Kenneth Bulmer (2 page)

"I'll
fight, of course! Shavian tomfoolery when there is an empty world waiting for
me to bring the breath of life to it! When I'm about to prove that Man—mere
mortal man-can himself create the miracle of life!"

Watching
him, Dudley Harcourt knew there lay a battle of outsize proportions ahead.

"I've
spent all my life with this great dream as the goal of all my ambitions. These
last ten years here have been only the final preparation. If they take away the
Maxwell Fund they're not just ruining a decade's work—they're wrecking my whole
life!"

The
door chimed and the ident plate lit up. Harcourt did not recognize the young
man pictured there and Randolph was too engrossed with his own dark thoughts
to care.

"Yes?"
said Harcourt politely. "These are Professor Randolph's chambers. Can I
help you?"

The
young man smiled. The smile did not impress Harcourt. It smacked of
artificiality, of calculation, and it also showed sharp white teeth.

"I
don't think so. I can see Professor Randolph now. Hey, uncle! It's me—Terry
Mallow."

The
familiar tones brought Randolph's massive head around, twisting his scrawny
body. Sunk in his own violent thoughts he stared at the ident plate; then he
reacted to what he saw and pressed the nearest stud to release the lock.

"Terence
Mallow," he said, wonderingly, brought abruptly out of his own vicious
dilemma. "I was told you were dead."

CHAPTER TWO

T
he
black
spider-hands of the clock pointed to fifteen
minutes to midnight.

Vice
Chancellor Dudley Harcourt had long since left Professor Cheslin Randolph's
chambers and now the professor sat thrust back in his winged chair, brooding,
a glass of whisky at hand on the wing table. Across from him his nephew,
Terence Mallow, sat negligently, smoking a cigarette, studying his famous
uncle, and wondering how he could be persuaded to cough up the necessary—again.

They
had not spoken for some time and although Mallow could plainly see something
was niggling the old boy, he began to feel the silence oppressive, a blight on
his nature, and an affront to his own presence here.

"I
say, uncle," he ventured, and at once was annoyed with himself for the
very childishness of his utterance. He was, after all, a grown man now, a
lieutenant-commander in the Terr an Space Navy—correction: ex-lieutenant-commander.

That brought back unpleasant memories,
thoughts he could do well without He swallowed and said, "Sorry if I gave
you a shock dropping in like this unannounced. But I only arrived in from Rigel
V yesterday and the jet was late at the airport. . . ."

Randolph was not listening.

Mallow
stubbed out his cigarette and with a soft rustle from his well-cut
synthi-velour suit reached across to the cigars. Uncle Cheslin liked the best
and didn't stint himself. If a penurious and cashiered ex-Naval officer was
going

to put through his scheme, then a trifle of
hesitation over asserting his independence must be quashed ruthlessly, and at
once.

Lighting
the cigar Mallow again studied his uncle. Something had upset the old boy. The
creased gnome face had shrunk in on itself. The pouches beneath the frog's-eyes
looked like blue plums in the subdued lighting. Funny little fellow. No body,
all brain. Absolutely top quality in his own field, something to do with
protein molecules, the stuff of life, DNA. No doubt a very necessary brain to
possess in the modern galaxy; but a brain rather rarified to a man who up to
quite recently had been obsessed only by a smart ship, astrogational
efficiency, perfection of gun drill, and a penetrating eye for a pretty woman.

Mallow's own problems were too pressing for
him to worry overlong about his uncle's preoccupations. It had come to him as
an amazing revelation that as a supply officer aboard a star cruiser he could
not pilfer and get away with it. A few perks, the court had implied, were quite
within reason and would be blinked at. But Lieutenant-Commander Terence Mallow
had gone into the wholesale trade, and the Lords of the Admiralty objected.
Result-one ex-lieutenant-commander without money or prospects back home on Earth
seeking to cadge a fresh lease on life from his famous uncle.

And
he'd damn well nearly got killed, too. The reports of the action had not been
specific; but of a crew of two thousand men only a hundred and ninety had been
saved. Then, the court martial had followed fast on the heels of the fight
against those fanatical rebels out in Roger's system, and he had thought it
best to allow reports of his death in action to go through uncorrected.

So here he was, eager for money—and Uncle
Cheslin sat and brooded over his own petty problems.

Mallow
coughed, blew smoke, coughed again, and finally, leaned over, and tapped his
uncle on the knee.

"Professor Helen Chase," said
Randolph slowly. "Proving that Shaw and Wells were one and the same or
not one and the same." Randolph looked up at his nephew with such a quick,
belligerent stare from those hypnotic frog's-eyes that Mallow started back.
"Well, she's not going to get away with itl" Randolph spoke with a
quiet viciousness out of place in the quiet University chambers.
"Goddamnit-tohell, no! Over my dead body!"

"I'm sorry, uncle. I'm not quite sure .
. ." Mallow spluttered weakly. The look in the old boy's eyes . . .

"No.
No, of course, you don't know the outsize in frameups that is going on here.
You don't know that a piece of the most important work science has attempted in
the last hundred years is going for nothing, is not even going to be allowed to
start, because some red-headed painted female wants to dig up a couple of
long-hairs dead these thousands of years and play pretty-pretty theories with
them."

For
Terence Mallow the outburst exploded along his nerves with much the same
feeling a wizard might experience, conjuring up a grade-one devil. He
stammered out a few trite phrases and all the time Randolph sat and champed
with the anger he could only just control.

"And
why should I control my anger? Why shouldn't
I
kick up the biggest stink this place has smelt in years?"

"Why
not, indeed, uncle. I'm all for a spot of shillelagh swinging myself."

Randolph
favoured his nephew with an ambiguous look. He remembered that at the time his
sister—poor dead Julie with the slender hands—had married Frederick Mallow he'd
been in the planning stages of the work that was now so near completion,
twenty-five, thirty years ago? Then his first impression of Frederick Mallow,
father of the young man sitting across from him now, had been one of grease. He
had felt it his duty to warn Julie knowing she'd ignore what he had to say. Her
death had been a happy release. But some of her vivacity, her love of life and
warm and genuine response to friendship must have rubbed off on her son—it must
have. If Terence Mallow had been all Mallow then Randolph would have been
barely polite to him and bid
him
goodnight and turned him out of his
chambers.

A scientific knowledge of genes and
chromosomes and heredity patterns, a keen eye that probed into the microscopic
universe of the living life force, he reflected with wry truth, still gave him
no control over his feelings about normal family relationships.

"Suppose you tell me
what the trouble is, uncle."

Mallow
spoke with boyish frankness, acting right up to his naive, husky spaceman
image. Money matters would have to be left until after his uncle was in a more
receptive frame of mind. And willing and concerned interest in the old boy's
affairs would pay dividends. "Can I help at all?"

"Unless
you have a few multi-billions of ready cash I fail to see what you—or
anyone—can do."

"So it's money."

"Partially."
Just talking about the iniquity of the thing relieved Randolph a little.
"And that's the queer part. It can't take all that much money to build a
live theatre and buy a collection of manuscripts."

"Depends
who owns 'em. If I did and knew a university with money behind it wanted the
papers, well . . ."

"Yes,
I suppose so. Values are so inflated and distorted these days."

"Who's Helen Chaser

Randolph glanced up, alert, bright, suddenly
like
a
pointer on game. "Ahl" he said, and
fell silent.

Presently
he began to talk, quietly, in a controlled tone of voice, giving
a
precise appreciation of the situation in the clear cut methods of
thought habitual to
a
scientist. The spider hands of the clock
moved uninterruptedly past midnight, past the half hour. Then Randolph moved
away from the definite values of science into the nebulous fields of personal
relations.

"I realize well enough, Terence, that
you have come to see me to ask for money. Your explanation about your reported
death in action against those foolish and pathetic rebels sounds quite
romantic, and you have been courageous and honest about your court-martial.
You're young and the lure of easy cash 'has wrecked many
a
stronger man—"

Mallow had the sense not to try to defend
himself at that delicate juncture.

"Your
poor mother told me, time and again, that your father was a charming man,
filled with great potential. I do not believe in altering facts about a person
because they are dead and so cannot defend themselves. I never saw eye to eye
with your father. But that he had this charm, this easy air of familiarity,
this ingratiating aura of bonhomie cannot be denied. And you, too, Terence,
have it. With, thank God, a lot of your mother's decency and moral fibre and
outlook to fight it. You did
a
damn
silly thing, pilfering Naval funds and stores; but it isn't the end of the
Galaxy."

"Thank
you, uncle." Mallow, his head bowed in
a
suitably humble and repentant angle, listened to the sermon with
resignation.

"I
want you," said Professor Cheslin Randolph, "to exert some of your
charm on this red-headed female, Helen Chase. I want you to find out all there
is to know about her theories, her plans, what she really wants the Maxwell
Fund for. Be careful. I feel she is a charlatan. And I am absolutely convinced
that I can prove to the Trustees that what she wants to fritter this money away
on is outside the scope of the objects of the Fund. I know the Fund should go
to Science!"

Mallow
lifted his head and looked steadily at his uncle. "You're determined about
this, aren't you? You'd stop at nothing to prevent that money going elsewhere
than your own department?"

"I
am. And I'm prepared to do anything to make sure I get the Fund! As for
your—ah—personal out-of-pocket expenses, well, I think we can afford to be
a
trifle generous there whilst you are, in fact, if not in name, as it
were, working for me."

"That
is good of you, uncle. You'll find 111 be quite
a
good undercover agent—and not too expensive."

Not,
that was, Mallow cautiously decided, at first.
1£
all that was worrying the old boy was the disbursement of this Maxwell
Fund, and there was a woman in it, why, then

Terry Mallow, ex-Space Navy, was the very man
for the job.

All
the same, he hadn't much cared for that look in his uncle's eyes.
He
recalled with particular clarity the last time he'd seen that pale
fanatic glare. The Rebbo had been young and lantern-jawed with an untidy shock
of corn-yellow hair. His legs, Mallow remembered with minute exactness, were
extraordinarily long and sinewy, the muscles bunching clearly beneath the fawn
skin-tight trousers. He'd run at Mallow's landing cutter, yelling, demoniac.
Just as Mallow had shot the young Rebbo he'd seen that lethal, wide-eyed,
dedicated look of hollowness in the eyes.

Odd—odd
and unsettling to find that passionate look in the eyes of his uncle, a sedate,
stuffy, shut-out-of-the-galaxy scientist.

But Terry Mallow could shut his own eyes to a
great deal for a fast credit.

And
so they left it like that, Mallow retiring to Randolph's ample guest room and
lying awake for some time, hands behind his head, smoking one of his uncle's
cigars and wondering what Helen Chase would be like.

CHAPTER THREE

"F
ob
evert
ten thousand science degrees last year, my
dear Helen, one—just a single measly one—arts degree went through—"

"Can
I help it, my dear Peter, if men and women are blind to their
opportunities?"

"Opportunities?"
Doctor Peter Howland halted his finger over the recorder button where Bach
waited to tinkle and titillate the senses. Helen Chase's chambers were crowded
with the usual folk, long hairs, weirdies, faddists,
a
few genuinely exciting new brains. Outside the lamps shone down on a
snow-covered vista; but inside the rooms were warm and alive and scented with
that pulse quickening aroma that good wine, good food, good cigars, and the
presence of beautiful women can bring to any building no matter how old or ugly
or decrepit.

"Yes, Peter.
Opportunities. Now, how about Bach?"

Howland
pressed the button and, with
a
casual
flick, reduced the volume. He knew well enough he was tolerated by these arts
people only because, as
a
scientist, he was looked upon as a technician
who could handle the electronic recording apparatus they all took for granted
and considered with a sickeningly affected coyness to be a clod-hopping item
of machinery. It was amusing to Peter How-land. It broadened his own horizons.
He had been at Lewis-read now for how long—three months? Well, it seemed like
three years. Professor Cheslin Randolph was not the easiest of masters.

He sat down on the floor beside Helen Chase's
chair and picked up his drink. "You tell me about these opportunities.''

"All
right. Take yourself." Helen Chase smiled down on him, sitting there at
her feet. She liked the look of him, tall and lithe—really rather too thin—but
that was infinitely preferable to fatness. A scrubbed look clung to him, a boyishness,
a shyness that matched her own. There sparked
a
fire in his eye, a humorous curl to his lips—and a predatory curl to
his nostrils. But they had as much in common, as they'd wonderingly discovered
over the past—how long? Three months? Seemed longer, somehow. They talked
eagerly and long on every subject—except themselves. So now How-land looked up
in guarded surprise.

"What about me? I'm normal."

"Of
course. But you are a doctor of science and you specialize in some obscure and
highly esoteric branch of your profession. You know how long you will have to
wait before any establishment offers you a chair of your own."