The Science Fiction Anthology. Fritz Leiber

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      Mrs. Jamieson turned to leave the room, but he stopped her. “You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

      “No, I don’t!” she said sharply. “You’re old enough to face realities. You are a Konv. You always will be a Konv. Have you forgotten your own father?”

      She turned her back and slammed the door. Earl stood very still for a long time in the room that was to have been happy for him. She was crying just beyond the wall.

      Earl did not use the room that first year. He slept in the second bedroom. He did not mention his frustrated desires to be normal, not after the first attempt, but he persisted in his efforts to be so. Use of the cylinder was out of the question for them now, anyway.

      In the spring Mrs. Jamieson caught a virus cold which resulted in a long convalescence. Earl moved into the new bedroom. At first she thought he moved in an effort to please her because of the illness, but she soon grew aware of her mistake.

      One day he disappeared.

      Mrs. Jamieson was alarmed. Had the Agents found him? She watched the papers daily for some word of Konvs being killed.

      The second day after his disappearance she found a small item. A Konv had raided the Agent’s office in Stockholm, killing three, and getting killed himself. Mrs. Jamieson dropped the paper immediately and went to Stockholm. She did not consider the risk. In Stockholm she found clothes and made discreet inquiries. The slain man had been a Finnish Konv, one of those left behind by Stinson as an undesirable. His wife had been killed by the Agents the week before. He had gone completely insane and made the raid singlehanded. Mrs. Jamieson read the account of crimes committed by the man and his wife, and determined to prevent Earl from making the mistake of taking on more than he could handle.

      When she arrived at her own home, Earl was in his room.

      “Where have you been?” she asked petulantly.

      “Oh, here and there.”

      “I thought you were involved in that fight in Stockholm.”

      He shook his head.

      She stood in the doorway and watched him leaning over his desk, attempting to write something on a sheet of paper. She was proud of his profile, tow-headed as a boy, handsome in a masculine way. He cracked his knuckles nervously.

      “What did you do?” she asked.

      Suddenly he flung the pencil down, jumped from his chair and paced the floor. “I talked to an Agent last night,” he said.

      “Where?”

      “Bangkok.”

      Mrs. Jamieson had to sit down. Finally she was able to ask, “How did it happen?”

      “I broke into the office there to get at the records. He caught me.”

      “What were you looking for?”

      “I wanted to learn the names of the men who killed Father.” He said the word strangely. He was unaccustomed to it.

      “Did you find them?”

      He pointed to the paper on his desk. Mrs. Jamieson, trembling, picked it up and read the names. Seeing them there, written like any other names would be written, made her furious. How could they? How could the names of murderers look like ordinary names? When she thought them in her mind, they even sounded like ordinary names—and they shouldn’t! She had always thought that those names, if she ever saw them, would be filthy, unholy scratches on paper, evil sounds, like the rustle of bedclothes to a jealous lover listening at a keyhole. “Tom Palieu” didn’t sound evil; neither did “Al Jonson.” She was shaken by this more than she would permit Earl to see.

      “Why did you want the names?”

      “I don’t know,” he said. “Curiosity, maybe, or a subconscious desire for revenge. I just wanted to see them.”

      “Tell me what happened! If an Agent saw you ... well, either he killed you or you killed him. But you’re here alive.”

      “I didn’t kill him. That’s what seems so strange. And he didn’t try to kill me. We didn’t even fight. He didn’t ask why I broke in without breaking the lock or even a window. He seemed to know. He did ask what I was doing there, and who I was. I told him, and ... he helped me get the names. He asked where I lived. ‘None of your damn business,’ I told him. Then he said he didn’t blame me for not telling, that Konvs must fear Agents, and hate them. Then he said, ‘Do you know why we kill Konvs? We kill them because there is no prison cell in the world that will hold a Konv. When they break the law, we have no choice. It is a terrible thing, but must be done. We don’t want your secret; we only want law and order. There is room enough in the world for both of us.’“

      Mrs. Jamieson was furious. “And you believed him?”

      “I don’t know. I just know what he said—and that he let me go without trying to shoot me.”

      Mrs. Jamieson stopped on her way out of the room and laid a hand on his arm. “Your father would have been proud of you,” she said. “Soon you will learn the truth about the Agents.”

      Beyond the closed door, out of sight of her son, Mrs. Jamieson gave rein to the excitement that ran through her. He had wanted the names! He didn’t know why—not yet—but he would. “He’ll do it yet!” she whispered to the flowered wallpaper. She didn’t care that no one heard her.

      She didn’t know where the men were now, those who had killed her husband. They could be anywhere. Agents moved from post to post; in ten years they might be scattered all over Earth. In the killing of Konvs, some cylinders might even be taken by Agents—and used by them, for the power and freedom the cylinders gave must be coveted even by them. And they were in the best position to gain them. She was consumed by fear that one or more of the men on Earl’s list might have acquired a cylinder and were now Konvs themselves.

      Two weeks later she read a news item saying that Tom Palieu had been killed by a Konv. The assassin’s identity was unknown, but agents were working on the case.

      She knew. She had found a gun in Earl’s desk.

      She took the paper into Earl’s room. “Did you do this?”

      He turned away from her. “It doesn’t matter whether I did or not. They will suspect me. His name was on the list.”

      “They will,” she agreed. “It doesn’t matter who the Konv is, now that an Agent has been killed. The one in Bangkok will tell them about you and the list of names, and it’s all they need.”

      “Well, what else can he do?” Earl asked. “After all, he is an Agent. If one of them is killed, he will have to tell what he knows.”

      “You’re defending him? Why?” she cried. “Tell me why!”

      He removed her hand from his arm. Her nails were digging into his flesh. “I don’t know why. Mother, I’m sorry, but Agents are just people to me. I can’t hate them the way you do.”

      Mrs. Jamieson’s face colored, then drained СКАЧАТЬ