IMMORTALITY FOR SOME Read online

  IMMORTALITY FOR SOME

  J. T. McIntosh

  Illustrated by van Dongen

  He was on the run again. This time there was no exhilaration in it, only a dull expectation of defeat. You couldn’t hide in society from society forever.

  His greatest advantage had always been that the police, smugly certain that there couldn’t possibly be any crime they didn’t know about and hadn’t already solved, were always slow to investigate things they decided were none of their business.

  Another big advantage had been that so far he had always been alone. This time he wasn’t alone. As he sat on the beach under the blazing Florida sun, he waved occasionally to a girl in a silver swimsuit who was bathing in the shallows.

  If the police weren’t looking for him, he was still safe. But this time the police would be looking for him, and that meant that at any moment a heavy hand would drop on his shoulder and his freedom and his life would be over.

  Thinking back, he couldn’t put his finger on any mistake he had made, any avoidable mistake. Of course, if he hadn’t gone to the Blue Moon night club, things would have been different. Lacking second sight, however, he could hardly have known that. It might have been better if he had given Marita a false name. But then, giving a false name could be even more dangerous. You couldn’t stop people who knew you under one name meeting people who knew you under another.

  A bronzed young Adonis ran into the water, straight for the girl in the silver swimsuit. Ignoring him, she blew a kiss up the beach, and the self-confidence of the Adonis faltered. He swam out past her.

  The man on the beach waved back. She was in love with him, obviously. He wondered if she knew he wasn’t in love with her—if she was going to be hurt.

  Barely a dozen feet from him the air crackled. Sometimes that happened when you were being peeped by transmitterless TV. Feeling an impulse to jump up and run, he fought it down. If it was TTV, the more unconcerned you could be the better.

  What you had to remember was that when the air popped, that was like seeing a cop. Naturally you’d soon land in trouble if every time you saw a cop you took to your heels.

  All the crackle meant was that someone had looked at him. That might be the end, it might be the beginning, or it might be an abortive, unimportant episode in the course of a search for somebody else.

  Two women passed him, walking along the beach. Neither of them could afford to wear swimsuits, but both were wearing them. One said:

  “See that girl in the silver bathing costume? That’s the type I mean.”

  “What type?” the other asked.

  “Too naive to be true. Baby blue eyes. Curves she pretends she doesn’t know about. I bet she’s forgotten more about men than you and I ever knew.”

  It was amazing, the man on the beach thought, how shrewd women could be about women. That one had sounded just like Susan Sonnenburg.

  Susan Sonnenburg… in a way it was her fault he was on the run again. Although Susan had ceased to exist more than a week ago, Susan had unwittingly set things in train which had resulted in the present situation. Why hadn’t she minded her business?

  “Right to the front door, please,” said Susan Sonnenburg firmly, as the cab dipped to land a block away from the Musicosmos Building.

  “Sorry, lady, I got no VIP license,” said the cab pilot. “If I touched down on the Musicosmos frontage, the air would be blue with cops before you could get the door open.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. I have a card.”

  “O.K., let’s see it.”

  “I’m not going to rummage for half an hour in my bag. Kindly take my word for it.”

  “I ain’t taking no chances, lady. You can walk from here.”

  “I most certainly can not walk from here, and I don’t intend to try. At my age I get quite enough exercise changing my mind.”

  The pilot grinned. “Say, if you rate a card, I should know your name. Who are you, lady?”

  “I said I had a card,” said Susan. “You very rudely doubt my word. Why should you believe me if I tell you I’m Martha Washington?”

  The pilot suddenly thought of something and looked down at her hands. Obstinately, perversely, she put them behind her.

  But his face had lighted up. “You are Susan Sonnenburg, the pianist,” he said. “I got your record of that Chopin sonata, the one in D Flat.”

  “B Flat Minor,” said Susan.

  “Have it your way. Five flats anyway. You play the funeral march too fast. But sure, you got a card. I’ll land you right away.”

  The cab hopped the block to the Musicosmos Building and dropped gently toward the reserved landing lot.

  “I don’t play it too fast,” Susan retorted. “You just listen too slowly.”

  “And the movement before that,” said the pilot, “the one with the chromatic chords running up, you take like a funeral march. When it comes to the bit that ought to go faster, you keep it the same speed.”

  “You ought to hear me play Minuet in G,” said Susan acidly. “I often get some of it nearly right.”

  The pilot touched the button that opened the door. When Susan opened her purse he shook his head. “This one’s on me, Miss Sonnenburg. When I said you played the second movement too slow and the third too fast, I didn’t mean I didn’t like it.”

  “Well, there’s no need to rave enthusiastically about my performance like a lyric poet,” said Susan sarcastically and hobbled inside, leaning on her stick.

  The Musicosmos Building swelled to heaven like a hymn of praise. Music made money these days, even serious music. Some people said the change had come when the schools started to teach children not to be scared of thinking, not to be afraid of being different, not even to be ashamed of secret cravings for taste and culture. Others said that when detection and punishment not only caught up with crime but got ‘way ahead of it, what was there to do but make strictly legal love, read books watch TV and even listen to Beethoven and Brahms? A third group, the supreme optimists, said Who knows—maybe the human race is maturing at last?

  Sixty years after Borodin died his music was made into a hit musical consisting mainly of lush blondes brunettes and redheads wearing diaphanous pants and jewels. Two hundred years after Borodin died his second symphony, in its original form, topped the hit parade. It all went to prove something.

  Old Benny touched his cap to Susan as she entered the building. He was even older than she was, nobody knew how old.

  “They’re ready for you in Studio Seven,” he mumbled, shook his head for no obvious reason, and gave her his arm. Susan took it gratefully.

  She had had a bad fall eight months before, and although it had been easy enough to pin the broken bones, she’d been hardly as good as new since. Curiously enough, as science made things easier for the average person, things became tougher and tougher for the semi-cripple. In the Nineteenth Century if you were old and tottery—and rich—you’d have servants to help you around and wrap you up and even carry you if necessary. Now there wasn’t a personal servant left in the United States, and you had to walk farther—because of the parking problem—climb more stairs—since there were no pedestrians on traffic lanes any more—and cope with more high steps—cabs, buses, escalators—than any Nineteenth Century lady of advanced years had ever had to do.

  It was for that reason that Susan had always appreciated the shambling but gentle helpfulness of Old Benny. As this was the last time she would need it, she stopped suddenly, unable to let the occasion pass without some word of thanks.

  “Benny,” she said. “I’m an old woman, and crotchety, and dried up. Why have you always been so nice to me?”

  The abrupt question was too much for him. His vacant, friendly face registered bewilde
rment and conflict. He seemed to feel something was demanded of him but had no idea what.

  “Never mind,” said Susan with unusual gentleness. “I want to tell you I’ve appreciated your kindness, anyway.”

  “Kindness?” said Benny, still bewildered.

  “Like now. Like getting cabs for me and making the pilots bring them right to the front door. Like fixing a room for me that day I felt sick. Like cutting a bit off my stick when I said it was too long. Like bringing me sandwiches at a long rehearsal. Like—”

  “It’s my job, Miss,” said Benny, embarrassed. “I’m caretaker, odd-job man. Most of the day I don’t have nothin’ to do. So I—”

  “So you help anybody who needs help. I know. I guess I’d have gone on for years taking you for granted, Benny, only today something made me realize how much you’d done for me, in a lot of little ways.”

  She hesitated, for what she wanted to tell him was rather like telling a hungry man she had just had dinner and now she had to go to a banquet. But she couldn’t just disappear without a word, without saying good-by.

  Old, inarticulate, not too bright and awkward as he was, she liked old Benny.

  “Today is the last time I’ll be here, Benny,” she said quietly, her usual sarcasm absent. “I’m making my last recording today, then going for Rebirth.”

  The sudden blaze in his dim eyes startled her. But all he said was: “Yes, Miss Sonnenburg.”

  “I once hurt your feelings by offering you a tip,” she said. “I’m not going to do it again. I know you don’t do things for any reward. But have you ever heard of an honorarium?”

  “Orrorrarian?”

  “Sometimes when someone’s done something over and above his duty, or his job, or his obligations, people want to express their gratitude somehow. So they give him something and call it an honorarium. That isn’t like a tip. Anybody can accept an honorarium.”

  “What does an orrorrarian look like?” Benny asked doubtfully.

  “All I can give you is money. But you can take it and buy anything you like, and whatever you buy will remind you of me. Thanks, Benny— and good-by.”

  She left him outside Studio Seven, three crumpled notes in his hand. Painstakingly he smoothed them out.

  Two hundred and fifty dollars.

  They weren’t ready for her in Studio Seven after all. Collini, the conductor, hadn’t finished shaping the tuttis.

  Most recordings were like jigsaw puzzles since the advent of wave matching. Although some old-fashioned conductors and performers still adhered to the old hit-or-miss methods, what usually happened these days was that a master was prepared, a blueprint for a particular performance, a sort of picture of the desired orchestral sound. This visual master could easily be transferred direct into sound, but, if it were, it would be of interest only to music students. It would be entirely too mechanical for anyone else.

  When the master was complete, the orchestra would record the music and an automatic process of comparison would be carried out. The machines would ignore the nuances of expression and phrasing which they didn’t understand, but would point out the factual, measurable differences which they did—where the second trumpet played an E natural instead of an E flat, where the second violins swamped the firsts, where somebody in the woodwind squeaked during a rest. The engineers, conductor, soloist if any, and supervisor would go over these points carefully, deciding what didn’t matter, what they preferred as played to what was on the master, and what would have to be done again.

  This system didn’t produce music of any greater artistic worth, it merely produced much more immaculate music much quicker.

  Collini hadn’t quite completed his orchestral master, so Susan withdrew to a rest room off the studio while he did so. To her disgust, Weygand followed her.

  “So this is the last Susan Sonnenburg recording session,” Weygand sighed sententiously.

  “When you make a statement like that, Mr. Weygand,” said Susan, “one cannot but agree with you.”

  He was a fussy, conventional little man. Indeed, his job was to be conventional. He was one of the directors of Musicosmos, and what he liked, nearly everybody would like.

  “The Mozart G Major, Köchel 453,” Weygand mused. “One could have wished the last work you recorded could have been something grander and nobler—Beethoven’s ‘Emperor,’ for example. But then, we have the ‘Emperor’ you recorded fourteen years ago.”

  “As you say.”

  “Aren’t you a little sad—a little regretful?” Weygand asked. “After all, you probably won’t be a pianist again. You may not even be a musician. You may not be famous.”

  If she shocked him, he might go away. “On the other hand, I won’t have to go to bed alone any more.”

  Weygand had a literal mind. “Yes, you will, for years yet. At least four years.”

  Susan resigned herself to the conversation. If she was honest with herself, which she usually was, she was forced to admit that the only real reason for her dislike of Weygand was the practical musician’s contempt for the theoretical musician. Plus the fact that you always knew what he was going to say before he said it.

  “I’ve done most things a pianist can do in music,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to do them all over again.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” said Weygand wistfully.

  “Maybe this time I’ll be a jazz trumpeter or a blues singer.”

  Weygand sniffed. “That wouldn’t be right. You’re a great artiste, Miss Sonnenburg.”

  “I’ve got a fair rating on the mechanical side. Perhaps I’ll turn out to be a physicist or a doctor this time.”

  “A scientist!” said Weygand, horrified.

  “Oh, it’s all right,” Susan reassured him blandly. “According to my rating, I wouldn’t be a very good one. That makes it all right, doesn’t it?”

  Weygand was struck speechless—a consummation devoutly to be wished. She enjoyed the silence until suddenly she thought of something Weygand could and would do for her. “Mr. Weygand,” she said, “you know old Benny?”

  “The caretaker? Of course.”

  “Would you do something for me? Would you have him tested?”

  “What do you mean, tested?”

  She could hardly say: For Rebirth. The idea was too fantastic. Rebirth was the prerogative of the Top Ten—the top ten per cent of the population on the VTC scale (value to the community).

  Ten per cent was a pretty wide band, really. Susan, of course, was well up in the top one per cent on the VTC scale. Everybody she knew, all her friends would qualify. Any college graduate, any executive, any artist, writer, musician, technician, doctor, nurse—indeed, practically anybody who had achieved moderate success in anything—was almost sure to qualify for Rebirth.

  Everybody Susan knew, except Benny.

  She couldn’t explain to Weygand, of all people, the feeling she had. The feeling, the intuition, the hunch that there was more in Old Benny than met the eye. She was well aware that she was biased—she liked Benny, and he might die at any moment, strong and healthy though he appeared to be for his age. It was natural for her to want Rebirth for him for no more reason than that he was a good Joe.

  Yet she was sure that there was more to it than that. The VTC scale included intelligence, a wide variety of talents, and among many other attributes a thing called affinity, sometimes called empathy. In a word, this meant that though Rebirth eliminated all psychosis anyway, a good Joe was always more likely to qualify, other things being equal, than the kind of fellow who tore the wings off flies.

  Benny would rate high on affinity, if nothing else.

  “You know what a test is,” she said irritably. She didn’t want to say the VTC test. That was for Rebirth.

  “The musical capacity tests?”

  “Sure, they’ll do,” she said. The MC tests were for an entirely different purpose, but they included a sketchy intelligence test and an even sketchier personality rating. If Benny turned out to have any talent or
capacity or intelligence or potential, the tests would show it, and sending him for a VTC rating would be a matter of routine.

  “Anything you say, Miss Sonnenburg,” said Weygand. “You trying to prove something about Benny?”

  Susan dodged the question. “You’ll do it?”

  “Of course.”

  One of the engineers tapped on the door and opened it. “Ready for you now, Miss Sonnenburg,” he said.

  It was no ordinary session. Everybody knew that immediately it was over, Susan was going straight to the Rebirth Institution. Although that wasn’t death, although only relatives and female ones at that cried when somebody went there, although everybody who rated Rebirth was cordially thankful and everybody who didn’t wished passionately that he did, in some ways it was just as final as death. Susan Sonnenburg the pianist would be just as dead as if she dropped away from the piano keyboard now with heart failure. She wouldn’t be told that she had ever been Susan Sonnenburg unless the psychologists decided it wouldn’t do her any harm to know, and the psychologists were known to have a bias against such disclosures.

  They had to be pretty careful over the wave matching, for there could be no re-takes, not of Susan’s part anyway. Curiously, when everybody was ready for a long and hard session, everybody hit top form at once and hardly anything had to be done again.

  When Susan saw that her solo part was safely taped, she turned and went out through the rest room so casually that Collini and Weygand and everybody else assumed she was merely going to the washroom. But she went right on out of the building, avoiding even Benny.

  Susan didn’t like farewells.

  The cab pilot who took her to the Rebirth Institute was surprisingly casual, too. “Sure, you’re the pianist,” he said. “Guess I’d better be specially careful. You don’t want to get killed on your way to Rebirth.”

  “As you say,” Susan agreed.

  “I’m coming here myself in about sixty years. You wouldn’t think a cab pilot would rate Rebirth, would you?”