The Last Master Read online

  “I know you did,” broke in Ett. “I don’t want to bother you, and I’m not going to ask those questions I asked before.”

  Malone snorted.

  “But I’ve been studying some temporal sociology and I need to talk to you—” Ett was interrupted suddenly.

  “Temporal sociology?” Malone said. “Have you been talking to Maea Tornoy?”

  “Er, yes,” Ett said, startled. “How did you know?”

  “Oh, I’m able to keep track of things if I want,” Malone said. “Is she there?”

  “Yes,” said Ett, “she’s been helping—” Again he was interrupted.

  “Good. You can come. Bring her along,” Malone said.

  He rang off.

  Ett stared into the blank screen for several minutes before he began to give the orders that would set up his trip.

  “Oh, and Rico,” he finished.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Notify the security people right away, so they can send their contingent along, would you?”

  Rico didn’t look startled, but he took a moment before giving his usual quiet acknowledgement of the order. Ett continued.

  “You know, you’re not going to be able to go inside with us, again; would you rather just stay here?”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Rico said. “Of course it’s my job to be with you, whenever I’m needed.”

  “Your job,” said Ett, emphasizing the word, “is to do what I want. And I’m giving you the choice—you can stay here while we go, or you can wait at the plane in San Diego, or—whatever. I’ll manage, either way.“ He paused for a reply.

  “I’d rather stay with you as long as possible, Mr. Ho,” Rico said. “I appreciate your consideration, but doing my job makes me happy, and this seems the best way for me.”

  Ett nodded.

  ***

  When the door with the red letters opened, Maea stepped forward and put her arms around Malone, who responded with a grin and a hug of his own. Ett simply stood on the top step, watching them in the doorway—and very surprised. After a moment they all stepped inside and Malone led the way through the dim halls to his sitting room.

  The evening had been warmer than the last time Ett was here, and now the fireplace was dark and cool, still; but the room retained all its former richness and warmth. Malone again took the old chair he’d used before, and Maea pulled up a large floor cushion and settled comfortably near him. Ett was left to take the other chair, at some distance from the others.

  For a few moments Maea and Malone exchanged small talk, explaining to each other why it had been so long since their last contact, and what they had been doing. But in a short time Maea looked up at Ett and then directed Malone’s attention back to his other guest. Malone looked across at Ett, and his old face seemed suddenly transformed—younger, and more lively, than Ett had ever seen it. But as it regarded him, it began to change, reverting back to the Malone Ett had met before.

  “So, you’re here,” Malone said. “But why? You know I told you to wait a year.”

  “I know,” Ett replied. “But as I said, I’m not here to bring up that subject again. In fact—” he broke off for a moment, while Malone looked across at him challengingly.

  “Actually,” Ett continued, “I’m using you. I wanted to set up my own reputation as an eccentric, and it seemed the best way to do that was to visit you more often.” Ett was addressing Malone but he was watching Maea for reaction.

  She smiled at him; and when he looked up Malone was laughing.

  “You’re learning, Ho,” he said. “But remember that the reputation had some bad aspects, too. Besides, you didn’t mention that you’re looking me over for good ideas you can use, on how to be eccentric, eh?”

  He watched Ett, slyly.

  “All right,” said Ett, “I’ll admit that.”

  “You won’t learn much,” Malone said. “There’s nobody around but us—so I can’t work at it. I fired my secretary and staff yesterday, you know—do that every once in a while and get new ones. Keeps ‘em on their toes; don’t have time to settle in and spy on me, either.” He nodded.

  “But then, you probably figured that one out already,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Ett.

  Malone nodded again but said nothing. Silence filled the room for some time, until at last Ett stood up.

  “Well,” he said. “May as well go home.”

  ***

  The following day Al went to Miami and bought a forty-foot yacht, which he had brought back to the island by a temporary crew. Ett gave orders to have him begin training the security contingent as crew for the vessel, even to arranging matching uniforms for them all. One of them was even given a bosun’s pipe and put in training to pipe Ett aboard whenever he came down to visit his ship.

  Watching from the terrace table as small forms scuttled about the ship, learning the endless tasks that sailors have to know how to do, Ett reflected that his reputation as an eccentric ought to be building by now.

  Walking up behind him, Maea said as much. Ett glanced back and up at her.

  “Yes,” he said, and smiled. “Of course, it keeps them all busy and out of the way, too—not to mention the fact they’re very tired when they get back on shore.”

  She nodded. “And did I see Dr. Hoskides down there?”

  “Yes,” Ett said. “He’s been put in charge of shipboard medicine for me, so he’s busy trying to prepare facilities and learn how to be a sea-going doctor.”

  He leaned forward to hit the phone stud that called Rico. When the secretary appeared, Ett asked him to have Carwell and Al join them all on the terrace.

  In a short time Alaric, Dr. Carwell, and Maea were all seated with him at the table. Standing—he had politely declined to sit—was Rico.

  “All right,” said Ett, with no smile on his face now, as he looked around at all of them. “It’s the witching hour. Time to take off our masks.”

  They all gazed back at him. It was Maea who spoke first.

  “Masks?” she said. “What masks?”

  “Everyone here except Al,” Ett said, “is wearing some kind of mask. Mine’s the mask of an R-Master, for the moment. For the rest of you—Maea, you’re a Woman of Good Will. There’s an organization called Men of Good Will, and you belong to it.”

  He turned to Carwell.

  “You, too,” he said. “You’re a Man of Good Will—though I don’t know if you knew Maea was a fellow member.”

  “I didn’t,” said Carwell, staring across at her.

  “Rico,” said Ett, looking at the secretary, “you’re either a spy deliberately attached to me by the Earth Council, or a Man of Good Will yourself. Being what you are, you ought to be a spy. Doing what you’ve done since I’ve known you, you ought to be a member of the same loose organization as Maea and Morgan, here. Which are you?”

  Rico looked back at him calmly.

  “If I may sit down, after all?” he said.

  “Sit, stand, anything you like,” said Ett.

  “Thank you.” Rico stepped forward and seated himself on the extra grav-float seat that Ett had provided for him originally. Seated, he seemed to change. It was a curious change, because there was no single specific sign of it in his face or body. But in some fashion he stopped being obliging and became almost commanding. “As a matter of fact, I’m neither.”

  “Then you’d better explain what you’re doing being my secretary,” said Ett.

  “I’ll be glad to,” said Rico. “And maybe you’ll tell me how you discovered Maea Tornoy and Morgan Carwell belonged to the Men of Good Will. I wasn’t aware of that myself. Which means the EC hadn’t identified them as such, or I would have been notified that Security here on the Island was to keep them under watch while they were here.”

  “In the case of Maea,” said Ett, “I found out her type of work had to bring her up against a situation existing on this planet right now, the same situation which has brought the Men of Good Will into existence. She’d have had eithe
r to ignore them or to join them, and the way the work she’s done the past few years has been directed makes me believe she joined them. Dr. Carwell here, struck me as preferring his work at the RIV Clinic to anything else. But when I asked him to give it up and become my personal doctor, he asked for time to think it over. Then, later, he accepted—still with no reason showing as to why he should leave the job he preferred, to take a position that makes him uncomfortable and offends his sense of order.”

  Ett broke off and looked hard at Carwell.

  “I think he asked for time so that he could check with his own local branch of the Men of Good Will and then took their advice to accept the post because it might put him in a position to do something useful for the organization.”

  Dr. Carwell did not exactly blush; maturity and solidity had put him beyond blushing. But his embarrassed acknowledgement was marked as plainly on him as if it had been written on a card hung around his neck.

  “Now what?” asked Maea.

  “Now we consider Rico,” said Ett, turning back to the secretary, “who needs to declare himself.”

  “I’ve already declared myself,” Rico answered. “The word I used was ‘neither’—neither spy nor Man of Good Will. I assigned myself to you, Etter Ho.”

  “Al,” said Ett.

  Al got up and slipped behind the float on which Rico was sitting.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Rico said, without turning his head. “If I wanted to leave here none of you could stop me.”

  “Al might surprise you,” said Ett.

  “I might have a few surprises to offer, myself,” murmured Rico. “But that’s all beside the point. What I actually am, is a free agent, for all intents and purposes.”

  “How can that be possible?” Maea asked.

  “Why not?” Rico replied. “Etter Ho has been one for a long time; why not someone else?”

  She looked at Ett, and then back at Rico. “All right, then,” she said, “if you are a free agent—to what end?”

  Rico shrugged. “To whatever end pleases me, I suppose.”

  There was a short silence.

  “He’s dangerous,” said Al, from behind Rico’s float. “We should get rid of him.”

  “That would be foolish,” said Rico. “I have no special loyalty to the EC or to anyone or anything but my work. And I can be more useful than any of you dream.”

  “You think pretty well of yourself,” said Maea.

  “I should,” said Rico. “I may not have quite the intellectual ability of an R-Master, but I’m not far below that level—and that without ever coming close to RIV. I speak twenty-two languages and I have an eidetic memory. I actually hold two degrees in science and one in art, but I could easily hold a couple dozen in either area.“ He paused for a moment in his catalog, then continued without any hint of self-consciousness.

  “I’ve been working for the Earth Council since I was a very young man, and I’ve done good work for them. I rose to the position of Special Manager very quickly—that means I would be dropped into any situation or organization which was performing below the optimum level; it was my job to straighten things out within as short a time as possible.” He smiled now.

  “As you can imagine, that’s a challenging field to work in, and one that demands a lot, but rewards the successful. I loved my work, and I loved to think that I was helping the world to run more smoothly. But after some years of this I found myself resenting more and more the fact that the real point of my job was to make my bosses look good—rather than actually worrying about the world. I decided that my resentment would soon affect my efficiency; and so I decided to change jobs.” He paused, and looked across at Ett.

  “So I decided to transfer to the Auditor Corps.” He stopped and smiled as Maea moved on her float, then continued.

  “Of course, I investigated the move thoroughly first; and I learned a great deal about the Corps. I’d taken for granted a Security organization had to be efficient in operation; but what I actually learned was that the Corps is just as politically hidebound and wasteful as any other branch of the government.”

  “And you didn’t join them after all?” Ett asked.

  “Definitely not,” said Rico. “But studying the AC turned out quite useful to me. It led me to a larger study of the entire top structure of the bureaucracy, from which I learned that the entire organization’s hardened into one more concerned with itself than with its job. I found myself in the repugnant position of having to work solely for the purpose of enhancing the reputations of people whose sole ability is to rise in the ranks of the bureaucracy.”

  Rico stopped, seemed about to begin again, then checked himself. He shrugged.

  Ett would not let him go easily. “And then what, Rico? What about all this brought you to me?”

  Rico shrugged once more. “Well, in my time I had built up my own network of good connections,” he said. “It was simple to have myself transferred to work with R-Masters; once there, it didn’t take long for me to become what you might call the resident expert in dealing with new Masters. Since then, I’ve been effectively free to assign myself to each new one who’s come along—and been in a position to examine and study each one.”

  “That’s a bit arrogant, don’t you think?” said Maea. “Studying R-Masters?”

  “Why not?” Rico said. Perhaps, thought Ett, he had been stung a little by the remark, for now he opened up a bit more.

  “I know myself well enough to realize that I have no real goals of my own,” he said. “I did well at managing organizations, and after that at managing individuals. Now it seems to me that the greatest challenge I can find is to try managing an idea—but I don’t have that idea myself. I’m not constructed to strike out efficiently for myself; I do better if I follow the lead of, and work for, a person I can respect, who’ll give me that idea I can work for. And what better chance to find such a person and such an idea than among the R-Masters? So far, I have to say, they’ve been disappointments—all of them lying down and letting themselves be medicated into near insensibility at the bureaucracy’s prodding.“ He shook his head.

  Now Carwell looked up sharply, and Ett met his eyes.

  “You hear that, doctor,” he said. “Drugs.”

  He looked back at Rico.

  “If drugged R-Masters is something you don’t want,” Ett said, “why did you keep offering the stuff to me?”

  “Well, think about it,” Rico said; “if what I did was enough to put you on them, then the odds were you’d end up on them anyway.”

  “A test,” said Ett. “All right. I’ll go along with that.”

  “As it stood up to a minute or so ago,” Rico said, “I’ve just been waiting. None of the Masters I worked with before ever got this far into understanding me. But I can’t believe you’ve lined all of us up now, here, and exposed us, out of simple curiosity. So tell us—tell me, Etter Ho—what are your intentions? If they’re anything like I guess they are, I’ve found what I’ve been looking for; and I’ll work with you, to the end you’re after.”

  Maea’s gaze turned narrowly back on Ett. “The end?” she asked.

  Ett sighed heavily.

  “You WOGOWs and MOGOWs think in terms of capital letters, don’t you?” he answered. “All right. I’ve got a purpose, but not necessarily with a large P at the front of the word. Until this happened to me I was happy just sailing around the world not worrying about anything. Now I’m involved in what goes on in the world, whether I want to be or not. If it was me, alone, I’d have nothing to do with any of you, or anything else. But I’m going to bring Wally back to life, if it’s the last thing I do, and beyond that, my purpose, my end, is just to keep the two of us safe and untouched by the rest of the world from then on.”

  Chapter Ten

  Ett turned to look deliberately at Maea.

  “Wally was one of you people, wasn’t he?” She looked back at him, palely.

  “Wasn’t he?” Ett repeated.

  “Yes,”
said Maea. Her voice was unnaturally calm. “I suppose he told you about it?”

  “No,” said Ett. “I didn’t even know MOGOWS existed until I got hauled back into society by this RIV reaction. Of course, everything you people say is what I used to hear from Wally himself, back when we were boys. But he seemed to forget it as he got older, so I forgot it. I suppose he was just trying to be more discreet by then. Anyway, he never said a thing to me about it all after he left home.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Well, even if he was one of you, once, that’s not too bad. I ought to be able to keep him from being one again. But meanwhile, a MOGOW is one thing; a MOGOW with a brother who’s an R-Master, that’s another. I want some sort of leverage with the Earth Council that’ll make them believe me when I say Wally and I just want to be left alone.”

  “I doubt,” said Rico in his precise voice, “that the EC would be seriously concerned by anything short of an R-Master who was himself a MOGOW—an active MOGOW, not just a talking one like Lee Malone. Generally speaking, the EC in my experience considers that particular gathering of idealists to be numerous but harmless, a loose, essentially unorganized movement. Consider the fact that the branch of the organization to which Dr. Carwell belongs clearly doesn’t know what’s being done by the part of the organization to which Miss Tornoy belongs. This shows just how ineffective they are.”

  “It’s just not practical to build a tight worldwide organization today in opposition to the established order,” protested Carwell. “The practical difficulties are too great. Nowadays, no one can move around without leaving all sorts of evidence of where he’s been—records of credit payments and the use of public equipment, like automated vehicles, lodging places, and stores.”

  “It’s true,” said Maea. “Each of our local cells has had to operate pretty much on its own initiative. We just happen to live at a time when social and technological conditions are against us. It’s a fact of life.”

  “It’s a fact of intent,” said Ett bluntly. “Do you think it’s sheer accident that for nearly forty years the mechanisms of society’s control of the individual have developed and proliferated while the mechanisms that would protect the individual have withered?”