The noise lifted, louder and closer. Reinach spun about. His gun muzzle glared emptily at Fourre.

  “Yes, Jacques.”

  “Mutiny!”

  “We had to.” Fourre discovered that he could again meet Reinach’s eyes. “The situation was that crucial. If you had yielded . . . if you had even been willing to discuss the question . . . I would have blown the whistle and nothing would have happened. Now we’re too late, unless you want to surrender. If you do, our offer still stands. We still want you to work with us.”

  A grenade blasted somewhere nearby.

  “You—”

  “Go on and shoot. It doesn’t matter very much.”

  “No.” The pistol wavered. “Not unless you— Stay where you are! Don’t move!” The hand Reinach passed across his forehead shuddered. “You know how well this place is guarded. You know the people will rise to my side.”

  “I think not. They worship you, yes, but they are tired and starved. Just in case, though, we staged this for the nighttime. By tomorrow morning the business will be over.” Fourre spoke like a rusty engine. “The barracks have already been seized. Those more distant noises are the artillery being captured. The University is surrounded and cannot stand against an attack.”

  “This building can.”

  “So you won’t quit, Jacques?”

  “If I could do that,” said Reinach, “I wouldn’t be here tonight.”

  The window broke open. Reinach whirled. The man who was vaulting through shot first.

  The sentry outside the door looked in. His rifle was poised, but he died before he could use it. Men with black clothes and blackened faces swarmed across the sill.

  Fourre knelt beside Reinach. A bullet through the head had been quick, at least. But if it had struck farther down, perhaps Reinach’s life could have been saved. Fourre wanted to weep, but he had forgotten how.

  The big man who had killed Reinach ignored his commandos to stoop over the body with Fourre. “I’m sorry, sir,” he whispered. It was hard to tell whom he spoke to.

  “Not your fault, Stefan.” Fourre’s voice jerked.

  “We had to run through the shadows, get under the wall. I got a boost through this window. Didn’t have time to take aim. I didn’t realize who he was till—”

  “It’s all right, I said. Go on, now, take charge of your party, get this building cleaned out. Once we hold it, the rest of his partisans should yield pretty soon.”

  The big man nodded and went out into the corridor.

  Fourre crouched by Jacques Reinach while a sleet of bullets drummed on the outer walls. He heard them only dimly. Most of him was wondering if this hadn’t been the best ending. Now they could give their chief a funeral with full military honors, and later they would build a monument to the man who saved the West, and—

  And it might not be quite that easy to bribe a ghost. But you had to try.

  “I didn’t tell you the whole story, Jacques,” he said. His hands were like a stranger’s, using his jacket to wipe off the blood, and his words ran on of themselves. “I wish I had. Maybe you would have understood . . . and maybe not. Marius went into politics afterward, you see. He had the prestige of his victory behind him, he was the most powerful man in Rome, his intentions were noble, but he did not understand politics. There followed a witch’s dance of corruption, murder, civil war, fifty years of it, the final extinction of the Republic. Caesarism merely gave a name to what had already been done.

  “I would like to think that I helped spare Jacques Reinach the name of Marius.”

  Rain slanted in through the broken window. Fourre reached out and closed the darkened eyes. He wondered if he would ever be able to close them within himself.

  The cost of heroism is cruelly high. What Fourre had slain was part of himself. His childhood faith perished with Reinach. Yet Stefan Rostomily, the actual killer kept his innocence and later provided Fourre with his finest weapon in the struggle against Chaos.

  Famine, plague, want, and radioactivity were slowly conquered. The Years of Hunger gave way to the Years of Madness—it takes very little surplus to fuel new mass mischief. These in turn yielded to quieter times, thanks to the revitalized United Nations organized by the First Conference of Rio. Global peace restored prosperity by the last decades of the century. Space exploration opened a new external frontier while the Psychotechnic Institute that grew out of Professor Valti’s theories probed an old internal one. Unfortunately, these happy developments were not to everyone’s liking.

  Un-Man

  I

  THEY WERE GONE, their boat whispering into the sky with all six of them aboard. Donner had watched them from his balcony—he had chosen the apartment carefully with a view to such features—as they walked out on the landing flange and entered the shell. Now their place was vacant and it was time for him to get busy.

  For a moment hesitation was in him. He had waited many days for this chance, but a man does not willingly enter a potential trap. His eyes strayed to the picture on his desk. The darkly beautiful young woman and the child in her arms seemed to be looking at him, her lips were parted as if she were about to speak. He wanted to press the button that animated the film, but didn’t quite dare. Gently, his fingers stroked the glass over her cheek.

  “Jeanne,” he whispered. “Jeanne, honey.”

  He got to work. His colorful lounging pajamas were exchanged for a gray outfit that would be inconspicuous against the walls of the building. An ordinary featureless mask, its sheen carefully dulled to non-reflection, covered his face. He clipped a flat box of tools to his belt and painted his fingertips with collodion. Picking up a reel of cord in one hand, he returned to the balcony.

  From here, two hundred and thirty-four stories up, he had a wide view of the Illinois plain. As far as he could see, the land rolled green with corn, hazing into a far horizon out of which the great sky lifted. Here and there, a clump of trees had been planted, and the white streak of an old highway crossed the field, but otherwise it was one immensity of growth. The holdings of Midwest Agricultural reached beyond sight.

  On either hand, the apartment building lifted sheer from the trees and gardens of its park. Two miles long, a city in its own right, a mountain of walls and windows, the unit dominated the plain, sweeping heavenward in a magnificent arrogance that ended sixty-six stories above Donner’s flat. Through the light prairie wind that fluttered his garments, the man could hear a low unending hum, muted pulsing of machines and life—the building—itself like a giant organism.

  There were no other humans in sight. The balconies were so designed as to screen the users from view of neighbors on the same level, and anyone in the park would find his upward glance blocked by trees. A few brilliant points of light in the sky were airboats, but that didn’t matter.

  Donner fastened his reel to the edge of the balcony and took the end of the cord in his fingers. For still another moment he stood, letting the sunlight and wind pour over him, filling his eyes with the reaching plains and the high, white-clouded heaven.

  He was a tall man, his apparent height reduced by the width of shoulders and chest, a curious rippling grace in his movements. His naturally yellow hair had been dyed brown and contact lenses made his blue eyes dark, but otherwise there hadn’t been much done to his face—the broad forehead, high cheekbones, square jaw, and jutting nose were the same. He smiled wryly behind the blank mask, took a deep breath, and swung himself over the balcony rail.

  The cord unwound noiselessly, bearing him down past level after level. There was a risk involved in this daylight burglary—someone might happen to glance around the side wall of a balcony and spot him, and even the custom of privacy would hardly keep them from notifying the unit police. But the six he was after didn’t time their simultaneous departures for his convenience.

  The looming facade slid past, blurred a little by the speed of his descent. One, two, three— He counted as he went by, and at the eighth story down tugged the cord with his free hand. The reel braked and he hung in midair.

  A long and empty way down— He grinned and began to swing himself back and forth, increasing the amplitude of each arc until his soles were touching the unit face. On the way back, he grasped the balcony rail, just beyond the screening side wall, with his free hand. His body jerked to a stop, the impact like a blow in his muscles.

  Still clinging to the cord, he pulled himself one-armed past the screen, over the rail, and onto the balcony floor. Under the gray tunic and the sweating skin, his sinews felt as if they were about to crack. He grunted with relief when he stood freely, tied the cord to the rail, and unclipped his tool case.

  The needle of his electronic detector flickered. So there was an alarm hooked to the door leading in from the balcony. Donner traced it with care, located a wire, and cut it. Pulling a small torch from his kit, he approached the door. Beyond its transparent plastic, the rooms lay quiet: a conventional arrangement of furniture, but with a waiting quality over it.

  Imagination, thought Donner impatiently, and cut the lock from the door. As he entered, the autocleaner sensed his presence and its dust-sucking wind whined to silence.

  The man forced the lock of a desk and riffled through the papers within. One or two in code he slipped into his pocket, the rest were uninteresting. There must be more, though. Curse it, this was their regional headquarters!

  His metal detector helped him about the apartment, looking for hidden safes. When he found a large mass buried in a wall, he didn’t trouble with searching for the button to open it, but cut the plastic facing away. The gang would know their place had been raided, and would want to move. If they took another flat in the same building, Donner’s arrangement with the superintendent would come into effect; they’d get a vacancy which had been thoughtfully provided with all the spy apparatus he could install. The man grinned again.

  Steel gleamed at him through the scorched and melted wall. It was a good safe, and he hadn’t time to diddle with it. He plugged in his electric drill, and the diamond head gnawed a small hole in the lock. With a hypodermic he inserted a few cubic centimeters of levinite, and touched it off by a UHF beam. The lock jangled to ruin, and Donner opened the door.

  He had only time to see the stet-gun within, and grasp the terrible fact of its existence. Then it spat three needles into his chest, and he whirled down into darkness.

  II

  ONCE OR TWICE he had begun to waken, stirring dimly toward light, and the jab of a needle had thrust him back. Now, as his head slowly cleared, they let him alone. And that was worse.

  Donner retched and tried to move. His body sagged against straps that held him fast in his chair. Vision blurred in a huge nauseous ache; the six who stood watching him were a ripple of fever-dream against an unquiet shadow.

  “He’s coming around,” said the thin man unnecessarily.

  The heavy-set, gray-haired man in the conservative blue tunic glanced at his timepiece. “Pretty fast, considering how he was dosed. Healthy specimen.”

  Donner mumbled. The taste of vomit was bitter in his mouth. “Give him some water,” said the bearded man.

  “Like hell!” The thin man’s voice was a snarl. His face was dead white against the shifting, blurring murk of the room, and there was a fever in his eyes. “He doesn’t rate it, the—Un-man!”

  “Get him some water,” said the gray-haired one quietly. The skeletal younger man slouched sulkily over to a chipped basin with an old-fashioned tap and drew a glassful.

  Donner swallowed it greedily, letting it quench some of the dry fire in his throat and belly. The bearded man approached with a hypo.

  “Stimulant,” he explained. “Bring you around faster.” It bit into Donner’s arm and he felt his heartbeat quicken. His head was still a keen pulsing pain, but his eyes steadied and he looked at the others with returning clarity.

  “We weren’t altogether careless,” said the heavy-set man. “That stet-gun was set to needle anybody who opened the safe without pressing the right button first. And, of course, a radio signal was emitted which brought us back in a hurry. We’ve kept you unconscious till now.”

  Donner looked around him. The room was bare, thick with the dust and cobwebs of many years, a few pieces of old-style wooden furniture crouched in ugliness against the cracked plaster walls. There was a single window, its broken glass panes stuffed with rags, dirt so thick on it that he could not be sure if there was daylight outside. But the hour was probably after dark. The only illumination within was from a single fluoro in a stand on the table.

  He must be in Chicago, Donner decided through a wave of sickness. One of the vast moldering regions that encompassed the inhabited parts of the dying city—deserted, not worth destroying as yet, the lair of rats and decay. Sooner or later, some agricultural outfit would buy up the nominal title from the government which had condemned the place and raze what had been spared by fire and rot. But it hadn’t happened yet, and the empty slum was a good hideaway for anybody.

  Donner thought of those miles of ruinous buildings, wrapped in night, looming hollow against a vacant sky—dulled echoes in the cracked and grass-grown streets, the weary creak of a joist, the swift patter of feet and glare of eyes from the thick dark, menace and loneliness for further than he could run.

  Alone, alone. He was more alone here than in the outermost reaches of space. He knew starkly that he was going to die.

  Jeanne. O Jeanne, my darling.

  “You were registered at the unit as Mark Roberts,” said the woman crisply. She was thin, almost as thin as the bitter-eyed young man beside her. The face was sharp and hungry, the hair close cropped, the voice harsh with purpose. “But your ID tattoo is a fake—it’s a dye that comes off with acid. We got your thumbprint and that number on a check and called the bank central like in an ordinary verification, and the robofile said yes, that was Mark Roberts and the account was all right.” She leaned forward, her face straining against the blur of night, and spat it at him. “Who are you really? Only a secret service man could get by with that kind of fake. Whose service are you in?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” snapped the thin man. “He’s not American Security. We know that. So he must be an Un-man.”

  The way he said the last word made it an ugly, inhuman sound. “The Un-man!” he repeated.

  “Our great enemy,” said the heavy-set one thoughtfully. “The Un-man—not just an ordinary operative, with human limitations, but the great and secret one who’s made so much trouble for us.”

  He cocked his gray head and stared at Donner. “It fits what fragmentary descriptions we have,” he went on. “But then, the U.N. boys can do a lot with surgery and cosmetics, can’t they? And the Un-Man has been killed several times. An operator was bagged in Hong Kong only last month which the killer swore must be our enemy—he said nobody else could have led them such a chase.”

  That was most likely Weinberger, thought Donner. An immense weariness settled on him. They were so few, so desperately few, and one by one the Brothers went down into darkness. He was next, and after him—

  “What I can’t understand,” said a fifth man—Donner recognized him as Colonel Samsey of the American Guard—“is why, if the U. N. Secret Services does have a corps of—uh—supermen, it should bother to disguise them to look all alike. So that we’ll think we’re dealing with an immortal?” He chuckled grimly. “Surely they don’t expect us to be rattled by that!”

  “Not supermen,” said the gray-haired one. “Enormously able, yes, but the Un-men aren’t infallible. As witness this one.” He stood before Donner, his legs spread and his hands on his hips. “Suppose you start talking. Tell us about yourself.”

  “I can tell you about your own selves,” answered Donner. His tongue felt thick and dry, but the acceptance of death made him, all at once, immensely steady. “You are Roger Wade, president of Brain Tools, Incorporated, and a prominent supporter of the Americanist Party.” To the woman: “You are Marta Jennings, worker for the Party on a full-time basis. Your secretary, Mr. Wade—” his eyes roved to the gaunt young man—“is Rodney Borrow, Exogene Number—”

  “Don’t call me that!” Cursing, Borrow lunged at Donner. He clawed like a woman. When Samsey and the bearded man dragged him away, his face was death-white and he dribbled at the mouth.

  “And the experiment was a failure,” taunted Donner cruelly.

  “Enough!” Wade slapped the prisoner, a ringing open-handed buffet. “We want to know something new, and there isn’t much time. You are, of course, immunized against truth drugs—Dr. Lewin’s tests have already confirmed that—but I assume you can still feel pain.”

  After a moment, he added quietly. “We aren’t fiends. You know that we’re patriots.” Working with the nationalists of a dozen other countries! thought Donner. “We don’t want to hurt or kill unnecessarily.”

  “But first we want your real identity,” said the bearded man, Lewin. “Then your background of information about us, the future plans of your chief, and so on. However, it will be sufficient for now if you answer a few questions pertaining to yourself, residence and so on.”

  Oh, yes, thought Donner, the weariness like a weight on his soul. That’ll do. Because then they’ll find Jeanne and Jimmy, and bring them here, and—

  Lewin wheeled forth a lie detector. “Naturally, we don’t want our time wasted by false leads,” he said.

  “It won’t be,” replied Donner. “I’m not going to say anything.”

  Lewin nodded, unsurprised, and brought out another machine. “This one generates low-frequency, low-voltage current,” he remarked. “Quite painful. I don’t think your will can hold out very long. If it does, we can always try prefrontal lobotomy; you won’t have inhibitions then. But we’ll give you a chance with this first.”

  He adjusted the electrodes on Donner’s skin. Borrow licked his lips with a dreadful hunger.