As Cornut sobered, he began to view his world and his past day in harsher, clearer perspective. Rhame helped. The policeman had the scraps of paper Cornut had left and he was remorseless in questioning. Why must you die? Who are the immortals? How did they make you try to kill yourself - and why didn't you just now, with every chance in the world?'
Cornut tried to explain. To die, he said, remembering the lesson that had come with the beating, that is nothing; all of us do it. It is a victory in a way, because it makes death come to us on our terms. St Cyr and the others, however—
'St Cyr's gone,' rasped the policeman. 'Did you know that? He's gone and so is his bodyguard. Master Finloe from Biochemistry is gone; and his secretary says he left with Jillson and that old blonde. Where?'
Cornut frowned. It was not in keeping with his concept of immortality that they should flee in the face of a plague. Supermen should be heroic, should they not? He tried to explain that, but Rhame pounced on him. 'Super-murderer, you mean! Where did they go?'
Cornut said apologetically, 'I don't know. But I assure you that they had reasons.'
Rhame nodded. His voice was suddenly softer. 'Yes, they did. Would you like to know what those reasons were? The aborigines brought that disease. They came off their island carrying active smallpox, nearly every one of them; did you know that? The worst active cases were brought, the well ones were left on the island. Did you know that? They were given injections - to cure them, they thought, but the surgeon says they were only cosmetic cures, the disease was still contagious. And they were flown to every major city in the world, meeting thousands of people, eating with them, in close contact. They were coached,' said Rhame, his face working, 'in the proper behaviour in civilized society. For example, the pipe of peace isn't their custom; they were told it would please us. Does that add up to anything for you?'
Cornut leaned forward, his head buzzing, his eyes on Rhame. Add up? It added up; the sum was inescapable. The disease was deliberately spread. The immortals had, in their self-oriented wisdom, determined to move against the shortlived human race, in a way that had nearly destroyed it more than once in ancient days: they had spread a fearsome plague.
Locille screamed.
Cornut realized tardily that she had been drowsing against his shoulder, unable to sleep, unable, after the sleepless night, to stay fully awake. Now she was sitting bolt upright, staring at the tiny glittering manicure scissors in her hand. 'Cornut!' she cried, 'I was going to stab you in the throat!'
It was night, and outside the high arch of the Bridge was a line of colour, the lights of the speedy monotracks and private vehicles making a moving row of dots.
On one of the monotracks the motorman was half listening to a news broadcast: 'The situation in the mid-west is not as yet critical, but a wave of fear has spread through all the major cities of Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. In Omaha more than sixty persons were killed when three heli-buses bearing emigrants collided in a bizarre mid-air accident, apparently caused by pilot error in one of the chartered planes. Here in Des Moines all transportation came to a halt for nearly ninety minutes this morning as air-control personnel joined the fleeing throngs, leaving their posts unattended. In a statement released—'
The motorman blinked and concentrated on his controls. He was fifty years old, had held this job and almost this run for more than half his life. He rubbed the sensor collar irritably; he had worn it nearly thirty years, but tonight it bothered him.
The collar was like a dead-man's switch, designed to monitor temperature and pulse, electronically linked to cut the monotrack's power and apply the brakes in the event of death or serious illness to the motorman. He was quite used to wearing these collars and appreciated the need for them; but tonight, climbing the approach ramp to the Bridge in third speed, his throat began to feel constricted.
Also his head ached. Also his eyes itched and burned. He reached for the radiomike that connected him to the dispatcher's office, and croaked, 'Charley, I think I'm going to black out. I—' That was all. No more. He fell forward. The sensors around his neck had marked his abnormal pulse and respiration for minutes, and reacted as he collapsed. The monotrack stopped dead.
Behind it another one drove catastrophically into its tail.
The motorman of the second unit had been feeling queasy for more than an hour and was anxious to get to the end of his run; he had been overriding the automatic slow-down controls all the way across the Bridge. As he passed the critical parameters of sensor monitoring, his own collar switched off the power in his drive wheels; but by then it was too late; the wheels raced crazily against air. Even the sensor collars had not been designed to cope with two motorman-failures in the same second. White sparks flew from Bridge to water and died - great white sparks that were destroyed metal. The pile-up began. The sound of crashing battered at the campus of the University below. The Bridge stopped, its moving lights becoming a row of coloured dots with one great hideous flare of colour in the middle.
After a few moments distant ambulance sirens began to wail.
Cornut held the weeping woman, his face incredulous, his mind working. Locille trying to kill him? Quite insane!
But like the other insane factors in his own life, it was not inexplicable. He became conscious, rather late, of faint whispering thoughts in his own mind. He said to Rhame. 'They couldn't reach me! They tried to work with her.'
'Why couldn't they reach you?'
Cornut shrugged and patted her shoulder. Locille sat up, saw the scissors and hurled them away. 'Don't worry, I understand,' he said to her, and to the policeman, 'I don't know why. Sometimes they can't. Like in the refectory kitchen, just now; they could have killed me. I even wanted them to; but they didn't. And once on the island, when I was blind drunk. And once - remember, Locille? - on the Bridge. Each time I was wide open to them, and on the Bridge they almost made it. But I stopped in time. Each time I was fuddled. I'd been drinking,' he said, 'and they should have been able to walk right in and take possession...' His voice trailed thoughtfully off.
Rhame said sharply, 'What's the matter with Locille?'
The girl blinked and sat up again. 'I guess I'm sleepy,' she said apologetically. 'Funny...'
Cornut was looking at her with great interest, not as a wife but as a specimen. 'What's funny?'
'I keep hearing someone talking to me,' she said, rubbing her face fretfully. She was exhausted, Cornut saw; she could not stay awake much longer, not even if she thought herself a murderer, not even if he died before her eyes. Not even if the world came to an end.
He said sharply, 'Talking to you? Saying what?'
'I don't know. Funny. "Me softspeak you-fella." Like that.'
Rhame said immediately, 'Pidgin. You've been with the aborigines.' He dismissed the matter and returned to Cornut, 'You were on the point of something, remember? You said sometimes they could get at you, sometimes not. Why? What was the reason?'
Cornut said flatly: 'Drinking. Each of those times I had been drinking!'
It was true! Three times he had been where death should have found him, and each time it had missed.
And each time he had been drinking! The alcohol in his brain, the selective poison that struck first at the uppermost level of the brain, reducing visual discrimination, slowing responses ... it had deafened him to the mind voices that willed him to death!
'Smellim olefella bagarimop allfella,' Locille said clearly, and smiled. 'Sorry. That's what I wanted to say.' Cornut sat frozen for a second.
Then he moved. The bottle he had carried with him, Rhame had thriftily brought back to the room. Cornut grabbed it, opened it, took a deep swallow and passed it to Locille. 'Drink! Don't argue, take a good stiff drink!' He coughed and wiped tears from his eyes. The liquor tasted foul; it would take little to make him drunk again.