The Last Master Page 14

  Carwell looked unhappy as Ett turned back to Malone.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Or otherwise you’ll let them know about my lab? Is that it? Oh, well,” snarled Malone, “why not? Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. But what do you need me for?”

  “I think you know more about the Men of Good Will than anyone else on the planet,” said Ett. “I think you flaunted the fact that you approved of them, as part of your pretended eccentricity—to cover you in your real contacts with them. You planned to use them if you found what you were looking for in the RIV, to use them as troops to get whatever you found to the other R-Masters. All right, I need troops now—I need the benefits of the organization I don’t have time to build for myself—to get at the place where the results of the further RIV research have been stored. Because it’ll be the same place that holds a lot of information I want.”

  “What for?” demanded Malone.

  “To hold as a club over the EC and force them to leave me alone, and my brother as well—once he’s revivified. Outside of that, I’ve got no interest in what’s hidden by the EC. You can use the research information to help other R-Masters, or the MOGOWs, or anything else you want; that’s up to you. We’ll just be working together for separate but mutual benefits.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so to begin with?”

  “Malone,” said Ett wearily, “will you stop playing word games? I don’t have that much physical strength and patience left over, these days.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The director of the home in which Wallace Gunther Ho had spent his last days led Ett, with Rico and Morgan Carwell, down to a shiny subcellar in which were what looked like eight metal tanks about a meter and a half thick and two and a half meters in length.

  “This is essentially a temporary holding room for cryogenic patients,” said the director. He was a slim, quick-moving man in his mid-fifties with sparse, straight gray hair. “Anyone who reaches a terminal point in our institution is kept encapsulated in this room until he or she can be moved to more permanent storage quarters or otherwise taken care of. In the case of Wallace, we’ve delayed beyond the usual time because of Master Ho’s new situation, and the fact that he might have special directions for us.”

  “Glad you did,” said Ett. Irrationally, he was relieved that the metal enclosure had no window, so that he did not have to look at Wally’s face. Even though Wally was dead, Ett felt the cold finger of an illogical guilt under his breastbone, at the thought of what had happened to him.

  “Mr. Ho,” said Rico, “feels his brother would approve the use of his brother’s body in a medical experiment which may be of benefit to all the race.”

  “I’m sure,” said the director. “That is, during the short period Wallace was here, he wasn’t in a position to discuss such matters with me, but I’m sure Master Ho, knowing his brother, would know what Wallace would want.”

  He turned to Carwell.

  “Doctor?” he said. “I suppose you’d like to check over the unit and the terminal patient?”

  “Yes, I’d better,” said Carwell.

  The director reached for a door which opened in the side of the metal capsule by which they were all standing. Ett turned away, pretending to examine the room at large and the other capsules, as Carwell, and the director, put their heads together over the opening.

  Rico followed at Ett’s elbow.

  “Trouble,” he murmured beside Ett’s right ear.

  “Trouble?” muttered Ett, without turning his head. “What trouble?”

  “I don’t know any details yet,” Rico said. “But I have a few illicit and privately-built warning systems of my own. One just went off, the one that’s concerned with EC authority.”

  “Wilson, maybe?” said Ett.

  “No,” answered Rico. “Or rather, not necessarily. Wilson is only one man. The warning I get comes whenever there is some EC Central Computer action concerning either yourself or myself. Somewhere in the bureaucracy, in other words, someone has filed a report or asked a permission concerning one or both of us—a report or permission labeled Classified, Secret, Top Secret, or something higher.”

  “What’s above Top Secret?”

  “That,” said Rico, “I’ve never been able to learn. But there’s at least one higher classification. I’ve gained access myself to all Classified and Secret data, and a good part of the Top Secret materials; but I found evidence in the Central Computer of other data I could not tap into. Probably the information we’re after about RIV would be among that other data.”

  “Master Ho!”

  It was the director, in the far part of the room. Ett turned and saw that Wally’s capsule was now on an energized grav table and floating free.

  “I’m sorry, Master Ho,” called the director, “but you’ll have to leave before us. I’m required to be the last one out of this room at all times. Regulations, you know.”

  “All right,” said Ett.

  Followed by Rico, he joined Carwell, who was steering the grav table with Wally’s capsule. They went out the door together and up the slideway beyond. Behind them, Ett heard the heavy metal door of the cryogenic room boom shut; and a few seconds later the director came trotting up to them, to ride along the slideway on the opposite side of the capsule from Ett.

  “Did you ever stop to think,” Ett said to him, “what it would be like if we cut down on the number of regulations? Not did away with them entirely, you understand; just cut down on them?”

  The director laughed.

  “Only criminals break regulations,” he said, “so I assume no one but criminals would want there to be less regulations than there are. After all, what else holds civilization together?”

  “But what if we did cut down?”

  The director stared at him across the coffin for a moment and then laughed again.

  “You have to be joking, Master Ho,” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” said Ett. “I’m joking.”

  They went on up to the director’s office, where there were forms to be thumbprinted and signed, by which Wally’s frozen entity was formally released to Ett. Then they floated the capsule out of the institution and down the hill to the dock at the foot of the grounds. Ett had planned to use this same trip to Hawaii to arrange trans-shipment of the Pixie to his island, and a whim had led him to sail her to the institution to pick up what was left of Wally.

  “You shouldn’t take regulations too lightly, Mr. Ho,” said Rico quietly, as they left the building behind them. “Among other things, they keep you alive.”

  “I could feed myself if I had to,” said Ett.

  “I’m not talking about your perquisites as an R-Master,” said Rico. “Or even about the Citizen’s Basic Allowance you got before you took the RIV. Under the Earth Council the world is like one big piece of working machinery, and regulations are the parts of that machine. The EC won’t break regulations because they don’t want anyone to tamper with the machinery, even themselves. As long as you don’t tamper either, they’ll put up with you in the hope that you’ll eventually slip and get crushed in the gears on your own. It would be easy enough for the bureaucracy to quietly kill off all the Masters and end the RIV Program—if they were willing to break regulations themselves. But they won’t, except as a last resort; the machinery justifies their own existence—it’s their god, and its parts are holy.”

  Ett thought about it. Rico’s words seemed to hang in his mind, echoing there with an importance he could not at first pin down; then it came to him. Essentially, what the smaller man was telling him was a typical example of the fact that intelligence—call it intellectual capacity—alone could be helpless in a situation where knowledge or experience was required. Rico knew the EC and the bureaucracy with a knowledge Ett would have to work for years to duplicate. For the first time, Ett considered the unusual value of the other man to his plans and thought about what it would be like if he had to do without Rico—either immediately or later
on.

  It would not be good if too much depended on any one person, except Ett himself. In this world of regulations, complications, and hidden values, what if Rico was not the ally he seemed? What if the secretary was actually an agent put among them by the very bureaucracy they had come to oppose? Ett was deep in thought by the time they reached the docks, so deep he did not at first notice the two men in the white jackets with the white, pencil-barrelled, laser pistols clipped to their waists, who came forward to meet them as they approached the Pixie.

  “Master Ho?” said the one on the right. Ett stopped and found himself looking down at a card case the armed man held open before him, an identification plaque within. “We’re Field Examiners of the Auditor Corps of the Earth Council. Mr. St. Onge, one of the full auditors of that department, would appreciate it if you could come along with us now for a few words with him.”

  “Why?” demanded Ett.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, sir,” said the Field Examiner, putting his identity plaque away in a pocket. “But I assume it’s important.”

  “I can’t come right now,” Ett said. “I have to take my brother in his cryogenic capsule to safe quarters on my island—”

  Rico drew in his breath between his teeth in something like a faint warning hiss.

  “I’m sure,” said the Field Examiner, “we can ensure the well-keeping of your brother in his capsule while you visit the auditor. We really must insist you come with us now, Master Ho. We have a ship that will take us to Mexico City, where Auditor St. Onge is waiting.”

  He turned and pointed to an amphibious atmosphere ship rocking on the waves at the end of the dock.

  “What do you mean, you must insist?” Ett said. “I’ve got normal freedom of movement, I suppose? I’m not under arrest—or am I? If so, let’s see your warrant.”

  “I don’t know of any warrant for you at the moment, Master Ho,” said the Field Examiner in his unvaryingly polite tones. “But I believe that if it should be necessary we might find when we arrived at the auditor’s offices that a warrant had indeed been issued.”

  “Some time since, I suppose?”

  “Yes, indeed, sir. Some time since.”

  Ett looked around.

  “My brother in his capsule, Mr. Rico Erm, and Dr. Carwell, here, are all going to have to come with me.”

  “I’m sure,” said the Field Examiner, “that Auditor St. Onge would be the first to insist that you have anyone you wanted with you.”

  “All right,” said Ett.

  They moved down the dock and boarded the atmosphere ship. There was a small but adequate lounge inside, which they all shared with Wally’s capsule; and the trip to Mexico City took less than an hour. It had been morning when they left the dock. It was just past 1 p.m. when they dropped down into the courtyard landing pad of the EC Western Hemisphere Center, which these days occupied most of the suburb of Gustavo A. Madero.

  Here, however, Ett was separated from Rico, Dr. Carwell, and the capsule containing Wally. Politely but inexorably, the Field Examiners explained that the others must wait aboard the atmosphere ship. Ett was conducted alone into the surrounding buildings.

  Patrick St. Onge, alone, met Ett in the lounge of an office suite that looked outward and down onto a plaza which held a very large swimming pool, in which some sort of water relay race was being held. Ett found that he was standing behind the weather shield of air flowing upward across a wide window opening, and gazing down at the swimmers fifteen meters below.

  “Well, Etter!” said St. Onge, turning to face him as Ett came up, flanked by the Field Examiners. “Good of you to come. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again!”

  “I got the impression from these two,” said Ett, “that there’d be a warrant found existing for my arrest if I didn’t.”

  “You what?” St. Onge turned upon the two field men. “What regulation gave you the authority to hint at anything like that? How the hell dare you approach a Master that way?”

  “Sir,” began the one who had spoken to Ett on the dock, “procedures—”

  “God damn your procedures,” snapped St. Onge. “Did you or did you not know Mr. Ho was an R-Master?”

  “Yes, sir, we knew.”

  “Then there’s no excuse. Get out of here.”

  They left. But the whole interchange of words had rung falsely on Ett’s ear, like a dialogue in a badly acted play.

  St. Onge turned back to Ett. “I don’t know what good an apology will do,” he said. “But please forgive me. These idiots they’re training for field work—give them a plaque and they think they’ve got all the authority of the Council itself. When I was in the field, we used our heads!”

  “And only threatened to arrest people who weren’t R-Masters?” said Ett.

  St. Onge burst out laughing.

  “Well,” he said, “at least you can joke about it. But, really, I am sorry something like this had to happen. I did need to talk to you; regulations require it. But there wasn’t any need to march you here under guard.”

  “It’s actually business, then, not social—your wanting to see me?”

  “I’m afraid so. After we met at the Milan Tower, I asked if I couldn’t be assigned to your file. We all have to carry a certain number of files, spread out over the various categories of citizens; it makes for a certain familiarity which makes it much easier to keep audit on someone like you—much easier when something comes up and you have to talk to him.”

  “Do you talk to most of the citizens whose files you handle?” Ett asked.

  “Lord, no,” said St. Onge. “Where would I find the time? No, for most citizens, even a full audit is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. But as a citizen’s expenditures go up, as his share of the GWP becomes larger—more and more attention has to be paid to the file—it’s in the regulations. For perhaps half a million people in the world, a yearly audit is automatic. And for perhaps five hundred or so, there’s a running audit being processed in the central computer at all times. We call it a ‘keeping’ audit. You’re in that category, Etter, and what it means is that I get a daily report on any expenditures of yours that exceed the estimates forecast according to your spending profile.”

  “I see,” said Ett. “What have I done now? Or are you thinking about the GWP units I gambled away in Hong Kong?”

  “No, no, of course not,” said St. Onge. “We expect the new R-Masters to get a bit extravagant as they feel their way into their new life. But—sit down, why don’t we?”

  They seated themselves opposite each other.

  “That’s better,” said St. Onge. “No, the little problem that’s come up now doesn’t actually deal with any current expenses of yours. We’ll be wanting to run a special forecast of expenses, if this attempt to revive your brother extends into more extensive work and research than is covered by the grant of compassionate funds—”

  “Who told you about that?” demanded Ett. “I only signed the waiver of responsibility a little over two weeks ago.”

  “But it had to be filed—the waiver form,” said St. Onge, with an odd, sudden flashing smile that was like the heatless flicker of lightning. “Any time you deal with forms, the information goes to the central computer, and from the central computer to your file in my office, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Ett. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve been used to living without everything I did being recorded and annotated.”

  “You mean before you became an R-Master?” said St. Onge. “Sorry to disillusion you, but even then you had papers to fill out every time your ship entered or cleared a harbor, or when you drew your allowance or purchased something. Also, the citizens who had anything at all to do with you had their own forms and records to make out. I’ve no doubt the central computer could give us a day-by-day summary—nearly a diary—of your actions since you were of school age. Would you like me to ask for a printout on that sometime?”

  “No, thanks,” said Ett. He loosened the neck of his ja
cket. The room was warmer than he had noticed it being on his arrival.

  “Be glad to. No trouble at all, and you might find it amusing.”

  “No,” said Ett. “You were going to tell me why you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Oh, that. Yes,” said St. Onge. “As you know, R-Masters can have pretty much anything they want. But we have a responsibility not to waste funds beyond those necessary for the Master’s own needs and desires. Now, you’ve happened to make some rather peculiar acquaintances since you had the RIV reaction. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but Maea Tornoy, the young woman you asked to see, belongs to an organization called the People of Good Will. And we have reason to suspect that the man you chose for your personal physician, over Dr. Hoskides—I mean Morgan Carwell—may be a member of the same group. And of course Master Lee Malone has shown a long-time fascination with that organization, among his other interests.‘’

  “Am I supposed to have fallen among dangerous companions?” Ett asked. “Is that it?”

  “Dangerous?” St. Onge laughed. “Good god, no! Organizations capable of actual subversion against the EC are a practical impossibility nowadays. Not only does the EC know immediately if anyone becomes a member of any group or organization at all, but of course it controls that individual’s wages or allowance and, through ordinary day-today records, can tell exactly what he’s doing and pick him up the moment he attempts to infringe regulations.”

  “He’d be smart not to infringe regulations, then,” said Ett.

  “Of course. And that’s why almost none of these odd-group members do so,” said St. Onge. “Of course, if they don’t infringe on the regulations, they don’t do any harm and we don’t need to worry about them. So as a matter of fact we don’t have to worry about anyone except the actual criminal regulation breaker. But even people like that are no real problem. They may get away with breaking regulations for a little while, but eventually we catch up with them, too.”

  “In the Sunset Mountain, in Hong Kong,” said Ett, “I saw people betting on a fencing match. But the fencers were using sharpened weapons, and one man was killed. I saw him killed myself.”