Another continuation would give me that hundred years, said the senator, talking to himself. A hundred years and some to spare, for this time I’ll be careful of myself. I’ll lead a cleaner life. Eat sensibly and cut out liquor and tobacco and the woman-chasing.
There were ways and means, of course. There always were. And he would find them, for he knew all the dodges. After five hundred years in world government, you got to know them all. If you didn’t know them, you simply didn’t last.
Mentally he listed the possibilities as they occurred to him.
ONE: A person could engineer a continuation for someone else and then have that person assign the continuation to him. It would be costly, of course, but it might be done.
You’d have to find someone you could trust and maybe you couldn’t find anyone you could trust that far—for life continua-tion was something hard to come by. Most people, once they got it, wouldn’t give it back.
Although on second thought, it probably wouldn’t work. For there’d be legal angles. A continuation was a gift of society to one specific person to be used by him alone. It would not be transferable. It would not be legal property. It would not be something that one owned. It could not be bought or sold, it could not be assigned.
If the person who had been granted a continuation died before he got to use it—died of natural causes, of course, of wholly natural causes that could be provable—why, maybe, then—But still it wouldn’t work. Not being property, the continuation would not be part of one’s estate. It could not be bequeathed. It most likely would revert to the issuing agency.
Cross that one off, the senator told himself.
TWO: He might travel to New York and talk to the party’s executive secretary. After all, Gibbs and Scott were mere messengers. They had their orders to carry out the dictates of the party and that was all. Maybe if he saw someone in authority—
But, the senator scolded himself, that is wishful thinking. The party’s through with me. They’ve pushed their continuation rack-et as far as they dare push it and they have wrangled about all they figure they can get. They don’t dare ask for more and they need my continuation for someone else most likely—someone who’s a comer; someone who has vote appeal.
And I, said the senator, am an old has-been.
Although I’m a tricky old rascal, and ornery if I have to be, and slippery as five hundred years of public life can make one.
After that long, said the senator, parenthetically, you have no more illusions, not even of yourself.
I couldn’t stomach it, he decided. I couldn’t live with myself if I went crawling to New York—and a thing has to be pretty bad to make me feel like that. I’ve never crawled before and I’m not crawling now, not even for an extra hundred years and a shot at immortality.
Cross that one off, too, said the senator.
THREE: Maybe someone could be bribed.
Of all the possibilities, that sounded the most reasonable. There always was someone who had a certain price and always someone else who could act as intermediary. Naturally, a world senator could not get mixed up directly in a deal of that sort.
It might come a little high, but what was money for? After all, he reconciled himself, he’d been a frugal man of sorts and had been able to lay away a wad against such a day as this.
The senator moved a rook and it seemed to be all right, so he left it there.
Of course, once he managed the continuation, he would have to disappear. He couldn’t flaunt his triumph in the party’s face. He couldn’t take a chance of someone asking how he’d been continuated. He’d have to become one of the people, seek to be for-gotten, live in some obscure place and keep out of the public eye.
Norton was the man to see. No matter what one wanted, Norton was the man to see. An appointment to be secured, someone to be killed, a concession on Venus or a spaceship contract—Norton did the job. All quietly and discreetly and no questions asked. That is, if you had the money. If you didn’t have the money, there was no use of seeing Norton.
Otto came into the room on silent feet.
“A gentleman to see you, sir,” he said.
The senator stiffened upright in his chair.
“What do you mean by sneaking up on me?” he shouted. “Always pussyfooting. Trying to startle me. After this you cough or fall over a chair or something so I’ll know that you’re around.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Otto. “There’s a gentleman here. And there are those letters on the desk to read.”
“I’ll read the letters later,” said the senator.
“Be sure you don’t forget,” Otto told him, stiffly.
“I never forget,” said the senator. “You’d think I was getting senile, the way you keep reminding me.”
“There’s a gentleman to see you,” Otto said patiently. “A Mr. Lee.”
“Anson Lee, perhaps.”
Otto sniffed. “I believe that was his name. A newspaper person, sir.”
“Show him in,” said the senator.
He sat stolidly in his chair and thought: Lee’s found out about it. Somehow he’s ferreted out the fact the party’s thrown me over. And he’s here to crucify me.
He may suspect, but he cannot know. He may have heard a minor, but he can’t be sure. The party would keep mum, must necessarily keep mum, since it can’t openly admit its traffic in life continuation. So Lee, having heard a rumor, had come to blast it out of me, to catch me by surprise and trip me up with words.
I must not let him do it, for once the thing is known, the wolves will come in packs knee deep.
Lee was walking into the room and the senator rose and shook his hand.
“Sorry to disturb you, senator,” Lee told him, “but I thought maybe you could help me.”
“Anything at all,” the senator said, affably. “Anything I can. Sit down, Mr. Lee.”
“Perhaps you read my story in the morning paper,” said Lee. “The one on Dr. Carson’s disappearance.”
“No,” said the senator. “No, I’m afraid I—”
He rumbled to a stop, astounded.
He hadn’t read the paper!
He had forgotten to read the paper!
He always read the paper. He never failed to read it. It was a solemn rite, starting at the front and reading straight through to the back, skipping only those sections which long ago he’d found not to be worth the reading.
He’d had the paper at the institute and he had been interrupted when the girl told him that Dr. Smith would see him. He had come out of the office and he’d left the paper in the reception room.
It was a terrible thing. Nothing, absolutely nothing, should so upset him that he forgot to read the paper.
“I’m afraid I didn’t read the story,” the senator said lamely. He simply couldn’t force himself to admit that he hadn’t read the paper.
“Dr. Carson,” said Lee, “was a biochemist, a fairly famous one. He died ten years or so ago, according to an announcement from a little village in Spain, where he had gone to live. But I have reason to believe, senator, that he never died at all, that he may still be living.”