Deluge II. Robert F. Young
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wasted no time in outlining his proposition. Standing before her, his short bulky body silhouetted against the mountainside, he pointed out first of all what would be in store for her if he turned her over to the Old York authorities; then he told her what he had in mind. She was sitting bolt-upright on the sofa when he finished, eyes glittering with hatred. “Do you think I’d sleep with you?” she demanded. He wanted to point out that he was not a negro, but a colored, and that the negro blood that flowed in his veins was as negligible as the negro blood that flowed in the veins of most modern Americans; but doing so would have given her the false impression that he was ashamed of that blood. Therefore, he let the epithet pass. “You would be my mistress in name only,” he explained, “and the whorl-lock on the love-nest in which I established you would be adjusted to respond to your touch alone. Surely you can see the advantages of such a way of life. For the first time since you were born you would have enough to eat and a roof other than a skin tarpaulin over your head. You would have clothes to wear—the best clothes Old York has to offer—and you would be a respected member of civilized society. And your only obligations would be to attend public gatherings with me and to give the impression while doing so that you respected and admired me. I am, in effect, offering to touch you with my magic wand—and my magic wand is hard cold cash.
She was regarding him narrowly. “Why?”
“I—I need someone like you. Someone unusual who will attract favorable attention to me and to my business.” He with-drew a lavender kerchief from the pocket of his tailored hunting-jacket and patted his forehead. To his astonishment, he saw that his hand was trembling. He replaced the kerchief and took a deep breath. “There is yet another advantage that would accrue from your acceptance.”
“Yes?”
“I had two reasons for purchasing this tract of land,” Burke said. “One was its rich potentials as a hunting-ground; the other was the spaceport and ship that came with it. The ship is the last of its kind—the last the World-office of Stellar Migration had built—and it was never put into use because at the time of its completion, the predicted radiation storms had already begun and the emigration ban was in effect. Both the ship and the spaceport then became the property of the new center of world-government—Old York—and after the few Bantus who had been left behind took telepassage to the city, both were allowed to fall into desuetude. I got them for a song, and several months ago, when I became convinced that my seismograph extrapolations were correct, I had the ship reconditioned. When the forthcoming tectonic revolution begins, I, and I alone, will have the means of escaping destruction, and I and I alone, will choose my fellow-passengers. Many of them I have already chosen, though I’ve informed none of them yet. I have room for many more.”
He paused, searching her eyes for the awe which his words should have evoked. He did not find it. Presently, “Let me elaborate,” he went on. “In tech-school I specialized in seismology. Today it is no longer taught, and the tutorobot who taught it has since been scrapped; but even then it was an unpopular subject. But for some reason it fascinated me—so much so, in fact, that I have made a hobby of it ever since. Today, in the basement of The Veldt building in Old York, I have a central coordinator which is attuned to hundreds of hypersensitive seismographs located in key positions all over the world. The coordinator interprets their recordings, correlates them and projects the result on a huge graph. I instituted the setup because I had been led to believe from my earlier seismic observations that centuries of weather-control have interfered with the normal cooling-off process of the planet and have brought about the conditions necessary for a new kind of tectonic disturbance. I have found out since that such is actually the case, and thanks to the efficiency of my seismic setup, I can predict the beginning of the end almost to the day. The new tectonic revolution will commence on or near the seventh of July—less than a month from now.”
He began pacing up and down, and when he spoke again, his voice was slightly louder than it had been before: “But this time, as I inferred, the revolution will be the result of expansion, rather than contraction. This time, the mountains will not rise, but the continents will sink, and as a prelude, there will be rains such as man has never known before!” He swept his arm in a wide arc, and his voice rose higher. “All will be covered, save for the tops of the highest mountains, and they will be as barren islands in a vast planetary sea. Let the civic dignitaries and their mistresses laugh at me behind my back—I don’t care! When the time comes they’ll listen to me. ‘Save us, Anton Burke!’ they’ll say. ‘Save us, please!’ “ He darted over to a huge tele-window, tuned it into the spaceport. He pointed at the ship with a rigid forefinger. “There it is—the Deucalion —and I own it, it’s mine! It will carry me and whomever I choose to accompany me to Alpha Centauri VI, and there I will establish a colony far superior to the one established on Alpha Centauri V by the unfortunates who escaped the radiation storms, and I will call it Asgard—the abode of the gods!” He turned from the tele-window and triumphantly faced the girl. His blob-like body and ugly moon-shaped face anticlimaxed his rhetoric, but he was blissfully unaware of the aspect he presented. “As my mistress,” he concluded, his voice calmer now, “your salvation would, of course come first.”
There was awe in her eyes now all right—or was it simply fear? “Be—before your wife’s?” she asked.
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