Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer (35 page)

There was a stunned silence. Then Bahr was on
his feet. "This is ridiculous," he roared. "There are the
paternity papers . . ." And then he broke off suddenly, staring at the
cameras, his mouth still open.

He remembered then.

There
were
no
paternity papers.

The
judge adjourned for the day, to quiet the courtroom and give Bahr time to
re-form his case.

The following day, a barrage of evidence:
blood typing, flesh and hair tests, fingerprint whorls, eye color. Alexander
dismissed it all, pleasantly but firmly. "Hundreds of men could have
produced a child with these characteristics," he said. "This is not
conclusive evidence; it isn't even evidence at all."

More
testimony, not in especially good taste, but Bahr was desperate. He was
committed now, he would not turn back. He would not lose a public battle to
that red-headed slut. He was Julian Bahr, he had dragged himself up from
nothing to the leadership of a continent, and she was nothing more than a
common whore, like
...
A wave of
anger shut his mind against the past. That didn't matter now. All that mattered
was that he was going to win.

He
verified the skiing vacation they took when Libby had become pregnant.
Witnesses testified that they shared the same room.

Libby
shook her head. "What difference does that make?" she asked
Braelow
. "All you're proving is immorality, not
paternity."

"You admit you went on weekends with Mr.
Bahr?"
"Certainly."

"That he was intimate with you?"
"You mean that he slept with me?"

"That's what I mean,"
Braelow
said, beginning to color.

"So
have other men," Libby said, "according to you. You ran a regiment
through this courtroom to prove it. Who was in bed with me doesn't matter. What
matters is who got me pregnant. It was not Bahr."

Braelow
turned back to the table, confused. "All right," Bahr said
angrily, "you've messed around long enough." He stood up and strode
to the center of the room, glaring at Libby, raising his head to the cameras.
He knew the eyes that were watching him, now, but he didn't care any longer; all
he could see was her face, her eyes watching him with hatred; all he could feel
now was the violent, overpowering urgency to break her, to beat her down and
pound her into the ground. He didn't care if
all the
world was watching, she couldn't do what she was doing to him and get away with
it. "Now," he said, his voice thick with repressed anger, "let's
straighten out a few simple facts. I know what you've turned into in the last
few weeks—that's why I'm involved in this filthy affair—but just for the record
let's talk about the year 2022. That is when you became pregnant, right?"
"In March, to be exact," Libby said.

"And you recall I was on a special
assignment in California during most of that month?" "Yes, I
recall."

"You
recall that I phoned you every night, from California?"

"Very clearly."

"Specifically,
did you not plead with me to come back to New York, because you were . . .
lonesome?"

"I didn't use those exact words,"
Libby said.

"Did
you arrange to meet me at the ski resort in Sun Valley, and did you not fly out
there?"

"Yes."

"We were together for two
week ends
?" "Yes."

"And it was during this time that you
became pregnant?"

"Well,
a woman has to calculate backwards, but I'm certain I became pregnant during
that
ten days in Sun Valley."

"Then
it couldn't have been anybody but me," Bahr said, and stepped back
triumphantly.

Libby's
answer was mocking laughter. "So I led you to believe . . ."

"You slut!"
Bahr screamed, and smashed his hand across
her face. She fell out of the chair, and Bahr reached down, grabbed her by the
shoulder, drawing his fist back savagely.

Someone
seized his wrist, twisted it and threw him off balance, and he was glaring into
Alexander's face. Suddenly Bahr remembered the cameras. He gripped the table
edge. "You're a dead man," he said to Alexander, in a voice so low
only Alexander could hear. Then he shrugged loose from Alexander's grip and
turned back to Libby. The 3-V lens caught a
closeup
of his face, hideous with the anger of death, facing Libby's scornful mask.

Then
Libby was turning to the judge, speaking in a voice that carried to the
farthest corner of the courtroom, to every person there, to every microphone.
"He could
never
have been the father of my
child." She looked around the room, drawing full attention, and then
looked at Bahr, and made a slow, deliberate gesture. There was a gasp from the
courtroom; as Libby spoke, facing directly into the 3-V lenses, her mouth
twisted in contempt.

"He
is a fraud," she said, "a magnificent fake. Julian Bahr is impotent."

EPILOGUE
. . .

It had been
predictable, and yet unpredictable; he had
headed for the border, and then, abruptly, the BRINT patrol had lost him, and
it was almost an hour before they realized that he had doubled back, that he
had never intended to go to the border at all.

Emergency
Director Harvey Alexander arrived in his Volta just as the BRINT men were
breaking down the door to Libby's apartment. "The guard," he groaned,
"my god, didn't she even have a guard?"

"She
did have,"
MacKenzie
told him. "The guard
was killed by a silent stunner. A couple of DIA men who were still loyal to him
blocked our way up here for fifteen minutes." The BRINT man put a hand on
Alexander's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said. "We thought Bahr
would try to get across the border when he slipped away from our patrol."

In the dark hallway the axe-blows on the door
shredded the silence, and finally the door crashed in. Two BRINT men pushed
through inside, stunners ready. Alexander tore away from the aides who tried to
restrain him, and followed them in.

They
were too late. Alexander saw her on the floor, and he turned white, and closed
his eyes with a sudden dizzy feeling of pain and loss.

Her
face had been beaten to jelly, the flesh and bones mashed beyond recognition as
if some blunt heavy maul had been used. She was naked, until they put a sheet
over her. Even in death her body was twisted in agony.

Julian
Bahr sat in darkness in the next room. The BRINT men surrounded him with drawn
guns, but it was a needless gesture. He sat dull and silent, staring at the
floor, and his hands were broken and swollen and bloody.

Later, as they were strapping Bahr onto a stretcher, Alexander half
listened to the aide speaking into his ear.
". . .
rounded
up most of the top DIA men, except those who got to the Southern Continent. No
question about your confirmation in the appointment. The engineering people at
White Sands have pledged loyalty."

He
nodded, but he was not hearing. He knew that presently he would have to think
about it. There was so much work to be done. The frontier had been reopened;
gradually, the pace would have to be slowed, the starvation economy improved,
Project Tiger converted from a crash war operation to a long-range program of
progress that would ultimately take men out to the stars. He would not have to
do it alone; he would have able hands helping him. There was
MacKenzie
and a dozen, a hundred, men like
MacKenzie
.

There
were other details, and soon he would have to begin thinking about them, but
now he could think only of Julian Bahr, and Libby Allison. Bahr was there, but
Bahr did not see him. He did not see Alexander weeping silently and alone over
Libby's body, nor turning back to the world and the overwhelming task he had
undertaken—to hold the reins of power in firm and dedicated hands.

Julian Bahr would not see the great
spaceships rise, months