("Mental fatigue, Steve. Mental. We've both gotten too involved in this project and the strain is starting to tell.")
"Thanks a lot," he muttered as he slid from the cab and shuffled to the door. "The centuries have not dulled your talent for stating the obvious."
And it was obvious. After The Healer episode, Dalt and Pard had shifted interests from the life sciences to the physical sciences and pursued their studies amid the Federation-Restructurist war without ever noticing it. That muddled conflict had been about ready to die out after a century or so, due to lack of interest, when a new force injected itself into the picture. The Tarks, in an attempt at subterfuge as clumsy as their previous attempts at diplomacy, declared a unilateral alliance with the Restructurist coalition and promptly attacked a number of Federation bases along a disputed stretch of expansion border. Divide and conquer is a time-tested ploy, but the Tarks neglected to consider the racial variable. Humans have little compunction about killing each other over real or imagined differences, but there is an archetypical repugnance at the thought of an alien race taking such a liberty. And so the Feds and Restructurists promptly united and declared jihad on the Tarkan Empire.
Naturally, weapons research blossomed and physicists became very popular. Dalt's papers on field theory engendered numerous research offers from companies anxious to enter the weapons market. The Tarkan force shield was allowing their ships to penetrate deep into Terran territory with few losses, and thus became a prime target for big companies like Star Ways, whose offer Dalt accepted.
The grind of high-pressure research, however, was beginning to take its toll on Dalt; and Pard, ever the physiopsychological watchdog, had finally prevailed in convincing Dalt to shorten his workday and spend a few hours on the exercise courts.
Wearily, Dalt tapped out the proper code on the entry plate and the door slid open. Even now, drained as he was in body and mind, he realized that his thoughts were starting to drift toward the field-negation problem back at Star Ways labs. He was about to try to shift his train of thought when a baritone voice did it for him.
"Do you often talk to yourself, Mr. Cheserak? Or should I call you Mr. Dalt? Or would you prefer Mr. Storgen?" The voice came from a dark, muscular man who had made himself comfortable in one of the living-room chairs; he was pointing a blaster at the center of Dalt's chest. "Or how about Mr. Quet?" he continued with a self-assured smile, and Dalt noticed two other men, partly in shadow, standing behind him. "Come now! Don't just stand there. Come in and sit down. After all, this is your home."
Eyeing the weapon that followed his every move, Dalt chose a chair opposite the intruders. "What do you want?"
"Why, your secret, of course. We thought you'd be out longer and had hardly begun our search of the premises when we heard your flitter hit the dock. Very rude of you to interrupt us."
Dalt shook his head grimly at the thought of humans conspiring against their own race. "Tell your Tark friends that we're no closer to piercing their force shields than we were when the war started."
The dark man laughed with genuine amusement. "No, my friend, I assure you that our sympathies concerning the Terro-Tarkan war are totally orthodox. Your work at Star Ways is of no interest to us."
"Then what do you want?" he repeated, his eyes darting to the other two figures, one a huge, steadfast hulk, the other slight and fidgety. All three, like Dalt, wore the baggy coversuits with matching peaked skullcaps currently in fashion in this end of the human part of the galaxy. "I keep my money in a bank, so—"
"Yes, I know," the seated man interrupted. "I know which bank and I know exactly how much. And I also have a list of all the other accounts you have spread among the planets of this sector."
"How in the name of—"
The stranger held up his free hand and smiled. "None of us has been properly introduced. What shall we call you, sir? Which of your many aliases do you prefer?"
Dalt hesitated, then said, "Dalt," grudgingly.
"Excellent! Now, Mr. Dalt, allow me to introduce Mr. Hinter"—indicating the hulk—"and Mr. Giff"— the fidget. "I am Aaron Kanlos and up until two standard years ago I was a mere president of an Interstellar Brotherhood of Computer Technicians local on Ragna. Then one of our troubleshooters working for the Telialung Banking Combine came to me with an interesting anomaly and my life changed. I became a man with a mission: to find you."
As Dalt sat in silence, denying Kanlos the satisfaction of being told to go on, Pard said, ("I don't like the way he said that.")
"I was told," Kanlos finally went on, "that a man named Marten Quet had deposited a check from Interstellar Business Advisers in an account he had just opened. The IBA check cleared but the man didn't." Again he looked to Dalt for a reaction. Finding a blank stare, he continued:
"The computer, it seems, was insisting that this Mr. Quet was really a certain Mr. Galdemar and duly filed an anomaly slip which one of our technicians picked up. These matters are routine on a planet such as Ragna, which is a center for intrigue in the interstellar business community; keeping a number of accounts under different names is the rule rather than the exception in those circles. So, the usual override code was fed in, but the machine still would not accept the anomaly. After running a negative check for malfunction, the technician ordered a full printout on the two accounts." Kanlos smiled at this. "That's illegal, of course, but his curiosity was piqued. The pique became astonishment when he read the listings, and so naturally he brought the problem to his superior."
("I'm sure he did!") Pard interjected, ("Some of those computer-union bosses have a tidy little blackmail business on the side.")
Be quiet! Dalt hissed mentally.
"There were amazing similarities," Kanlos was saying. "Even in the handwriting, although one was right-handed and the other obviously left-handed. Secondly, their fingerprints were very much alike, one being merely a distortion of the other. Both were very crude methods of deception. Nothing unusual there. The retinal prints were, of course, identical; that was why the computer had filed an anomaly. So why was the technician so excited? And why had the computer ignored the override code? As I said, multiple accounts are hardly unusual." Kanlos paused for dramatic effect, then: "The answer was to be found in the opening dates of the accounts. Mr. Quet's account was only a few days old ... Mr. Galdemar's had been opened two hundred years ago!
"I was skeptical at first, at least until I did some research on retinal prints and found that two identical sets cannot exist. Even clones have variations in the vessels of the eyegrounds. So, I was faced with two possibilities: either two men generations apart possessed identical retinal patterns, or one man has been alive much longer than any man should be. The former would be a mere scientific curiosity; the latter would be of monumental importance."
Dalt shrugged. "The former possibility is certainly more likely than the latter."
"Playing coy, eh?" Kanlos smiled. "Well, let me finish my tale so you'll fully appreciate the efforts that brought me to your home. Oh, it wasn't easy, my friend, but I knew there was a man roaming this galaxy who was well over two hundred years old and I was determined to find him. I sent out copies of the Quet/Galdemar retinal prints to all the other locals in our union, asking them to sec if they could find accounts with matching patterns. It took time, but then the reports began to trickle back—different accounts on different planets with different names and fingerprints, but always the same retinal pattern. There was also a huge trust fund—a truly staggering amount of credits— on the planet Myrna in the name of Cilo Storgen, who also happens to have the Ouet/Galdemar pattern.
"You may be interested to know that the earliest record found was that of a man known simply as 'Dalt,' who had funds transferred from an account on Tolive to a bank on Neeka about two and a quarter centuries ago. Unfortunately, we have no local on Tolive, so we couldn't backtrack from there. The most recent record was, of course, the one on Ragna belonging to Mr. Galdemar. He left the planet and disappeared, it seems. However, shortly after his disappearance, a Mr. Cheserak—who had the same retinal prints as Mr. Galdemar and all of the others, I might add—opened an account here on Meltrin. According to the bank, Mr. Cheserak lives here ... alone." Kanlos's smile took on a malicious twist. "Care to comment on this, Mr. Dalt?"
Dalt was outwardly silent but an internal dispute was rapidly coming to a boil.
Congratulations, mastermind!
("Don't go putting the blame on me!") Pard countered. ("If you'll just think back, you'll remember that I told you—")
You told me—guaranteed me, in fact—that nobody'd ever connect all those accounts. As it turns out, you might as well have left a trail of interstellar beacons!
("Well, I just didn't think it was necessary to go to the trouble of changing our retinal print. Not that it would have been difficult—neovascularization of the retina is no problem—but I thought changing names and fingerprints would be enough. Multiple accounts are necessary due to shifting economic situations, and I contend that no one would have caught on if you hadn't insisted on opening that account on Ragna. I warned you that we already had an account there, but you ignored me.")
Dalt gave a mental snort. I ignored you only because you're usually so overcautious. I was under the mistaken impression that you could handle a simple little deception, but—
The sound of Kanlos's voice brought the argument to a halt. "I'm waiting for a reply, Mr. Dalt. My research shows that you've been around for two and a half centuries. Any comment?"
"Yes." Dalt sighed. "Your research is inaccurate."
"Oh, really?" Kanlos's eyebrows lifted. "Please point out my error, if you can."
Dalt spat out the words with reluctant regret. "I'm twice that age."
Kanlos half started out of his chair. "Then it's true!" His voice was hoarse. "Five centuries ... incredible!"
Dalt shrugged with annoyance. "So what?"
"What do you mean, 'so what?' You've found the secret of immortality, trite as that phrase may be, and I've found you. You appear to be about thirty-five years old, so I assume that's when you began using whatever it is you use. I'm forty now and don't intend to get any older. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Dalt?"
Dalt nodded. "Loud and clear." To Pard: Okay, what do I tell him?
("How about the truth? That'll be just about as useful to him as any fantastic tale we can concoct on the spur of the moment.")
Good idea. Dalt cleared his throat. "If one wishes to become immortal, Mr. Kanlos, one need only take a trip to the planet Kwashi and enter a cave there. Before long, a sluglike creature will drop off the cave ceiling onto your head; cells from the slug will invade your brain and set up an autonomous symbiotic mind with consciousness down to the cellular level. In its own self-interest, this mind will keep you from aging or even getting sick. There is a slight drawback, however: Legend on the planet Kwashi has it that only one in a thousand will survive the ordeal. I happen to be one who did."
"I don't consider this a joking matter," Kanlos said with an angry frown.
"Neither do I!" Dalt replied, his eyes cold as he rose to his feet. "Now I think I've wasted just about enough time with this charade. Put your blaster away and get out of my house! I keep no money here and no elixirs of immortality or whatever it is you hope to find. So take your two—"
"That will be enough, Mr. Dalt! Kanlos shouted. He gestured to Hinter. "Put the cuff on him!"
The big man lumbered forward carrying a sack in his right hand. From it he withdrew a metal globe with a shiny cobalt surface that was interrupted only by an oval aperture. Dalt's hands were inserted there as Giff came forward with a key. The aperture tightened around Dalt's wrists as the key was turned and the sphere suddenly became stationary in space. Dalt tried to pull it toward him but it wouldn't budge, nor could he push it away. It moved freely, however, along a vertical axis.
("A gravity cuff,") Pard remarked. ("I've read about them but never expected to be locked into one.") What does it do?
("Keeps you in one spot. It's favored by many law-enforcement agencies. When activated, it locks onto an axis through the planet's center of gravity. Motion along that axis is unrestricted, but that's it; you can't go anywhere else. This seems to be an old unit. The newer ones are supposedly much smaller.")