Doppelgangers (24 page)

Once Alpha had found it, he was bound, in that mood of clairvoyant suspicion, to find out how it was made, or mismade, how it was made to work. And then he would simply brood, as he had, till he felt, with all the compulsion psychosis that suicides have, that this was the way, the one way, to save himself from being murdered. Of course he knew about the cervical stab—a man as interested as he in the nervous system of men, a man who for half his fighting life had been killing pretty successfully without leaving traces, couldn't fail to know that, the easiest way to kill, even yourself. Yes, mercy killings, and mercy hospitals with gentle, mental remolding of character, all those gentle things of those who had safely arrived in power, all came later. In the beginning, when the letter “A” really meant the crude first start, well, then killing had to be crude, and to kill what you couldn't hold and remold was the only way. And killing must be traceless. That was it, without a doubt, and that brought him up to this actual moment: the cards in his hands, the ball at his feet.

Everything had now been passed on to him. Alpha had just completely abdicated—no, it was more thorough than that—much. The husk which had held Alpha had just split itself open—that was all; the chrysalis had split and the new vehicle had emerged. Alpha's luck? True enough, it had worked with complete finality of proof. For here it was still playing perfectly, playing for the hands that held it, into these fresh hands, but with the unbroken succession going on. Could he doubt it? He had only had to hold himself in readiness and everything just fell into his hands. The way was cleared by the very wish of that which had only in the end wished to get out of the way. But just as clearly, he, the new hand, must do his part. The one thing which was clearly forbidden was to let the move pass or try to get out from the prepared succession. Now that the invisible service belt of fate had fed him up to the top and carried off the man in front, he must take the place left for him. There was no need to think any more; action was everything and inevitably clear and straight ahead.

He drew a deep breath. He knew himself now as a man in full control, alone responsible for himself and for everything else that was going to happen, going to develop out of the situation to which this power, which his predecessor had called his Luck and seemed to the newcomer more Fate-Universal, had brought him. And Time was making up for its pause with redoubled activity. He need wait no more. He could do something decisive, germinal, in every second. And with the call came the character. This was the old life, on a larger scale maybe, but the same calls were being made and his training had made him a ready person, not afraid of the size of what might suddenly loom up on one. His training patterns were well-cut rails. He ran on them without speculating as to the future. He felt the exhilaration of pure unspeculative action.

He took the daggered pin, just glancing back at the body which looked peacefully dozing. It was in that most ancient attitude of burial and abandonment, rightly called “the attitude of foetal humility”—a phrase Alpha had actually approved. Well, it accepted the
fait accompli
and would wait patiently for his orders. He went into what had been Alpha's bathroom and carefully washed the pin, though no stain appeared on it. Then he fitted it back and, with the half-turn, locked it in its sheath. He went quickly back into his room and deposited it where Alpha had taken it from, in the shaving pouch.

Though he was not thinking, through his mind shot two bright, gaudy pictures. They were pin-ups they had in their bunkhouse. Both were of a barbarous amusement the savages of the past used to enjoy—a bullfight. The first was the final scene. The bull is on his knees, spent, it is true, but, at any moment, in the exhausted, exasperated beast, the life might flare back. He is still a very dangerous creature, perhaps the most dangerous of all wild animals, the beast that is wounded to death but may spend his last gust of energy, Samson-like, in hurling his taunting foe to death, one driving lunge and step, before toppling over into the abyss himself. The matador approaches, the man who must gain the final burst of applause or be gored amid yells of contempt at a clumsy botcher. He gives a flourish with his small, lance-pointed sword, and then drives home. If he knows his job, then “
procumbit humi bos
!” and he stands, amid a torrent of flowers covering him and the carcass. If not …! Yes, it is well called the coup de grace, the happy dispatch; and the little weapon was called in the Middle Ages the misericord—the instrument of compassionate release.

The other picture showed another act in this series of savage duels between man and bull. It showed the matador, his gaudy clothes covered over with a white cloth stiffened with plaster, his face and head white, and mounted on a small stool also painted to look like white stone. The bull has charged, but, seeing itself up against a motionless white block and fearing to shatter its horns on a monolith, it swerves and someone else standing on the side can then stab it. But the man who had the nerve to stand still, and whose life depended on his rigid nerve, is the one who gets the ovation and to whom the bull belongs.

Their trainer used to say that both gifts of nerve are needed, and sometimes added, “If you keep your head and learn how to keep as still and expressionless as a block of stone, even the Bull himself may suddenly balk at you. He'll be brought within range and your nerve will have done it.”

That had sounded rather odd then, almost nonsensical when most of the class was young and looking forward to making fine-flourished and spectacular thrusts. But surely as his training had gone these last months—surely, hadn't the second picture been nearer the actual facts? He had been obliterated as though he were a carved-away stone, and so completely successful had been the artifice that the effect had been more remarkable than any that the most daring tricks of the bull ring could ever have won. For the bull, baffled by the mysterious image, had fallen at its feet, goring himself to death.

He was back again in the study. The two bullfighting pictures hung high somewhere in his mind acting as decorative orientation-points on the corners of the map of action across which he was, move by move, charting his behavior, as he took his course about the room. He remembered all the things that must be done if murder is not to look like murder and—even more difficult—if a suicide is not to be taken for what in fact it is. He went to a small panel in the room. Yes, that was the place where Alpha—always himself a fine methodical mind—put his gun when he came in. He still carried one when out; more, as he once said, as a matter of method and to remind those who had to carry such things, or thought they had, not to be careless, if they still thought any particular carefulness was still necessary.

It was one of the last things in automatics. Though, of course, all such firearms were on their last legs—they still might be useful at a pinch, and here certainly was such a pinch—they were useful in the make-up of a dramatic picture. You couldn't miss with these weapons. Once you were pressing the stock rightly, they went off the moment the muzzle was aligned with the central nervous system of a living creature and, best of all, when trained on a man, for the electric field of the human body was strongest. It was simply an improvement of that old-fashioned device called Radar and the radio timing device of shells that exploded when any plane or flying bomb flew near them. Along the top of the barrel was an electric tube device, so sensitive just to that electric wave-length of the central nervous system that, up to fifteen feet, the response fire was perfect.

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.”