No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories Read online

  It was as if something had struck him with a whip. He started and then settled back.

  “Yes, they do,” he said. “The extent of their possibilities I cannot say. I can tell you roughly what they do, but I don’t understand just how—

  “Perhaps we had better start at the beginning.

  “If one is to accept the hypothesis that death is the result of the final hydrolysis of the proteins in the protoplasm, then it would seem reasonable that anything which would arrest hydrolysis or would catalyze resynthesis of the proteins would hold death at bay.

  “The salts apparently do this, but whether they merely arrest the process of hydrolysis, preventing one from growing older, or whether they completely resynthesize a portion of the original proteins contained in the protoplasm I cannot even guess.

  “If resynthesis actually does occur, then one might speculate upon the possibility that a larger dosage, by resynthesizing all or nearly all of the proteins would cause a man to grow younger instead of merely stopping him from growing older.”

  He smiled. “I never experimented. I was satisfied with arresting old age.”

  I didn’t say a thing. I almost held my breath. It seemed incredible the man could be sitting there, telling me that story. There was something wrong. Either he was wacky or I was batty—or maybe both.

  I wanted to pinch myself to make sure it wasn’t all a dream, because, if it wasn’t, here was the biggest story the world had ever read.

  Here was the sort of thing Ponce de Leon, the old Earth explorer, had dreamed about. Here, in hard truth, was an age-old myth that had echoed down the world for ages.

  He was quiet so long that I finally spoke. “So you took some of the salts. Possibly so you could continue your work?”

  “That’s it,” he said. “I talked it over with my friend, the one who expected me to help him—the one I knew I couldn’t help

  “He understood and agreed to do his part. I was to prolong my life so I could continue with my work. He was to continue his so I could use him as a subject for experiments. It wasn’t an easy decision for him to make, for it meant years of torturing illness. The salts seemed to help him to some extent, perhaps repairing some of the ravages of the disease and for a while we thought they might be the cure. But they failed us, too. He lived—it’s true—but he wasn’t cured.”

  “But why was it necessary to continue his life?” I asked. “Necessary for the experiments, I mean. Certainly you had plenty of other patients to experiment upon.”

  “They died too fast,” said Anderson. “A few months, a few years at the most. I needed long range observation.”

  He matched fingertips, speaking slowly, as if choosing his words with care.

  “Perhaps you wonder why I did not pass my work along, why I did not select someone else and train them so they could pick up where I left off. Maybe that would have been the best. I’ve often blamed myself for not doing it instead of this. But my research had become an obsession. It wasn’t all pride or scientific ardor. There was the human angle to it, too. No man could have seen those poor devils, doomed, without a single chance, and not wanted to do something for them. They weren’t just patients. They were human beings, crying for someone to do something—and no one had. I tried to—God knows how I tried.

  “I was afraid, you see, that someone else, no matter how carefully selected, might not be able to carry on with the singleness of purpose that seemed necessary—that somewhere along the way they might falter, might get sick of the job. That couldn’t be, that was the one thing that simply could not happen. Someone at least had to keep on trying to help those men for whom there was no help.”

  “So you killed yourself off,” I said. “You let yourself be buried. You saw the stele erected in your honor. You became Dr. Brown and later Dr. Vincent. And yet, when I called you Dr. Anderson you answered.”

  “I’ve always been Anderson,” he said. “The robots, of course, call me by the name I go by at the moment, but my friend who has stood by me all these years always calls me Anderson.”

  He grimaced. “He never could get used to my other names.”

  “And Eli?”

  “Eli was easy to manage. I made him believe he had a malignant ailment, cautioned him he must come here at regular intervals for injections. The injections, of course, were his own salts. They have to be taken at intervals. After a time the hydrolysis would reach a point where it was necessary to set the catalytic action back to work again.”

  He rose from the desk and paced up and down the room.

  “But now Eli is dead. And I have failed. And someone else knows about the salts.”

  He stopped in front of me.

  “Do you realize what the knowledge of the salts will do to the Solar System?” he demanded. “Can you see what I have feared all these years?”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “The salts would be the greatest blessing the world has ever known—”

  He stared at me.

  “Greatest blessing, did you say?” he whispered.

  His fists clenched and unclenched by his side.

  “They would be the greatest curse that could fall on mankind. Can you see what men would do to get them? No crime too foul, no treachery too great. Can you imagine what those in power would charge for them? Charge in money and service and power? The man who had them would rule the Solar System, for he could hold forth or withdraw the hope of eternal youth, of eternal life.

  “Can you even remotely imagine the economic consequences? Men beggaring themselves for a few more years of life. Life insurance companies crashing as the people grabbed at the hope of living forever. For if a man is to live forever why bother with insurance? And when the insurance companies crashed they would drag others with them—companies that hold their paper—and other companies that—But why go on. Surely you must see.

  “Envision the wars that might result. The mad hunt for the magic salts—”

  “Wait a minute,” I shouted at him. “You’re forgetting that the man who killed Eli probably didn’t find out where Eli got the salts. He stole the salts that Eli had, but he probably doesn’t know—”

  “That makes no difference,” said Anderson. “No difference at all. Once the System knows such salts exist all hell will break wide open. Mercury will be swamped with men looking for them—”

  He stopped his tirade, walked around the desk and sat down.

  “I hope you’ve enjoyed my story, Mr. Marshall.”

  I gulped at that one. “Enjoyed it! Why, it’s the greatest story the System’s ever known. They’ll give it headlines two feet high. They’ll spread it—”

  I stopped because I didn’t like the look that had crept into his eyes.

  “You realize, of course, Mr. Marshall, that you shall never print it.”

  “Never print it,” I yelped. “What did you tell it to me for?”

  “I took advantage of you,” said Anderson. “I had to tell it to someone. I’ve had it corked up in me too long. And I needed time.”

  I gulped again. “Time—”

  He nodded. “Time for the robots to take certain measures. By this time they have discovered something is wrong. They are quick at things like that.”

  He seemed to be laughing at me.

  “You’ll never leave this place alive,” he said.

  We sat there looking at one another. He was smiling. I don’t know how I looked. I was mad and plenty scared.

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “We mustn’t be dramatic. I don’t mean I am going to kill you. I mean that you will never leave this place. If you try you’ll most assuredly be killed. You see, I can’t let you go. Not knowing what you know.”

  “You dirty—” but he stopped me.

  “You asked for it,” he said.

  A door back of the desk opened softly and a ray o
f light slashed into the room. Through the door I caught the glimpse of a laboratory.

  A tall, gaunt man stood in the doorway. His face was pallid above the black lounging robe he wore.

  “Anderson—” he began excitedly.

  “Why, Ernie,” said Anderson. “I didn’t expect to see you. We have a guest. Mr. Sherman Marshall. He’s staying for a while”—he cast me a sidelong look—“for quite a while,” he finished.

  “I am glad to know you,” Ernie said to me. “Do you, by chance, play whist? Anderson is no good at it. Claims it is old-fashioned—absolutely primitive.”

  “I don’t know a thing about it,” I said, “but I’m handy with cards.”

  “Of course,” said Anderson to me, “you must have guessed that Ernie is my partner in crime. Not quite as old as I am but almost. Ernie Hitchcock. Once one of the best captains that ever flew in space.”

  “I came to tell you,” said Hitchcock, speaking to Anderson with the old urgency in his voice, “that there has been a reaction. The kind we were hoping for. I made sure before—”

  Anderson’s hands grasped at the table.

  “A reaction—” he choked. “You mean it … really … what we were looking for?”

  Hitchcock nodded.

  Anderson turned to me. “You will excuse us?”

  I nodded, not knowing what to say. I was trying to make head and tail or what had happened. What did the tall, gaunt man mean by reaction? Could it mean that a cure had been found, after all these years, for the space sickness? Did it mean that Dr. Anderson, at the moment all seemed lost, had triumphed in this search that had stretched over three lifetimes?

  The two went out the door, into the laboratory and I watched them go. Minutes dragged by. I got up and paced around the room. I stared at the books in the shelves, but there was nothing to interest me, mostly medical works.

  Knowing it wouldn’t do me any good, I went to the door leading into the room where I’d bashed the robot on the head. I opened it and there squarely in front of it, stood a robot with his arms folded across his chest. He looked as if he were just waiting for me to make a break. He said nothing and I said nothing. I simply shut the door.

  The radio caught my attention and I wondered if it would work. Anderson had said it hadn’t been tuned in for months. Radio reception usually is almost impossible here, but with the new broadcast units put in at New Chicago in the last few months it should be halfway decent, I thought.

  I turned it on and the set lighted up and hummed. Swiftly I spun the dial to the New Chicago wave length and the voice of Jimmy Doyle, newscaster, blared out, somewhat disrupted by static, but still intelligible.

  Jimmy was just starting his broadcast and what he had to say held me rooted to the spot —

  “—still searching for Sherman Marshall, wanted for the murder of Eli Lawrence. A warrant was issued for Marshall’s arrest ten hours ago when a canvas bag belonging to the murdered man was found in an alley near the North Wall. Marshall’s fingerprints, the police say, were found upon it. A bartender at the Sun Spot, a night club—”

  There was a lot more to it, and I listened, but it didn’t mean much. The things that mattered were my fingerprints upon the canvas bag in which old Eli had carried his salts and the story the bartender at the Sun Spot had told the police.

  Back at New Chicago the cops were in full cry. Intent to hang the murder on someone. Anxious to make a showing because election was near.

  And with those fingerprints and the bartender’s story it wouldn’t be so hard to hang it on me.

  Numbly I reached out and snapped off the radio. Covering trials, both in New Chicago and back on Earth, I often had tried to put myself in the defendant’s place, had tried to imagine what he was thinking, how he felt.

  And now I knew!

  I was safe, I knew, for a while, for no one would think of looking for me here. Perhaps even if they did come looking they wouldn’t find me, for Anderson would want to keep me hidden. It would be to his interest to keep me where I couldn’t talk.

  I thought back over the events immediately preceding and following Eli’s death—and I suddenly remembered the sand flask hidden in my dresser drawer. The sand flask with the white spaceship!

  The door to the laboratory opened and Anderson entered the room. He was all smiles and he almost beamed at me.

  “I have been thinking,” he said. “Perhaps I can let you go.”

  “What’s that?” I yelped.

  “I said I was thinking I needn’t keep you here.”

  “But, Doc,” I protested, “I really want to stay. I think—”

  And then I saw it wasn’t any good. If he was ready to let me leave, he would be no protection if I stayed.

  “But why this sudden switch?” I demanded. “If you let me go, I’ll publish the story. Sure as hell, I will.”

  “I don’t think you will,” he said. “Because I am trading you another story for it. A bigger story—”

  “The cure? You’ve found the cure?”

  He nodded. “There had seemed just one thing left to do. A very dangerous thing and with slight chance of success. If that failed, we feared that we were done. We had then explored every possibility. We had come to the end.

  “We tried and failed—or so it seemed. But what had seemed failure was really success. The reaction was slower than we thought, took longer to manifest itself. We know now that we can cure the space sickness.”

  He was staring at the wall again and there still was nothing there—

  “It will take some time,” he finally said. “A little time to perfect the method. But I still have a little time … a little time … enough—”

  “But, Doctor,” I yelled at him, “you must have some salts. You certainly didn’t use all that Eli brought you. There is no need to talk of time.”

  He turned tired eyes to me.

  “Yes, I have some salts,” he said. “Let me show you—”

  He rose and went through the laboratory. I followed him.

  From a cabinet above a sink he lifted down a box and opened it. Inside I saw the crystals.

  “Look,” said Anderson.

  He upended the box, dumped the salts into the sink, reached out and turned the tap. In silence we watched the water wash them down the drain.

  “Try and tell that story now,” he said. “You’ll be laughed out of your profession. There is no evidence. I am the only evidence and I will soon be dead.

  “I’ve waited for this day—for the day when I could pour them down the drain. I’ve done what I set out to do. I’ve taken the terror out of space. I’ve answered the prayers I have seen in the eyes of dying men. No one, even if they knew, and believed, my story, could say now that I had been wrong in doing what I did.”

  “You forget just one thing, Doctor.”

  “What is that?”

  “There still is evidence. Someone stole some salts from Eli.”

  He blanched at that. I knew he would. In the triumph of the moment he had forgotten it. His hand shook as he put back the box, turned off the water.

  And in that instant, I think, I realized what he stood for. I could envision those long lonely years. Facing failure every year, despairing of ever doing what need be done. Keeping within his brain a knowledge that would have brought him greater glory than any man had ever had and yet keeping silent because he knew what his secret would do to the people of the System.

  “Look, Doctor,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “About those salts that Eli had. You needn’t worry. I know where they are.”

  “You know where they are?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t until a minute ago.”

  He didn’t ask the question, but I answered it.

  “I’ll do what’s necessary,” I said.

  Silently he held out
his hand to me.

  I knew where those salts were, all right. But the problem was to reach them.

  I knew, too, who had murdered Eli. But there was no way to prove it. The salts would have furnished the proof, but it was doubtful if any court, any jury would have believed my story. And using them as evidence would have told the world, would have broken faith with Dr. Jennings Anderson.

  My first job was to get them.

  How I did it I still don’t clearly remember. I remember that I came into the west port of the city with a jam of other cars, gambling on the belief the police would be watching outgoing cars, would pay little attention to incoming ones.

  Once inside I ran the car into a side street, ducked it into an alley and abandoned it. I remember dodging up alleys, hiding in recessed doorways to avoid passers-by, working nearer and nearer to my apartment house.

  Getting into the house was simpler than I thought.

  Plain-clothes men were watching the place, but their watch had eased up a bit. After all, what murderer would be crazy enough to come back to a place he knew was being watched?

  I waited my chance and took it. I met one man in the hall, but turned to one of the doors, fumbling in my pocket as if for a key, shielding my face from him until he was past.

  My own room was unguarded. Probably they figured that it was impossible for me to slip into the building, so why guard the room?

  The place had been ransacked, but nothing, apparently, had been taken.

  Swiftly I went to the dresser in the bedroom, pulled out the drawer, lifted out the sand flask. With trembling fingers I pried out the cork, shook out the contents.

  There was no mistaking the appearance of the white sand. It wasn’t white sand—it was the crystals Eli had shown me at the Sun Spot.

  What was it Anderson had said—“if resynthesis actually does occur a man would grow younger—”

  I hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. Then I scooped up some of the crystals, put them in my mouth and swallowed. They went down hard—like sand. But they went down. I took some more, just to make sure. I had no way of knowing how many I should take. Then I washed the rest down the bathroom drain.