“Verrick can just walk in here?” Benteley asked helplessly.
“Of course,” Cartwright answered. “This is a public resort. He’s not an assassin; he’s an ordinary citizen.”
“Do you mind being present?” Shaeffer asked Benteley. “It may be—difficult.”
“I’ll stay,” Benteley said.
Verrick and his small group pushed slowly through the wide entrance-sphincter. Removing their suits, they glanced cautiously around.
“Hello, Verrick,” Cartwright said. The two of them shook hands. “Come on inside and have a cup of coffee. We were eating.”
“Thanks,” Verrick answered. “Yes, if you don’t mind.” He looked haggard, but calm. His voice was low; he followed Cartwright obediently up the corridor toward the dining-room. “You know, don’t you, that Pellig has left?”
“I know,” Cartwright said. “He’s heading out toward John Preston’s ship.”
The others followed after the two of them as they entered the dining-room and seated themselves. MacMillans had cleared the table; they rapidly reset cups and saucers. Benteley seated himself beside Rita O’Neill at the far end of the table from Verrick. Verrick saw him but he gave no sign beyond a momentary flicker of recognition. Shaeffer, the other Corpsmen and Directorate officials, took seats in the background and listened and watched respectfully.
“I suppose he’ll find it,” Verrick murmured. “When I left Farben, he was already thirty-nine astronomical units out; I checked with the ipvic monitor. Thanks.” He accepted black coffee and sipped it with relief. “A hell of a lot has happened, today.”
“What would Moore do if he got hold of Preston’s material?” Cartwright asked. “You know him better than I do.”
“It’s hard to say. Moore was always a lone wolf. He was in it for himself … I provided him with materials and he worked away on his projects. He’s brilliant.”
“I got that impression. Didn’t he engineer the whole Pellig project?”
“It was all his idea. I went out and hired him; I knew he was good. I didn’t try to tell him what to do.”
Eleanor Stevens had come quietly into the dining-room. She stood, nervous and uncertain, her small thin hands clasped tightly together. After a moment of anxious indecision she slipped into a seat in the dim recesses of the room and watched wide-eyed, a demure and terrified shape half-lost in the shadows.
“I wondered where you went,” Verrick said to her. “You beat me here by—” He examined his watch. “Only a few minutes.”
“Will Moore go back to you if he gets what he wants?” Cartwright asked.
“I doubt it. There wouldn’t be any real reason.”
“His oath?”
“He never worried about that sort of thing.” Verrick’s deep-set eyes strayed vaguely. “It seems to be the fashion among the bright young men. I suppose oaths don’t seem as important as they did, once.”
Benteley said nothing. Under his fingers his hand-weapon was cold and moist with perspiration. His coffee cooled beside him, untouched. Rita O’Neill smoked convulsively, stubbed her cigarette out, lit another and then stubbed out that.
“Are you going to call a second Challenge Convention?” Cartwright asked Verrick.
“Oh, I don’t know. Not for a while.” Verrick made an intricate pyramid with his massive hands, studied it, then dissolved it back into individual fingers. He gazed absently around the dining-room. “I don’t remember this place. It’s Directorate property, isn’t it?”
Shaeffer answered. “We always arrange something in advance. You’ll recall the interplan station we fixed for you outside Mars. That was constructed during Robinson’s reign.”
“Robinson.” Verrick mused cloudily. “I remember him. God, that was ten years ago. Has it really been that long?”
“Why did you come here?” Rita O’Neill’s voice cracked out.
Verrick’s shaggy eyebrows pulled together in a weary frown. He didn’t know Rita, obviously. He turned to Cartwright for an explanation. “My niece,” Cartwright said. He introduced them; Rita glared down at her coffee cup and said nothing. Her lips turned white and she clenched her fists until Verrick forgot her and went back to pyramiding his fingers and brooding.
“Of course,” Verrick said finally, “I don’t know what Benteley has told you. I suppose you understand my set-up, by now.”
“What Benteley didn’t tell me orally, Shaeffer scanned,” Cartwright answered.
Verrick muttered obscurely. “Then you know all I have to say by way of explanation,” he finished. He raised his massive head. “Can I take that for granted?”
“Yes,” Cartwright said, nodding. “Of course.”
“I don’t intend to bring in anything to do with Herb Moore. As far as I’m concerned that’s over and finished.” Verrick struggled with his pocket and finally brought out a massive Hopper popper, which he propped upright against his water glass and napkin ring. “I can’t very well kill Benteley here at the table. I’ll wait until later on.” A thought struck him. “I don’t have to kill him here at the resort. He can go back with me and I’ll kill him along the way, somewhere.”
Shaeffer and Cartwright exchanged glances. Verrick took no interest; he gazed down broodingly at his popper and paw-like hands.
“That really doesn’t matter,” Cartwright said. “But we should clear up one thing. Benteley is presently under oath to me, as Quizmaster. He took a positional oath.”
“But he can’t,” Verrick said. “He broke his oath to me; that negates his freedom to swear on.”
“Well,” Cartwright said, “I don’t consider that he broke his oath to you.”
“You betrayed him,” Shaeffer explained to Verrick.
Verrick reflected at length. “I’m not conscious of any betrayal. I performed the duties and obligations due from my end.”
“That’s not even remotely true,” Shaeffer contradicted.
There was a moment of silence.
Verrick grunted, retrieved his popper, examined it, and then shoved it back in his coat pocket. “We’ll have to get advice on this,” he murmured. “Let’s try to get Judge Waring up here.”
“Fine,” Cartwright agreed. “That’s satisfactory. Do you want to stay here during the interval?”
“Thanks,” Verrick said appreciatively. “I’m tired as hell. What I need is a good long rest.” He gazed around him. “This looks like just the place.”
Judge Felix Waring was a grouchy, hunched-over old gnome in a moth-eaten black suit and old-fashioned hat, a heavy legal binder under his arm. He was the highest ranking jurist in the system; and he had a long white beard.
“I know who you are,” he muttered curtly, glancing at Cartwright. “And you, too.” He nodded briefly at Verrick. “You and your million gold dollars. That Pellig of yours was a fizzle, wasn’t he?” He cackled gleefully. “I never liked the looks of him. I knew he was no good. He didn’t have a muscle on him.”
It was “morning” in the resort.
The ship that had brought Judge Waring had quietly disgorged MacMillan newsmachines, Hill officials, and more Directorate bureaucrats. Ipvic technicians came in their own ship; a steady stream of workmen moved through the sphincters into the balloon. Signalmen with tangled reels of communication wiring thrown over their shoulders wandered everywhere, stringing up ipvic tv equipment. Toward the middle of the day the resort became a hive of noisy, determined activity. Motion was everywhere, figures coming and going with serious expressions.
“How’s this?” a Directorate official was saying to one of the ipvic men.
“Not big enough. What about that place over there?”
“That’s the main game room.”
“That’ll be fine.” Equipment was waved toward the entrance arch. “The acoustics will be blurred but that’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Not on your life. We want no boom; use something smaller.”
“Don’t step through the balloon,” a soldier warned a work-crew setting
up transmission equipment.
“It’s pretty tough,” a technician said. “This place was made to handle tourists and drunks.”
The central game room had rapidly filled with men and women in bright-colored vacation clothes. They scampered and played and amused themselves as the technicians and work-crews laid out tables and machinery. MacMillans were everywhere, getting underfoot and blundering among the game-players.
Benteley stood off in a corner watching gloomily. The laughing, gaily-clad men and women sprinted back and forth; shuffleboard was a popular sport, as well as softball and soccer. No purely intellectual games were permitted. This was a psych resort: the games were therapeutic. A few feet from Benteley a purple-haired young girl was determinedly hunched over a three-dimensional color board, forming elaborate combinations of shapes, tones, and textures, with sharp little quivers of her hands.
“It’s nice, here,” Rita O’Neill said in his ear.
Benteley nodded.
“We still have some time before they begin.” Rita meditatively tossed a garishly-painted disc into the middle of a flock of robot ducks. One duck dutifully fell dead, and a score rang itself up on the marker. “You want to play something? Exercise and enjoy yourself? I’m dying to try some of these things out.”
The two of them edged through the people and into the side gym, Rita leading the way. Directorate soldiers had stripped off their green uniforms and were tilting with magnetic fields, pressure beams, artificial high-grav steps, a variety of muscle-building equipment. In the center of the room an interested group was watching a Corpsman wrestle a MacMillan robot.
“Very healthful,” Benteley said grimly.
“Oh, this is a wonderful place. Don’t you think Leon has put on weight? He looks a lot better since the Pellig business ended.”
“He’ll probably live to be an old man,” Benteley agreed.
Rita flushed. “There’s no need for that. You can’t really be loyal to anybody, can you? You’re only thinking of yourself.”
Benteley moved on; after a moment Rita followed. “Is Judge Waring going to make his decision with all these enthusiasts running around?” Benteley demanded. He had come to a raised web on which tanned figures were stretching out in the sun. “Everybody seems to be having a wonderful time. Even the MacMillans are enjoying themselves. The menace is past. The assassin has departed.”
Rita happily took off her clothes, gave them to a mechanical attendant, and tossed herself into one of the quavering webs. Low-grav counterfields released her body; she spun dizzily into the depths of the web and after a time emerged, breathless and flushed, clutching wildly for something to hang on to.
Benteley pulled her to a standing position. “Take it easy.”
“I forgot about the low grav.” Laughing and excited, she pulled away from him and aimed herself for a deeper section of the web. “Come on, it’s fun! I never realized before.”
“I’ll watch,” Benteley said gloomily.
The woman’s lithe body disappeared for a time. The web vibrated and bounced; eventually she emerged to the surface and lay stretched languidly out, the artificial sun gleaming from her perspiring back and shoulders. Closing her eyes, she yawned gratefully.
“It’s good to rest,” she murmured drowsily.
“This is the place for it,” Benteley paraphrased Verrick. “If you have nothing else on your mind.”
There was no answer. Rita was asleep.
Benteley stood with his hands in his pockets, surrounded by a blur of joyful color and motion. Laughing people romped by him; ceaseless games were started and restarted. In a corner Leon Cartwright was talking with a barrel-chested grim-faced man. Harry Tate, president of the Inter-plan Visual Industries Corporation, was congratulating Cartwright on his successful bout with his first assassin. Benteley gazed at the two of them until they separated. Finally he turned away from the webs—and found himself facing Eleanor Stevens.
“Who is she?” Eleanor asked in a bright, clipped voice.
“Cartwright’s niece.”
“Have you known her very long?”
“I just met her.”
“She’s pretty. She’s older than I, isn’t she?” Eleanor’s small face was frigid as metal; she smiled up at him like a merry tin doll. “She must be thirty, at least.”
“Not quite,” Benteley said.
Eleanor shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” She started away suddenly; after a moment Benteley warily followed. “Want a drink?” she said over her shoulder. “It’s so damn hot in here. All the yelling gives me a headache.”
“No, thanks,” Benteley said, as Eleanor hastily scooped a martini from a wall-tray. “I want to stay sober.”
Eleanor strolled along, turning the tall glass this way and that between her thin fingers. “They’re about to start. They’re going to let that stupid old goat decide.”
“I know,” Benteley said listlessly.
“He hardly knows what’s going on. Verrick pulled the wool over his eyes at the Convention; he’ll do it again. Has there been any news about Moore?”
“Ipvic has their screen set up here, for Cartwright’s use. Verrick doesn’t care; he didn’t interfere.”
“What does it show?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t bothered to look.” Benteley came to a halt. Through a half-open door he had caught a glimpse of a table and chairs, ashtrays, recording instruments. “Is that—”
“That’s the room they set up.” Suddenly Eleanor gave a cry of terror. “Ted, please get me out of here!”
Reese Verrick had moved past the door of the room.
“He knows,” Eleanor said icily, as she pushed aimlessly among the laughing people. “I came to warn you—remember? Ted, he knows.”
“Too bad,” Benteley said vaguely.
“Don’t you care?”
“I’m sorry,” Benteley said. “There’s nothing I can do to Reese Verrick. If there was, I suppose I’d do it. Maybe not.”
“You can kill him!” Her voice was shrill with hysteria. “You have a gun. You can kill him before he kills both of us!”
“No,” Benteley said. “I’m not going to kill Reese Verrick. That’s out. I’ll wait and see what happens. In any case, I’m finished with that.”
“And … with me?”
“You knew about the bomb.”
Eleanor shuddered. “What could I do?” She hurried after him, frantic with apprehension. “Ted, I couldn’t stop it, could I?”
“You knew that night when we were together. When you talked me into it.”
“Yes!” Eleanor slid defiantly in front of him, blocking his way. “That’s right.” Her green eyes glittered wildly. “I knew. But I meant everything I said to you. I meant it all, Ted.”
“Christ,” Benteley muttered. He turned away, disgusted.
“Listen to me.” She caught imploringly at his arm. “Reese knew, too. Everybody knew. It couldn’t be helped—somebody had to be in it, didn’t they? Answer me!” She stumbled after him. “Answer me!” she screamed.
Benteley stepped back, as a grumbling white-bearded little old man pushed angrily past him toward the ante-chamber. He disappeared inside the room and dropped his heavy book on the table with a thump. He blew his nose, moved critically around examining the chairs and finally took a seat at the head of the table. Reese Verrick, standing glumly at the windows, exchanged a few words with him. A moment later Leon Cartwright followed after Judge Waring.
Benteley’s heart resumed beating, slowly and reluctantly. The session was ready to begin.
SIXTEEN
There were five people in the room.
Judge Waring sat at one end of the table, surrounded by his law books and tapes. Leon Cartwright faced the massive, ponderous figure of Reese Verrick, separated by two heaped ashtrays and an ugly pitcher of ice water. Benteley and Major Shaeffer sat across from each other at the low end of the table. The final chair was empty; Oster, the ipvic technicians, the Directorate officials, the
Hill brass, had been barred. They were in the game room and the gym and basking around the pool. Through the heavy wood door of the ante-chamber filtered the faint vibrations of men and women at play.
“No smoking,” Judge Waring muttered. He glared suspiciously from Verrick to Cartwright and back to Verrick. “Is the recording business going?”
“Yes,” Shaeffer said.
The recording robot crept agilely along the table and took up a position in front of Reese Verrick. “Thanks,” Verrick said, as he collected his papers and prepared to begin.
“Is this the fellow?” Waring asked, indicating Benteley.
“He’s the one I came for,” Verrick said, with a brief glance at Benteley. “But he’s not the only one. They’re all breaking their oaths, turning disloyal and betraying me.” His voice trailed off vaguely. “Certainly not like the old days.” He roused himself and quietly delivered his statement. “Benteley was dropped by Oiseau-Lyre. He was a derelict classified without a position. He came to me at Batavia looking for an 8–8 position; that’s his class. Things were bad for me, at that time. I didn’t know what lay ahead; I was thinking I might have to lay off some of my own staff. Anyhow, I took him on, in spite of my own uncertainty. I took him into my household, gave him an apartment at Farben.”
Shaeffer shot a quick glance at Cartwright; he was ahead of Verrick’s spoken words.
“Everything was in disorder, but I gave Benteley what he wanted. I put him on my biochemist research staff. I gave him a woman to sleep with, fed him, and took care of him. I brought him into my biggest project.” Verrick raised his voice a trifle. “He was given a responsible position in the project, at his own insistence. He stated he wanted to get in on policy-level. I trusted him and gave him what he asked for. At the crucial moment he betrayed me. He killed his immediate superior, dropped his work, and fled. He was too cowardly to go on, so he broke his oath. The critical project collapsed because of him. He came here aboard a Directorate ship and tried to swear on to the Quizmaster.”