Short Fiction

mockingly contrite. “It was Dr. Lowiewski’s expressed wish that his remains be cremated as soon after death as possible, and that funeral services be held over his ashes. The big electric furnace in the metallurgical lab will do, I think.”

“But⁠ ⁠… but there’ll be all sorts of formalities⁠—” the Englishman protested.

“Now you forget. Our contract,” MacLeod reminded him. “We stand upon our contractual immunity: we certainly won’t allow any stupid bureaucratic interference with our deceased colleague’s wishes. We have a regular M.D. on our payroll, in case anybody has to have a death certificate to keep him happy, but beyond that⁠—” He shrugged.

“It burns me up, though!” Suzanne Maillard cried. “After the spaceship is built, and the Moon is annexed to the Western Union, there will be publicity, and people will eulogize this species of an Iscariot!”

Heym ben-Hillel, who had been staring at MacLeod in shocked unbelief, roused himself.

“Well, why not? Isn’t the creator of the Lowiewski function transformations and the rules of inverse probabilities worthy of eulogy?” He turned to MacLeod. “I couldn’t have done what you did, but maybe it was for the best. The traitor is dead; the mathematician will live forever.”

“You miss the whole point,” MacLeod said. “Both of you. It wasn’t a question of revenge, like gangsters bumping off a double-crosser. And it wasn’t a question of whitewashing Lowiewski for posterity. We are the MacLeod Research Team. We owe no permanent allegiance to, nor acknowledge the authority of, any national sovereignty or any combination of nations. We deal with national governments as with equals. In consequence, we must make and enforce our own laws.

“You must understand that we enjoy this status only on sufferance. The nations of the world tolerate the Free Scientists only because they need us, and because they know they can trust us. Now, no responsible government official is going to be deceived for a moment by this suicide story we’ve confected. It will be fully understood that Lowiewski was a traitor, and that we found him out and put him to death. And, as a corollary, it will be understood that this Team, as a Team, is fully trustworthy, and that when any individual Team member is found to be untrustworthy, he will be dealt with promptly and without public scandal. In other words, it will be understood, from this time on, that the MacLeod Team is worthy of the status it enjoys and the responsibilities concomitant with it.”

Last Enemy

Along the U-shaped table, the subdued clatter of dinnerware and the buzz of conversation was dying out; the soft music that drifted down from the overhead sound outlets seemed louder as the competing noises diminished. The feast was drawing to a close, and Dallona of Hadron fidgeted nervously with the stem of her wineglass as last-moment doubts assailed her.

The old man at whose right she sat noticed, and reached out to lay his hand on hers.

“My dear, you’re worried,” he said softly. “You, of all people, shouldn’t be, you know.”

“The theory isn’t complete,” she replied. “And I could wish for more positive verification. I’d hate to think I’d got you into this⁠—”

Garnon of Roxor laughed. “No, no!” he assured her. “I’d decided upon this long before you announced the results of your experiments. Ask Girzon; he’ll bear me out.”

“That’s true,” the young man who sat at Garnon’s left said, leaning forward. “Father has meant to take this step for a long time. He was waiting until after the election, and then he decided to do it now, to give you an opportunity to make experimental use of it.”

The man on Dallona’s right added his voice. Like the others at the table, he was of medium stature, brown-skinned and dark-eyed, with a wide mouth, prominent cheekbones and a short, square jaw. Unlike the others, he was armed, with a knife and pistol on his belt, and on the breast of his black tunic he wore a scarlet oval patch on which a pair of black wings, with a tapering silver object between them had been superimposed.

“Yes, Lady Dallona; the Lord Garnon and I discussed this, oh, two years ago at the least. Really, I’m surprised that you seem to shrink from it, now. Of course, you’re Venus-born, and customs there may be different, but with your scientific knowledge⁠—”

“That may be the trouble, Dirzed,” Dallona told him. “A scientist gets in the way of doubting, and one doubts one’s own theories most of all.”

“That’s the scientific attitude, I’m told,” Dirzed replied, smiling. “But somehow, I cannot think of you as a scientist.” His eyes traveled over her in a way that would have made most women, scientists or otherwise, blush. It gave Dallona of Hadron a feeling of pleasure. Men often looked at her that way, especially here at Darsh. Novelty had something to do with it⁠—her skin was considerably lighter than usual, and there was a pleasing oddness about the structure of her face. Her alleged Venusian origin was probably accepted as the explanation of that, as of so many other things.

As she was about to reply, a man in dark gray, one of the upper-servants who were accepted as social equals by the Akor-Neb nobles, approached the table. He nodded respectfully to Garnon of Roxor.

“I hate to seem to hurry things, sir, but the boy’s ready. He’s in a trance-state now,” he reported, pointing to the pair of visiplates at the end of the room.

Both of the ten-foot-square plates were activated. One was a solid luminous white; on the other was the image of a boy of twelve or fourteen, seated at a big writing machine. Even allowing for the fact that the boy was in a hypnotic trance, there was an expression of idiocy on his loose-lipped, slack-jawed face, a pervading dullness.

“One of our best sensitives,” a man with a beard, several places down the table on Dallona’s right, said. “You remember him, Dallona; he produced that communication from the discarnate Assassin, Sirzim. Normally, he’s a