"Perhaps Slovetski did not consult him," Benedetto said with dignity.
"At any rate, he is free and not far from here. And he is the answer
we have sought, you understand."
"How?" I demanded. "What can he do that we can't?"
Benedetto smiled indulgently, though the smile was strained. His wound
must have been giving him hell; it had had just enough time to stiffen
up. He said, "Leave that to Slovetski, Thomas. It is his métier, not
yours. I shall go to him now."
Well, I did what I could; but Benedetto was an iron-necked old man. I
forbade him to leave and he laughed at me. I begged him to stay and he
thanked me--and refused. Finally I abandoned him to Rena and Zorchi.
Zorchi gave up almost at once. "A majestic man!" he said admiringly, as
he rolled into the room where I was waiting, on his little power cart.
"One cannot reason with him."
And Rena, in time, gave up, too. But not easily. She was weeping when
she rejoined me.
* * * * *
She had been unable even to get him to let her join him, or to consider
taking someone else with him; he said it was his job alone. She didn't
even know where he was going. He had said it was not permissible, in so
critical a situation, for him to tell where Slovetski was.
Zorchi coughed. "As to that," he said, "I have already taken the
liberty of instructing one of my associates to be ready. If the Signore
has gone to meet Slovetski, my man is following him...."
So we waited, while the television announcers grew more and more
grim-lipped and imperative.
I listened with only half my mind. Part of my thoughts were with
Benedetto, who should have been in a hospital instead of wandering
around on some dangerous mission. And partly I was still filled with
the spectacle that was unfolding before us.
It was not merely a matter of preserving human lives. It was almost as
important to provide the newly awakened men and women, fifty years from
now, with food to eat and the homes and tools and other things that
would be needed.
Factories and transportation gear--according to the telecasts--were
being shut down and sealed to stand up under the time that would
pass--"weeks," according to the telecast, but who needed to seal a
tool in oil for a few weeks? Instructions were coming hourly over
the air on what should be protected in each home, and how it was to
be done. Probably even fifty years would not seriously damage most
of the world's equipment--if the plans we heard on the air could be
efficiently carried out.
But the farms were another matter. The preserving of seeds was
routine, but I couldn't help wondering what these flat Italian fields
would look like in fifty untended years. Would the radiocobalt
sterilize even the weeds? I didn't think so, but I didn't know. If not,
would the Italian peninsula once again find itself covered with the
dense forests that Caesar had marched through, where Spartacus and his
runaway slaves had lurked and struck out against the Senators?
And how many millions would die while the forests were being cleared
off the face of the Earth again to make way for grain? Synthetic foods
and food from the sea might solve that--the Company could find a way.
But what about the mines--three, four and five thousand feet down--when
the pumps were shut off and the underground water seeped in? What about
the rails that the trains rode on? You could cosmoline the engines,
perhaps, but how could you protect a million miles of track from the
rains of fifty years?
So I sat there, watching the television and waiting. Rena was too
nervous to stay in one place. Zorchi had mysterious occupations of his
own. I sat and stared at the cathode screen.
Until the door opened behind me, and I turned to look.
Rena was standing there. Her face was an ivory mask. She clutched the
door as her father had a few hours before; I think she looked weaker
and sicker than he.
I said, for the first time, "Darling!" She stood silent, staring at me.
I asked apprehensively, "What is it?"
The pale lips opened, but it was a moment before she could frame the
words. Then her voice was hard to hear. "My father," she said. "He
reached the place where he was meeting Slovetski, but the expediters
were there before him. They shot him down in the street. And they are
on their way here."