The Fellowship of the Hand (23 page)

“He should be up and around soon,” Freddy said. “That’s why we disconnected the IV. He doesn’t need it anymore, and the hunger will help to wake him. He might need some low-level radiation, but I’ll leave that to Armstrong.”

“Have you searched down here for Miss Watson?”

“Hell, buddy, we worry about the living.”

“You think she’s dead?”

“If she’s not, she should be. Once they pass seventy we should take their brains and give them to the young. Too many people on the globe anyway.”

“They’re talking about colonizing Venus.”

“You think we’ll live to see that?”

“Maybe,” Earl said. He was watching the slow but regular rise and fall of Frank’s chest. The young man was breathing, all right. “How about the brain? Have you run your tests?”

“Not yet.”

Something was still bothering Earl. “Tell me, Freddy—why did you hurry down here as soon as we discovered the old lady missing?”

O’Connor shrugged. “Maybe I thought she was down here screwin’ him. Old lady like that—”

“Be serious for once, Freddy!”

But he merely turned away. “I was serious for three hours last night, over this table. That’s serious enough to last me the rest of the month.”

Lawrence Hobbes entered from above and came down through the seats of the amphitheater. “We’ve searched everywhere. She’s not on the island.”

“Could she have left by hovercraft?” Earl asked.

“Impossible! Anything landing on shore would have set off our nighttime proximity alarms.”

“You have alarms all through the house too, though, don’t you?”

“Correct. I turned them on myself before retiring.”

“Then she couldn’t have left her room without sounding an alarm?”

“No,” Hobbes admitted.

“And no one could have entered her room without sounding an alarm? Then what happened to her?”

“Someone could have been hiding in her bathroom last night, after the operation. He could have taken her—her body out this morning. The alarms automatically go off at sunrise, but with our late night no one was quite up by then.”

“Who could have been hidden in her bathroom?” Freddy asked. “We were all down here except for that Mexican whore cook of yours.”

“Shut up about her!” Hobbes growled. He was rapidly reaching the limit of his patience with Freddy O’Connor. “Just remember I’m the one who’s paying you, and show a little respect!”

“Come on,” Earl Jazine said. “This won’t get us anywhere. If she’s missing, you can be sure we’ll search till we find her.”

“We’ve searched,” Hobbes said. “She’s not on the island.”

“I’ll bet there’s one place you haven’t searched.”

“Where’s that?”

“That turretlike effect on the roof, where the microwave equipment is. A body could easily be hidden up there.”

Hobbes tightened his lips to a thin line, then said, “Let’s go look.”

They could see nothing from the ground outside the house. Finally Tony Cooper volunteered to climb up the metal ladder attached to the rear of the house and have a look. “I’m in better shape than you guys,” he said. “I’ll go.”

“If you fall off,” Freddy called after him, “I’ll take good care of Miss Vera.”

Earl saw Vera Morgan twist away as he tried to circle her waist with his arm. She was obviously having none of him. By the time Tony had reached the roof she’d turned away from the group completely and was walking down toward the water.

“Nothing up here,” Cooper called down. “No bodies.”

Freddy O’Connor snorted. “If he killed the old gal himself and hid her up there, naturally he wouldn’t admit finding her.”

“I’ll go up too,” Earl decided.

He climbed the metal ladder quickly, without effort, remembering all those times he’d done something like it in government training. He didn’t really expect to find anything on the roof, and when he reached Cooper’s side he saw that he was right, but the gesture had needed to be made.

“That loud-mouthed bastard,” Tony muttered, looking down at the others. “It’s time somebody shut him up for good.”

“He said you two were friends.”

“Remind me sometime to tell you what sort of friends we were.” He left Earl standing there and started down the ladder.

When they were all assembled again on the ground, it was Dr. MacKenzie who put their thoughts into words. “There’s only one place left, you know. The sea.”

“But how could she get out of her room?” Cooper asked.

“This morning, early, after the alarms were off. Either she went by herself or—”

“She’d never go by herself,” Hobbes insisted. “The whole purpose of her pouring money into ICI was to insure her own immortality. Even if she felt she was dying—
especially
if she felt she was dying—she’d never have thrown her body into the sea.”

“Then somebody must have killed her and thrown her body in there,” Freddy said.

“Somebody?”

He glanced around at the circle of faces. “One of us.”

Who? And why?

They sat around in the living room discussing it for the next hour and got nowhere. Freddy went downstairs with Harry Armstrong to finish his tests on Frank, but the rest of them simply sat and talked. After a time Hobbes pushed a button to summon Hilda from the kitchen and announced that the cocktail hour would be somewhat earlier than usual.

“But it’s barely noon!” Vera pointed out.

“Those who think it’s too early don’t need to drink,” Hobbes assured her. He was a man whose dream was beginning to crumble before his eyes and Earl felt oddly sorry for him.

“Whatever happened to Miss Watson needn’t affect the experiment,” he told the man, trying to cheer him up. “If Frank lives—”

“Don’t call him Frank!”

“All right. If the patient lives, you’ll have all the fame and money you need.”

“And all the lawsuits,” Dr. MacKenzie commented. “Bringing people back to life is a damn sight more complicated than walking on the moon.”

“Lawsuits?” Earl repeated, not understanding at first.

“Of course! And not just from what’s his name, either! We used body parts from five different people last night—all without the permission of their families.”

But Hobbes shook his head. “That’s no problem. I have a signed contract in each case giving ICI sole and exclusive rights to the bodies in its care if any of the perpetual upkeep payments are missed. Since the initial payment at time of freezing covers only twenty-five years of care, I now have a number of bodies in my personal possession. You’d be amazed how many sons and daughters and nieces and nephews lose interest in paying the upkeep after twenty-five years.”

“That’s disgusting!” Vera said and stalked out of the room. The others merely sat there in silence.

“I thought there were insurance policies for that sort of thing,” MacKenzie said, recovering himself.

“There are. The wiser of my clients took the precaution of investing in one. But so many did not. I was much younger in those days, of course, and some said I was an excellent salesman. But then selling tomorrow is always easy. That’s why so many Florida land speculators used to flourish. Something for your old age, or your next life.”

Freddy and Armstrong came back from the basement operating room, and Armstrong reported, “His vital signs are very good.”

“Is he conscious yet?” Hobbes asked.

“No.” Armstrong fidgeted. “Frankly, I don’t know why. The revival might take longer than we expected.”

Hobbes turned to Freddy. “And his brain?”

“Normal in all respects. When he comes to, he should be fully functional.”

Lawrence Hobbes sighed. “Well, that’s something anyway.”

Earl excused himself when the drinks arrived and went up to his room. As he opened the door he saw Vera Morgan bent over his bedside table. She’d changed into a pink sweater and slacks suit, which from his angle was most attractive.

“Well! Hello!”

She wheeled around, startled. But immediately she regained her composure. “I came in to borrow some matches, and I. found something quite interesting.”

Earl’s eyes darted to the bedside table. “Oh?”

“Who are you really, Mr. Jazine?”

“I thought you knew.”

“I mean really. Who are you, and why have you been tape recording our conversations?”

Earl sat down on the bed. “Where’d you get that idea?”

She stepped up close to him, and he could see the points of her nipples through the fabric of the sweater. “This tiny tape recorder was running when I came in. I thought you’d left it on by accident and I went to shut it off. I pushed the wrong button and I could hear the conversation downstairs. You’ve got a tiny radio mike on you and you were transmitting up to this room!”

There was little point in denying it. “You’re a very intelligent young lady.”

“Cut out the sweet talk! Who are you?”

“Who would you like me to be?”

“Tony says Hobbes is afraid of foreign agents.”

“I’m not one of those.” He reached for his wallet and flipped open the hidden compartment. “Earl Jazine is the real name. I’m an investigator for the Computer Investigation Bureau, back in New York.”

“Never heard of it!”

“I’m not surprised. We’re fairly new. I work for a man named Carl Crader, who in turn reports directly to the President.”

“Is that supposed to impress me?”

“I don’t care if it impresses you or not. It’s the truth.”

She stepped back, hands on hips, and studied him. “Is this another one of those private groups the President sets up in secret without anybody knowing?”

“No. I assure you we’re legit. The New York
Times
even ran an article on us and called us the ‘computer cops.’”

“So what are you doing here? There are no computers on Horseshoe Island—at least, not that I’ve seen.”

“Our investigations sometimes spill over into what might generally be called crimes of the new technology. Cryogenics is certainly a new technology.”

“And what is the crime?”

“Well, that’s what I’m here to find out.” He gave her a broad grin to cover his obvious evasion. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t reveal this to anyone else—not even to Tony Cooper.”

“Don’t worry—I don’t go running to him with everything I know.”

“Good.”

She sat down and took out a cigarette, accepting the light he offered. “Then you’re not really a medical photographer at all?”

“They gave me a cram course back in New York so that I could play the part.”

“Do you know what happened to old Miss Watson?”

He shook his head. “I wish I did.”

“Is it tied in to your investigation?”

“It might be.”

Her blue eyes were studying him. “You’re so mysterious.”

“Sorry about that.” He wondered if it was an invitation of some sort, and decided to pursue it a bit. “But you’re mysterious too. What about you and Cooper and O’Connor. Tony said just now he’d tell me about it someday.”

She shrugged and got to her feet. “Let him.”

“But you won’t tell me?”

“We’d better join the others, don’t you think?”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1973 by Edward D. Hoch

Cover design by Jason Gabbert

978-1-4804-5642-6

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