Noyes sagged to the floor and crouched there. “Listen to me,” he said, shaping the words with terrible effort. “This is Noyes again. Noyes. See, the right voice? He didn’t quite reach dybbuk. A good try, that’s all. Listen. Are you recording this, Kaufmann?”
“Every word.”
“Good. I’ve been an idiot. I’ve let everyone use me. But no more. My mind’s my own. Last night — Roditis sent me here. John Roditis of Roditis Securities. With orders to kill St. John. So that he could reapply for the Paul Kaufmann persona. I gave St. John a drug — cyclo — cyclophosphamide-8. I confess this of my own — free — will.”
He could not sustain even the crouching position any longer. Now he lay on his left side, half his body limp.
“I repeat: I killed St. John at Roditis’ orders. Mindpick Roditis and you’ll see it’s so. Two favors, please. Don’t let Kravchenko have another carnate trip. You saw — he almost went dybbuk.
Did go dybbuk, for a minute. And also — for me — no more trips either. Just sleep. I want to get off the wheel.”
I ought to utter a mantra now, Noyes thought. Go out with a flourish. Om mani padme hum. But why bother?
His hand went into his breast pocket. He felt Kravchenko fighting him, furiously trying to seize their shared body again. But Noyes held him off. His coordination was almost destroyed, yet he was able to get his hands on the beloved flask of carniphage, fondled so often, so sensually, his constant companion, his dearest friend. He brought it to his mouth. He bit down. The flask shattered and its contents spurted down his throat. Mark Kaufmann stared in shock at the writhing, deliquescing thing on the carpet.
“Carniphage,” he said thickly. “Risa — Elena — don’t look!” Elena had fled. But Risa was watching the process of decay with somber fascination. Kaufmann did not try to cover her eyes.
Surely Noyes must be dead. The inward rot was nearing the surface; his body was chaos. Yet still it moved, jerking and twitching as it traveled its one-way road to destruction.
Risa said, “Why did he confess? He was trying to be defiant at first.”
“He was showing everyone. Roditis. Kravchenko. Right at the end, he finally found a little strength.”
The limbs were flowing into shapelessness. The motions of the body were ceasing.
“Will that confession be any good?” Risa asked. Mark nodded slowly. “The voiceprints will show that it was really Noyes speaking. The recording will show that he was nearly ejected by a dybbuk, fought back, blurted his story, and killed himself. It’ll be good enough to convince the quaestors that Roditis should be mindpicked.”
“And then?”
“They’ll erase him,” Kaufmann said. He felt little triumph, somehow. He took one more look at the ghastliness on the floor, and then went to put in a call to the quaestors.
Chapter 15
It was July now. A season of stifling weather had set in, beyond the capacity of the weather controllers to handle, and many people had fled to cooler climes. Risa remained in New York. The trial of John Roditis had just ended, and now there was a great deal for her to do.
Roditis had been found guilty, of course. Noyes’ recorded testimony had induced the quaestorate to seek a mindpick against him, and the motion had been granted. Roditis’ lawyers had undertaken a delaying action based on the ancient constitutional principle of freedom from self-incrimination; but the legality of the mindpick was firmly established, and Roditis was put to the test. His complicity in the deliberate discorporation of Martin St. John was undeniable after that.
The defense tactics shifted. Now the lawyers asserted that, while Roditis and Noyes had undoubtedly conspired to destroy the St. John body, there was no injured party, since St. John was not his own body’s tenant. The only occupant of the body, the persona of Paul Kaufmann, was legally dead and therefore not capable of suffering discorporation.
It was a fine point, and gave the jurists of the quaestorate considerable exercise. It caused a good deal of embarrassment for Francesco Santoliquido, too, since he was responsible for creating the anomaly of the deliberate dybbuk. In the end, the decision went against Roditis, but the charge was reduced from murder to antisocial actions of the first degree. Which, when Roditis was found guilty, resulted in these sentences:
Forfeiture of citizenship and Civic privileges. Mandatory destruction of any recorded Roditis personae on file with the Scheffing Institute.
Erasure of all present personae carried by Roditis, and their return to the soul bank for redistribution to others.
Five years of corrective therapy, including, if needed, a total reorientation of personality to remove aggressive impulses.
“He’s finished now,” Mark Kaufmann said to his daughter as the verdicts were announced. “He’ll come out of the therapy a broken man — polite, amiable, lacking in purpose and direction. A pleasant nobody. A nothing. A shell.”
“It seems like such a waste,” said Risa. “All that drive — all that energy thrown away—”
“He was too dangerous to remain as he was, Risa. He had a greatness, I’ll admit, but his ambitions weren’t tempered by the moral sense. He was without a governor.”
“And you? And Uncle Paul?” Kaufmann looked at her sharply. “We have our family traditions. We have our sense of what is honorable. Roditis was a wild beast. Now he’ll be tamed. There’s no comparison between a Roditis and one of us, Risa. None.”
Risa had private reservations about that. She had no wish to anger her father; but it seemed to her that the real difference between the shattered, defeated Roditis and the triumphant Mark Kaufmann was more a matter of luck and diplomacy than of breeding and honor. Roditis had overreached himself, and Mark had destroyed him. But Mark’s methods, though they stopped short at murder, had hardly been gentle.
Roditis disappeared behind the fortress walls of Belle Isle Sanatorium for corrective therapy. No one would ever again see the old John Roditis in public, that man seething with vitality and shrewdness. When Roditis emerged, several years hence, he would still be a wealthy man, but he would be an aimless, smiling ruin, cheerfully acquiescing in the decisions of the courtappointed trustees who managed his financial empire.
A great waste of dynamism, Risa decided. Perhaps, she thought, such a squandering might be in some way avoided.
On the hottest day of that July heat wave, soon after the sentencing of John Roditis, Risa brought her hopter down in the employee lot of the Scheffing Institute building. She parked it deftly and crossed the sweltering strip of ferroconcrete in a hurry. It was three in the afternoon the first shift of technicians was about to leave.
Within the building Risa picked up the first telephone she came to and requested to speak to a certain employee. Moments later, his face appeared on the screen.
He looked baffled. “Hello, Leonards. Remember me?” He was young, pale, good-looking, pinch lines forming between his eyebrows. He moistened his lips. “M-Miss Kaufmann?”
“That’s right, Leonards. Go to the head of the class.” He forced an uneasy smile. “Is there something wrong? Can I be of service?”
“No, there’s nothing wrong, and yes, you can be of service. You’re finished working for the day, aren’t you?”
“Good. My hopter’s parked in Employee Lot D. Meet me there right away and we’ll take a little trip.”
“But—”
“I’ll be waiting, Leonards!” He did not disappoint her. He did not dare. Looking mystified, he entered the hopter, taking his seat beside her as she indicated. The little craft lifted and headed north. Risa said, “You did an excellent job with my transplant, Leonards. Tandy and I are very happy together.”
“That’s good, Miss Kaufmann. Perhaps you could tell me—”