There was a long silence. Anson looked sick.
“He bred the Goblins to study the disease?” he said at last.
“Worse than that.” Rob’s face had no color in it. He was nursing his new left hand as though it again pained him. “Remember the name, Expies? To him, they were no more than experimental animals. Morel could give Goblins the disease. When I saw them in the lab, some were healthy — the control group — and the rest suffered from cancer pertinax.”
“He used people as lab animals?”
“What is the ideal lab animal if you want to learn the side effects of a treatment on a human being?”
Anson did not speak. After a few moments Rob went on, “The best lab animal in studying human diseases is another human. That’s why Morel was breeding the Goblins. That was the only reason for their existence. He could run through a complete generation of them in a few years.”
“And Regulo knew about it?” Anson was staring out of the window, avoiding Rob’s eyes.
“He did.”
“Then you were right, Rob. I would rather not have known that. It explains why you looked fifteen years older when you got back to Earth.”
“Make that fifty years. I only wish I felt about Regulo as I did about Morel. You know, I liked Regulo. I never knew my own father, and he seemed like the nearest thing to a father I ever had. I don’t know if he had anything to do with the deaths of my real mother and father, and I think that’s something I would rather never know. But I’m sure he knew what Morel was doing with the Goblins. His disease had driven him over the edge, too. Remember what Senta told us about his `lust for life’? Regulo didn’t want to die. He had reached the point where he would do anything to go on living. Anything at all.”
“But why would Morel do all this? He didn’t have Regulo’s disease, he didn’t have anything to gain from the experiments.”
“You didn’t know Morel. If there was one thing that he was willing to die for, it was Caliban. That was the important experiment to him. I don’t think he ever thought of the Goblins as more than experimental animals. Originally he may not have expected Regulo to go along with the idea, but once they started they both had to keep their secret.”
“Regulo didn’t suggest Goblins. He wouldn’t have had the medical knowledge.” Anson glanced quickly at Rob. “But agreeing to something like that is nearly as bad as suggesting it. Don’t you agree?”
“What is it, Howard?” Rob stared at Anson. “That’s not your style of question. What are you getting at?”
“I remember everything you ever told me about Atlantis. One thing won’t pass my own test of reasonableness, and we have to face a nasty possibility. Corrie lived on Atlantis for a long time. She was close to everything that happened there. Isn’t it possible that she knew about the experiments, too?”
Rob again fell silent, gazing out at the majestic column of the beanstalk rising against the dark blue of the late afternoon sky. At last he said, “I had that thought, too. When I came back from the lab, after Caliban had killed Morel, I found Corrie with Regulo. I had been left alone for more than four hours — and I couldn’t help wondering what Morel had been doing all that time. The only answer that made any sense was one I didn’t like to think about: Morel was talking the whole thing over with Regulo, wondering what to do with me. And where was Corrie while they were talking? She might have been there with them.”
“Do you think that Corrie and Regulo agreed to have Morel kill you?”
“I’m not saying that. I think that was Morel’s decision, against Regulo’s orders. He could have gone back to the study and told Regulo that I attacked him. He would have claimed it was self-defense. I can believe a lot about Darius Regulo, but I can’t believe he would have me killed.”
Anson did not speak, but his expression needed no words.
“I know,” said Rob. “Damn it, Howard, I need some illusions. If I’m wrong, we’ll never know it. Regulo is dead. We can’t ask him questions. Did you ever find out if Corrie is really Regulo’s daughter?”
“That’s what started my own suspicions. That’s why I said it wasn’t over until one question was answered. She is his daughter, no doubt about it. But she told you she wasn’t. Why did she do that?” Anson began to prowl about the bedroom, his hands smoothing imaginary creases from his lapels. “Why would she disown her own father?”
“Maybe she wanted to dissociate herself from Regulo, because she hated the idea that people might think she was riding his coattails to success. There’s another possibility, one that I like a lot less.”
“You mean, she wanted you to think she had no strong tie to Regulo, because she knew about the experiments. And she needed them to succeed as much as he did.”
Rob nodded. He lay back on the pillows and closed his eyes. “That’s the one I’m afraid of, Howard. Remember the other thing about cancer pertinax? It has a strong hereditary tendency.”
Howard Anson paused in his pacing. “You think that Corrie — ?”
“I’m almost sure of it. It’s in the early stages, but she has the first signs of cancer pertinax. Take a close look at her when the subject is mentioned. She controls herself well, but you can see the fear in her eyes. It may be years until any physical symptoms show. That’s the way it was with Regulo.”
Anson went to the window and stared out at the eastern sky. The first stars were showing but he did not see them. He was searching for Atlantis, thirty million miles away and slowly moving in from its position in the Belt. It would be months before it reached Earth orbit.
“You told me that Corrie hated Morel,” he said at last. “Now you’re suggesting that she might have been working with him, trying to find a cure. At the very least, she might have been taking treatment from him.”
“Do you think that’s too improbable a combination?”
“Not at all — but I thought maybe you would.” Anson laughed, and it was an abrupt, humorless sound. “I learned long ago that people are complicated. There’s almost no limit to the levels of inconsistency you can find in a person. I’m glad you’re learning it, too. What are you going to do next?”
“Next?” Rob opened his eyes. He shrugged. “Build more beanstalks. Develop the Slingshot further, shrink the Solar System. Regulo left enough unfinished work to keep me busy for a lifetime.”
“You’re playing dumb. You know what I mean. What are you going to do about Corrie? What about Caliban? Worst of all, what about the Goblins? Forget the engineering. Sala Keino could handle that for you.”
Rob shook his head. There was a lengthening silence, broken at last by the sound of the door to the outer room sliding open.
“That’s Senta and Corrie,” said Rob. “Howard, I have no answers. According to the Antigeria Labs, we should be able to treat the Goblins for progeria to the point where they recover most of a normal life span. What we can do for them socially, God knows. They’ve been treated worse than slaves. Thirty of them have induced cases of cancer pertinax — as many as in the whole rest of the System. We’ll have to keep a systematic program going, a legal program, to look for a cure. As for Caliban, you tell me. What do you do with a new intelligence once you’ve created it?”
“You study it. You interact with it. That’s what I’d like to do, for my own selfish reasons.” Anson spoke quickly. “Why do you think I’m letting Senta talk me into going up to space? Caliban and Sycorax seem to have developed methods of information storage and retrieval different from anything on Earth — non-sequential, non-random, I’m tempted to say non-logical. I’d like to work with them, and that means Atlantis. Caliban ought to have regenerated his arms—”