Michaelmas Read Free

capabilities. Finally, it agrees with my own evaluations for you at the time."
    "Norwood became part of an expanding ball of high-temperature gases, correct?"
    "Yes."
    "So your present estimate that Norwood lives is based purely on the Reuters item."
    "Right."
    "Why?"
    "Common sense."
    "Reuters doesn't usually get its facts wrong and never lies. Dr. Limberg did make the statement, and he can't afford to lie. Right?"
    "Correct."
    Laurent Michaelmas smiled fondly at the machine. The smile was gentle, and genuinely tender.
    It was exactly like what can be seen on the faces of two very young children awakening with each other in the morning, not yet out on the nursery floor and wanting the same thing.
    "How do you envision Norwood's marvellous resurrection? What has happened to him?"
    "I believe his trajectory in the capsule did end somewhere near Limberg's sanatorium. I assume he was gravely injured, if it has taken him all these months to recover even at Dr.
    Limberg's hands. Limberg's two prizes are after all for breakthroughs in controlled artificial cellular reproduction and for theoretical work on cellular memory mechanisms. It wouldn't surprise me to learn he practically had to grow Norwood a new body. That sort of reconstitution, based on Limberg's publications over the years, is now nearly within reach of any properly managed medical centre. I would expect Limberg himself to be able to do it now, given his facilities and a patient in high popular esteem. His ego would rise to the occasion like a butterfly to the sun."
    "Is Norwood still the same man?"
    "Assuming his brain is undamaged, certainly."
    "Perfectly capable of leading the Outer Planets expedition after all?"
    "Capable, but not likely to. He has missed three months of the countdown. Major Papashvilly must remain in com-mand, so I imagine Colonel Norwood cannot go at all. It would be against Russian practice to promote their cos-monaut to the necessary higher rank until after his success-ful completion of the mission."
    "What if something happened to Papashvilly?"
    "Essentially the same thing has happened vis-à-vis Nor-wood. UNAC would assign the next back-up man, and ..."
    Laurent Michaelmas grinned. "Horsefeathers."
    There was a moment's pause, and the voice said slowly, consideredly: "You may be right. The popular dynamic would very likely assure Norwood's re-appointment."
    Michaelmas smiled coldly. He rubbed the top of his head. "Tell me, are you still confident that no one had deduced our—ah—personal dynamic?"
    "Perfectly confident." Domino was shocked at the sugges-tion. "That would require a practically impossible order of integration. And I keep a running check. No one knows that you and I run the world."
    "Does anyone know the world is being run?"
    "Now, that's another formulation. No one knows what's in the hearts of men. But if anyone's thinking that way, it's never been communicated. Except, just possibly, face to face."
    "Which is meaningless until concerted action results. And that would require communication, and you'd pick it up. That's one comfort, anyway." He was again looking out at night-softened Manhattan, which rose like a crystallo-grapher's dream of Atlantis out of a lighted haze. "Probably meaningless," Michaelmas said softly.
    There was another silence from the machine. "Tell me..."
    "Anything."
    "Why do you ask that in connection with your previous set of questions?"
    Michaelmas's eyes twinkled as they often did when he found Domino trying to grapple with intuition. But not all of his customary insouciance endured through his reply. "Because we have just discovered that the very great Nils Hannes Limberg is a fraud and a henchman. That is a sad and significant thing. And because Norwood was as dead as yesterday. He was a nice young man with high, special-ized qualifications no higher than those of the man who replaced him, and there was never anything secret or mar-vellous about him or you would have told me long ago. If we could