Anti-Man

IX

I had been so tired and dejected that I had slept in my clothes, and I wasted no time now in getting to the window. I wiped a thin film of steam from it and pressed my face against the cold pane. But there was nothing to see; I was at a bad vantage point, looking out on the cliffs, most of the sky shielded by tall pines. I went into the living room to the row of windows that stretched across the front of the house. I could see it from there, hanging a hundred feet out from the cabin, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet in the air. It had the giant green letters W-A bent to form a globe painted on its side, the symbol of the World Authority military. It was not a troop transport, however. Only a scout. It swung out and swept along the hill, down to the base, up over a rise, and was gone. Abruptly, it turned and came back, drifting over the house, turning again, going away fast. I knew we had been found. The snow had stopped soon after I had come in the last time. It had not covered my last few sets of footprints.

The sound of chopper blades faded. Died completely.

Our time was up.

I looked out at the snow, at the telltale markings, the ugly crimson stain of the elk's blood, the frozen red puddles. For the first time, I was retchingly nauseated with my killing spree. At the time, it had seemed an urgent assignment. I had plodded through it, shooting, hacking apart, dragging to the cabin, throwing down the cellar stairs, numb from my effort, sapped by cold and exhaustion. And all that had led to a reflex grab for the gun when that man had spotted me with the flashlight.

Before, hunting had always been a sport, a pleasant test of my shooting skills. I had only shot birds, for there is something about a dead bird that carries no guilt. It is not the same as killing a warm rabbit, a soft-skinned elk. A bird is hard: pinions and beak and claws. It is almost not living, almost a mechanical construction. But the slaughter last night had been different, had been directed against other empathy-arousing beasts. It was not like me, not like me at all. I wondered, briefly, whether He had had anything to do with my sudden surge of blood lust.

But that sort of talk could lead me nowhere but back to the Frankenstein theory, and I had outgrown that. Hadn't I? Yes. He was a boon to mankind. A few animal deaths were petty compared to what He would be able to do when He had finished changing and was ready to aid us.

I started toward the cellar, checked myself. There was nothing He could do about the situation, for He was immobile. And perhaps I had been misinterpreting the helicopter. Maybe they didn't suspect. No, I was deluding myself by being optimistic. The wounded man had aroused suspicions. I got the rifle, loaded it, and checked the level of pins in my narcodart pistol. I pulled a chair up to the window and settled down to wait. I had promised Him time to finish whatever He was doing. I would see that He got it.

I tried to set aside thoughts of murder. I tried to see what I would have to do as my duty, nothing more. Duty. Duty. Dutydutydutyduty… I ran the word through my mind like a rat in a maze, and it bounced off deadends everywhere it went. Duty. Wasn't it my duty to see that mankind got a chance at immortality? Wasn't it my duty to see that death was stopped, that-perhaps-aging was reversed, that youth, was a right and not a privilege to be eventually taken away by Time? I talked to myself, sitting there by the window. The words sounded hollow; they seemed to strike things in the room, slide to the floor, lying about my feet like cold grease-puddles gone hard. I imagined killing a man, what it would be like. I had almost done it last night. I could do it, I told myself. I could kill a man as long as I did not have to see the corpse at close range. Duty. Murder. Immortality. Death. Duty. Duty.

When the troop transport came an hour and twenty minutes later, my nerves were shot. My hands trembled on the gun, and a tic had developed in my left cheek. The transport settled down two hills below, disgorging forty men in white snowsuits, all armed. I pushed back the curtain, slid the window open, and knocked out the screen with the rifle butt. I waited.

Duty. Murder. Duty.

I sighted on the lead man, wrapped a finger around the trigger, and promptly put the gun down without shooting. I had lost the battle with myself. Or, perhaps, I had won it. After fifteen years of living and breathing the code of a physician, after eight years of practicing that code, I could not fire at the man. The incident last night had been a freak. I had acted by reflex, under pressure. That was not the same as cold-blooded murder. Not the same at all.

The troops were crossing the open space quickly, hunched and running, guns held out to their sides, obviously expecting a bullet in the shoulder or face at any minute. I turned and ran to the cellar door, went down the steps two at a time

"Jacob!"

It was an excuse to go down, and I knew it. There was danger, yes, but I had confronted Him now chiefly because my curiosity needed salving.

"Jacob, you shouldn't have!"

And, truly, maybe I shouldn't have. I stopped and moved back against the wall, unable to speak. He had changed more than I had guessed. I knew that He was not human, but I had not been prepared for this. He filled half the cellar, a great pulsing mass of hideous, veined flesh, reddish-brown in color with patches of black cancer-like cells pocketing Him. He was attached to the walls with pseudopods that bored away into the stone, anchoring Him. To my left, a tangle of fleshy membranes and tubes formed his vocal apparatus. A deformed, overlarge mouth was set in a fold of flesh. There were no teeth in it and no evidence of the rest of His face anywhere around it. It was obviously just for communicating with me. I sensed, without being told, that He no longer consumed His food as a man would, but more like an amoeba, engulfing it whole.

Frankenstein! my mind screamed.

That strange, horrid laughter came again, freezing me even more solidly to the floor. I choked down my terror and concentrated on remembering Him as He had been-and remembering the promises He had made, the promises to help mankind if only I could gain Him some time, time enough. Well, now was the moment when I would discover His true nature and the value of all promises. "They're coming," I said. "I was going to shoot some of them to hold them up-but I can't."

"I know," He said. His voice was one of compassion and friendship. He was silent a moment. The vocal apparatus writhed, enlarged, grew into a many-petaled flower. When He spoke again, it was with His old voice. "I've been meaning to work on that all along," He said apologetically, referring to the ominous voice He had used before. "Just didn't have the time."

"What will you do?" I asked.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I leaped, my heart pounding. He laughed.

I turned, expecting the WA police with guns, handcuffs, and nasty faces. Instead, I stood looking at an android, an exact copy of Him as He had been back at the laboratory. "It's you!" I managed to say.

"I made it," He said. "It is a different facet of the same jewel, another me, not just another android. It has all the abilities I have gathered through the steps of my transformation, but has them without making those same transformations itself."

"But what purpose-"

Frankenstein, Frankenstein!

"To help mankind, as I told you, Jacob. Forget your Frankensteins. Yes, I have known what you've been thinking. Another ability of mine. But I certainly don't hold anything against you. I couldn't even if I should, because I have developed above the level of revenge and vendetta. Jacob, believe me, I only want to help mankind. I can use my powers to liberate each man's brain so that it is one hundred percent operable as is mine. Every man can become a superman."

"And develop into what you've become?"

"No, no, no. This is only a stage, Jacob, that a few android facets of me will have to undergo in order to produce more androids-a highly sophisticated form of budding. That's how I created this other me. Man will always look like Man, but will now have abilities far beyond anything he ever dreamed of."

I believed Him now. There was nothing else for me to do. "Then we'll explain it to the police-"

"No, Jacob," He said. "There will be a long, drawn-out fight before I am accepted by mankind. We have to play for more time."

"How, for God's sake!" I thought of the advancing troops.

"You'll take this one with you and let them kill him. They'll think they have finished off the menace of the Android-Who-Wouldn't-Take-Orders. That will give me time enough."

I stood, looking at the android who would die, the part of Him that was to be sacrificed. "One thing," I said.

"What is that, Jacob?" He could read my mind and find out, but He was being polite and letting me have my speeches.

"What will we do for room? You'll not only be making Man nearly immortal, but you'll be flooding the world with replicas of yourself, with Doppelgängers. Where will we put everyone?"

"With his entire intellect at hand, with all of his brain open to use, Man will move out into the stars, Jacob. There are no limits any longer. There is more than enough room, Jacob. I saw to that."

"You saw to it?"

"When I formed it, Jacob. When I created the universe."

I choked, almost fell. The new android gripped me and grinned His old grin. I looked back to the blob of tissue pulsing before me. "You are trying to say that-"

"You had no idea how unusual my flesh was, did you, Jacob? It's the flesh, Jacob. Sorry to break it to you so suddenly, but-as you know-there is so very little time. The soldiers are almost at the front door, by the way. You had better get my other self upstairs and let them kill him. I won't let them do anything to you, Jacob. As soon as things are straightened out here, I'll send one of my selves to you. I'll always be with you."

I turned and started up the stairs behind the android. My mind was spinning wildly, unable to settle on any orderly thought progression.

"And Jacob," He said behind me. I turned. "Man will not be nearly immortal. He will be completely immortal. The time has come. There will soon be an end to death."

We went upstairs into the living room. We walked to the door and threw it open, stepping onto the porch overlooking all that grand scenery. He walked down the steps into the snow, His arms outstretched, and they shot Him. Half a dozen marksmen opened fire. He jerked spasmodically, danced across the white carpet, and crashed to His face, blood pouring out of His body in twenty different places.

I raised my hands and stepped outside. It was Him they wanted to kill. They would take me prisoner and decide my fate later. Two WA policemen flanked me, cuffed my hands together, and led me across the frozen earth toward the copter on the far hill.

It was not snowing at all now. The wind had ceased to blow.

Once, I looked back at the bloody corpse. He had said there would soon be an end to death. I realized that this could not be called death. Not really. They had merely shot a husk. He lived on in the amoeboid flesh in the old ice cellar. And there would be thousands of other husks shortly. He was with us at last. He. And, of course, His name had always been spelled with a capital letter. He… Man was moving out. Man was immortal. The mystery of His flesh wrapped us like a blanket and carried us into the New World.

TWO: The enemy is self……