The Immortals Read online

He tired quickly and sank back to his pillow after a few minutes. “Your mother was right,” he repeated. “Not in any fairy-tale sense. In a real, practical way, you have new blood, whose immunity factors—the gamma globulins—can repel cellular degeneration, as if death itself were a disease.”

  He told her the story of Marshall Cartwright, the fabulous creature who had gone secretly about the country to father an immortal race, like some latterday Johnny Appleseed. He told her about the Institute and the men who had founded it, and its purpose. He told her that he had been an unwitting part of it until he had found, by accident, what all the rest had been looking for.

  “How did you find me?” she asked, her face pale.

  “I was going through some old medical records—doctor’s notes, case histories, that sort of thing. One of them was for a maternity case: Janice McFarland, unmarried. She had given birth to a daughter, Barbara. She needed blood; she was dying. The attending physician was a Dr. Russell Pearce. He must have known your father.”

  “Why?”

  “I found this note stuck to the back of one of the lab reports: ‘Baby fine but mother dying. Contact Cartwright. Only chance.’ ”

  “That seems like such a small thing.”

  “When I forced the information out of Locke, I knew I was right. It all fitted together.”

  “You had traced me before, then,” she said, her voice distant.

  “Yes,” he said quietly, “but a funny thing happened: I fell in love with the girl I was searching for.”

  Her face changed. “Oh, thank God!” she said prayerfully. “For a little while I was afraid—”

  “That I was a vampire, interested only in your blood?” Sibert shook his head chidingly. “Bobs! Bobs!”

  “I’m sorry.” She squeezed his hand in heartfelt repentance. “Then you came back for me,” she prompted.

  “Les—that’s the only name I knew him by—was waiting for me, watching from his first-floor apartment. And Missus Gentry was watching him, probably without knowing what his job was.”

  “Then he was going to shoot you because you wouldn’t tell him my name,” Barbara said quickly.

  “No, not that. He knew I wouldn’t tell. The shooting was to silence me quickly. As soon as I came directly back to the apartment building, they were sure they could find you. But I shot first. Missus Gentry shot me and was killed when I fired back. You know the rest.”

  “The rest?” Slowly she smiled; her radiance seemed to brighten the room. “The rest will make up for all we have suffered. It will be so beautiful, Eddy—so lovely it seems impossible and unreal. If what you say is true, I’ll never die, and I will keep you young, and we will be together forever.”

  “If it were only that simple!” He sighed.

  “Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “The power of wealth and the fear of death are a terrible combination. After fifty years of disappointment, the Institute smells blood. It will never leave the scent until it finds you—and eliminates me.”

  “Then what can we do?”

  “I keep thinking: What kind of man was your father? And I think: He must have made some provision for protecting you, some hiding place, some help. As soon as I can travel, we’ll begin a search of our own.”

  * * *

  The electric Ford chugged along the highway at less than eighty miles per hour. It was a dusty, rain-spattered ten-year-old, a farmer’s car. When it came up beside the old man plodding along the highway, it hesitated and stopped.

  Unhurried, the old man with grizzled hair and beard marched forward until he reached the car. Behind the wheel was a middle-aged farmer. The old man nodded curtly as he got in. When the door slid shut behind him, he leaned against it, his head bent sullenly over his hands.

  “Don’t recognize the face,” the farmer said cheerfully. “New around here, or just passing through?”

  “Passing through,” the old man said in a cracked voice.

  “Lots of people on the road these days,” the farmer said, shaking his head soberly. “Old fellows like you, some of them. Hydroponics done ’em in, and now this new fisheries stuff, farming the sea, they say—why, a few more years and a man won’t hardly be able to pay his medical bills with what he can grub out of the dirt. Where’d you say you was from?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  The farmer shrugged and turned his full attention to the road.

  Ten minutes later the Ford passed the same spot. It was going in the opposite direction. On a crossover, it turned left and pulled to a stop. The farmer had disappeared. The old man was driving.

  A young woman, her hair so blond it was almost colorless, stepped from behind a clump of trees and ran quickly to the car. Before she had settled herself, the car began to move. As she turned toward the old man, the speedometer stood at 120.

  “Why did you change plans?” Barbara asked. “You told me to wait an hour, hitch a ride, and we would meet in Joplin.”

  “That was the smart way,” Sibert said, “but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let you get that far away from me.”

  He glanced at his face in the visor mirror and nodded. The beard and the shoe-blacking had changed his appearance drastically. The illness had left his face drawn and hollow. He looked old. With his training, he walked old and talked old. He almost felt old.

  Barbara’s frown faded in spite of herself. “What did you do with the farmer?”

  Sibert glanced at her quickly. With even less effort, she had been changed more. It was amazing what the old peroxide had done for her. The blondness changed her whole face. The contrast with her dark eyes was striking. Sibert felt his pulse stir.

  “I knocked him out and left him behind some bushes. He’ll be all right. He’ll come to and get help, like the doctor.”

  “If we were going together, we might as well have taken the Cadillac.”

  “They’ve connected it with us by now, and that car could be spotted by a helicopter ten miles away. At this stage of the search, the area is blocked off in sectors. As long as we stayed still, we were safe until they started nets through. But as soon as we move we start attracting attention, setting off alarms, coming under surveillance.”

  Barbara looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. “I don’t like this business—shooting and stealing and slugging. . . .”

  “Bobs!” Sibert said sharply. “Look at me!” Her eyes swung over; he fixed them with his gaze. “You think I like it? But it’s something we can’t escape. It’s the times we live in. It’s you. You attract violence. You’re the princess, remember, and you’re heir to the greatest fortune on earth—life eternal. Wherever you go, men will fight for you, lie for you, kill for you.”

  “I never asked for that.”

  “You got it as a gift at conception—life. Just as the rest of us inherited death as our portion. There’s nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do.”

  Then there was silence.

  As they approached Joplin, Sibert slowed the car. “Much as I dislike it, now our only chance is to split up. They’ll be looking for two people together, and they may know by now to look for a man and a woman. Get out here. Catch a taxi to the airport and get a ticket on the first plane to Washington—”

  “Why Washington?” she asked quickly.

  “No time to explain now. Trust me. I’ll try to be on the same plane. Don’t recognize me or speak to me. Whether I’m on the plane or not, take a room in Washington at the airport motel under the same name you use for the ticket—Maria Cassata, say. With your dark eyes, you can pass for one of those blond Italians from the north. If I don’t show up within twenty-four hours, forget me. You’ll be on your own.”

  Silently she climbed out of the car, and it moved away. Sibert didn’t look back.

  * * *

  The old man hobbled down the jetway toward the impatient transport as fast as his ancient arteries would let him go. As soon as he had climbed aboard, the jet taxied toward the end of the runway. Two minutes later it was in
the air.

  Settled in his seat, Sibert glanced around with doddering curiosity. When he saw Barbara toward the back, he suppressed a sigh of relief. Her eyes met his without changing expression and returned to the paper she was reading.

  For the rest of the trip, Sibert didn’t look back—she couldn’t get off.

  Although he had spotted nobody at the Joplin airport, he was certain that watchers had been there. When he tottered off the plane at Washington, he was equally unsuccessful in identifying any Institute men.

  He settled himself with a sigh in a battered plastic waiting-room chair and watched the ebb and flow of the human tides until he could keep himself still no longer. Nearly an hour had passed and he had not seen anyone who lingered, who had not passed toward the ticket machines or the exit doors.

  He got into the next motel transport when it was about to leave, and let it take him to the motel lobby. There he got the number of Maria Cassata’s room from the front-desk computer, made his way up in the elevator and down the hall, and announced himself quietly to the monitor square on the door. Silently Barbara let him in. As soon as the door closed behind him, he straightened his bent back and caught her in his arms. “We made it,” he said gleefully.

  She was stiff and unresponsive. “Did we?”

  “Of course we did. What’s the matter with you?”

  She pushed him away and picked up a newspaper from the table beside her. It was a Joplin paper. The headline read:

  LOCAL MAN MURDERED BESIDE OLD TOLLWAY

  “You lied to me,” she said without inflection.

  He nodded slowly, watching her face, gauging the depth of her disillusionment.

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “Do you think I wanted to kill him? A nice old guy like that?” Sibert grimaced. “It was the only safe way. I told you how it would be. I couldn’t take the chance he’d raise an alarm before we got away.”

  “Yes, you told me.”

  “Bobs, I did it for you.”

  “Did you?” She closed her eyes and opened them wearily. “Well, maybe you did. But now you’ve got to tell me the truth—you’ve got to stop lying to me—why did we come to Washington?”

  Sibert shrugged. “A wild guess, a hunch, an intuition. I tried to put myself in Cartwright’s place. He couldn’t have his kids watched; he couldn’t even keep in touch with them or let them know what they really were. Anything unusual would show up in the Institute’s files or computers, would bring down the full resources of the Institute’s search upon the very persons Cartwright was trying to shield.”

  “What has that got to do with Washington?”

  “Cartwright’s problem, then, was identical with the Institute’s problem: to locate his kids, who may be scattered all over the United States, or even the world by now. He had to establish his headquarters where he could keep track of nationwide phenomena: that meant Washington. But he had no organization; the very act of organizing would alert the Institute. He had few people he could trust—one person maybe, surely no more than two. Where could he place one man to do what must be done? There’s only one place where one man could be effective: inside the Institute itself. As long as the Institute doesn’t locate any one of Cartwright’s children, the kids are reasonably safe. But if the Institute finds one of them—then Cartwright’s agent can act.”

  Barbara nodded slowly. “It sounds logical. What are you going to do?”

  “Get in touch with the agent—whoever he is. I’m going to smoke him out, and you’re the smokescreen. I’ll report to the Institute as I promised, and I’ll offer to sell you—for a price. The agent will hear about it; he must be in a position where he’ll hear things. And he’ll get in touch with me.

  “Meanwhile, as soon as I leave here, check out. Get a room somewhere else—in a private home, if possible. Use another name. No, don’t tell me what it is. What I don’t know, Locke can’t force out of me. When I want to get in touch with you, I’ll put a personal on the Net. I’ll address it to Leon, for Ponce de León. That will be our signal.”

  “Why all the precautions?”

  Sibert smiled grimly. “From now on, you’re my insurance. As long as you’re free, they won’t dare kill me.”

  * * *

  As soon as the taxi sagged to a stop in front of the block-square building, Sibert was seized. From the car behind, four men poured out, guns in their hands. Four more came through the building’s entrance.

  They went over him thoroughly, swiftly, and found the tiny automatic. They took him directly to Locke’s office through a subterranean passage Sibert had never suspected.

  Only Sanders, the file clerk, and Liz, Locke’s secretary, were in the outer office as they passed through. They did not look at him; it was as if he did not exist.

  Locke was unchanged, but the office was different. One corner was hidden behind an impenetrable barrier of blazing light. Wordlessly Locke waved his men out of the room.

  Sibert straightened his shoulders and smoothed down his rumpled coat. He peered futilely into the hidden corner.

  “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “To you it doesn’t matter,” Locke said cheerfully. He looked at Sibert steadily. He smiled slowly. “So, the prodigal returns, bearded, weary, but more than welcome, eh? Aged considerably, too. Shall we kill the fatted calf?”

  “Depends on whom you’re calling the fatted calf.”

  Locke’s face sobered. “What brought you back?”

  “Money.”

  “What for?”

  “Cartwright’s kid.”

  “Have you got any proof it’s Cartwright’s kid?”

  “As you must know,” Sibert said, unbuttoning his shirt, “I was shot a little over two weeks ago.” He spread his shirt open. The scar in his chest was only a pink dimple. “Enough?”

  Locke raised his old, hungry eyes to Sibert’s face. “What do you want?”

  “Security: money and a guarantee I’ll stay alive to get the transfusions when I need them.”

  “The money is easy. How do you propose to get the other?”

  “I want the Cartwright story, the whole thing,” Sibert said evenly; “documents, affidavits, complete. I want it put where nobody can touch it. I want it fixed so that on the day I don’t verify that I’m alive, it gets released to every news outlet in the United States.”

  Locke nodded over it, considering. “You’d feel safe, then, wouldn’t you? Anyone would. Then we’d have to keep you alive, no matter who had to die. It would make us all very uncomfortable, but we’d have no choice. If you had Cartwright’s kid.”

  “I have.”

  “You had,” Locke corrected gently. He touched the arm of his chair. “Bring in the girl.”

  Three men brought her into the office. Her blond head was erect; her dark eyes swept the room. Locke nodded. The men left. As the door closed, out of the hidden corner of the room rolled a self-powered wheelchair. Huddled in it was the oldest man Sibert had ever seen. The man was completely bald. His face and head were a wrinkled mass of gray flesh discolored with liver spots. Out of it, faded eyes stared fixedly like marbles dropped into decaying fungus. Saliva drooled uncontrollably from the lax mouth.

  The eyes stared at Barbara. In spite of her self-control, she shrank back a little.

  “Not yet, Mister Tate,” Locke crooned, as if he were speaking to a small child. “She’ll need a complete physical examination before we can let her give more blood. She’s given a liter recently, and her health comes first. The children, you know.”

  Barbara looked at her future: Mr. Tate. She shuddered. When she looked at Sibert, her face was dead and white. “Why did you do it?” she asked.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Bobs—” he began desperately.

  “No,” she said without inflection, “I’ve finally got it all right. I couldn’t let myself wonder, before, why you should fall in love with someone as plain as I am. I was still the princess in disguise; I wouldn’t let myself doubt. Now I’ve g
ot it straightened out.”

  “No, Bobs!” Sibert protested hoarsely. “I was following the plan—”

  “Your plan, maybe. You changed the ending a little. You were going to sell me, really. I should never have believed that absurd story you told me at the motel. I should have known you could never believe it yourself. You’re too ruthless to understand a human impulse. You’ve killed three people already—”

  “Bobs, I swear this wasn’t part of it!”

  “Oh, I believe that. You were clever, but not clever enough. They win. And you lose everything. I’m sorry for you, Eddy. I loved you. You could have had immortality. But you threw it away.”

  Sibert’s face worked ungovernably as he looked away, unable to endure the cold knowledge in her eyes. When he looked toward her again, the three men were once more beside her. They led Barbara toward the door; she did not look back.

  “Put her in the apartment below,” Locke said. “You know the one—it’s been ready for long enough. Man every guard station; she must be watched every second. She’ll try suicide. The man who lets her succeed will take a year dying.”

  Then she was gone. Locke turned back to Sibert. He smiled. “You can’t beat the organization; you should have known that. No one can.” He paused. “You told me once that you weren’t a very good actor, Sibert. You were right; we picked you up at Joplin. As soon as you left the motel, we grabbed the girl. My only problem now is what to do with you.”

  “I’ve got protection,” Sibert said quickly.

  “That letter you wrote before you were shot?” Locke shook his head pityingly. “It was routine to check the mailbox after your escape.”

  The lips of the thing in the wheelchair moved; a thready whisper escaped into the room. Locke nodded.

  “Mister Tate says there is no problem: You must die. You saw his face. You must die, of course. The question is: How? We’d like to hand you over for murder, but you know too much.

  “For now, we’ll put you away. You’ll have time to consider your sin. It’s an old one—Adam and Eve succumbed to it, too. And it’s the unforgivable one: too much knowledge.”

  * * *

  The cell somewhere in the interminable levels beneath the building was bare except for the plastic bunk. Sibert sat motionless on the bunk, unable to sleep, unable to stop thinking. Somewhere he had gone wrong. And yet—he couldn’t pin down any moment when he could have acted otherwise. He had to look out for himself; no one else would. He had to make the only possible deal that would give him immortality and freedom from violent death.