Berserker - Earth Descended Part 20

He went out again, through the French windows, to sit in a lawn chair on the patio over-looking the sea.

The ocean, never quite silent, was now almost invisible in the gathering darkness. The smell of it brought back to him no memories that were peculiar to this place. He had looked at and smelled the sea in too many other, different places for that. The one great ocean that went on and on.

Through low clouds there came suddenly the half-familiar, half-surprising sound of a slow Navy plane from the air station not far away. One of the search and rescue craft, and it sounded like it was heading out. Would they commence a search at night? That seemed unlikely, but there were always new devices, new techniques. Anyway, they wouldn't be using a plane to look for her, she hadn't gone out in a boat.

And if they hadn't started to look for her last night, when she walked out, they wouldn't be starting now.

He paused, trying to clear his thoughts. How could they have started any search last night? He still, up to this minute, hadn't told anyone how she had gone. Not yet...

Ifyou can't stand your own life, he had said to her,then I suggest you put an end to it. I have an interesting life of my own that's going to take all my time. The room seemed still to echo with the words.

The waves were getting a little louder now, rolling invisibilities up the invisible beach.

He went into the house and turned up the volume of the television slightly; he could not really remember having turned it on. The voices from the talk show came with him as he went outside again, onto the seaward patio. The hyper-fine and superhyperfine splittings could now be measured accurately, but that was only the start. Police forces all over the country were using the technique on unidentified bodies every day, with great success. n.o.body worried anymore that the technique might offer any danger to the fabric of the world. The implications were really vast. The ligand fields expanded without limit. The voices continued to follow as he opened the gate in the low wall and walked down a slope of sand to meet the still invisible burden of the waves.

WHERE THY TREASURE IS.

It was a small private hospital, so Benedict Cunningham and his doctor had a small private elevator to themselves.

Call me at any time if you think any problems are developing," said the doctor. He was youngish and intense, and was earring Cunningham's valise himself. "Any sort of problems."

Cunningham smiled. He had just turned fifty, and looked quite healthy and vigorous. A sun lamp, installed in his hospital room at his in-sistence, had maintained his golf tan during his stay. His new wig was so well made that only the very few who knew him well were likely to spot it. He said: "We went into all the possibilities pretty thoroughly ahead of time, as you'll recall. And everything has gone well. I don't antic.i.p.ate problems."

"Nor do I. But, since you're the first-"

"Of course."

"Don't look so grim, doctor. You're going to do quite well out of this." Cunningham's smile was faintly amused; if the man hadn't needed money desperately, he wouldn't have done this....

A faraway look came into Cunningham's eyes. "Wait," he said softly. "I'm making contact with what must be another company. Oh. Giant...I think...it's got to be AT&T. Whole networks of metal...networks of finance...I can't describe it, any more than I could the others. But it's there, yes, it's definitely there.

The whole structure ...you know, there's one detail in all this it's just occurred to me to wonder about."

At that point the elevator door opened onto the ground floor lobby. Cunningham grabbed his valise from the doctor's hand and stepped out briskly, determined to impress the small group of waiting reporters with his smiling health.

"I'm fine," he a.s.sured them. "Just elective surgery to have a wen removed. Then I stayed over for my annual checkup and a little rest."

The doctor, in turn, issued a short somewhat vague statement that revealed nothing about the unheard-of thing that he had really done. Then he walked with Cunningham to where Cunningham's chauffeur stood holding open the door of a waiting limousine.

Motioning the doctor to follow, Cunningham got into the car and greeted his wife with a hurried kiss.

Shirley was a quiet, attractive woman with a dread of the press intense enough to have kept her waiting in the car today. She looked worried; as the doctor shook her hand hastily he wondered how much her husband had really told her.

One reporter was still watching, and Cunning-ham touched the intercom and told the chauffeur to drive away.

"What's the detail that's just occurred to you?" the doctor asked, as soon as the auto was in motion.

Cunningham raised his fingers to touch the deceptive fabric of his wig, where it covered the healed incision behind his right ear. New hair growth had made a start, and in a month or so the wig could probably be discarded. "Huss tells me the transmitting device is concealed exactly where we wanted it at the Exchange; it should put me in contact with every corporation traded on the Big Board. But in fact the only ones I've been able to feel are those in which I own some stock."

The doctor relaxed slightly. "And about which you are naturally more concerned. There'll be all kinds of psychological interaction with the device."

"About which you may someday be able to publish."

"But nothing else bothers you."

"There's a..." Cunnningham hesitated for just a moment. "There's a certain feeling, hard to describe. Like being spread out, diffused, that's the best way I can find to put it."

"You didn't mention that before." The doctor's voice was sharp and resigned at the same time.

"It's nothing, I just notice it a little more today. If it should be permanent, I can get used to it. Shirley, you should see that chimp in the lab. The device in his skull is just like mine, and it connects him electronically with a machine that delivers food. And he knows infallibly just when and where that next banana is going to fall, and he's there to grab it every time. Believe me, I've got my eye on some ripe bananas already."

The last signature had just been inked into the doc.u.ment that transferred twenty thousand hectares of Idaho timberland to Benedict Cunningham, and the transaction electronically recorded for the central data banks as the law required, when he pushed his chair back from the table and uttered a low exclamation.

"All right, Ben?" asked the man who had just sold him the timber.

"Yes, fine." Cunningham straightened his business collar. As far as he knew, he was all right; it was just that a new sensation had surprised him.

As soon as the timber-dealer had departed, Cun-ningham phoned the president of the newly formed Macrotron Engineering Company.

"Huss, I'd like you to come over to my office right away."

"Oh?" Carl Huss's voice was guarded. "Some-thing important?"

"I'm calling you, am I not? Get over here." He switched off without waiting for a reply.

Cunningham knew that his order would be obeyed. He had in effect given Macrotron to Huss in payment for the two cybernetic devices and the secret installation of one of them at the Exchange; but, as Huss well knew, Cunningham still held the financial fate of Macrotron in his own masterly hands.

"Have you added anything to the device at the Exchange?" Cunningham demanded, as soon as he was alone with the engineer.

Huss was an electronic genius and a rapid talker, even more nervous and younger than the doctor. "Of course not. Nothing needs to be added. And if I did want to try out some improvement, I'd certainly tell you about it first."

"I should hope so." Cunningham frowned. "I don't suppose anyone or anything else could be causing interference?"

"The chance of that is so small-" Huss made a gesture of dismissal. "The technicians at the Ex-change don't open up the Board once in six months now, the equipment has become so reliable. And when they do open it, they'll notice nothing to make them suspicious. I did a good job."

"All right, then. I just wanted to make sure nothing had changed."

"What's gone wrong?"

"Probably nothing." Cunningham shook his head. "It's just that I've begun feeling things, identifying with things, that aren't on the Board. Things that have nothing to do with the Stock Ex-change."

Huss, unconsciously scowling, thought it over. "That's not electronically possible."

"It happens. I bought some timberland today, and the instant I owned it, it was as if a part of myself went there. That's the only way I can describe it. I can tell that there's copper under the soil there, a great deal of copper."

"I don't understand." Huss for once spoke slowly. "How can you know a thing like that?"

"I was hoping that you could tell me." Cunningham shrugged. "It's the same substance that I see in copper wires, but mixed with rock and dirt and buried. I just feel it there. How do you know that your toenails are hard and nerveless?"

That afternoon Cunningham sounded out a couple of mining companies, making preliminary arrangements.

But his dream that night had nothing to do with copper, or, as far as he could tell, with wealth of any kind. He was standing in darkness, paralyzed, attacked by some kind of tiny vermin that gnawed their way through his skin and then scuttled in and out through the holes they had made. He tried to move, but could only sway stiffly, his joints creaking. He could only endure, well past the point where any ordinary nightmare should have ended. Managing at last to get a clear mental image of one of his tiny tormentors, he saw that it had the face of a cartoon comedy rat, a discovery that for some reason added a sharp stab of horror. Cunningham woke up, in a cold sweat.

Shirley was standing beside his bed. "Ben, you were...calling. Are you all right?"

"I was dreaming. Yes, I'm all right." He wiped his face. Looking for his cigarettes, he switched on the bedside light, and became abstractedly aware of the worried expression on his wife's face. "Don't be upset about the car, Shirley. Those things happen."

Surprise registered in Shirley's eyes, then guilt. "No one was hurt. Ben, I, I wanted to tell you about the accident, but you've had so much else on your mind."

"It's all right," he said. The damage to the prized sports car was not severe; it amounted to some banged-up sheet metal, and a slight hidden strain on the frame, that not even the mechanic had yet detected...

But how did he, Ben Cunningham, know that?

The answer, of course, was that he felt it, in the same way he would know if his ankle had been wrenched slightly. The discomfort he felt now was not in his ankle, not anywhere in his body, but he felt it. While he slept, a part of himself had been pulled into the car.

There had been a bad dream too, a dream now fading rapidly, a dream that had nothing to do with cars...

Shirley, her voice hesitant, was speaking again. "Ben, I've never interfered in anything regarding business."

He grunted something.

"This time I would have, if I'd known when you went into the hospital what you really meant to do."

"Go back to bed, Shirley," he told her, crushing out his cigarette. "Everything's all right."

"Are you sure, Ben?"

"I'm just tired now; let me rest." He smiled at his wife, the smile that always rea.s.sured her, and then lay back and closed his eyes. She put out the light, and a few moments later he heard the door between their rooms close softly. A great woman. He would tire himself out, use himself up, go through nightmares, for her and the two boys who were away at school. Even if he never got to see much of them...

Tired, but he wasn't going to be able to go right back to sleep. He lay in his bed alone-he would never have been able to get the rest he needed, had he given up half his bed to another body's weight and movements and breath-staring up into dark-ness. He was now able to feel the twenty pairs of shoes racked in his bedroom closets (nothing like dressing right to make exactly the right impression) and with a little effort he could even tell which pairs needed polishing. Lying there motionless, he could feel himself being drawn, slowly, inescapably, into all the things that were in and about and of his house. The fireplace down-stairs with its fading warmth, the Pica.s.so print on the wall, the garbage in the undersink disposal.

The concrete of the outdoor pool, drained for winter. The growing gra.s.s and trees.

One by one, all the things he owned were coming forward, each demanding its own portion of his being.

He had the feeling that there was not going to be enough of himself to go around. His things were absorbing him into their own substances. He had told the doctor he would get used to feeling diffused, but the sensation was only getting worse.

He put his hands over his face in the darkness. He fiercely willed his own coherence and survival. What was attacking him was illusion; he still functioned. To build for his sons and his sons' sons he would find a way to come to terms with his new power. He had to. At last he dozed.

In his office next day Ben Cunningham began to feel burning and amputation and scarring; the sensations were not localizable to any part of his human body, nor were they generalized throughout it. He felt them, though, and they were real, physically real. He traced them to their origin in a part of his newly extended ident.i.ty, and he knew before the phone message came that his new Idaho timberland was ablaze. The first copper-hunting expedition sent by the mining company had managed to start a forest fire.

That night he again stood wooden and swaying, infested by rat-faced mites. (Also moving about inside him were other, much larger creatures, but these were doing no damage at the moment and he could ignore them.) It was the tiny beasts with their tiny gnawings that were terrible. This time the image of the vermin stayed with him after he awakened, and he understood that they were rats, real rats. When one hungry rat found food in the form of one of the larger living things, Cunningham's nerves did not feel the bitten baby's pain, for the baby was not his property. He felt only baby's scream, reverberating in the shaky wood of the tenement.

"Hullo? Whatsamatter?"

"This is Benedict Cunningham. I want you to get busy and sell any building I own that could be called a slum. I know it's four in the morning. I don't want arguments and I don't want any delay. Start on it right now."

"What's...Mr. Cunningham? Sell buildings, you say?"

"And don't haggle about prices. Get rid of them."

The hurried sale of the slum buildings relieved him of pain; but it did not free him. He was still gripped by the money from the sale, as by all the other money that was his. Parts of him stretched out, and then tied down, confined, in cage-boxes made of bars like the ruled lines in an old-fashioned ledger.

For another day or so he continued forcing himself grimly on along the road to greater profits. More cage-compartments and more bars.

Making money had always been something he could do, and it was almost no trick at all now that he was wired into the Board. The connection was everything that he had hoped it would be, and more.

And more.

For Shirley and the boys, he clung to his deter-mination to endure and adapt. But with every pa.s.sing day, with every hour, he could feel himself going. Losing what tenuous contact he had ever had with people and music and food and sunsets. He inexorably diffused, becoming machinery and oil wells and expensive shoes.

The forest fire was out now and he had got out of the reach of the rats' teeth. But he could feel himself dying of diffusion. His body walked on, planning daily tasks, smiling when required, keeping socially active and presentable. But soon his shrinking core of self might be altogether gone, and against that fate his ego at last rebelled.

The first step was to try saving himself without really giving up any of his wealth, by putting vast properties in his wife's name. But the pen marks and electronic transfer of symbols that had got the rats out of gnawing range proved in this case ineffective. The things of his wealth maintained their grip on him this time, as if they understood that they were in every real sense still his.

"Ibelieve I understand, sir. You want the books physically spread out on the table, opened?"

"Yes. And the discs from the computer." The symbols of wealth were concentrated even more intensely there. "And then move the table over to the windows, let the sunlight fall on it." He no longer cared a great deal if subordinates thought him eccentric or even insane.

He could feel the sunlight falling upon the rigid records of his wealth. But even the sun could not thaw him loose from them.

These days he never worked late at the office. And when he came home, Shirley was always waiting for him, peering at him anxiously. Today she said: "Ben, if you don't make an appointment with a doctor right away, I'm going to make one for you."

"Don't bother, I've just made one."

"You couldn't remove it," was almost the first thing that Cunningham said on coming out of the anesthetic.

"Oh, I removed the device." The doctor's voice was weary, his face grim. "There was some in-volvement of brain tissue that I hadn't expected. How do you feel?"

"You might as well have left it in. I'm still being pulled apart."

By next morning, the doctor had a theory ready: some of the nine-tenths of Cunningham's brain that he had never used, that no one ever uses, had been stimulated to new activity by the cybernetic device. The components of the device were very small and subtle and new, and no one yet under-stood them very well.

"I'm not going to try to do anything more to your brain," he told Cunningham flatly. "What's going on may right itself in time. It probably will. That's all I can say."

The surgery hadn't been the doctor's idea in the" first place. Cunningham didn't really want the doctor to say anything more now. He put on his wig again and left the hospital again, knowing that he had only a little time left. Whatever elastic might be left in his tough soul was failing now. There were moments, with his wealth stretching him in every direction, when a black cavity appeared in the center of his being. The cavity was nothingness, and that was his future.

Since surgery had failed, he could think of only one more course open to him that was (a little, at least) less desperate than suicide. As soon as Cunningham got home he called his lawyers and with their help began to give things away. At first they worked at the job enthusiastically, eager to learn what the trick was going to turn out to be. Putting things in Shirley's name hadn't worked, and now Cunningham stayed clear of her and other relatives and chose charities.

At last, success. He could tell that this time he had found a method that was going to work for him. Each gift eased the strain, allowing a bit of humanity to return. The trouble was that partial relief was no longer enough, he had been too badly stretched. A tug on even one finger or toe is unendurable to a man who has been for days on the rack.

When his lawyers, puzzled by the continued absence of any tricks, pressed for explanations, and he told them that he planned to give itall away, down to the last penny, they called his doctor. For a while Cunningham feared there would be an effort to have him committed. But the last thing the doctor wanted was fuss, possible investigations. He backed up his patient as sane and competent, and the lawyers eventually, went along.

Not before they had spoken to Shirley, enough to give her some idea of what was going on.