Half-Past Eternity

Chapter Five The Iron Maiden

It was a most unfortunate accident. Lieutenant Klatsa of the state police, who handled the investigation, saw how it had happened. The daughter — a nice item, that one, even with her tear-puffed eyes — told how Tomlinson had left the dinner table saying that he wanted to take a look at progress on the small addition to the main lab building. It was dusk, a fool time of day for an old duffer like that to be out climbing ladders.

The ladder had been tilted up against the cinderblock wall, with the legs in soft sand. It was clear how the ladder had shifted and slid. It came down with the old boy and he would have survived the fall had it not been for the cinderblock. The edge of it caught him at the temple.

The man named Banth was pretty up set about the whole thing. And odd setup; the old man working with rabbits and cats and rats right on the same property where this Banth operated a health camp or something.

He made his report and the body was taken to a Kingston funeral home and buried two days later in a local cemetery, at a service attended by the weeping daughter, a grim-faced Sam Banth and the entire staff.

After dark, as Howard was heading back to the dormitory, he passed Linda’s car in the drive. He did not notice her sitting in it. “Howard!” she called. He turned back and she said, “Get in, Howard. Sit beside me for a little while.” He sensed the tears behind her words.

She began to sob softly as he got in. She leaned against his shoulder. A scalding tear fell on the back of his hand, and her helplessness turned his heart over and over.

“There, there,” he said. He held her in his arms. He wished she would keep crying forever so that he could hold her.

At last she was under control. She sat up and moved away from him.

“What is it? Anything I can do, Linda?”

“I don’t think so. Howard. There was a board meeting today. That horrible Mr. Prader and Mr. Banth and me. I thought things were going so well. I thought dad had left me a little money. But it doesn’t look that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Prader says that we’re overextended. We expanded too fast. Notes have to be met. The only thing to do, they say, is disband the staff and close the labs.”

“They can’t do that!” Howard said hotly.

“But we can’t afford to keep them up. No one man could handle the treatments, you know. I guess it’s all over.”

“But that’s silly! I could handle them by myself. The big staff was for research.”

“You could do it by yourself. Would you do that for me? I think we could keep on paying you the same amount.”

“They should have had me in that meeting. What do they know about what Dr. Tomlinson was doing? In another three days I’ll have the new equipment set up so that an idiot child could operate it. Dr. Tomlinson and I were working on making the outfit both portable and equipped with fool-proof controls. I don’t know why he wanted it that way, but now maybe I understand.”

“Oh, Howard! If you’ll only stay there’s a chance that the gamble will pay off. After all dad did, it seems a shame to give it all up.”

“I thought Banth was making a good thing out of all this. I thought those athletes were bringing in a good return. I don’t approve of what you people were using Tomlinson’s discoveries for, but I thought that it was at least profitable. To me it has always seemed like monkeying with people’s life spans, which could be a second cousin to murder. What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”

“No. Go on.”

“You keep giving athletes miraculous reaction times and they automatically become tops in each sport. It destroys the basic idea of competition. When the world knows, and some day it will, they’ll either outlaw the ‘graduates’ of this place, or competitive sport will be dead.”

“But in the meantime it’s profitable, Howard. But not profitable enough. The return hasn’t been big enough to cover the investment.”

“That surprises me. It doesn’t seem logical the way Banth tosses the coin around. But I guess that’s none of my business. I’d do anything in the world to help you. Fire the rest of the research staff and I’ll stay on and run the new gismo once I get it hooked up. If you have to cut down even further, I could show you how to operate it in twenty minutes.”

Her arms slipped around his neck and her lips were insistent. It was not the sort of tender kiss that he had expected. In some obscure way it disappointed him.

“Thank you, darling,” she whispered.

Sam Banth walked into the smallest lab building, the only one that was not closed when the rest of the staff departed. Howard looked up and nodded distantly.

“That the works?” Banth asked, pointing at the apparatus. It was a framework sarcophagus, an iron maiden formed of metal tubes, hinged to open and admit the patient. Affixed to the tubing at what appeared to be random points were cup-sized discs. The back of each disc was an exposed maze of wiring and tiny tubes.

“That’s it,” Dineen said absently.

“How does it work?”

“We don’t know. Dr. Tomlinson abandoned his previous line of conjecture a few weeks before he died. If it was pure stimulation, the body structure could not withstand the increased speed. We were working on the theory that in some unknown way it put the individual out of phase with normal time. In other words it creates for each individual an entire universe of accelerated time in which he is the sole example.”

“I don’t mean why does it work, Dineen,” Banth said. “I mean how do you make it work?”

“Here’s the control box. You can see that the wiring passes through it before leading to the discs. Note that there are two dials, calibrated, on the slanted side of the box. You translate the subject’s weight into kilograms and set the left-hand dial carefully. There’s a mass problem involved. The right-hand dial works much the same way as a rheostat control. You can see that it is calibrated with a diminishing interval between markings. Those markings are in percentages. The dial must be turned slowly. It is geometric. The first centimeter gives you a ten percent acceleration, the next centimeter twenty. Then forty, eighty, one sixty, three twenty and so on. It goes so high because we used it on lab animals. For humans this little stop should be slid over so that there is no chance of the acceleration going beyond twenty per cent. Anything beyond that and the individual cannot be trained to simulate normalcy.”

“Have you turned the dial over all the way on an animal?”

“Once. It was a bit — terrifying. We filled a cage with ample food for the lifetime of a mouse. The mouse disappeared for the smallest fraction of a second and then reappeared, quite dead on the bottom of the cage. Most of the food and the water was gone. We were able to tell that it had died of old age. There was a distinct malformation of the nostrils and lungs that had not been there before, showing that in the first part of its accelerated life span it had trouble sucking the air into its lungs with sufficient speed to maintain life. You see, it had to overcome the inertia of the air.”

“Almost anybody could operate the thing the way it’s set up, eh?”

Howard smiled. “If you’re thinking of firing me, I’d advise against it. I’m committing a criminal act using this process on human beings, even with their consent. You don’t know yet what the potential after-effects may be. I’m trying to find out. If you block me, I’ll go directly to the authorities. You see, I’m the only person with the exception of Dr. Tomlinson among the research staff who knew what you’ve been doing here.”

Banth pursed his lips. “That’s pretty big talk. Feeling tough, eh?”

“No sir. Just practical. My salary is small. I think you’ll see that it’s best to keep me around. I’ll even be frank with you. If it weren’t for Miss Tomlinson I would have quit six months ago when I first found out what was really happening here.”

Banth looked back at the apparatus for a long moment. It looked absurdly like some skeletal robot.

“Keep working, Dineen,” he said. “Any after-effects you can isolate will be helpful. I’ll send two more boys around this afternoon. They’re young enough so that ten per cent ought to do it.”

Wally Christopher caught the signal and shifted left. He adjusted his sun glasses. He saw the pitch go down and the lusty swing. The ball was an upslanting streak. He gauged it and moved over, careful not to move too fast. It came down, ridiculously slow. He moved toward it, as slowly as he dared, then dived, gloved hand outstretched. The ball smacked into the pocket and stuck. He rolled over and over, hearing the full-throated roar of the crowd. In days gone by it would have given him a lift. Now it was just too easy. He jogged in toward the dugout and he realised with something close to fear that baseball just wasn’t very much fun any more.

The girl across the net from Barbara Anson was playing with taut despair. They were into the second set after Barbara’s 6–1 win in the first. It was four games to one, Barbara’s favor and she had this game at deuce. Barbara’s serve. She softened the serve and let the opponent return it. She forced herself to place her own return within easy reach of the younger woman’s powerful forehand. Barbara made herself lose the return, smacking it into the net. She walked back to serve. It would have looked silly to win without giving up a single point in any game. Yet she knew she could do it. She had always loved the tense competition of the game. Now it was like playing with children, humoring them along, encouraging them. She wondered if she should give up the game — for good. The old thrill was gone.

The seventeenth had always bothered him. Four hundred and sixty-five yards, par four. Before, it had been a case of getting the second wood close enough so that the approach could be played up to one putt the green for a possible par. The only chance of a birdie was to sink the approach. Now he was alone on the hole in the graying dusk. He teed the ball, took a limbering swing and then addressed it. He swung with every ounce of effort and speed at his command, breaking his wrists at the right point for that final snap. Club head against ball made the deepest, heaviest crack he had ever heard on a golf course. The ball went out and it looked slow to him, but it rose, floating, fading. When at last he walked up to it he saw that he was not more than thirty yards from the edge of the green. He looked at it for a long time and then picked the ball up and trudged back in the direction of the clubhouse.

And all over the country, sports figures, doing at last, with ease, the things of which they had so long dreamed, became discontented. Now the ability was there, and yet it had been gained too easily, with too little effort. It was suspect, as are all gifts. Records were broken. The sports writers talked about ‘the new crop of immortals’ and when they talked among each other they marveled at the comebacks that had been made. They speculated. They did not guess the answer. There were new champions. Bored champions. Wealthy, yawning champions. Restless and lonely. They were the new strangers in a strange land. There was no need to train, to practice. The only goal was to refrain from winning too flagrantly. There was no competition for them. And thus all the games became work.

Sam Banth spent less and less time on the property and more time in the city. Linda’s devotion bored him. He would not have said that he was in any way a moralist, and yet he was oddly troubled that Linda was so unaffected by the death of her father. She had planned it with him and had correctly given her testimony which made it all the more obvious that it had been an accident.

Sam felt no special guilt at having committed the crime with his own hands. It bad been absurdly easy, once the plan had been made. And Tomlinson, at best, had very few years left to him. It was not like killing a young person — hardly, to Sam, like killing a person at all.

Yet there was something almost obscene about the placid and untroubled way that Linda treated it, as though it were an unfortunate incident.

When she was — unattainable she had been an excitement to him. Now she cloyed and stated and smothered him.

Two factors entered into his planning. The apparatus was portable and could just as well be set up in New York. Without Linda the entire take would be his. He woke up often in the middle of the night thinking about those two factors. The puzzling additional factor was Howard Dineen. How would Dineen react if he and Linda made their marriage public? Linda wanted it made public. Sam had demurred with the reason that to do so would alienate Dineen. But now Linda knew how to run the apparatus. In fact, she had treated two “students” with almost no supervision from Dineen. She was growing more insistent in her demands.

From a practical point of view it would be wise to publicize their relationship before Linda met with an “accident.” Then the marriage licence, reposing in his safe deposit box, would not be in the least suspect. It would be accepted as a legitimate document, which it was.

But to alienate Dineen might mean his running to the newspapers with the full account. It might cut the throat of the golden goose. “Graduates” might be barred from competition.

He worried the problem around in his mind for several weeks. The golden flow of money from the “graduates” increased. Instead of sating his needs it merely seemed to increase his itch to gather in all of it, not forty-nine percent.

And at last he had his plan, and it pleased him. It depended on how trusting Linda was. He covered his motive by a confusing monologue on tax structure.

“If you say so, dear,” Linda said. There was no suspicion in her now. She signed over her own stock and that which she had inherited from her father for the consideration of one dollar. The forms were duly notarized and recorded. Prader wore a wise look. Sam made a private vow to unload Prader and take on a new accountant-attorney.

The next day he went to a cheap rooming house and paid in advance for a room. That night, at dinner, he said to Howard and Linda, “I’ve got a pretty special customer who doesn’t want to be seen coming out here. It’s a profitable deal. Maybe we could take the thing into town. You said you could make it run on a house circuit.”

“It will take a few hours’ work.”

“Could you do that tonight? Then we can take it in in the morning.”

“Okay with me.” Dineen said.

Linda said just what Sam had hoped and expected. “Oh, can I come along?”

“If you want to, Linda. Sure.” He smiled at her. Inside he was laughing.

The furnished room was on East Ninety-third. It was dismal, with rug, walls, one overstuffed chair in varying shades of dirty brown. The two windows looked out onto an airshaft. No sun ever reached it. The low-wattage bulbs had to he kept on at all times.

“Charming setup,” Linda said.

Sam carried the iron maiden over by the table He unwrapped the blankets from around it. Howard busied himself with the connections. Sam sat on the bed and smoked until at last Howard sighed and backed away “All set.”

“When will this Important Person be along?” Linda asked.

“Any minute now.”

He put his hand in his pocket and, as he stepped close to Howard Dineen. he pulled out a worn leather sap. Back in hungrier days he had taken it away from a recalcitrant bookie customer. He planted the lead weight delicately behind Howard Dineen’s ear. Dineen sagged and fell.

Linda stood, her mouth open, her eyes wide. Horror and realization replaced surprise as Sam swung at her. The lead struck the corner of her jaw. He caught her as she fell.

It was awkward getting her inside the tubular iron maiden. He shut the hinged front of it and she slumped down inside it until her knees struck the front and she remained partially propped up. He pulled the control box toward him, set it at an approximation of her weight and twisted the other dial. As he did so he leaned against the front of the case to keep her from bursting it open. She began to move around inside so rapidly that she was blurred. He could not focus on her. If Dineen had not been lying it should take only a few moments before she became still, dead of thirst. At times he could see her and he guessed that she slept. When he was certain she was dead he would haul her out and put Dineen in there. It would be a mystery the police would never solve. Two people dead of thirst after a dozen witnesses had seen them alive earlier the same day.

He was totally unprepared for Dineen’s heavy step behind him, for the smashing blow against his jaw that drove him down into blackness.