"This capsule is poison, and it isn't partial to blue-blood," Danton
said easily. "A few seconds after putting it into my mouth, I'll be
dead. I'll be silent then. I can tell you how the ships were destroyed,
the weapons used, some things about the planned revolt. If I don't tell
you, you'll never find out. And if you don't find out what is happening
out there in a short time, it will be too late--for you."
The woman pointed. "Take that door out, soldier. Perhaps you'll be
contacted later."
Danton smiled. "Don't wait too long. You don't have much time,
beautiful."
* * * * *
A corridor led into a circular room, one section paneled entirely in
glass. Furnishings were suspended at odd angles, the concepts of an odd
structural art, from various lengths of silver strands. He stood there,
then tried the door. He couldn't open it. He was locked in. He felt
eyes on him.
Later he turned, moved back until he was facing the door through which
he had entered. He kept the food-capsule near his mouth as the door
opened and she stood there looking at him strangely.
Then she strode toward him, long slim legs and an easy imperious
stride. The metallic-silk skirt that came half-way to her knees tinkled
like a thousand infinitely tiny bells.
She said, "The records have been checked. One of our ships failed to
get out of Earth's atmosphere when we came here a century ago. We had
assumed the ship had burned up. It has been suggested that you are from
Earth, that you found that ship. It would be odd if you were one of the
Equalitarian soldiers who fought against us a hundred years ago."
Danton shrugged. Self control was difficult now. He had to resist
an urge to reach out, put his fingers around her throat. She seemed
weaponless, and it could be accomplished rapidly enough. There would be
a great deal of personal satisfaction. But he still clung to the shreds
of his duty. His duty to Seers, to Earth millions who could so easily
die under the bombs of an enemy they had never been allowed to know
even existed. Or was that the real reason? _Maybe I don't really want
to kill her._
"Think whatever you wish. I've told you the facts. I know nothing about
such a ship. If you believe such a fantastic idea, then where is this
ship now?"
"You'll answer that," she said. She moved nearer, nearer than necessary
for conversation. How ageless and smooth her face was, he thought.
Smooth and pale. And her eyes like exotic books, concealing strange and
terrible secrets.
He shrugged again. "It doesn't matter much to me," he said. "My offer
still stands. Take it or leave it. As I said, this capsule will kill me
in seconds. After that the troubles are all yours. You won't be able
to escape. Those mongrels out there, as you call them, they don't need
Earth. They have minds of their own."
"That's impossible! They're mongrels."
"You think you have them set solidly and forever in a static mold,
just the way you want them? The perfect slavery--culturally molded,
so they don't even realize they're slaves. That's the idea? It isn't
working out that way. They're human, with minds too complex--they can
never be wholly predictable. Of course you could send an agent to Earth
to find out. It would reduce the odds against us."
"Us? But you've asked to become one of the Oligarchs."
"Yes. I would prefer that, frankly. But it isn't too important. I'm
interested in your system for only one reason--because you never grow
old. You will notice that I am growing old, hair graying, wrinkles
creeping in around my eyes. I don't like that. To be ageless like you,
I would bargain."
"You seem so sure of yourself. I almost believe you."
"I am sure of myself. The mongrels can manage a successful revolt. But
with the information I can give you, you could put down that revolt. I
can't say about the next revolt, or the one after that, or any of the
revolts that will go on as long as there are men who have minds for
figuring out reasons for revolting. If you try to force the information
from me, I'll take the poison."
"Would you really do that?"
He nodded.
"We could go out there and get the information directly from the
mongrels."
"From them, you would find out nothing. The mongrels don't know
anything. Only the leaders know, the scientists, the secret
underground. You would never find them. The revolt is latent in every
man beyond these walls, in every man and woman and child. The leaders
know how to bring out that latent desire to revolt, when the time
comes. There will be adequate weapons, too. Like the ones those three
ships were blasted with."
He touched her throat. He felt the stirring of the pulse. A flush rose
to her cheeks. "Show me why you haven't grown old during this last
hundred years, Rhone, as I have."
Her face was near his. He could see the trembling in her lips, the
enigmatic brightness of her eyes. "You're attractive," she whispered.
"And that's odd, that a mongrel could be attractive."
"There are differences among the mongrels," Danton said. He moved his
hands down her arms. She shivered a little. "And maybe there's a need
in you that makes me seem something I'm not."
"That may be, yes. Maybe it isn't so easy to live forever. We have all
you would think anyone would want here. But there are so few of us. And
the men--always the same, with faces the same and walks the same and--"
"Then you really are the same Rhone, the Oligarch of a century ago?"
"Yes."
"And it's true, you never grow old?"
"It's true. We won't grow any older. And we'll never die."
She looked into his eyes and the seconds went by and time dissolved
around Danton. And he thought: the lies I have told here--are they
really a conscious effort to deceive? Do I really want, unconsciously,
to become an Oligarch? Why not? He had wondered about it before.
Immortality. A system depending on eternal warfare for its existence.
Was this not his system after all?
"Come," she said, and took his arm. "I'll show you. You interest me.
You're a diversion, soldier. I'll show you what we are."
* * * * *
They sat in a small spherical car. It made no noise. It slid silently
over the smooth floor by working a simple lever around. It darted like
a silver beetle. First she took him back to a place he remembered well.
The Pit.
She didn't seem to see things actually. She talked with a calm
detachment, and sometimes her thoughts seemed far away. Danton's
thoughts weren't far away.
She was saying, "The war goes on outside the walls. Their culture is
one of war, and that is all they know. We established it that way. We
intend to keep it that way. You see this is the Pit; here the bodies
come, the ones who have died. Here the bodies are sorted roughly onto
the conveyor belts which take them to the Dismembering Wards."
The car whirred them away. The next station, gleaming white rooms,
shining and sterile. Danton felt the perspiration streaming down his
throat.
Electronic machinery examined the bodies, mechanical hands removed
them from the conveyor belts with deft selectivity, deposited them on
wheeled, white slabs.
"You will notice," Rhone said calmly, "that the bodies have come
through an antiseptic room, and their clothing dissolved. Now they are
ready for dismembering."
Men in white moved silently down the line and did their work with
sharp, quick strokes. Scalpels and tiny whirring saws and the bodies
slowly dwindling into isolated parts. There was no blood, no mess,
everything was efficient and thorough and clean.
"The usable body-parts are selected here," Rhone said. "Notice the
departments along the walls by each slab? They are refrigerated. They
contain separate sections for each of the salvaged body-parts that are
worth preserving."
Behind glass in the walls, Danton saw neatly placed parts of the
bodies. Hearts, fingers, hands, legs, feet, bone sections, eyes and
interior organs. Kidneys, spleens, livers, carefully preserved, neatly
arranged and labeled and waiting.
Danton slowly licked his lips. Her voice seemed far away now, droning
like an insect on a lazy day far from anywhere, and the endless length
of that room seemed dust-mantled and still, so still, he thought, and
unreal; but it was real.
"From here, any part of a human body can be replaced by our surgeons.
Here is the source of our immortality. When any body organ becomes
worn, it is replaced. We are stocking our body-banks, soldier. As you
can see."
Danton could see. What he saw was blurring a little though, and his
legs seemed numb when he tried to move them.
"Why does it affect you so?" she was asking him then, and he turned and
looked at her.
"Why?"
He didn't really know, or else his brain wasn't functioning at the
moment. Why? It was beyond horror. It was alien, and yet why should it
be alien? As a soldier, why should he find it disturbing? He had been
conditioned, and his conditioning had allowed him to destroy millions
by pressing buttons, by directing missiles he never saw in flight to a
target he never saw dissolve in a great white-hot flame.
Here it was planned, and here death had some transcendental meaning.
"There's one more thing for you to see," she said.
A dimly-lighted series of chambers. She pointed them out. Refrigerated
banks. As far as Danton could see, the long chambers were lined with
huge banks. Each filled with spare body-parts.
"You see the pattern now, soldier? We started with a select group. From
among the Oligarchs only the elite of the elite was selected to come
here to Mars. There are fifty of us now, as there were fifty then. No
children, of course. Why complicate things?
"Our slaves out there know nothing except that they must fight the
Redbirds. Theirs is a war society. We arranged it and we've perpetuated
it, and now it's the only life they know--unless your story of a revolt
is true, of course, which I can hardly believe. They have only the
crudest weapons. The kind of weapons we fought with on earth, soldier,
left little for body-salvage, did they? We feel we've found the only
way of being immortal. Why does it affect you like this, soldier?
Doesn't it seem logical and fair to you?"
* * * * *
Danton didn't say anything. He couldn't. His throat was dry and his
blood hammered past his temples. She was putting the question to him,
all right; and in a way it was the same question he had asked himself
more than once. To an efficiently conditioned soldier class, killing
was an end in itself. Why not go on from there, carry it out to its
final denominator?
"The brain never wears out," she was saying, "the only damage possible
to it is due to the wearing out of supplementary body-parts, and they
are seldom used to such a point. And even parts of the brain can be
replaced. We have blood banks, of course. We cannot die of natural
causes. If death comes from any kind of violence or accident, we can
bring that body to life again.
"We are storing up reserve body-parts to keep us strong and un-aging
for as long as one would care to imagine. When we are ready, of course,
we shall return to Earth. We have kept that in mind, naturally. We are
almost ready now to return. On Earth, of course, the same system will
be established--but there our system will of necessity be slightly
different. Perhaps wars will not necessarily go on unceasingly. There
will be breathing spells ... it won't matter particularly to us."
She looked at Danton closely. "First we shall wipe out most of the
population. We only need a small stabilized population to provide for
us."
"What about the Redbirds?" Danton said. His voice sounded weak. It was
weak. "This is their planet, doesn't--"
"Their bodies are too alien," she said. "They can't be of any benefit
to us. Except, of course, they provide conflict for the mongrels."
Danton closed his eyes. There was no more confusion. He knew now where
the road led if you stayed on it to its end. It ended here with bodies
stacked up in refrigerators. It ended with the cancellation of all
human values, except the values of the fifty select--and they were no
longer human in any familiar sense.
He felt sick, very sick. It might be embarrassing, he was so sick.
He said, "I don't feel very well. Maybe I could rest here for a few
minutes?"
She laughed. She stopped laughing, and Danton heard the sound of doors
sliding and the approach of softly moving feet. Two Oligarchs--Guards,
evidently, for each wore a flash-gun at his side. And between them--
Danton didn't quite believe what he saw, and if what he saw was true,
he didn't know whether to be glad or not. Keith and Van Ness. The
latter was terribly wounded, his face a red smear, blood soaking his
side. And Keith--Keith, Danton had decided, was a dangerous man.
One of the Oligarchs said, "We brought them directly to you, on
Weisser's orders. Weisser talked to them, then sent them down here. He
said that you would know--"
She raised her hand and the Oligarch guard stopped talking. Danton
looked at Keith's rigid, white face. Keith's lips thinned back over his
teeth as he grinned at Danton. "Captain," he said. "I guess you beat me
to the punch. I see you're already on friendly terms."
Van Ness moaned softly and fell to his knees. He stared sightlessly
from his broken face.