"I'm sorry, sir--"
"All right. Get away from that machine and let _me_ talk to him. If
there are repercussions, tell him I forced you at gunpoint."
She backed away, horrified, and he slid in behind the desk. He made
contact; there was no acknowledgment. He said, "Mr. FitzMaugham, this
is Roy. I'm outside your office now. Should I come in, or not?"
Silence. He stared thoughtfully at the apparatus.
"I'm going in there," he said.
* * * * *
The door was of solid-paneled imitation wood, a couple of inches thick
and probably filled with a good sturdy sheet of beryllium steel.
FitzMaugham liked protection.
Walton contemplated the door for a moment. Stepping into the screener
field, he said, "Mr. FitzMaugham? Can you hear me?" In the ensuing
silence he went on, "This is Walton. I'm outside with a blaster, and
unless I get any orders to the contrary, I'm going to break into your
office."
Silence. This was very extraordinary indeed. He wondered if it were
part of some trap of FitzMaugham's. Well, he'd find out soon enough. He
adjusted the blaster aperture to short-range wide-beam, and turned it
on. A soft even flow of heat bathed the door.
Quite a crowd of curious onlookers had gathered by now, at a respectful
distance. Walton maintained the steady heat. The synthetic wood was
sloughing away in dribbly blue masses as the radiation broke it down;
the sheet of metal in the heart of the door was gleaming bright red.
The lock became visible now. Walton concentrated the flame there, and
the door creaked and groaned.
He snapped the blaster off, pocketed it, and kicked the door soundly.
It swung open.
He had a momentary glimpse of a blood-soaked white head slumped over a
broad desk--and then someone hit him amidships.
He was a man about his own height, wearing a blue suit woven through
with glittering gold threads; Walton's mind caught the details with odd
clarity. The man's face was distorted with fear and shock, but Walton
recognized it clearly enough. The ruddy cheeks, the broad nose and
bushy eyebrows, belonged to Ludwig.
The UN man. The man who had just assassinated Director FitzMaugham.
He was battering his fists into Walton, struggling to get past him and
through the wrecked door, to escape somewhere, anywhere. Walton grunted
as a fist crashed into his stomach. He reeled backward, gagging and
gasping, but managed to keep his hand on the other's coat. Desperately
he pulled Ludwig to him. In the suddenness of the encounter he had no
time to evaluate what had happened, no time to react to FitzMaugham's
murder.
His one thought was that Ludwig had to be subdued.
His fist cracked into the other's mouth; sharp pain shot up through his
hand at the impact of knuckles against teeth. Ludwig sagged. Walton
realized that he was blocking the doorway; not only was he preventing
Ludwig from escaping, he was also making it impossible for anyone
outside to come to his own aid.
Blindly he clubbed his fist down on Ludwig's neck, spun him around,
crashed another blow into the man's midsection. Suddenly Ludwig pulled
away from him and ran back behind the director's desk.
Walton followed him ... and stopped short as he saw the UN man pause,
quiver tremulously, and topple to the floor. He sprawled grotesquely on
the deep beige carpet, shook for a moment, then was still.
Walton gasped for breath. His clothes were torn, he was sticky with
sweat and blood, his heart was pounding from unaccustomed exertion.
_Ludwig's killed the director_, he thought leadenly. _And now Ludwig's
dead._
He leaned against the doorpost. He was conscious of figures moving past
him, going into the room, examining FitzMaugham and the figure on the
floor.
"Are you all right?" a crisp, familiar voice asked.
"Pretty winded," Walton admitted.
"Have some water."
Walton accepted the drink, gulped it, looked up at the man who had
spoken. "Ludwig! How in hell's name--"
"A double," the UN man said. "Come over here and look at him."
Ludwig led him to the pseudo-Ludwig on the floor. It was an incredible
resemblance. Two or three of the office workers had rolled the body
over; the jaws were clenched stiffly, the face frozen in an agonized
mask.
"He took poison," Ludwig said. "I don't imagine he expected to get out
of here alive. But he did his work well. God, I wish I'd been on time
for once in my life!"
Walton glanced numbly from the dead Ludwig on the floor to the live
one standing opposite him. His shocked mind realized dimly what had
happened. The assassin, masked to look like Ludwig, had arrived at
1300, and had been admitted to the director's office. He had killed the
old man, and then had remained inside the office, either hoping to make
an escape later in the day, or perhaps simply waiting for the poison to
take effect.
"It was bound to happen," Ludwig said. "They've been gunning for the
senator for years. And now that Popeek was passed...."
Walton looked involuntarily at the desk, mirror bright and uncluttered
as always. Director FitzMaugham was sprawled forward, hands
half-clenched, arms spread. His impressive mane of white hair was
stained with his own blood. He had been clubbed--the simplest, crudest
sort of murder.
Emotional reaction began. Walton wanted to break things, to cry, to let
off steam somehow. But there were too many people present; the office,
once sacrosanct, had miraculously become full of Popeek workers,
policemen, secretaries, possibly some telefax reporters.
Walton recovered a shred of his authority. "All of you, _outside_!" he
said loudly. He recognized Sellors, the building's security chief, and
added, "Except you, Sellors. You can stay here."
The crowd melted away magically. Now there were just five in the
office--Sellors, Ludwig, Walton, and the two corpses.
Ludwig said, "Do you have any idea who might be behind this, Mr.
Walton?"
"I don't know," he said wearily. "There are thousands who'd have wanted
to kill the director. Maybe it was a Herschelite plot. There'll be a
full investigation."
"Mind stepping out of the way, sir?" Sellors asked. "I'd like to take
some photos."
Walton and Ludwig moved to one side as the security man went to work.
It was inevitable, Walton thought, that this would happen. FitzMaugham
had been the living symbol of Popeek.
He walked to the battered door, reflecting that he would have it
repaired at once. That thought led naturally to a new one, but before
it was fully formed in his own mind, Ludwig voiced it.
"This is a terrible tragedy," the UN man said. "But one mitigating
factor exists. I'm sure Mr. FitzMaugham's successor will be a fitting
one. I'm confident you'll be able to carry on FitzMaugham's great work
quite capably, Mr. Walton."
V
The new sign on the office door said:
_ROY WALTON_
_Interim Director_
_Bureau of Population Equalization_
He had argued against putting it up there, on the grounds that his
appointment was strictly temporary, pending a meeting of the General
Assembly to choose a new head for Popeek. But Ludwig had maintained it
might be weeks or months before such a meeting could be held and that
there was no harm in identifying his office.
"Everything under control?" the UN man asked.
Walton eyed him unhappily. "I guess so. Now all I have to do is start
figuring out how Mr. FitzMaugham's filing system worked, and I'll be
all set."
"You mean you don't know?"
"Mr. FitzMaugham took very few people into his confidence," Walton
said. "Popeek was his special brain-child. He had lived with it so long
he thought its workings were self-evident to everyone. There'll be a
period of adjustment."
"Of course," Ludwig said.
"This conference you were going to have with the director yesterday
when he--ah, what was it about?" Walton asked.
The UN man shrugged. "It's irrelevant now, I suppose. I wanted to find
out how Popeek's subsidiary research lines were coming along. But I
guess you'll have to go through Mr. FitzMaugham's files before you know
anything, eh?" Ludwig stared at him sharply.
Suddenly, Walton did not like the cheerful UN man.
"There'll be a certain period of adjustment," he repeated. "I'll let
you know when I'm ready to answer questions about Popeek."
"Of course. I didn't mean to imply any criticism of you or of the late
director or of Popeek, Mr. Walton."
"Naturally. I understand, Mr. Ludwig."
Ludwig took his leave at last, and Walton was alone in the late Mr.
FitzMaugham's office for the first time since the assassination. He
spread his hands on the highly polished desk and twisted his wrists
outward in a tense gesture. His fingers made squeaking sounds as they
rubbed the wood surface.
It had been an uneasy afternoon yesterday, after the nightmare of the
assassination and the subsequent security inquisition. Walton, wrung
dry, had gone home early, leaving Popeek headless for two hours. The
newsblares in the jetbus had been programmed with nothing but talk of
the killing.
"A brutal hand today struck down the revered D. F. FitzMaugham,
eighty-one, Director of Population Equalization. Security officials
report definite prospects of solution of the shocking crime, and...."
The other riders in the bus had been vehemently outspoken.
"It's about time they let him have it," a fat woman in sleazy old
clothes said. "That baby killer!"
"I knew they'd get him sooner or later," offered a thin, wispy-haired
old man. "They _had_ to."
"Rumor going around he was really a Herschelite...."
"Some new kid is taking over Popeek, they say. They'll get him too,
mark my words."
Walton, huddling in his seat, pulled up his collar, and tried to shut
his ears. It didn't work.
_They'll get him too, mark my words._
He hadn't forgotten that prophecy by the time he reached his cubicle in
upper Manhattan. The harsh words had drifted through his restless sleep
all night.
Now, behind the safety of his office door, he thought of them again.
He couldn't hide. It hadn't worked for FitzMaugham, and it wouldn't for
him.
Hiding wasn't the answer. Walton smiled grimly. If martyrdom were
in store for him, let martyrdom come. The work of Popeek had to go
forward. He decided he would conduct as much of his official business
as possible by screen; but when personal contact was necessary, he
would make no attempt to avoid it.
He glanced around FitzMaugham's office. The director had been a product
of the last century, and he had seen nothing ugly in the furnishings
of the Cullen Building. Unlike Walton, then, he had not had his office
remodeled.
That would be one of the first tasks--to replace the clumsy battery of
tungsten-filament incandescents with a wall of electroluminescents, to
replace the creaking sash windows with some decent opaquers, to get rid
of the accursed gingerbread trimming that offended the eye in every
direction. The _thunkety-thunk_ air-conditioner would have to go too;
he'd have a molecusorter installed in a day or two.
The redecorating problems were the minor ones. It was the task of
filling FitzMaugham's giant shoes, even on an interim basis, that
staggered Walton.
He fumbled in the desk for a pad and stylus. This was going to call for
an agenda. Hastily he wrote:
_1. Cancel F's appointments_
_2. Investigate setup in Files_
_a) Lang terraforming project_
_b) faster-than-light_
_c) budget--stretchable?_
_d) locate spy pickups in building_
_3. Meeting with section chiefs_
_4. Press conference with telefax services_
_5. See Ludwig ... straighten things out_
_6. Redecorate office_
He thought for a moment, then erased a few of his numbers and changed
_Press conference_ to _6._ and _Redecorate office_ to _4._ He licked
the stylus and wrote in at the very top of the paper:
_0. Finish Prior affair._
In a way, FitzMaugham's assassination had taken Walton off the hook
on the Prior case. Whatever FitzMaugham suspected about Walton's
activities yesterday morning no longer need trouble him. If the
director had jotted down a memorandum on the subject, Walton would be
able to find and destroy it when he went through FitzMaugham's files
later. And if the dead man had merely kept the matter in his head,
well, then it was safely at rest in the crematorium.
Walton groped in his jacket pocket and found the note his brother had
slipped to him at lunchtime the day before. In the rush of events,
Walton had not had a chance to destroy it.
Now, he read it once more, ripped it in half, ripped it again, and
fed one quarter of the note into the disposal chute. He would get rid
of the rest at fifteen-minute intervals, and he would defy anyone
monitoring the disposal units to locate all four fragments.
Actually, he realized he was being overcautious. This was Director
FitzMaugham's office and FitzMaugham's disposal chute. The director
wouldn't have arranged to have his _own_ chute monitored, would he?
Or would he? There was never any telling, with FitzMaugham. The old man
had been terribly devious in every maneuver he made.
The room had the dry, crisp smell of the detecting devices that had
been used--the close-to-the-ground, ugly metering-robots that had
crawled all over the floor, sniffing up footprints and stray dandruff
flakes for analysis, the chemical cleansers that had mopped the blood
out of the rug. Walton cursed at the air-conditioner that was so
inefficiently removing these smells from the air.
The annunciator chimed. Walton waited impatiently for a voice, then
remembered that FitzMaugham had doggedly required an acknowledgment.
He opened the channel and said, "This is Walton. In the future no
acknowledgment will be necessary."
"Yes, sir. There's a reporter from _Citizen_ here, and one from Globe
Telefax."
"Tell them I'm not seeing anyone today. Here, I'll give them a
statement. Tell them the Gargantuan task of picking up the reins where
the late, great Director FitzMaugham dropped them is one that will
require my full energy for the next several days. I'll be happy to hold
my first official press conference as soon as Popeek is once again
moving on an even keel. Got that?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Make sure they print it. And--oh, listen. If anyone shows up
today or tomorrow who had an appointment with Director FitzMaugham,
tell him approximately the same thing. Not in those flowery words, of
course, but give him the gist of it. I've got a lot of catching up to
do before I can see people."
"Certainly, Director Walton."
He grinned at the sound of those words, _Director Walton_. Turning away
from the annunciator, he took out his agenda and checked off number
one, _Cancel FitzMaugham's appointments_.
Frowning, he realized he had better add a seventh item to the list:
_Appoint new assistant administrator_. Someone would have to handle his
old job.
But now, top priority went to the item ticketed zero on the list:
_Finish Prior affair_. He'd never be in a better position to erase the
evidence of yesterday's illegality than he was right now.
"Connect me with euthanasia files, please."