B.J. was off on a topic that was dear to him. He could talk on it for hours. He droned on and on.
Frost glanced at Appleton. The man was hunched tensely in his chair and scowling.
So it didn't work, thought Frost. Not the way you thought it would. You came in here primed and cocked and you let me have it and it didn't work entirely. And I wish I knew what was back of it, why you tried to get me.
For there had never been bad blood between himself and Marcus. Not that he'd been friendly with the man, for no man ever was a friend of Marcus Appleton. But they had been, if not friends, at least colleagues, each respectful of the other.
There must be something going on, he thought, something not apparent to the eye, some development somewhere that he had failed to catch. For if something were not going on, why had Appleton tried to ruin him?
He became conscious once again of B.J.'s words.
"And that is why, I say, we must bend all our resources to finding Mona Campbell. She may have something that we need, that we've needed all these years."
He stopped and looked inquiringly around the table. No one said a thing.
B.J. rapped on the table with his pencil.
"That is all," he said.
5
"You see, it's this way," said the little old lady to the mortician. "We both are getting old. It isn't as if we had a lot of years ahead of us. Although our health is good."
The old gentleman banged his cane upon the floor in glee and chuckled.
"That is the thing of it," he said. "Our health is just a bit too good. More than likely the both of us could go on living for another twenty years."
"And we enjoy it, too," the little old lady said. "James worked so hard all his life and we scrimped and saved. Now that he can't work any more, we have time just to sit and take it easy and do a little talking and go visiting and such. But we're going behind, financially, every blessed day. We are using up the little that we've saved and we can't have that."
"It's foolish," the old gentleman declared. "If we put ourselves away, the money that is left would go on earning interest."
The old lady nodded vigorously. "Earning interest," she said, "instead of us just sitting around and eating into it."
The mortician rubbed soft, flabby hands together.
"I quite understand," he said. "There is no need of you to feel embarrassment. People with your problem come in all the time."
6
From the window of his office, on the topmost floor of Forever Center, Frost stared out across the tapestry that was old New York. The Hudson was a strip of silver, shining in the morning sun, and the island of Manhattan was a patchwork of faded colors.
Many times before he had stood at this window and gazed out, seeing the scene below, framed by the blue haze of distance and of water, as a symbolic thine;—a glimpse into the past of mankind from the vantage of the future.
But today the symbolism was not there. There was
nothing but the nagging question and the worry that hammered at his brain.
There was no question but that Appleton had tried, deliberately, to put him on the spot, and while that, in itself, was frightening enough, the crux of the entire question was why Marcus had felt it necessary. Had it been Appleton alone, or had the man been acting for other interests, perhaps more involved?
Office politics-that would be die normal answer. But Frost, through the years, had studiously avoided involvement in office politics. Someone might want his job—perhaps many people did. But none of these, he was fairly certain, could engineer what Appleton had done.
And that left only one thing—that someone was afraid of him, that he knew something or suspected something that could be damaging, perhaps not to Forever Center, but to some of its department heads.
Which was ridiculous on the face of it. He did his job and minded his own business. He was consulted only on matters which touched upon his duties. He was not involved in policy other than whatever implementation of policy he was able to carry out promotionally.
He always had minded his own business, but this morning, he reminded himself, he'd stepped beyond the rule he had placed upon himself. He had told B.J. that it was ridiculous to pretend that Forever Center did not run the world. It was true enough, of course, but he should not have said it. He should have kept his mouth shut. There had been no need to say it. The one excuse he had was that he had been angered by Appleton and had acted in anger rather than in common sense.
What Appleton had said was the truth. There was a network of undercover people, but it was a system which had been handed on to him and it was small and restricted in its purpose. Appleton, for his own purposes, had blown it up far beyond the fact.
Frost turned from the window and went back to his desk. Sitting down, he reached out and pulled in front
of him the stack of papers that Miss Beale had placed there. On top of the pile, as usual, was the deadly report on vital statistics.
He picked it up and glanced at it.
There was simply the date, June 15, 2148, and then two lines of type:
In Abeyance-96,674,321,458 Viable^? 128,932,076
Scarcely glancing at the sheet, he crumpled it in his fist and dropped it in the wastebasket, then picked up the second paper off the stack.
There was a rustle at the door of the outer office and Frost looked up. Miss Beale stood there.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Frost," she said. "You weren't here, so I read the morning paper, then forgot to put it on your desk."
"It's quite all right," he said. "Anything of interest?" "It has the release on the Cygnian expedition. They used it just the way we wrote it. You'll find it on page three."
"Not page one?" he asked. "No. There was this Chapman case." "Chapman case?"
"Yes, you know. The man whose rescue car broke down."
"Oh, that one. It's been in the news for days." "He was sentenced yesterday. It was on TV." "I missed it. I didn't turn on the set last night." "It was so dramatic," said Miss Beale. "He has a wife and children and now he can't go with them into second life. I feel so sorry for them."
"He broke the law," said Frost. "He failed a plain and simple duty. The lives of all of us depend on men like him."
"That is true," Miss Beale admitted, "but I still feel sad about it. Such a dreadful thing. To be only one out of many billions who is condemned to everlasting death, to miss the second chance."
"He is not the first one," Frost reminded her. "And he will not be the last."
She laid the paper on the corner of the desk.
"I heard," she said, "you had some trouble at tnis morning's meeting."
He nodded bleakly, saying nothing.
She had heard, he thought. Already the story of what had happened had been leaked somehow and now was racing like wildfire through the building.
"I hope it's not too bad," she said.
"It's not too bad," he told her.
She turned and started for the door.
"Miss Beale," he said.
She turned around.
"I'll be gone this afternoon," he told her. "There's nothing coming up, is there?"