Carl shrugged, and lit a cigarette. "Hard to say. This was my first
look, I had nothing to compare it with. But there's _something_ wrong.
I always thought the Mars Colony was a frontier, a real challenge--you
know, Man against the Wilderness, and all that. Saloons jammed on
Saturday nights with rough boys out to get some and babes that had it
to give. A place that could take Earthbound softies and toughen them
up in a week, working to tame down the desert--"
His voice trailed off. "They've got a saloon, all right--but everybody
just comes in quietly and gets slobbery drunk. Met a guy named Fisher,
thought the same thing I did when he came up five years ago. A real
go-getter, leader type, lots of ideas and the guts to put them across.
Now he's got a hob-nail liver and he came back here on the ship with
me, hating Mars and everything up there, most of all himself.
Something's wrong up there, Dan. Maybe that's why Armstrong bowed
out."
The Senator took a deep breath. "Not a man like Ken Armstrong. Why, I
used to worship him when I was a kid. I was ten when he came back to
Earth for his second Retread." The old man shook his head. "I wanted
to go back to Mars with him--I actually packed up to run away, until
dear brother Paul caught me and squealed to Dad. Imagine."
"I'm sorry, Dan."
The car whizzed off the Throughway, and began weaving through the
residential areas of Arlington. Jean swung under an arched gate,
stopped in front of a large greystone house of the sort they hadn't
built for a hundred years. Dan Fowler stared out at the grey November
afternoon. "Well, then we're really on thin ice at the Hearings. We
can still do it. It'll take some steam-rollering, but we can manage
it." He turned to the girl. "Get Schirmer on the wire as soon as we
get inside. I'll go over Carl's report for whatever I can find. Tell
Schirmer if he wants to keep his job as Coordinator of the Medical
Center next year, he'd better have all the statistics available on all
rejuvenated persons past and present, in my office tomorrow morning."
Jean gave her father a queer look. "Schirmer's waiting for you inside
right now."
"Oh? Why?"
"He wouldn't say. Nothing to do with politics, he said. Something
about Paul."
* * * * *
Nathan Shirmer was waiting in the library, sipping a brandy and
pretending to scan a Congressional Record in the viewer-box. He looked
up, bird-like, as Dan Fowler strode in. "Well, Nate. Sit down, sit
down. I see you're into my private stock already, so I won't offer you
any. What's this about my brother?"
Schirmer coughed into his hand. "Why--Dan, I don't quite know how to
tell you this. He was in Washington this afternoon--"
"Of course he was. He was supposed to go to the Center--" Dan broke
off short, whirling on Schirmer. "Wait a minute! There wasn't a
slip-up on this permit?"
"Permit?"
"For rejuvention, you ass! He's on the Starship Project, coordinating
engineer of the whole works out there. He's got a fair place on the
list coming to him three ways from Sunday. Follmer put the permit
through months ago, and Paul has just been diddling around getting
himself clear so he could come in--"
The little Coordinator's eyes widened. "Oh, there wasn't anything
wrong on _our_ side, if that's what you mean. The permit was perfectly
clear, the doctors were waiting for him. It was nothing like that."
"Then what was it like?"
Nathan Schirmer wriggled, and tried to avoid Dan's eyes. "Your brother
refused it. He laughed in our faces, and told us to go to hell, and
took the next jet back to Nevada. All in one afternoon."
The vibration of the jet engines hung just at perception level,
nagging and nagging at Dan Fowler, until he threw his papers aside
with a snarl of disgust, and peered angrily out the window.
They were high, and moving fast. Far below was a tiny spot of light in
the blackness. Pittsburgh. Maybe Cleveland. It didn't matter which.
Jets traveled at such-and-such a rate of speed; they left at
such-and-such a time and arrived elsewhere at such-and-such a time
later. He could worry, or he could not-worry. The jet would bring him
down in Las Vegas in exactly the same time, to the second, either way.
Another half-hour taxi ride over dusty desert roads would bring him to
the glorified quonset hut his brother called home. Nothing Dan Fowler
could do would hurry the process of getting there.
Dan had called, and received no answer.
He had talked to the Las Vegas authorities, and even gotten Lijinsky
at the Starship, and neither of them knew anything. The police said
yes, they would check at Dr. Fowler's residence, if he wasn't out at
the Ship, and check back. But they hadn't checked back, and that was
two hours ago. Meanwhile, Carl had chartered him a plane.
God damn Paul to three kinds of hell. Of all miserable times to start
playing games, acting like an imbecile child! And the work and sweat
Dan had gone through to get that permit, to buy it beg it, steal it,
gold-plate it. Of course the odds were good that Paul would have
gotten it without a whisper from Dan--he was high on the list, he was
critical to Starship, and certainly Starship was critical enough to
rate. But Dan had gone out on a limb, way out--The Senator's fist
clenched, and he drummed it helplessly on the empty seat, and felt a
twinge of pain spread up his chest, down his arm. He cursed, fumbled
for the bottle in his vest pocket. God damned heart and god damned
brother and god damned Rinehart--did _everything_ have to split the
wrong way? Now? Of all times of all days of all his fifty-six years of
life, _now_?
_All right, Dan. Cool, boy. Relax. Shame on you. Can't you quit being
selfish just for a little while?_ Dan didn't like the idea as it
flickered through his mind, but then he didn't like anything too much
right then, so he forced the thought back for a rerun.
Big Dan Fowler, _Senator_ Dan Fowler, Selfish Dan Fowler loves Dan
Fowler mostly.
_Poor Paul._
* * * * *
The words had been going through his mind like a silly chant since the
first moment he had seen Nate Schirmer in the library. Poor Paul. Dan
did all right for himself, he did--made quite a name down in
Washington, you know, a fighter, a real fighter. The Boy with the
Golden Touch (joke, son, laugh now). Everything he ever did worked out
with him on top, somehow. Paul was different. Smart enough, plenty of
the old gazoo, but he never had Dan's drive. Bad breaks, right down
the line. Kinda tough on a guy, with a comet like Dan in the family.
Poor Paul.
He let his mind drift back slowly, remembering little things, trying
to spot the time, the single instant in time, when he stopped fighting
Paul and started feeling sorry for him. It had been different, years
ago. Paul was the smart one, all right. Never had Dan's build but he
could think rings around him. Dan was always a little slow--never
forgot anything he learned, but he learned slow. Still, there were
ways to get around that--
Dad and Mom always liked Paul the best (their first boy, you know) and
babied him more, and that was decidedly tougher to get around--Still
there were ways.
Like the night the prize money came from the lottery, when he and Paul
had split a ticket down the middle. How old was he then--ten? Eleven?
And Paul was fifteen. He'd grubbed up the dollar polishing cars, and
met Paul's dollar halfway, never dreaming the thing would pay off. And
when it did! Oh, he'd never forget that night. He wanted the
jet-racer. The ticket paid two thousand, a hell of a lot of cash for a
pair of boys--and the two thousand would buy the racer. He'd been so
excited tears had poured down his face.... But Paul had said no. Split
it even, just like the ticket, Paul had said. There were hot words,
and pleading, and threats, and Paul had just laughed at him until he
got so mad he wanted to kill him with only his fists. Bad mistake,
that. Paul was skinny, not much muscle, read books all the time it
looked like a cinch. But Paul had five years on him that he hadn't
counted on. Important five years. Paul connected with just one--enough
to lay Dan flat on his back with a concussion and a broken jaw, and
that, my boy, was that.
Almost.
Dan had won the fight, of course. It was the broken jaw that did it,
that night, later the fight Mom and Dad had, worse than usual, a cruel
one, low blows, mean--But Dan got his racer, on the strength of the
broken jaw. That jaw had done him a lot of good. Never grew quite
right after that, got one of the centers of ossification, the doc had
said, and Dan had been god's gift to the pen-and-brush men with that
heavy, angular jaw--a fighter's jaw, they called it.
* * * * *
That started it, of course. He knew then that he could beat Paul. Good
to know. But never _sure_ of it, always having to prove it. The
successes came, and always he let Paul know about them, watched Paul's
face like a cat. And Paul would squirm, and sneer, and tell Dan that
in the end it was brains that would pay off. Sour grapes, of course.
If Paul had ever squared off to him again, man to man, they might have
had it over with. But Paul just seemed content to sit and quietly hate
him.
Like the night he broke the Universalists in New Chicago, at the
hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner. He'd told them, that night. That was
the night they'd cold-shouldered him, and put Libby up to run for
Mayor. Oh, he'd raised a glorious stink that night--he'd never enjoyed
himself so much in his life, turning their whole twisted machine right
over to the public on a silver platter. Cutting loose from the old
crowd, appointing himself a committee of one to nominate himself on an
Independent Reform ticket, campaign himself, and elect himself. A
whippersnapper of thirty-two. Paul had been amused by it all, almost
indulgent. "You _do_ get melodramatic, don't you, Dan? Well, if you
want to cut your own throat, that's your affair." And Dan had burned,
and told Paul to watch the teevies, he'd see a thing or two, and he
did, all right. He remembered Paul's face a few months later, when
Libby conceded at 11:45 PM on election night, and Dan rode into office
with a new crowd of livewires who were ready to help him plow into New
Chicago and clean up that burg like it'd never been cleaned up. And
the sweetest part of the victory pie had been the look on Paul's face
that night--
So they'd fought, and he'd won and rubbed it in, and Paul had lost,
and hated him for it, until that mysterious day--when had it really
happened?--when "that big-brained brother of mine" changed subtly into
"Christ, man, quit floundering! Who wants engineers? They're all over
the place, you'll starve to death" and then finally, to "poor Paul."
When had it happened? Why?
Dan wondered, suddenly, if he had ever really forgiven Paul that blow
to the jaw--
Perhaps.
He shook himself, scowling into the plastiglass window blackness.
Okay, they'd fought it out. Always jolly, always making it out to be a
big friendly game, only it never was a game. He knew how much he owed
to Paul. He'd known it with growing concern for a lot of years. And
now if he had to drag him back to Washington by the hair, he'd drag
the silly fool--