carcass worse than I hate death. But more than that, I want to go to the stars."
She came forward a little. Her eyes shone like Vega and Spica on a warm summer night. How could he have ever thought her cold? She was quick, hot, full-bursting with verve, passion, imagination. "I want to go too."
"Where is this everybody wants to go?" said a light baritone voice, easy on the surface, yet full of a furious undercurrent. Mervyn Alien was swiftly crossing the room. He swung his great athlete's arms loose from the shoulder, clenching and unclenching his hands. "Where do you want to go?" He addressed Mario. "Hell, is it? Hell it shall be." He rammed his fist forward.
Mario lumbered back, then forward again. Ebery's body was not a fighting machine. It was pulpy, pear-shaped, and in spite of Mario's ascetic life, the paunch still gurgled, swung to and fro like a wet sponge. But he fought. He fought with a red ferocity that matched Alien's strength and speed for a half-minute. And then his legs were like columns of pith, his arms could not seem to move. He saw Alien stepping forward, swinging a tremendous massive blow that would crush his jaw like a cardboard box, jar out, shiver his teeth.
Crack! Alien screamed, a wavering falsetto screech, sagged, fell with a gradual slumping motion.
Thane stood looking at the body, holding a pistol.
"That's your brother," gasped Mario, more terrified by Thane's expression than by the fight for life with Alien.
"It's my brother's body. My brother died this morning. Early, at sunrise. Alien had promised he wouldn't let him die, that he would give him a body... . And my brother died this morning."
She looked down at the hulk. "When he was young, he was so fine. Now his brain is dead and his body is dead."
She laid the gun on a table "But I've known it would come. I'm sick of it. No more. Now we shall go to the stars. You and I, if you'll take me. What do I care if your body is gross? Your brain is you."
"Alien is dead," said Mario as if in a dream. "There is no one to interfere. The Chateau d'lf is ours."
She looked at him doubtfully, lip half-curled. "So?"
"Where is the telescreen?"
The room suddenly seemed full of people. Mario became aware of the fact with surprise. He had noticed nothing; he had been busy. Now he was finished.
Sitting anesthetized side by side were four old men, staring into space with eyes that later would know the sick anguish of youth and life within reach and lost
Standing across the room, pale, nervous, quiet, stood Zaer, Breaugh, Janniver. And Ralston Ebery's body. But the body spoke with the fast rush of thought that was Letya Arnold's.
And in Letya Arnold's wasted body, not now conscious, dwelt the mind of Ralston Ebery.
Mario walked in his own body, testing the floor with his own feet, swinging his arms, feeling his face. Thane Paren stood watching him with intent eyes, as if she were seeing light, form, color for the first time, as if Roland Mario were the only thing that life could possibly hold for her.
No one else was in the room. Murris Slade, who had lured, bribed, threatened, frightened those now in the room to the Chateau d'lf, had not come farther than the foyer.
Mario addressed Janniver, Zaer, Breaugh. "You three, then, you will take the responsibility?"
They turned on him their wide, amazed eyes, still not fully recovered from the relief, the joy of their own lives.
..."Yes." ..."Yes."
"Some of the transpositions are beyond help. Some are dead or crazy. There is no help for them. But those whom you can return to their own bodies-to them is your responsibility."
"We break the cursed machine into the smallest pieces possible," said Breaugh. "And the Chateau d'lf is only something for whispering, something for old men to dream about."
Mario smiled. "Remember the advertisement? 'Jaded? Bored? Try the Chateau d'lf.'"
"I am no longer jaded, no longer bored," sighed Zaer.
"We got our money's worth," said Janniver wryly.
Mario frowned. "Where's Ditmar?"
Thane said, "He has an appointment for ten o'clock tomorrow morning. He comes for the new body he has earned."
Breaugh said with quiet satisfaction, "We shall be here to meet him."
"He will be surprised," said Janniver.
"Why not?" asked Zaer. "After all, this is the Chateau d'lf."