BURDEN the Hand

                          By RANDALL GARRETT

                  _The clock was self-correcting--so
                  Van Ostrand's plot was foolproof!_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                        Infinity November 1958.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


"Aren't you boys sort of biting the hand that feeds you?" asked Nikki
Varden, staring complacently down the barrel of a Lundhurst Twelve
while she kept both hands high above her head.

Van Ostrand was big and fat and had sleepy eyes and an oily manner
about him that nobody with half a brain could fall for. I, personally,
would have picked him as the villain of a vidicast the first time he
walked on the screen. He could have played the part to a T. The trouble
with somebody who looks that much like the heavy is that your mind
rejects the idea. You think to yourself, "I'll watch that guy because
I don't trust him, but I doubt if he could really be as bad as he
acts--nobody could."

Van Ostrand was. He gave a smooth, hardy chuckle and said: "You have a
way with words, my dear. However, I have learned that it's perfectly
possible to bite the hand that feeds one, provided it is bitten off
cleanly at the wrist. Then, you see"--again that chuckle--"you can feed
off the hand."

"My! What you can't do with a metaphor!" said Nikki Varden admiringly.

Van Ostrand said nothing but, "You will oblige me by turning around, my
dear."

I had to admire the girl, even though she was being an insufferable
little prig, acting as though she had too much money, too much beauty,
too much talent, and not enough common sense.

There were five of us in the big house--Miss Varden, Van Ostrand, the
mouse-faced Giles Jackson, the too handsome Bob North, and me. Van
Ostrand herded the girl into the big living room; Jackson, North, and I
tagged along behind. While the rest of them went on in, I stayed at the
door, listening.

"Take care of her, North," Van Ostrand said smoothly.

North laughed in his rich, hearty way. "Just how do you mean that, Van?"

Van Ostrand looked painfully exasperated. "Please, Mr. North; I am
much too old and too fat to be amused by your lascivious humors. Put
the handcuffs on her before she does something young and foolhardy and
forces me to shoot her."

"Shoot me?" There was a sneer in Nikki Varden's voice. "You wouldn't."

I knew what she was thinking, and I hoped she wouldn't try to act on
it, because she was wrong. If she wasn't careful, she'd be dead wrong.

Bob North jerked the girl's hands around and snapped a set of magnetic
cuffs on them. She said something in a low tone that I didn't get, but
it probably referred to either North's ancestry or his questionable
birth. North just laughed and pushed her into a chair.

"I don't get you, Bob North," she said. "You and your good looks had
me fooled. You should have married me for my money instead of pulling
something like this."

Van Ostrand's chuckle came bubbling up from deep within his great, soft
belly. "My dear Nikki, you are wrong on at least two counts. In the
first place, if he attempted to go anywhere near a Registry Office for
a mating certificate, he would be nailed for bigamy and desertion."

North looked suddenly angry, like a schoolboy faced with a tattletale.
"That's enough, Van!"

Van Ostrand's piggish eyes and his soft voice both became suddenly
cold. "Remember your place, Mr. North."

North subsided.

"In the second place," Van Ostrand went on, his voice soft and oily
again, "we are all of the persuasion that there are more important
things in life than money."

Nikki Varden had been basing her actions on the obvious fact that
in order to get her to sign anything and get it through any of her
big holding corporations, they would have to keep her definitely and
indisputably alive and conscious. But if it wasn't her money that was
wanted....

Her face went suddenly white. "What do you want?" she said, in an
almost inaudible voice.

"For the nonce," said Van Ostrand, "only your continued co-operation.
Believe me, dear child, we have no desire whatever to dispatch you
untimely from this, our present sphere of corporal existence. On the
other hand, we have no compunctions against it, either. Our choice will
depend on your choice."

"What do you want?" she repeated. Her color was beginning to come back.

"Right now, you can just sit comfortably and relax. If you wish, I
would be happy to turn on the tri-di. You can watch a program and take
your mind from your troubles."

"No thanks," she said.

       *       *       *       *       *

She had only a small idea of what she was up against. I knew exactly
what Van Ostrand was up to, and, for the moment, I was glad Nikki
Varden didn't. She was scared enough as it was.

Jerome Van Ostrand was a lawyer, and a good one. Presumably, he worked
for Marcus Varden Enterprises; I say "presumably," because obviously he
didn't work _for_ the company, but against it. Or at least, for himself
only. I didn't know how much control he now had over Marcus Varden
Enterprises, but I suspected that it was more than he was entitled to
have. Nikki had gotten wise to him just a little too late.

But Van Ostrand had been prepared, even for that eventuality. Without
Bob North inside to shut off the great mansion's electronic defenses,
he would never have made it into the house alive, nor would he have
been able to manhandle Nikki the way he had. But the way things stood,
Jerome Van Ostrand was in complete control.

The silence became heavy. Giles Jackson, the mouse-faced little
triggerman, shoved his gun into his pocket holster and sat down. He
lit a cigarette and stared at the tips of his shoes.

Van Ostrand rolled an expensive, pungent cigar in his round, fat face,
while Bob North contented himself with looking at Nikki with obvious
thoughts showing on his face. I just stayed at the door, being very
quiet and wishing I could do something else.

Nikki couldn't take it. "For the love of God!" she shouted finally.
"Say something! Tell me what you want!"

Bob North started to open his yap and make the obvious remark, but Van
Ostrand cut him off with a wave of his pudgy hand.

"Your father," he said, after removing the cigar from between his heavy
lips, "is a very great man. Indeed, one might almost say, a genius."

"What's my father got to do with this?" Nikki asked with irritation.
"My father's been dead for seventeen years."

Van Ostrand looked at his cigar-end, approved of the ash, and looked
back up at the girl. "Only legally," he said.

She gazed back at him uncomprehendingly.

"Your mother," Van Ostrand continued, "was, shall we say, something of
a schemer."

"From you," snapped Nikki, "that's very funny."

The fat man chuckled hugely. "Indeed it is! I admit the beauty of your
penetrating witticism, my dear. No, compared with me, your mother was
practically the epitome of virtue and guilelessness. But she had her
path made easy, while I did not. I hardly think I could have managed to
marry the great Dr. Marcus Varden!" He chuckled jovially at his own wit.

However, I had to agree with his last remark. I don't think he could
have passed the physical.

"At least my mother was married to my father," Nikki said bitingly.

"Hoho!" the fat man laughed hugely. "You improve, my dear, really you
do. Yes, indeed she was. And when she married Dr. Varden, she married a
man who was already a millionaire several times over. He was not only
capable of doing basic research into the laws of the universe, but
of capitalizing on them. He was one of those truly rare persons, the
all-around genius. It was as if Newton had been able to invent and use
an antigravity device, or if Einstein had perfected the atomic bomb and
sold it to the United States Government."

"Why are you telling me things I already know?" Nikki asked
sarcastically.

The fat man looked astonished. "Why, my dear child! You screamed at
me just a few moments ago, wanting me to talk, to explain. I _am_
explaining, but we have plenty of time"--he gestured at the big ornate
clock on the wall--"so I'm taking plenty. Otherwise, I might finish the
story too soon, and you would become bored again."

He took a puff from his cigar and blew a cloud of blue-gray smoke
slowly toward the ceiling. "But if you insist on new data, dear girl,
you shall have it. Did you know that your mother blew up your father's
spaceship seventeen years ago?"

Even I perked up my ears at that one. It was a bit of Varden family
history that I hadn't been aware of.

"Mother killed Dad?" Nikki laughed shortly. "You lie."

"I admit the charge," chuckled Van Ostrand. "I do. Frequently. Not this
time, however. Besides, I didn't say she killed him; I said she blew up
his ship, which is quite a different thing. Indeed, my dear, I am happy
to say that your father has been alive for these seventeen years and is
alive at this very moment."

Nikki looked at him silently for a long moment, then leaned back and
closed her eyes. "I don't believe you, of course," she said calmly.

"Of course not," said the fat man. "Why should you? But it's true,
nonetheless. You see, your father--"

"Time, boss," interrupted the rodentish little Giles Jackson suddenly,
pointing at the clock on the wall.

"So it is," said Van Ostrand. "You are very observant, Giles, my
boy." He heaved his ponderous bulk out of the chair into which he
had lowered himself and strolled rollingly over to the visiphone. He
dialed a number. The screen lit up, but no face appeared. "Yes, Mr. Van
Ostrand?" said a voice at the other end.

"Ah, you're there on time, I see," said the fat man. "Very good.
We'll synchronize, then, for exactly twenty-five seconds after three.
Understood?"

"Twenty-five seconds after three. Yes, sir." There was a click, and the
screen faded.

       *       *       *       *       *

The fat man looked even more jovial than ever. "All is going according
to schedule, my children," he said as he lowered his bulging body again
into the chair.

"Boy, I sure hope this works," said Bob North suddenly, as though he
had thought about it for the first time.

"It'll work," said Giles Jackson sharply. "Mr. Van Ostrand figured it
out, and he's got more brains than you and me put together."

"Your loyalty is touching, Giles," said Van Ostrand gravely, "and well
within the bounds of truth." He dropped the remains of his cigar into
a dispenser and watched it vanish. "I have worked on this ever since I
found those papers ten years ago. And I have waited patiently for Dr.
Marcus Varden to return. Nikki, my dear, when we first came in here
after Mr. North had so kindly shut off the house's ingenious defenses,
you thought I was going to force you to hand over to me the rest of the
stock shares in Marcus Varden Enterprises, did you not? And for that
reason, you were not in the least afraid that we would kill you. Why
not?"

"You know perfectly well," said Nikki, "If I die or even become
unconscious, my brain pattern won't register on the recorder at the
Exchange Commission, and the transfer wouldn't be valid."

"Exactly. Your brain pattern is constantly being received by one of
your father's greatest inventions--the sigma brainwave pickup. Your
father began working on another modification of that device seventeen
years ago--a sigma brainwave _sender_. A device that could impress one
person's sigma signal upon the brain of another. A hypnotic, telepathic
control, capable of controlling the mind of anyone, over almost any
distance. Can you imagine what a device like that would be worth? What
it would mean in terms of power?" He looked at the girl. "Ah, I see you
understand."

"Not completely," said Nikki, "Where is this device?"

"Ah," said the fat man. "That is a lovely story in itself. But,
physically, the device--and the data on it--are in your father's
spaceship."

"Then it was destroyed seventeen years ago," said the girl.

"No, indeed," said Van Ostrand. He gazed up at the ceiling as though he
could gaze through it. "You father had _two_ ships, my dear. One has
been vaporized for nearly two decades; the other is up there somewhere,
invisible and indetectable, in a satellite orbit around Earth. At
precisely twenty-five seconds past three, an electronic mechanism will
be activated in this house by that clock on the wall. That mechanism,
in turn, will activate a corresponding device in your father's ship, if
it is within range, and automatically land the ship here."

North laughed. "Only instead of landing here, he'll land at the spot we
designate instead. Because five seconds before this signal is sent, our
man will send a different signal keyed to another spot. The ship will
come down, and we will have imm--"

"North!" the fat man bellowed.

Because Nikki had suddenly leaped to her feet and run toward the clock.
She was trying to move the second hand with her head, since her hands
were locked with magnetic cuffs. It didn't do any good; the steel hand
went on; unperturbed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bob North grabbed her by the hair and jerked her to the floor. Giles
Jackson was on his feet, his gun aimed at her head.

"No, Giles!" Van Ostrand snapped. Then, to the girl: "That was
damnably stupid of you. In the first place, you might have been
killed--accidentally. In the second place, that clock is automatically
corrected every minute. It wouldn't do you any good to push it to
an incorrect time, because it would be readjusted at the end of the
minute. Watch." He pointed. The hand was nearing twelve. It passed it.
Then, suddenly, it jerked back to twelve as the mechanism corrected it,
and then went on again.

"North," said the fat man, "handcuff the wench to the sofa. We can't
have any more of this."

North dragged her roughly across the floor and followed the fat man's
orders. Giles Jackson settled himself to his seat again and lit another
cigarette.

I had listened silently all the time, and I figured I'd heard almost
enough--but not quite. I kept hoping that Nikki would ask more
questions.

She didn't have to. Van Ostrand was in an expansive mood. He had become
more and more jubilant as the time approached, and his jubilance
loosened his tongue.

"You see, my dear, we don't want to lose a secret which may be even
more important than the mind controller--the secret of immortality.
Because that's why he put his ship into that orbit; that's why he
surrounded it with so many protective devices; that's why he can't
land it himself. Your father is in a coma, you see, and has been for
seventeen years, while his body was being rejuvenated by a process
known only to himself.

"If it was successful, he planned to return and rejuvenate your mother,
using a process which renders the body immortal and eternally young,
for all practical purposes. But your mother couldn't wait, so she had
a duplicate of his ship blown up, and had the courts declare him dead.
She wanted the money immediately. And a good thing it was, too; she
died six years ago, when you were nineteen."

"How do you know all this?" Nikki asked. "How _could_ you?"

The fat man smiled. "From a friend, a very dear friend. And that, for
now, is all I think you need to know."

I smiled thoughtfully. I had all I needed to know, too. I knew how he
had gotten his information, and where it came from. It's nice to know
who you can trust and who you can't.

The clock showed that I had ten minutes to do what had to be done. I
backed away from the door and trotted back in the direction from which
I had originally come upstairs from the sub-basement of the house. None
of the others noticed me leaving.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was while I was in the sub-basement that I was actually surprised
for the first time that night. I felt the faint vibration of a landing
spaceship. But that couldn't be! It should have landed at the spot Van
Ostrand had chosen unless something had gone wrong with his device.

In my own flesh this time, I headed up through the sealed tube, out
of the prison where my body had lain, immobile, for seventeen years,
buried, like the cicada, waiting for new life. When I reached the
living room, it was empty, except for Nikki. It took every bit of will
power I had to stay away from her, but I didn't want her to be able to
give anything away. I slipped in carefully so that the back of the sofa
prevented her from seeing me.

I could hear the fat man's voice through the French windows as he,
North, and Giles pounded toward the little antigravity-powered
spaceship that had landed on the front lawn.

"It shouldn't have landed here!" Van Ostrand was bellowing. "We'll be
detected here! They'll follow it in no time! They--" His voice was
drowned out by a bellow of thunder as the police ships dropped from the
sky.

"_That ship is government property! Stay away, or we shoot!_"

The three men knew that they'd be safe from almost anything inside
that ship, so they kept going. They'd rather take the risk than lose
their chance at having immortality or a mind control machine. I walked
quietly over to a window and looked out.

Giles, the triggerman, was firing, accurately but ineffectively, at the
police craft. The blue-hot beam of his Lundhurst was simply spattering
off their shields.

A police beam winked down, and Giles Jackson was gone.

I hadn't known the fat man could move so fast. He was already at the
airlock, tugging open the emergency unlocker. Bob North was right
behind him.

Again the police gunner's beam found its mark.

But this beam touched the ship, too.

I turned away from the window and ran to Nikki. Her shock at seeing me
didn't last long.

"Close your eyes!" I yelled. "Get behind that sofa!"

A glare of brilliant white lit up the landscape for miles around as my
ship dissolved in a blaze of silent flame. The light seemed to come
through the very walls of the house as the ship burned.

"The police will be blind for a while from that," I said rapidly.
"Remember that you don't know anything. You weren't even told anything
by anyone. The fat man came in here and held you prisoner, but you
don't know why. Got that?"

"Yes, darling! Now hide, _quickly_!"

I did. I headed back for my secret sub-basement, and I didn't come
out again for several hours. When I did, Nikki was waiting for me. We
didn't speak at first; I was too busy kissing her.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I still don't quite know what happened, Marcus," she said afterwards.
"I've thought, all these years, that you were in that ship."

"Not Marcus," I cautioned her. "Marcus Varden is as dead as his wife.
From now on, you're Nikki Varden, and I'm Daniel Markell."

"Explain," she said. "The house defenses are up again. Not even the
police can get in here." Then she giggled. "They were certainly
surprised when that ship went up. They wanted to get the secrets of
what was inside it just as much as Van Ostrand did."

"I'll bet. That's one of the reasons I did it this way. I was
reasonably certain that not even the government could be trusted with
a secret like this. That's why I left misleading information in the
government vaults. That's where Van Ostrand got the information, by the
way; he got the same mixture of truth and half-truth that I'd given
them. Someone in high places is going to get burned for this."

"He thought I--or, rather, my mother--must have blown up your other
ship, just to get your money."

"I know." I grinned. "I was listening all the time."

"But--_how?_"

"That sigma projector of mine. I used it on the cat. I just wanted to
take a look around, before coming out in my own body. And it's a good
thing I did."

She opened her mouth, closed it, then laughed. "You mean that all the
time puss was walking around the house watching us--all the time he was
sitting near the door--that was _you_ watching out of those slitted
green eyes?"

"Right. While my body was down in the basement, I was walking around up
here, being a housecat. You can see why that isn't a machine to trust
just anybody with."

She nodded, and her face became suddenly somber. "The government
couldn't be trusted either. But why couldn't you trust me? Why didn't
you tell me you were here all the time, instead of out in space?"

"Because I had no way of knowing how well you could hold on to two
identities during the Change," I told her. "If they had ever caught on
that you were growing younger and that you were playing the part of
both mother and daughter, they might have grabbed you and psyched the
whole story out of you."

She nodded. "I see. But I was so worried about your being in that ship
that I almost ruined the whole thing."

"How?"

"You didn't want the ship to come down here, did you?" she asked.

"No. I wanted it to follow the signals of Van Ostrand's confederate.
It would have burned when they opened the inner airlock, anyway. What
did you do to bring it down here?"

"If you were the cat, sweetheart, you saw what I did." She looked
suddenly very coy.

"You mean that bit with the head, when you tried to nudge the second
hand? I don't quite see--"

"Magnetic handcuffs and bobby pins," she said.

Then I got it. Even a genius like me can see the obvious when you draw
him a picture of it. She'd magnetized a bobby pin and let it stick to
the second hand of the clock. The weight of it had been just enough to
cause the clock to run fast when the hand was dropping from "12" to
"6", and make it run slow when it was trying to go up the other side.
The two cancelled each other out, so it was always almost correct when
it was pointing straight up. But it took it only twenty seconds to get
to the "6", and about forty to reach the "12".

"Very clever," I said. "I'm glad you didn't kill me with it. Once I get
the sigma receiver-sender down to manageable size, we won't have to
worry about either of us not knowing what the other is up to."

"Well, you're not going to work on it just yet," she said
emphatically. "First you'll have to establish your new identity. And
then you'll have to marry me again. Nikki Varden is a very respectable
and unspoiled girl."

I thought of all the years that I had lain in that tomb, while, due to
the sex-linked differences in the rejuvenation process of immortality,
my wife had been fully alive. And I thought of men like Bob North who
tried to push themselves onto helpless women. And then I realized that
Nikki was not quite helpless. Respectable and unspoiled?

"She'd better be," I said.