"Isn"t that rather a naive view?" Mr. Bennet asked, smiling. "As it happens, my a.s.sociates and I are not undertakers. We took on the disguise in order to present an understandable motive if our plan to capture you had misfired. In that event, others would have believed exactly--and only--what you thought: that our purpose was to safeguard our business."
Dennison frowned and watchfully waited.
"Disguises come easily to us," Mr. Bennet said, still smiling. "Perhaps you have heard rumors about a new carburetor suppressed by the gasoline companies, or a new food source concealed by the great food suppliers, or a new synthetic hastily destroyed by the cotton-owning interests. That was us. And the inventions ended up here."
"You"re trying to impress me," Dennison said.
"Certainly."
"Why did you stop me from patenting my immortality serum?"
"The world is not ready for it yet," said Mr. Bennet.
"It isn"t ready for a lot of things," Dennison said. "Why didn"t you block the atom bomb?"
"We tried, disguised as mercenary coal and oil interests. But we failed. However, we have succeeded with a surprising number of things."
"But what"s the purpose behind it all?"
"Earth"s welfare," Mr. Bennet said promptly. "Consider what would happen if the people were given your veritable immortality serum. The problems of birth rate, food production, living s.p.a.ce all would be aggravated. Tensions would mount, war would be imminent--"
"So what?" Dennison challenged. "That"s how things are right now, without immortality. Besides, there have been cries of doom about every new invention or discovery. Gunpowder, the printing press, nitroglycerin, the atom bomb, they were all supposed to destroy the race. But mankind has learned how to handle them. It had to! You can"t turn back the clock, and you can"t un-discover something. If it"s there, mankind must deal with it!"
"Yes, in a b.u.mbling, b.l.o.o.d.y, inefficient fashion," said Mr. Bennet, with an expression of distaste.
"Well, that"s how Man is."
"Not if he"s properly led," Mr. Bennet said.
"No?"
"Certainly not," said Mr. Bennet. "You see, the immortality serum provides a solution to the problem of political power. Rule by a permanent and enlightened elite is by far the best form of government; infinitely better than the blundering inefficiencies of democratic rule. But throughout history, this elite, whether monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorship or junta, has been unable to perpetuate itself. Leaders die, the followers squabble for power, and chaos is close behind. With immortality, this last flaw would be corrected. There would be no discontinuity of leadership, for the leaders would always be there."
"A permanent dictatorship," Dennison said.
"Yes. A permanent, benevolent rule by small, carefully chosen elite corps, based upon the sole and exclusive possession of immortality. It"s historically inevitable. The only question is, who is going to get control first?"
"And you think you are?" Dennison demanded.
"Of course. Our organization is still small, but absolutely solid. It is bolstered by every new invention that comes into our hands and by every scientist who joins our ranks. Our time will come, Dennison! We"d like to have you with us, among the elite."
"You want me to join you?" Dennison asked, bewildered.
"We do. Our organization needs creative scientific minds to help us in our work, to help us save mankind from itself."
"Count me out," Dennison said, his heart beating fast.
"You won"t join us?"
"I"d like to see you all hanged."
Mr. Bennet nodded thoughtfully and pursed his small lips. "You have taken your own serum, have you not?"
Dennison nodded. "I suppose that means you kill me now?"
"We don"t kill," Mr. Bennet said. "We merely wait. I think you are a reasonable man, and I think you"ll come to see things our way. We"ll be around a long time. So will you. Take him away."
Dennison was led to an elevator that dropped deep into the Earth. He was marched down a long pa.s.sageway lined with armed men. They went through four ma.s.sive doors. At the fifth, Dennison was pushed inside alone, and the door was locked behind him.
He was in a large, well-furnished apartment. There were perhaps twenty people in the room, and they came forward to meet him.
One of them, a stocky, bearded man, was an old college acquaintance of Dennison"s.
"Jim Ferris?"
"That"s right," Ferris said. "Welcome to the Immortality Club, Dennison."
"I read you were killed in an air crash last year."
"I merely--disappeared," Ferris said, with a rueful smile, "after inventing the immortality serum. Just like the others."
"All of them?"
"Fifteen of the men here invented the serum independently. The rest are successful inventors in other fields. Our oldest member is Doctor Li, a serum discoverer, who disappeared from San Francisco in 1911. You are our latest acquisition. Our clubhouse is probably the most carefully guarded place on Earth."
Dennison said, "Nineteen-eleven!" Despair flooded him and he sat down heavily in a chair. "Then there"s no possibility of rescue?"
"None. There are only four choices available to us," Ferris said. "Some have left us and joined the Undertakers. Others have suicided. A few have gone insane. The rest of us have formed the Immortality Club."
"What for?" Dennison bewilderedly asked.
"To get out of this place!" said Ferris. "To escape and give our discoveries to the world. To stop those hopeful little dictators upstairs."
"They must know what you"re planning."
"Of course. But they let us live because, every so often, one of us gives up and joins them. And they don"t think we can ever break out. They"re much too smug. It"s the basic defect of all power-elites, and their eventual undoing."
"You said this was the most closely guarded place on Earth?"
"It is," Ferris said.
"And some of you have been trying to break out for fifty years? Why, it"ll take forever to escape!"
"Forever is exactly how long we have," said Ferris. "But we hope it won"t take quite that long. Every new man brings new ideas, plans. One of them is bound to work."
"Forever," Dennison said, his face buried in his hands.
"You can go back upstairs and join them," Ferris said, with a hard note to his voice, "or you can suicide, or just sit in a corner and go quietly mad. Take your pick."
Dennison looked up. "I must be honest with you and with myself. I don"t think we can escape. Furthermore, I don"t think any of you really believe we can."
Ferris shrugged his shoulders.
"Aside from that," Dennison said, "I think it"s a d.a.m.ned good idea. If you"ll bring me up to date, I"ll contribute whatever I can to the Forever Project. And let"s hope their complacency lasts."
"It will," Ferris said.
The escape did not take forever, of course. In one hundred and thirty-seven years, Dennison and his colleagues made their successful breakout and revealed the Undertakers" Plot. The Undertakers were tried before the High Court on charges of kidnapping, conspiracy to overthrow the government, and illegal possession of immortality. They were found guilty on all counts and summarily executed.
Dennison and his colleagues were also in illegal possession of immortality, which is the privilege only of our governmental elite. But the death penalty was waived in view of the Immortality Club"s service to the State.
This mercy was premature, however. After some months the members of the Immortality Club went into hiding, with the avowed purpose of overthrowing the Elite Rule and disseminating immortality among the ma.s.ses. Project Forever, as they termed it, has received some support from dissidents, who have not yet been apprehended. It cannot be considered a serious threat.
But this deviationist action in no way detracts from the glory of the Club"s escape from the Undertakers. The ingenious way in which Dennison and his colleagues broke out of their seemingly impregnable prison, using only a steel belt buckle, a tungsten filament, three hens" eggs, and twelve chemicals that can be readily obtained from the human body, is too well known to be repeated here.
Contents
THE HOUR OF BATTLE.
BY ROBERT SHECKLEY.
As one of the Guardian ships protecting Earth, the crew had a problem to solve. Just how do you protect a race from an enemy who can take over a man"s mind without seeming effort or warning?
"That hand didn"t move, did it?" Edwardson asked, standing at the port, looking at the stars.
"No," Morse said. He had been staring fixedly at the Attison Detector for over an hour. Now he blinked three times rapidly, and looked again. "Not a millimeter."
"I don"t think it moved either," Ca.s.sel added, from behind the gunfire panel. And that was that. The slender black hand of the indicator rested unwaveringly on zero. The ship"s guns were ready, their black mouths open to the stars. A steady hum filled the room. It came from the Attison Detector, and the sound was rea.s.suring. It reinforced the fact that the Detector was attached to all the other Detectors, forming a gigantic network around Earth.
"Why in h.e.l.l don"t they come?" Edwardson asked, still looking at the stars. "Why don"t they hit?"
"Aah, shut up," Morse said. He had a tired, glum look. High on his right temple was an old radiation burn, a sunburst of pink scar tissue. From a distance it looked like a decoration.
"I just wish they"d come," Edwardson said. He returned from the port to his chair, bending to clear the low metal ceiling. "Don"t you wish they"d come?" Edwardson had the narrow, timid face of a mouse; but a highly intelligent mouse. One that cats did well to avoid.
"Don"t you?" he repeated.
The other men didn"t answer. They had settled back to their dreams, staring hypnotically at the Detector face.
"They"ve had enough time," Edwardson said, half to himself.
Ca.s.sel yawned and licked his lips. "Anyone want to play some gin?" he asked, stroking his beard. The beard was a memento of his undergraduate days. Ca.s.sel maintained he could store almost fifteen minutes worth of oxygen in its follicles. He had never stepped into s.p.a.ce unhelmeted to prove it.
Morse looked away, and Edwardson automatically watched the indicator. This routine had been drilled into them, branded into their subconscious. They would as soon have cut their throats as leave the indicator unguarded.
"Do you think they"ll come soon?" Edwardson asked, his brown rodent"s eyes on the indicator. The men didn"t answer him. After two months together in s.p.a.ce their conversational powers were exhausted. They weren"t interested in Ca.s.sel"s undergraduate days, or in Morse"s conquests.
They were bored to death even with their own thoughts and dreams, bored with the attack they expected momentarily.
"Just one thing I"d like to know," Edwardson said, slipping with ease into an old conversational gambit. "How far can they do it?"
They had talked for weeks about the enemy"s telepathic range, but they always returned to it.
As professional soldiers, they couldn"t help but speculate on the enemy and his weapons. It was their shop talk.
"Well," Morse said wearily, "Our Detector network covers the system out beyond Mars" orbit."
"Where we sit," Ca.s.sel said, watching the indicators now that the others were talking.
"They might not even know we have a detection unit working," Morse said, as he had said a thousand times.
"Oh, stop," Edwardson said, his thin face twisted in scorn. "They"re telepathic. They must have read every bit of stuff in Everset"s mind."
"Everset didn"t know we had a detection unit," Morse said, his eyes returning to the dial. "He was captured before we had it."
"Look," Edwardson said, "They ask him, "Boy, what would you do if you knew a telepathic race was coming to take over Earth? How would you guard the planet?""
"Idle speculation," Ca.s.sel said. "Maybe Everset didn"t think of this."
"He thinks like a man, doesn"t he? Everyone agreed on this defense. Everset would, too."
"Syllogistic," Ca.s.sel murmured. "Very shaky."
"I sure wish he hadn"t been captured," Edwardson said.
"It could have been worse," Morse put in, his face sadder than ever. "What if they"d captured both of them?"
"I wish they"d come," Edwardson said.