Half-Past Eternity

Chapter Four Empire of the Damned

The meeting was held in a room so new that it still smelled of damp plaster. Dr. Tomlinson walked briskly in, pushing the door open. Linda looked quickly over her shoulder and pushed herself away from Sam Banth. Her eyes had a heavy-lidded look. Her lips were parted and her face and throat were flushed. It troubled Tomlinson to sec her like that. Banth gave him an impudent grin.

“Prader’ll be along any minute, doc,” Sam said. Prader was the combination lawyer and accountant hired by Sam when the two corporations were being formed.

The three of them sat at the board table. Linda kept her smoky eyes on Sam Banth. Dr. Tomlinson sorted his papers.

Prader came in with a short mincing stride, his briefcase under his arm. He apologized profusely for the delay. He found his chair, unbuckled the briefcase and took out a minute book. He was a giant of a man down to the waist, but his legs were absurdly short. Once he sat down he had a commanding presence, emphasized by a jutting jaw and black, unwinking eyes. Afoot he merely looked absurd.

“Let’s take Dr. Tomlinson’s pet first,” Sam said. “The meeting of the Board of the Tomlinson Research Foundation, Incorporated, will please come to order. We better take the financial report first, doctor.”

Tomlinson found the proper page. “Ah, yes. The donation this month from Champions, Incorporated was thirty-seven thousand, five hundred. Twenty-six hundred and ten went for salaries and wages. Twenty-four thousand was applied against the building. Eighteen thousand, three hundred of new equipment was ordered. The total comes to forty-four thousand nine hundred and ten. There was thirteen hundred and three on hand from the previous month. Thus the deficit to date is six thousand one hundred and seven, plus, of course, the additional fourteen thousand outstanding on the lab. I’ve given the figures to the nearest dollar for simplicity’s sake.”

Sam said harshly, “The purpose of the large donation was to build up a cash reserve. Instead you spent every dime of it and more too. I don’t know as I care for that. What’s that eighteen thousand three hundred for equipment?”

“Let’s take things in order, Mr. Banth,” Prader said smoothly. “I see you have the progress sheets on your phase of construction, Dr. Tomlinson. If you’ll pass them over I’ll enter the pertinent data in the minute book. I — ah — believe that we can dispense with the reading of the minutes of the previous meeting. Any new business?”

Tomlinson interrupted Sam. “Yes. We’re on the track of a new method of excitation. Rather than go into detail I’ll merely say that rather than the concocting of the precise stimulants for the secretion pattern of the individual, it is based on placing the individual at the focal point of a vibrating magnetic field. Nerve tissue so stimulated has shown an almost incredible impulse speed. Our barrier in the injection method was a speed-up of fifty percent. So far we cannot determine the barrier in the new method.”

“I don’t see any particular excuse for any new method,” Banth said.

Tomlinson gave him a surprised look. “But this is a research group! There is always a reason for research, Banth.”

Sam looked down at his big fists for a moment. He looked up quickly. “I would like the privilege, as a large stockholder, to countersign all checks issued by the Tomlinson Research Foundation, and approve all orders for materials.”

“I was told I would have a free hand.”

“To milk Champions, Inc., of every dime, eh?” Banth said. “Not so fast, doc. Not quite so fast. Maybe it was agreed, but it can be put to a vote.” He looked meaningfully at Linda. “So let’s vote on it, doc. My forty-nine percent votes that one Sam Banth be dealt into your financial picture.”

“And my forty-one percent,” said Tomlinson “is, of course, against such a change in our picture. Really, you disappoint me, Banth.”

Both men looked at Linda. She had turned a bit pale. She looked quickly at Sam and then, more shyly, at her father. “Some compromise, maybe,” she said weakly.

“Vote, baby,” Sam said.

She gave him a look of anger. “Don’t try to tell me what to do! I’ll vote with my father. Against you.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Then he grinned. “Good girl. I like a good loyal girl. You win, doc. But let’s have a gentleman’s agreement. Let’s turn over the same amount this month and you see if you can hang onto some of it.”

“That will suit me,” Tomlinson said quietly.

“That should wind up the foundation,” Prader said. “Now, Mr. Banth. How did your enterprise function? Financial report first, of course.”

“Our cut of the wages of all eleven employed graduates came to seventy-eight hundred. That end is chicken feed so far. Eventually it’ll be the big end of the stick. Income from wagers amounted to one hundred nine thousand, three hundred and five.”

Prader whistled involuntarily. Tomlinson’s eyebrows went up.

“Now think it out for a minute,” Banth said. “This month was the end of the gravy train on wagers. The boys are on guard now. I’m going to have to bet through dummies. The bets will have to be smaller. At the beginning of month there was eight thousand two hundred in the kitty, after turning over the thirty-seven five to the foundation. That, plus income, equals one hundred twenty-five thousand, three hundred and five. Another thirty-seven five to the foundation leaves eighty-seven, eight oh five. Expenses were fourteen two. Reserve for taxes twenty, leaving fifty-three, six oh five. I suggest a twenty buck dividend on each of the thousand outstanding shares. It will take us down to thirty-three, six oh five, enough to cover operating expenses for the coming month. Eighty-two hundred bucks for the doctor, ninety-eight hundred for me and two thousand for Linda. Shall we vote? Hands up? Done,

“Now for the progress report. As I said before we have eleven ‘graduates’. There are twelve in training and we ought to have four of those out bringing in income by the end of the month and an additional six or seven lined up. The twelve consist of three boxers in three different weight divisions, a professional magician whose hand wasn’t quicker than the eye, a pro miler — his income will be peanuts but the side bets might be all right on a four-minute mile, one golfer whose trouble was not enough distance on the drives, a baseball pitcher who had lost his fast stuff, a team of three circus acrobats, and two pro footballers who were about through.

“Every one of them and also our ‘graduates’ understand that if they do any talking we can flood their particular speciality with graduates and put them right back where they started. We’ve kept the press from finding out anything. Sooner or later they’ll suspect and track it down, of course. Then we’ll have to throw up some smoke screens. As to future plans, I want to go down to Mexico and grab a couple of bullfighters. Headliners in that trade make thousands for an afternoon’s work and reflexes are pretty important. Collections and accounting may be a problem, but I think we can handle it all right. I have — some experience in making collections.”

Prader organized the minutes into proper form. The dividend checks were drawn up and distributed. Salaries were given an upward boost.

The meeting broke up and Tomlinson went back to his research in the labs.

Sam and Linda walked slowly down toward the farmhouse. She held the folded check in her hand.

“You’re the girl who wanted to be smothered with money,” he said, giving her a crooked smile.

“Two thousand isn’t going to smother me, Sam.”

“There’s a lot more in the picture.”

“How do you mean that?”

“Take those two payments to the foundation. They total seventy-five thousand. Ten percent of that is seventy-five hundred, plus what you’ve got in your hand would make your take for two months total ninety-five hundred.”

She stopped. He turned and faced her. “What are you trying to tell me, Sam? What are you trying to get across? The whole agreement was made because you showed dad how it would help his work. If you cut off all funds—”

“Let’s not get sentimental, Linda honey.”

“I’m being practical. He treats the people you bring here. If he didn’t get the agreed money, he might stop treatments, and then where would you be?”

Sam scuffed the ground with his toe. “Have you taken a look at the kids he hired? Have you seen that one named Howard Dineen? Have you seen him looking at you?”

She flushed. “I guess I have.”

“He’s a big dumb-looking towhead and his red ears stick out but the doc says he’s the keenest one in the group. And if you told Dineen to jump up in the air and land on his head, he’d knock himself out.”

“Sam, darling, you’re — frightening me.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know why. I was just showing you that if we’re smart and if your old man should decide to walk out on the deal, Dineen could be made to go along with us. You’d just have to smile at him every Tuesday. That’s all.”

“Why would dad walk out?”

“If you should vote with me a few times, honey, he might get sore. But that would be a shame because he’d walk out with forty-one percent of the stock and forty-one percent of the profits. You’d inherit. I suppose. Eventually.”

“Don’t talk like that!” she whispered. “Don’t!”

He gave an elaborate shrug. “Now why act like that? I didn’t say a word. I was just thinking that if you ever did inherit we could keep Dineen working for peanuts. You’d take fifty-one percent each month of the total. Our target is one hundred ‘graduates.’ After we get to that point, we won’t treat any more of them. Some will make a lot, some won’t make much. They will average a gross of twelve thousand a year. And we’ll average forty percent of that. Call it an even half million a year. And little Linda would he getting a quarter million a year, all her very own before Uncle Sugar’s cut. I’m just thinking out loud. Would that smother you?”

She laughed nervously. “It might bring on shortness of breath.”

“He’s an old guy. What is he? Close to seventy?”

“Don’t, Sam. Don’t!”

“You act like I might be trying to talk you into something, kid.”

“Sam! Are you?”

He shut the kitchen door behind them, swung her around and backed her against the closed door. His mouth was an inch from hers. He said softly, “How do I know whether I’m talking you into anything? Can you be talked into anything?”

“I’m frightened, Sam. Scared green. Hear my heart. It’s pounding.”

He took a small box out of his pocket, opened it with his thumbnail. The stone was a living and perfect green. “Remember that dream I tried to sell you? Will you buy it?”

“Oh, Sam!”

“There was no more to the dream. I got to go line up a couple of bullfighters. Acapulco is maybe an hour and a half, two hours, by air from Mexico City.”

“But I couldn’t leave with you,” she whispered.

“Go visit a girl friend. A girl friend in Seattle, or New Orleans. You got two thousand. Take yourself a vacation.”

She bit her lip. “I might do that.”

“If you want to write me or anything, I’ll be at a hotel called the Del Prado in Mexico City. I’ll get there next Tuesday.”

“I’ll send you a special delivery.”

“You do that.”

Howard Dineen crouched and looked moodily in at the cage of white mice. One would stop for a moment and he could see it. Then it would completely disappear and reappear on the opposite side of the cage. He knew that this group had been speeded to a point where the eye could not follow their normal movements. Dr. Tomlinson had fretted about the possible structural damage that would be self-inflicted by the mice through their mere velocity of movement, but it was beginning to appear that the new vibration-born acceleration also caused a compensation in the structural qualities of bone and tissue so that the expected damage did not result.

Dineen was moody about the changes which this past seven months had made in him. Before coming here there had been nothing but the work, the intense, almost feverish devotion to the work of research. And now another factor had intruded. Linda Tomlinson. Even as he stared into the cage he seemed to see her walking toward him.

He had tried all manner of things to chase her out of his mind. He lay at night picturing her in the embrace of that crude Banth person, and instead of making it better, it made it worse so that he heard himself groan aloud. He had walked the nearby roads and fields until he was exhausted, and still he dreamed of Linda. He had forced himself into an intrigue with one of the new lab girls who had recently reported, but it had been awkward and tawdry and utterly disappointing.

She had been gone for ten days now. And so had Banth. He tortured himself with conjectures about whether they were together. Dr. Tomlinson bad said that Linda was visiting a school friend. Dr. Tomlinson did not seem to be worried.

Howard Dineen knew that it was hindering his work, his powers of concentration. He made mistakes in timing and in recording and found it necessary to repeat an awkward number of experiments. He told himself a thousand times that she was a tramp, Banth’s girl, a divorced woman. Nothing worked.

“Hello, Howard,” her voice said, close behind him. He thought how odd it was that his imagination could consistently give him such convincing impressions of her.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Linda asked.

He spun around awkwardly, rapping his elbow smartly against the side of the cage. He rubbed it and said vacuously, “You’re back!”

She wore a dark suit, so severely tailored that it accented rather than concealed the intense femaleness of her. Her dark hair had been cropped fashionably short. Her eyes puzzled him. They had lost a certain awareness while she had been away. They had an almost glazed look, as though she were an automaton set in motion by a superior force for a specific purpose.

“Yes, I’m back, Howard. How has the work been going?”

“The work? Oh, fine. Great. How was your trip, Miss Tomlinson?”

“Do you have to be so formal? My name is Linda. It was a nice trip.”

“I’m glad — Linda.” He flushed, knowing that the way he had said her name, the way he had mouthed it so gently had told her too much.

“I’m glad to see you again, Howard. Dad is always so engrossed, and Mr. Banth is so busy. It seems like you’re the only real friend I have here ”

The suspicions of Sam Banth melted like snow in a furnace. He grinned. “I want to be your friend, Linda. Your — good friend.”

“I don’t see any reason why you can’t be, Sam. Dad says you’re ever so clever.”

He flushed again. “He overrates me, Linda.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m too bold.”

“I won’t.”

“I have a new car and I’m timid about driving it into New York at night. I wondered if tonight you and I could — I mean it would be nice to—”

“I’d love it, Linda!”

“At seven, then. No, make it six, so the evening will be long.”

“At six, then,” he said reverently. She left. Howard turned back to the cage and spoke tender words to the uncomprehending mice who flitted back and forth like rays of soft white light.

Sam arrived the next day, in the afternoon. He sought out Linda. He spoke a few words to her and later she came to his room. He shut the door.

“How did the kid react?”

“How did you expect?” she said bitterly. “He’s nice, Sam. Too nice for what we’re doing to him.”

He held her shoulders. “Come on, now! Don’t go soft on me. We’ve got to keep the kid in line and know he’s going to stay in line before we do — the other thing.”

“You’re cold, Sam. You’re cold and hard and cruel.”

His hands tightened on her shoulders and his mouth curled. “Duckling, I was protecting your sensibilities. I used nice words. I could have said before we kill your father. I was being delicate.”

Her eyes half closed. She swayed. “Sam, maybe I... can’t—”

“I made you a promise in Acapulco, duckling. I told you that you’d follow through — all the way — or you’d never see me again. It still stands that way.”

“Please, Sam.”

“Don’t forget we’re married, duckling. We’re gay newlyweds. Remember? I’m your staunch and loyal husband. Between us we’ll own a hundred percent of this business. You said you wanted that.”

“All right, Sam. All right,” she said wearily. “I’ll be all right — afterward.”

“You better be. Now get out of here.”