Doppelgangers, p.19
Doppelgangers, page 19
He put the gun on the ground and turned to the chair. True, not a spot of blood had followed out the puncture. He bent down. Even now, in amid the last fringe of down-hair, he could not be sure which poremark was actually the entrance to the lock through which his skeleton key had gone to release the prisoner. He heaved up the body over his shoulder and with his left arm swung the chair round till it was facing the back of the imperial desk about ten feet away. He propped the body in it as upright as he could manage.
Then, after retrieving the gun, he faced the dead man, himself stepping back till his calves felt the ridge of the dais against them. He raised the gun until it tracked across the target. But it failed to fire. Then he smiled with a slight irritation at himself, thinking—Many men have lost their lives through such a silly oversight. Of course, the dead nervous system couldn’t activate the firing mechanism. There was, naturally, a safety device on such instruments. He twisted the knob round, to finger-fire, took his aim in the old-fashioned way, pressed the supplementary trigger and heard the chuckling cough which was all these silenced instruments emitted—so little sound, in fact, that he could in the still room hear through its deathly chuckle the whip of the spinning bullet, the dull bump as it bored its way in a flash through the body, and the tearing bump as it, finally, was held up in the tough plastic of the wall panel behind. The body scarcely shuddered, so sharp and clean was the thrust.
He put the instrument on the edge of the desk behind him to his right and walked over. Yes, he was still a fine shot. It had certainly gone through the heart and the body was fresh enough, thank his stars, for blood to begin to ooze through the tunic. There would be no proof that he had shot a corpse; no sign of his real mercy, or of any of his motives, or indeed, best of all, of who he was or who did what. A perfect involvement. He raised the body carefully, keeping away his hands from the blood, and, as it was his duty, he could afford to let himself feel a certain relief that he did not have to touch that red, over-dramatic fluid. He took the body and laid it face down on the floor some nine feet or so from the desk. That’s how a man falls, he thought, when he rushes you and you get a heart hit with a high-speed skewer bullet. He looked over the layout carefully, and then sprawled forward the right arm, leaving the left under the carcass.
“Ah, the ring,” he said to himself in a low voice, and, bending lower, slipped it off the finger and onto his own. “That’s a bit of not unuseful authentication in a case of somewhat confused identity. But I haven’t much time. He’s getting cold already and he’ll be stiff if I dawdle.”
He got up, turned and went quickly round to the desk, mounted the dais firmly, and sat down. “The king is dead, long live the king.” He repeated the formula of instantaneous succession, of automatic succession brought about by nothing more or less than death.
“Now for the first commands from the reoccupied throne!”
He put out his left hand and took the microphone three and saw the great ring, like a knuckle-duster on his finger joint. That microphone summoned the trusty-watch.
“Number One,” he said, “report and bring with you one large mail-delivery sack.”
They were just the thing—those huge waterproof sacks in which the monster palace mail was brought in for sorting. There was no answer. He knew why that was so. The trusties never spoke if it was at all possible to obey, and when they could not they had difficulty in speaking unless they were asked a question directly. He heard the connection open and then close. He, too, put back the microphone, sat back and waited.
One glance showed that all was in the orderly disorder that he had planned. There was no need to put a weapon in the felled assailant’s hand. The case was clear and more convincing so. The door at that moment opened. But it was not Trusty One that came in and closed it after him. It was Algol.
He was not disconcerted. It was, of course, a very likely possibility. He ought to have thought that some small routine urgency would make the chief of police run in, that instant. Well, better then than earlier or later. Anyhow, Algol would have had to be told very soon. And Alpha had providentially explained very fully to him the kind of simple, restless mind he was now to deal with. Yes, surely it was the Alpha Luck serving up to him the next incident when, nicking the minute with a happy tact, it was most apt. His mind was moving quite quickly enough for the event and he was more amused than annoyed by the contretemps.
“I sent for Trusty Number One. Turn round. See what’s happened.”
Algol glanced askew over his shoulder and, like a well-trained man, made no reaction.
“He broke under the strain. You know what it is: though most people haven’t an idea. And I didn’t think he’d break so soon or so suddenly. He rushed me when I was giving him some instructions for his next appearance.”
Algol had turned round to him again and smiled. “You’re still pretty quick with a gun.” Then, with a slight pause, “Forgive an old chief of police being interested in what is probably irrelevant detail, but I thought you always put away that gun in the locker over there when you came in. You said once that, with us to depend on and your work to be done quietly, you didn’t want fireworks on your desk.” The voice till then had been questioning.
The remodeled man said sharply, “When is Trusty Number One coming!”
The reply, “He’s not coming, I’ve come instead,” was said unmistakably and, with the words, the gesture completed the sentence. The chief of police took out an automatic from his pocket and held it lightly in his hand.
“It is,” he remarked like a man reading out measurements, “three feet from where you are sitting to the microphones on your left and three feet to your right to the other automatic in this room, which you have obligingly left so well out of your reach. There’s been some queerly interesting little piece of maneuvering in this room, which, as an old hand at reconstruction-puzzles, I’d like to get straight with your help.
“You will talk, of course, and you won’t move or our talk will have to be shorter than either you or I would wish. But first, let me tell you that the trusties won’t come. Ill-placed hopes spoil a good narrative style. You have nothing to look forward to and so will be able to remember clearly what has passed. I have, for some little time, been expecting developments, and, so, like a good guardian, I saw that the lines which go to the trusty office should come through to mine, to my own private telephone; and I have been a very careful sentinel, whenever you have been here, just waiting for this call which has come as I expected.”
The covered man had long learned not to move when in such a position. But he parried with a good show of indignation.
“Algol,” he shouted, “wake up! I see what you think. You think that that double you provided has succeeded, and that it’s he who’s talking to you and that that is Alpha dead on the floor.” Then, when that burst of well-simulated indignant humor had been shot off, he went on quietly, “Look at my hand, do you see the ring? You know perfectly well that it’s the Leader that’s speaking to you. Come along. Let’s get that poor lump into the incinerator and disposed of. I haven’t suffered a scratch.”
“No, I think you haven’t, and I’m glad you haven’t. And I’m as sure as you are, that, behind me, on the floor is lying the double and in front of me is the one and only Alpha that has survived—that has survived.” And he began to smile.
The remodeled man was irritated to find his own heart accelerating its beat. He must keep as quiet inside as out, if he were ever to get out of this.
“Algol,” he said in a quietly commanding voice, “don’t be a fool.”
“That is precisely what I have been saying to myself for a little while, and now I am going to act on that advice, perhaps the last you’ll give me, but better than most you have.” The chief of police drew himself up, weighed the automatic in his hand, and smiled. “I see you don’t understand, and I know how unpleasant it is to go away with one’s mind all confused. Besides, it will give an extra pleasure to my pretty little piece of work if I share with another and point out in words, actually what has happened, and how I’ve managed to employ events.
“First, I would say again—of course you’re Alpha—though now you’re Omega, too! For a long while I knew you were in decline. You were fuller and fuller of wild notions of turning the revolution into evolution and all that nonsense. You were becoming no longer the leader of a charge and having the fun and the dash, but a great dummy mouthing out about people having a good time. Oh, it made me sick! But it also taught me sense.
“Well, of course, to cut a long story short, as I’m about to cut another longer-winded storyteller shorter in a minute, I tried to think of some way of bringing back the good old times, and for the people who won to have the prize and to carry on the fine fighting life. We didn’t fight and win, to sit about in floodlit nightgowns with crowds debauched with sentiment. But you seemed somehow to have got the great sugary tide, the great oily mass, to suck us away. The police weren’t even unpopular; they were treated as increasingly funny, anachronisms! There seemed no way out: but all the while my detestation of you, you old softy, grew. And then your softness made you do the very thing that put everything open.
“I own I never thought that your having a double would serve my purposes so perfectly. But, sooner or later, now I see, it would have happened. You probably don’t know that I primed the little piece of carrion on the carpet to make the dash at you by telling the inflated little fellow that he’d knock you out and then he and I would share the prize.”
The realization that Algol was reduced by boasting to such a lie, gave the covered man a new sense of readiness.
“Well,” he remarked, “tell me why the present situation so suits your cards.”
“Gladly, and may I congratulate you on your coolness. I must say, I thought you’d become too soft to hold together right up to the moment that you are blown out. Well, I knew that the one thing that could make all good and plain would be if one or the other of you did the other in. Of course you killed the door dupe. But that’s all the same to me. Didn’t you see? The one square you should not, must not move on, was, of course, getting rid of your double, at least by killing him. For then, briefly, I kill you because of course you are the double that killed my master and so I revenge my dear lost leader. Macbeth killing Duncan’s guards after killing Duncan was pretty crude. But this,” and he smiled with a certain complacency, “is, I think you will allow, pretty neat.” Then, putting his head on one side, he asked lightly, “Have you any more questions?”
The man covered in the chair crouched back. “Algol,” he said, “this is a big mistake, believe me. You are making a colossal mistake, all the way through. Stop this fooling and let me explain. I can—”
“Oh, stop that kind of rhetoric!”
“But,” he broke in again, “give me twenty seconds to tell you one thing. Perhaps in that time—”
“Oh, no, I shan’t change my mind! But twenty seconds out of eternity isn’t long, and no one is coming to interrupt our interview.” Algol swung his left wrist across his right so that he could see his wrist watch as his right hand trained the automatic on the man in the chair. “Twenty seconds to so impress me that I shall know I quite misunderstood the situation,” he laughed. “Now, go!”
The covered man repeated, “There’s just time. It is a mistake. Put that pistol down.” He spoke the commonplace words with intense earnestness and, as he spoke, shrank back into the chair, his nervous hands twisting about and fingering its arms.
The smile on Algol’s face widened as the muscles of his right hand began to contract.
The nervous fingers of the man he had cornered were now feebly playing with the bull’s-head terminals of the chair-arms, while he said over again, “Stop, it’s not too late.”
“Fifteen,” counted out Algol’s voice and, in mounting triumph, “sixteen, seventeen.”
Nothing moved in the man opposite him, save those twisting fingers. Now even the fingers were all but still. Only the thumb of his right hand still feebly played with the short left-hand horn of the right bull’s head, pushed at it, till it suddenly bent.
Algol’s right hand, at that moment, opened widely, made the kind of gesture that a Bali dancer makes in explicating a movement, a fan gesture with all the fingers splayed; and the automatic—just as a flower that has been played with is, then, tossed to the audience—leaped lightly from the flattened palm, bounced onto the desk, collided with a couple of the microphones on the left, and was still. Algol carried through the movement of his arm. He had risen, evidently, on tiptoe; he twirled round; his neck and head spun in the same ballet gesture, and then, as quickly, swooped down behind the desk.
The man in the chair fiddled with the loose bull’s horn again. A slight sound of shifting came from behind the desk out of his sight. He played with the small tusk of sham ivory again, listening. But no sound now came from the desk’s other side. He took his thumb off the bull’s head, raised his hand and then, rather wearily, his body. He was taken with an immense yawn. He turned to the right, skirted round the big desk, and, when he was on the other side of it, looked down. Algol was lying with his hand still in that rather unsuitable dancer’s gesture, but his other arm was under him and his face was on the floor. His observer bent down, waiting for a moment, then ran his hand under the body on its left side, nodded and immediately rose.
He collected the automatics, the one on the right-hand corner of the desk and the one lying among the microphones. The first he placed by the twisted hand that still seemed reaching out for something. The second he took into the bathroom. He emerged wiping the stock with rubbing alcohol while holding the barrel wrapped in toilet tissue. He put it back in the small locker in which Alpha had kept his insignia pistol which now was serving a more practical purpose. Then he returned to the desk, took the microphone three. The contact opened.
“Trusties One and Two,” he directed, “come up with two mail-delivery sacks.”
He heard the contact close and waited, watching the door. It opened and the two familiar house figures entered, each carrying a voluminous textile sack.
“My defender saved my life but lost his,” he remarked, watching their faces. Perhaps a shadow of commiseration or admiration might have passed across their eyes: certainly not of surprise. And now that cleared and they were evidently only waiting for orders.
“Place the bodies one in each sack.” They handled them as though they were clumsy parcels for the post or pillows limply being pushed into their pillowcases. “Now, carry them out with me.” These men were chosen for powerful build, and they swung the sacks on their shoulders with one heave. He opened the, door for them and led the way to the large elevator. They all got in. He slammed the gate and pressed the lowest knob.
“Dispatching outgoing mail,” he found himself repeating in a whisper. “Two loads: one white mail, the other black mail!”
The whirring stopped with a cushioned jerk. He swung back the gate when they had grounded. He knew where they would be. He was down, with his cargoes, at the incinerator level and at this hour they were out of action. He went over to the wall in which, like built-in marble sarcophagi, the electric furnaces of fused quartz gleamed dully in the strip lighting of this vault. He picked the large central one that dealt with hard garbage at high temperature.
“Open that furnace and deposit the sacks in it.” They obeyed adroitly. The pale white cave, like a cool sepulcher, received the two swathed lumps. “Now you can go back to your quarters, and remember to send down the lift to wait for me. Bring me some hot consommé in another half hour.”
He heard the elevator door clash behind him. Then he spun the resistance knobs at the side of the furnace door and stood, his eyes at the observation slit, where, through translucent deep-tinted quartz, the interior of the furnace could be viewed.
For perhaps two seconds all was black. Then a red sunrise spread over the scene on which he looked, a flat gray landscape from which rose two low ranges of dark mountains. The landscape flushed quickly as though the sun were rising somewhere behind him, flushed and then glowed, glowed and then glared. And the mountain ranges, as though the place had suddenly become volcanic, burst into flame. The flame enveloped them and the landscape became a solid bank of fire enclosing an atmosphere of fire. The mountain range in this climate rapidly began to shrink. The atmosphere which for a few moments was heavy and dim began to clear to a fierce brightness. The two ranges were rapidly shrinking, melting away, or rather withering away. They shrank and twisted as fine paper in an ordinary fire will twist and shrink until it finally contracts and completely vanishes away into gas.
Finally he could tell that anything had been in that consuming mouth only because, on the quivering heat of the floor, the smooth level surface seemed to be slightly raised along two tracks by a low silt of incandescent dust. He had been told that the heat was so intense that it pulverized bone and tooth and that all that was left was a little pure white, very fine calcium dust. It was evidently true. He switched back the dials to “Off” and heard, as he retraced his steps to the elevator, the gentle tick, tick, coming in slower intervals as the furnace made the very slight contraction adjustments that was all the reaction it showed to this tremendous upsurge and downrush of temperature. He got into the elevator.
In the apartment he gave himself a leisurely shower and then, as he heard the trusty come in with the soup, he bathed in a tub of radiated water that stung and needled your muscles till it felt, at least to him, better than any massage. Putting on only a robe, he went in to his late supper just as the trusty who had served it withdrew. He felt hungry, tired, and curiously content. Empty, too—finished, in a way.
His mind did not want to speculate, to think of the future, or to reflect, to live over the past. It stood at a dead center and he was well content to let it do so, while he looked after his body. He knew he had left out nothing and that he had taken all the moves offered him. He felt like a piece on the chessboard that has been played with to considerable effect and now waits until the consequences of what its moves have brought about, develop further.
