The Gentle Seduction (21 page)

A Simple Case Of Suicide

It was hot in Washington, and muggy, as usual. Why did the air conditioning have to break down today, of all days?

It did not matter. With a last deep breath—and a brief, hacking cough—Max nodded to the Secret Service agent.

The agent opened the door, and Max stepped swiftly through the crowded rows and rows of seats. He paused as he came to the podium, to look once more at the Presidential Seal affixed to the lectern.
Will I ever get over the awe of looking at these symbols of power?
he wondered. He smiled, grimly.
No: if I haven't gotten over them yet, I never will.
Determination renewed, he climbed the two short steps and turned to survey his audience.

One of the camera crews was waving frantically to tell him to wait. He nodded to them. His eye wandered over his prepared notes. They were pointless, of course. He had spent the night dreaming of the words he would say today; over and over they haunted him. He shuffled the papers, putting them aside on the lectern, except for one. The important one.

He gazed at it, and was pleased that his hand held it steadily.
I must convey a sense of importance and destiny as no man before,
he realized again.
For the message I give must ring in their ears for decades.

It will be,
he realized again,
my last, my greatest, act — of betrayal.

He made no excuses for it in his own mind; he would betray millions of people today, as he had already betrayed everyone whose life had ever come too close to his. His wife, his son, his mother, his father, his best friend, his only hero—he had betrayed them all, sooner or later. They were gone now except, perhaps, for their ghosts.

Yes, he could feel their ghosts there now, looking over his shoulder at the paper, watching him watch the crowd . . .

"You've got to be
crazy
to keep on going back to school every year," Max's younger cousin said. She seemed quite childlike to Max; Max, after all, was already twenty-five.

Max shrugged, lying on the couch, deep in the middle of a well-worn spy novel. "There are worse things in the world than going to grad school."

"Oh yeah?"

"Sure. Getting a job, for example."

The squeaking from his father's room subsided. A loud "Whew" sounded from the same direction.

"He's done with his exercise bicycle," Janet mumbled ominously.

The sound of an elephant stampede thundered down the hall and broke into the living room. "I just went three miles farther than ever before," Max's father bellowed triumphantly.

"Um-hm," Max replied.

Max caught a glimpse of a falling object, and he heard a loud thump as his father slipped suddenly and fell down. Max looked up from his book with a slight smirk. "You all right?"

His father was spread-eagled on the floor, gasping, sputtering, and gulping air. His eyes bulged.

"Dad?" It took Max and Janet several seconds to realize that something was really wrong. Max reacted first. "Dad!" He jumped to his father's side. Janet screamed.

Max knelt over his father. Still he gasped for air, yet his face was turning blue at the same time. "What's wrong?"

His father didn't respond.

Janet yelled again. "What's wrong?"

Max didn't look up. "Call the ambulance."

The gasping was dying down. Max brought his hands up, moved them toward his father's chest; he had had CPR training two years before, he had learned what to do.

But that CPR had been two years ago. He had forgotten what to do. His hands were shaking; he couldn't believe this was really happening; his blood was pounding in his head, screaming
Do something! Do something!

He put his hands on his father's chest—
but he couldnt remember what to do.

The bluish tinge in his father's face deepened, turning grayish.

He died as Max knelt there, trying to remember how to save his life.

A few days later, an old friend called him; an old friend who was now a psychologist.

". . . It's really not too surprising that I couldn't remember what to do," Max explained. "I just didn't expect it, for one thing, right out of the blue like that. And CPR training only lasts a year—you've got to take a refresher every year to stay qualified."

"But still you blame yourself." Joe was probably a terrific psychologist, Max realized. He was so calm and steady as he directed the therapy: that was what Joe had called to give him, though Max was sure Joe would never admit it.

Max considered the matter for a moment: did he blame himself for his father's death? His first instinct was to just deny any guilt feelings because he didn't believe in feeling guilty. But he realized that he wouldn't be kidding anybody, not even himself. "Yes, I blame myself."

"But surely you see that there's no reason to blame yourself."

"You're right, Joe. But . . ." and his voice started to tremble. "
Joe, I was so close.
I
almost
could have saved his life." He shrugged, though Joe could not see. "Don't worry, Joe. I'm not suicidal or obsessed by it. I'm just guilt-ridden. I probably always will be."

Yes, the ghosts were there, looking over his shoulder at the millions and billions of lives that Max held in the paper in his hands. Max was so
close
to saving their lives. But he didn't dare.

The cameraman nodded to him.

Dry as his throat had been, now it was drier still. He smiled nevertheless.
Dry throat? Tough. This speech is gonna get a lot harder before it gets easier.
He breathed deeply.

"People of America," his voice rang with pride. "People of the World," he said more softly. Max hadn't been sure whether he should include them or not, but finally he decided he had to. After all, they listened today, too; they knew his decision had profound consequences for them as well as for America.

It was so important, that today even Tina would be watching. Even Steve.

It was dry, sunny, and not too hot for once, standing on the edge of the lake. No doubt the coolness was caused by the breeze that now blew sand in his face. Max turned away from the glare and the sand. Steve strolled toward him, holding hands with a skinny girl in white shorts and a red halter. Steve waved at him; Max waved back.

Steve released her hand. "Tina, this is the guy who's been my roommate for the last six years, Maxwell Palmer. Max, this is Tina, the most beautiful woman in the world."

Max shook her hand. Close up, she no longer looked skinny, and her eyes were bright emerald green. Max was mesmerized. "The most beautiful girl in the world," he muttered. "I can well believe it," he said more clearly, with a touch of envy.

Tina frowned, smiled, blushed, and shook her head. "Not hardly. You're both crazy."

"Yeah," Steve said, "that's one of our problems. We're too much alike." Steve's eyes met Max's, and they shared a silent chuckle. "Where's Holly?" he asked Max.

Max sighed. "I dunno. Looks like she stood me up again." It hurt, inside, but it wasn't the first time. Max could stand it.

"Oh, well," Steve shook his head. "Crud. Another one of my problems is that I can't remember a damn thing. Lunch is still in the car." He trotted back the way they'd come. "Be back in a flash," he yelled.

Max looked over at Tina, looked down at his feet, looked at Tina again. "Steve's a great guy."

"Yeah." After a long pause, Tina said, "So you're the other half of the grad student team that's gonna change the world."

Max laughed. "At least we're gonna try. You can't change it if you don't make the attempt, can you?"

Tina shrugged. "I guess not." For the first time, they looked each other in the eye. Both looked away.

Tina brushed back her hair nervously; it fell limply around her shoulders. "What's your family constellation?"

"My what?" Max asked.

"Your family constellation. I just read a book about that. You know, are you the oldest, youngest, or middle child in your family, things like that."

"Oh. Am I oldest or youngest? The answer is yes." So much for being infatuated with Steve's new girl friend. She was beautiful, but if she believed in dumb stuff like that. . . . It was just as well that she wasn't too perfect. Steve's and Max's tastes in women ran too close together most of the time, anyway. "I am the oldest, and the youngest, and the middle."

"What?" She frowned, not understanding the joke. "Oh—you're an only child. That's a shame. You'll have a lot of trouble when you get married, then."

Max snorted.

"No, it's true."

"Even the claims like that that
are
true are only
statistically
true, though. I'll bet they say eldest children shouldn't marry each other, right?"

"Right. They'll both try to dominate the marriage."

"Aha. But my mother and father were both eldest children, and their marriage worked perfectly."

"I see." She'd caught the use of the past tense, but misinterpreted it. "
Worked
perfectly?"

Max looked away. "They died."

"Oh. I'm sorry." She blushed, then hurried on. "Goodness. An only child reared by two eldest children. Tell me, do you feel, uh,
parental
feelings a lot? A need to help people?" Max looked puzzled, and Tina continued. "You grew up as the focus of a lot of intense caring, right?"

Max nodded. "I suppose so." He gave a short, loud laugh. "Actually, it was even worse than that. My father's father ran out when Dad was seventeen, so Dad had been surrogate father for his brothers before getting married. And my mother's mother died when Mom was eighteen, so Mom was surrogate mother for her sister. I suppose I'm the quintessence of Parenthood, the distillation of a super-mother and a super-father."

"Yes." Tina raised her eyebrow. "If you're really the quintessence of Parenthood, then who is your Child?"

Max thought about it, and was disturbed to see the whole silly constellation business making sense. His voice held just a hint of awe. He quoted from a sign in his office, " 'The human race is a child, who must be protected until he is old enough not to hurt himself.' "

"What?"

"That's a sign on my office wall. It's one of my pet phrases, when I'm talking about war, and bombs, and starvation, and such. I've always been at least half-serious when I said it, too. I guess Mankind is my child."

"I see." Her words held deep understanding. At least Tina seemed to be trying to suggest that they held deep understanding.

Their eyes met, and held.

"Hey, would one of you statues help me with this stuff?" Steve Felman yelled across the sand.

"As you know, we are here to discuss life—and death." Max frowned slightly; his timing was a bit off in the delivery. Jason would have done it better. "As you know, our researchers have made a breakthrough in the integration of microprocessor technology and microbiology. A breakthrough that would permit us to cure all disease—not only the common cold, but cancer also— not only the common cancers, but the mutant II cancers as well." He looked confidently across the reporters and congressmen in his audience.

"No one ever need die of disease again." He knew it was true, with a certainty that few presidents ever feel. He knew it was true despite the screams of
hoax
by some grant-hungry researchers.

The cure was sure and clean. Maxwell Palmer knew it was good. Maxwell Palmer, after all, had conceived it.

Max tossed himself into the beanbag chair. "Barkeep, I need another drink." He waved his arm in the air at Steve Felman, his new roommate. Well, relatively new; they'd been sharing an apartment for two months now, and it was the best friendship Max had ever had, better than he'd ever thought possible. They could sense each other's mood without a word; sometimes Steve would come into the room while Max was stretched on the floor in deep depression, and put on an old record— and it was exactly the one song that Max needed to hear to shake the sorrow. Could he ever find a woman who understood his needs so perfectly? He suspected not.

Steve chuckled. "So you need another drink, huh? Man, those robotics majors are real lushes."

"Ha! A biochemistry major should talk about lush. Who is it that consumes the most pure alcohol in the world? The biochemists. Not the robots, buster."

"Of course. Robots don't consume mass alcohol. Robots, like robotics majors, are much too prissy and sterile for that kind of thing."

"Ha! At least robots work for a living. What do biochemistry majors do? Collect unemployment and Social Security." Max coughed.

"Sounds to me like you need a biochem major right now, joker, to cure your flu."

"Ha! You guys can't even cure the common cold. What can we expect from you with
real
diseases?"

"Maybe I can't cure the common cold
yet
. But no robot
ever
will."

"Hold on there." Max thought about it for a minute. "You know, I"ll bet we
could
use robots to cure the cold."

"Oh no. You've
already
had too much to drink."

"Wait a minute." Max sat up in the beanbag, not too successfully. "I can see it now: a robot the size of a germ, gobbling up viruses as fast as it can move."

"Great idea. Did you bring a few robots like that home with you?" Steve walked away from the bar, jumped headlong onto the couch.

"I'm serious."

Steve believed him. He rubbed his nose, staring at the ceiling. "How's the robot gonna recognize the viruses? You might, one of these centuries, make a robot the size of a germ, but where are you gonna put the brain power inside it to make it smart enough to recognize invaders?"

"We could datalink them to a big computer on the outside, let the number-cruncher do the thinking."

"I see. Okay, then, how're you gonna make enough of these things to make a difference? I mean, you're gonna have to have enough in your bloodstream so that you can destroy the viruses faster than they can reproduce, unless you're gonna make the robots reproduce, too."

Max frowned. "That is a problem, I guess. You can't really make a robot reproduce inside your body. Not enough silicon."