Ten From Infinity

P >> Paul W. Fairman >> Ten From Infinity

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"Your reticence is quite understandable. That I bring it up at all must
shock you, but--" Crane hesitated, a touch of sadness brushing across
his face.

"But what, Senator?"

"You understand, certainly, that I hold the greatest respect for Brent
Taber. That's why I hesitated to come to you."

"It seems to me Halliday said something about calling Taber in.
It had to do with a mild reprimand over Taber's attitude on
legislative-executive relations."

"Halliday?" Senator Crane asked innocently. "He's another of the really
good men you picked for government service."

"I trust Halliday implicitly, but he's carrying a big load so I'm glad
you came directly to me, Senator. Exactly what is the trouble?"

"In plain words, there have been some bad leaks out of Taber's office.
There is in existence a taped recording of a meeting."

Porter was aghast. He tried to hide it, which made his greenish
expression all the more ludicrous--as though he'd swallowed a worm out
of his salad.

"Impossible."

"You'd think so, with all the top-secret precautions that have been
taken."

"How did you discover this?"

Crane held up a restraining hand. "I'd be happy to tell you if it would
serve any purpose, but believe me, it wouldn't. I would only tend to
eliminate a contact who is extremely loyal to me and--I might add--to
good government."

"I understand. But I certainly can't imagine what has happened to Taber.
I would have backed him with my last dime."

"I actually don't think it was Taber's fault. A man can't personally see
to every detail in his department."

"That's the responsibility of whoever is in charge."

Crane sighed. "Yes, I guess that's a cold, hard fact of life in this
time of danger. But don't be too hard on him. Perhaps there's an
explanation."

"He'll have his chance to explain," Porter said grimly.

"I'm sure you understand how it pains me to have to--well, put this
black mark on the record of a good man. I debated many hours and
searched my soul before I came to you. With a man's career at stake--"

"Men are expendable," Porter snapped. "The nation's safety is not."

Again Crane glanced around. "Are the Russians _really_ that far ahead?"

Porter's eyes narrowed just a shade. "The Russians? Did you listen to
the tape you mentioned?"

"Only sketchily. I assumed--"

"The danger is far greater. A Senatorial committee was briefed on the
thing. I honestly think you should have been on that committee,
Senator. By coming to me you've done far more toward protecting the
nation's safety--and that of the world--than have any of your
colleagues."

"Let's just say I had more opportunity."

"Your modesty is becoming."

"And now," Crane said wryly, "now that I've done all I can, I wish I
could forget the whole thing. But with the gravity of the situation--"

"I'll see that you get a complete briefing."

"Thank you. And I promise I'll be most discreet."

A little while later, on the way back to his office, Crane smiled. Now
maybe that self-important little son-of-a-bitch, Taber, would find out
what it meant to insult a United States Senator.

From there, his mind went to another insult. So they'd passed him up in
forming the committee to hear about the damned androids, had they? Well,
by God, he'd show them the people of his state wouldn't tolerate that,
either.

The people back home were going to hear about their Senator.

It probably wouldn't even be necessary to campaign next year.

7

"If you've changed your mind about anything--about us, maybe--just say
so. I'll understand." Frank Corson felt he had to make this point--at
this particular time. There was something inevitable in the need to do
so.

"You're being ridiculous. The old thing about money again," Rhoda
parried.

"There's nothing old about money. The problem is ever new. It's always
with us."

Rhoda Kane wanted to cry. She sat on the floor beside the sofa on which
Frank Corson lay, his hands behind his head, his eyes staring up at the
ceiling. She wanted to say, _Darling, what's happened to me? What is
this thing inside me that keeps blocking me away from you? Why can't I
tell you about it?_

But she could not say this. She could only push the tears back and lay
her head seductively on his chest. "You're just tired, dear. You've been
working too hard."

He ran his hand petulantly through her hair. "It isn't me. It's you,
Rhoda. Half the time you don't even realize I'm talking to you. You're
getting such a faraway look in your eyes I'm beginning to think there's
another man."

"That's silly," she said lightly. "Let me make you a drink."

"I don't want a drink."

The way he responded to her kiss indicated he didn't want to make love,
either. Rhoda settled back to the floor and said, "Darling--"

Suddenly she couldn't go on. Somewhere inside, a dam broke; the strange,
bewildering block tottered and began to fall. "Darling--there's
something I want to tell you--"

Frank Corson indicated with a jerk of his head. "The phone's ringing."

"Let it ring. Darling, I--"

"For heaven's sake, answer it, Rhoda. It might be important."

She got up, went to the phone and picked it up. "Hello."

"This is John Dennis."

She felt that frightening excitement again--that feeling of dangerous
delight at something forbidden. "Yes?"

"Do you remember what I told you to do?"

"Yes."

"Has it been done?"

"Not yet."

"Why have you not done it?"

"I haven't had a chance."

"You have a chance now. Frank Corson is in your home."

"Yes. I have a chance now."

The phone clicked. Rhoda put it down and went back to the sofa. As she
sank to the floor, Frank Corson looked at her questioningly.

"That was certainly a cryptic conversation."

When Rhoda didn't answer, he scowled and snapped, "There you go again.
Into the brown study."

"Oh, I'm sorry, dear."

"What was the phone call about?"

"My hairdresser. It was nothing."

"Weird conversation to have with a hairdresser."

"He's a weird hairdresser."

"What had you started to say when the phone rang?"

"It just occurred to me--you never told me what happened when that
government man talked to you."

Frank wished she hadn't brought that up. He'd been ordered to keep the
incident in his room strictly to himself. That hadn't been too
difficult. It _had_ been hard not to look on the thing as a murder. The
blood had looked real and so had the body.

But if that was the way Brent Taber wanted it, all right. Frank was
amazed at how smoothly everything had been handled. There hadn't even
been a police car at the door--just an unmarked delivery truck and two
men carrying out what might have been a rolled-up rug.

And that had been that.

"He didn't say much. Actually, there was no point in mentioning it to
you."

"What ever happened to the man with two hearts?"

"I was wrong. He just had a peculiar heartbeat. As a matter of fact,
everybody's heart beats all over their body. Nothing strange about
that."

"But there's something strange about a doctor not being able to tell the
difference between one heart and two. Frank, you _are_ keeping something
from me."

"Rhoda! For heaven's sake! The government man told me to keep my mouth
shut about it."

"Does that mean you can't tell even me?"

He turned his head and looked into her eyes. "This isn't like you,
Rhoda. Not like you at all."

"That's silly. I haven't changed."

"Yes, you have."

"How?"

"It's hard to say. You don't seem to have the same sense of values any
more. You've--"

"Just how have they changed?"

If he sensed any inner fright in her question he said nothing about it.
"For instance, when I told you I'd given up all ideas of going into
research, when I said I'd decided to finish out my internship and
establish a practice, you hardly twitched an eyebrow. I thought that
would make you happy."

"It did, darling. I was delighted. But I'm still a woman and that gives
me a right to be curious. What _did_ the government man say?"

He sighed and drew her cajoling hand out of his hair. "They've got some
wild idea the man who broke his leg wasn't a man at all. They think he
was a synthetic of some kind. An android."

"Why, that's ridiculous. You saw him. You certainly know a man when you
see one."

"According to Brent Taber, these androids _are_ men, to all intents and
purposes, but they're manufactured."

"That's just utterly insane. Are we paying taxes just to keep a lot of
people in Washington who don't know the difference between a human being
and a--"

"Rhoda! Please! I'm sick of the whole thing and I'd rather not talk
about it."

"But he must have told you more than that. Where do these--these
androids come from?"

"He didn't tell us any more than he had to, but I got the idea they
think they're from outer space."

Rhoda laughed. "I never heard such foolishness in my life." She stopped
laughing abruptly. "Who's _us_?"

"What?"

"You said, 'He didn't tell _us_ any more than he had to ...' Who was
with you?"

"Oh. Les King. You don't know him."

She seemed satisfied with the information and probed no farther.

He drew her close and looked very seriously into her eyes. "You have
changed, Rhoda. What's got into you?"

She put her lips to his and whispered, "Is this changed?" She ran one
hand softly and seductively down his body. "Or that?"

He took her in his arms. "No, baby, that hasn't changed. I guess I was
wrong."

And as she kissed him, she saw the oddly expressionless face, the cold
empty eyes--of John Dennis.

And she was afraid.

* * * * *

Something in the mind that had been given him--the synthetic duplicate
of what had once been a part of Sam Baker--told the tenth android that
women were attractive. For just what reason, he could not tell. There
was nothing in his practical working structure that had any need of
women. Still, the attraction was there in the memory patterns that had
been transferred.

There were other attractions just as puzzling to him. He had vague
memories of people with whom he felt no affinity except as vaguely
nostalgic memories--Sam Baker's mother, his father, the blurred faces of
friends he had known. And, at times, there were faint tinges of the
terror Sam had known that night when a quick light flashed down from
nowhere and he was abducted into a world too strange and terrible to be
real. Yet it _had_ been real.

There were no birth memories in the android, but there were the vestiges
of Sam's death memories: the endless torture under a machine so
sensitive that, while it had no definition of a woman, it was able to
discern--in the names thefted from Sam's memory and used as names for
the ten androids--those which applied to males and those that did not.

But of all these traces of memories, those concerning women nagged the
android most. And now, as it turned his empty gaze on Rhoda Kane, it was
with a little more personal interest than before.

"What did Frank Corson tell you?"

"He said the man in the hospital with a broken leg was not a man. He was
an android."

The term, grotesquely enough, meant nothing to the creature who called
himself John Dennis. In the strange pattern of his consciousness there
were no patterns of definitive difference. Though in many respects more
able than the humans against whom he was pitted, he was no more aware of
himself as different than a dog is aware of its differences from a man.
The concept didn't take shape in the android's synthetic mind.

"Did he tell you where the man with the broken leg came from?"

"He said they thought it came from somewhere in outer space."

"There were others. Did he know of them?"

"No. He only told me about a man named Les King."

"What did he say about Les King?"

"King was there when the government man talked to Frank. That was all.
The government wanted them to say nothing."

"But Frank Corson told you."

"He would not tell anyone else, though. He is not interested in the
androids. He wants to forget them."

"But Les King does not want to forget them?"

"I don't know."

"Will he talk about them?"

"I don't know that, either. I have never seen Les King."

"Can the government man keep Les King from talking about the man with
the broken leg?"

"I doubt if he can force him to."

John Dennis again left the window and approached Rhoda Kane. She was
wearing a housecoat, a brassiere and panties underneath.

"Take off your clothes."

Rhoda unbuttoned the housecoat and slipped it off. That strange
excitement showed in her eyes now.

The android pointed. "Take those off."

As she unhooked her brassiere, Rhoda said, "My head aches."

"Your head does not ache."

"You are right, my head does not ache."

She slipped out of the panties and stood naked. The android regarded
her. "You are different."

"Of course. I am a woman."

"I want to make love." As Rhoda stood motionless, helpless, he spoke
very positively. "You make love on the bed. We will go into the bedroom
..."

Later, she was never able to recall any details of that next half-hour.
In defense of her own sanity, she was able to block the incident from
her mind. But as she lay naked on the bed, looking up at the man she
knew as John Dennis, she thought of her mind as being in two sections.
One section, the part of her consciousness that clung to reality, kept
saying, _I want to cry. If I could cry, everything would be all right.
Why can't I cry?_

The other part was a pool of quivering excitement. She lay motionless,
watching John Dennis undress, garment by garment, until he, too, was
naked.

His body was not perfect, yet it had an individual perfection of its own
in Rhoda's eyes. The skin was smooth and white, the legs and hips firm
and masculine. The chest was broad and Rhoda wanted to put her hands on
it and feel John Dennis' hands on her own body.

He stood looking at her, a little like a child, she thought tenderly; a
child waiting to be told what to do. She did not account this as
strange--only as a shyness in him. She held out her arms.

He lowered himself onto the bed beside her. She put her arms around him
and pressed her lips to his. She waited. Nothing happened.

He was neither cold nor passionate. He was neither hostile nor friendly.
He was nothing.

"You wanted to make love," Rhoda whispered. "Here I am. Take me. Take
me."

Instead, he disengaged himself, raised himself up on his elbows and
looked down at her. "You are quite different."

She did not know whether to be complimented or offended. "I'm about the
same as every other woman."

"You are different than I am."

"Of course I'm different." Was he joking? He didn't seem to be. He was
deadly serious as he began examining her breasts.

_This is mad. This is insane. Why can't I cry?_

But the other part of her mind quivered with her body as John Dennis
went over it, inch by inch. He appeared to be trying to memorize it. She
moved and turned as his hands directed, a new kind of fire rising within
her. She waited. He touched her and waited for a response. There was
none; nor any feeling within her at that moment except the strange fire
inside and the ache of her taut groin tendons.

John Dennis touched her again and noted the sudden jerk and quiver of
her response. He became grotesquely, academically interested. He touched
the same nerve surface again and studied her face for the response.

Her eyes were closed and her lower lip was gripped in her teeth. "No,"
she gasped. "Not that way. Not that way--please."

She could have been pleading with a brick wall. John Dennis
continued--her natural reactions interested him. He frowned and seemed
puzzled by the excitement he generated within her.

Then she cried out and rolled away from him and lay sobbing, her face
buried in the pillow. But they were dry sobs; strange, tense sounds
filling a questionable and dubious ecstasy.

"You are cruel," she whimpered.

"Cruel?"

"You make love so brutally."

He considered this and then got off the bed. "I do not like making
love."

He began putting on his clothes. She watched him, completely defeated.
"Where do you come from?" she demanded. "Who are you? Why did you want
to know about the man with the broken leg?"

He turned from putting on his shirt and stood motionless, looking down
into her eyes and after a moment or two it did not matter to Rhoda
again. It mattered no more than it had in the beginning. The strange
fire had not been quenched by what had occurred. It was still there, in
her mind more than in her body, but finding its boundaries was not
important either.

"Are you going?"

"Yes."

"Will you come back?"

"I will come back. I want you to find out from Frank Corson what
happened to the androids."

"He doesn't know."

"Have him find out for you."

"I can't do that."

"Then I will not come back."

Somehow, in the part of Rhoda Kane's mind that was beyond her control,
the thought that John Dennis might not return took on the proportions of
a disaster. Her feeling was akin to panic as she said, "I will make him
find out."

"Then I will come back."

"Please. I will wait for you."

* * * * *

Les King answered the knock on the door and broke into a smile. "Well,
talk about luck! I've been looking all over hell for you. Come in. Come
in."

The tenth android was already in. He walked across the room and turned
to look back at Les King with the outside light behind him.

King returned the gaze and wondered if he was afraid. It was an odd
thing to wonder about. A man should know his own emotions. But King
could not quite analyze the ones that struck him at that moment. For one
thing, he'd discounted most of what Taber had said. There was something
going on here, true--something big. When the government could cover up a
murder in Greenwich Village, there had to be a big score at stake. And
there _had_ been a murder--but no cops, no police cars, nothing. Only a
couple of guys in an unmarked truck walking out with what could have
been a rolled-up carpet. They'd swiped _his_ pictures and told him to
keep his mouth shut.

This last was what made Les King mad. He'd found the story. It was his
by every right. But when they were ready to break it they'd do it
through some privileged Washington newspaperman who'd get it on a silver
platter. The hell with that stuff. It would take more than a shadowy
character like Brent Taber to scare him off.

He looked at the man in the blue suit and said, "You've been lucky.
They're after you."

"Who is _they_?"

"Taber. The government crowd. The police, too, maybe. You killed that
guy in the Village, didn't you?" Les King had decided a bold approach
was the best way. But he was no fool. He kept his hand on the doorknob
and watched the man carefully. "By the way, you haven't told me your
name."

"John Dennis."

"You look like a man named Sam Baker. He disappeared about ten years
ago--from a little town upstate."

"I am John Dennis."

King shrugged. "Okay, you're John Dennis. All I want to do is stay on
top of this thing and have the inside track when it breaks."

"Brent Taber told you to forget about it."

King did not like the odd feeling of helplessness that seemed to have a
grip on him. He was not alarmed, though. Over and above this was a
sense of excitement. There was money here--he knew damned well there was
money here.

"You want money, don't you?"

The question startled King. Could the guy read his mind? "Who the hell
doesn't?" he retorted defensively. "If you're heeled you've got it
made."

Somehow King felt that the pressure, the odd excitement, lessened in
intensity. His nerves, he conceded, were sure playing tricks.

"There are some things I want. I will tell you where they are. I will
give you money for them."

An espionage approach? King wondered. In a way, he hoped it was. He
could always get clear. When the time was right, when he had the story
locked, he'd go to the FBI with it. He had a quick vision of a spread in
_Life_, a title: "I Broke the Russian Spy Ring." His own by-line.

"That sounds touchy," he said.

"I will tell you where to go and what to do."

"I'll have to know more than that."

"I will tell you what to do."

John Dennis left without saying good-bye.

Les King stared at the inner side of the closed door. "Jesus!" he
muttered.

But the excitement was creeping back.

8

Brent Taber stood in front of the desk of Authority and said, "Mr.
Porter, I don't think you people realize the gravity of this situation."

Porter's eyes were frosty. "And just what gives you that idea?"

"The fact that I'm being hamstrung at every turn. Men I assigned to
search out the last android have been taken off the job, transferred
away from me without notice."

"You speak of being _hamstrung_." Porter pronounced the term with an
inflection of disgust, as though it were a vulgarism no gentleman would
use. "You say we do not realize the gravity of the situation. Perhaps we
realize it far more than you do. It may be that your activities have
been indirectly curtailed because you have not recognized the vital need
of harmony in government."

"Are you telling me Crane's ego is still smarting?"

"_Senator_ Crane did, in the spirit of co-operation, mention certain
leaks in your department."

"What in hell are you talking about?"

"I'd watch my tone if I were you, Taber. You aren't talking to one of
your legmen now!"

Taber's teeth came tight together. "I'm sorry. Let me repeat the
question. Exactly what was the nature of the leak to which the Senator
referred?"

"A tape--transcribed at one of your top-secret meetings."

Taber's fist closed and opened. "I guess maybe I have been lax," he said
softly.

Porter, grimly happy to have made his point, went on. "As to policy up
above, I'll be quite frank. We have not necessarily gone along with your
theory that the so-called androids were from outer space."

"Then where do you think they originated?"

"We have put data into the calculators on that point. So far, the
results have been inconclusive."

"That's too bad."

"Your sarcasm is uncalled for. I am quite willing to tell you, however,
that we have been proceeding in the matter. You are aware, no doubt, of
the recent space shot that ended disastrously?"

"Who isn't?"

Still insistent upon treating Taber like a backward child, Porter said,
"The missile was safely launched and made five orbits and then suffered
destruction."

"There was a lot of newspaper copy written on the failure; a lot of
questions asked as to the cause."

"The releases were entirely true," Porter said with prim severity.
"There was malfunction of crucial units under stress. But another phase
was not made public. The astronaut's mission--one of them, at least--was
to hunt outer space for foreign bodies of any description."

"What did he report?"

"Nothing."

"I recall a story printed by some Washington columnist that some of the
code picked up from the missile was not translated for the press. This,
he stated, in view of the Administration's current 'Open End' policy on
such matters, was strange."

"If you're implying that we censored certain information, that's quite
true. In the public interest."

"To keep scientific information out of Russian hands?"

"In this case, no. The astronaut fell victim to a psychological stress
that was unforeseen. What he sent made no sense whatever. We blame the
medical men for not finding the flaw in his psyche."

"And I would be entirely out of line in assuming he did discover hostile
foreign bodies and was destroyed by them?"

"Entirely," Porter snapped.

Brent Taber's eyes were stony. "But I _am_ to assume that you're asking
for my resignation."

Now Porter shrugged. "If that is the way you see it, I can, of course,
only tender my regrets."

"Well, you won't have to. I'm not resigning."

The sharp declaration made Porter blink. "It's rather unusual that a
man, after a vote of no confidence--"

"To hell with that. If a tape got out of my office, it's my fault. I'll
grant that. But there's more to this. I'm willing to bet the man who
told you was the same one who engineered the steal."

"That's ridiculous! Are you accusing Senator Crane of--?"

"I'm accusing an opportunist-demagogue of playing fast and loose with
national safety to further his own ends and salve his ego. I'm accusing
the men above me of being too weak-kneed to back their own against
outside interference."

"I'll stand for no insults from you, Taber!"

"You'll take it and like it," Brent Taber said savagely. "You'll take it
because you can't knock me out of my office overnight. It will take
time. You've got to go up through the command and you'll have to go
pretty high before you'll find anyone who'll do it with the stroke of a
pen. Nobody wants to stick their neck out."

"Of course," Porter replied icily, "if you care to keep functioning as a
discredited person--"

"I can. And I will. I'd be a coward if I didn't."

Porter was obviously disappointed but he shrugged. "That's your
privilege. You, of course, will not be taken off the payroll."

"The payroll be damned. Send my checks to the Red Cross!"

And Brent Taber strode out of Porter's office, a man who stood alone in
the Washington jungle of clashing ambitions, of purposes and
cross-purposes--but a man who had no thought of quitting.

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