The Man Who Was Six by F. L. Wallace (thriller novels to read .txt) 📖

glanced at him indifferently, then looked away. Outside the orifice, where the tube had been in the outer of two walls, was an actual port. He gazed through it contentedly.

A finger tapped him. "Yes?" he said in a loud voice.

The man behind him leaned over. "I've been riding in this plane once a week for five years. I mean, would you mind if I looked out? I've never seen where I'm going."

"Glad to have you."

The man sat beside him and peered wistfully out. Below were lights, the patterns of cities, roads and towns and in the distance the glare of furnaces. There was also a current of cold air seeping from the space between the double walls. The man looked, shivered, turned up his collar and finally went back to his seat.

It was cold, but Merrol remained where he was. There was some satisfaction in asserting himself, but the satisfaction wore off and the cold didn't.

His attention was caught by the program which was flickering across the aisle. Doctor Crander—Merrol frowned. Did the hospital want him too? He listened intently. No, they didn't want him.

Crander sounded tired. "This is an emergency appeal and we'll need a wide response. We have in our care a person with a serious illness we can't diagnose. With so much interplanetary travel we can't determine what causes the disease. It may be an organism from a moon of Saturn or almost anything else.

"Our staff is working at top speed. We feel, if we can keep her alive for one week, she'll be out of danger. That is by no means a certainty, but a reasonably accurate forecast.

"We have a new theory, largely untested, but we hope it will work. Each person differs from the next and though, when we match limbs and organs, we try to take this into account, we never quite succeed in effecting a perfect biological match. As a result, the character of the blood changes, slightly but significantly. It's as if we had lumped together the various natural immunities of the component bodies and created an entirely new super-immunity."

Crander paused. "We need persons who have had five or more major replacements. By major, I mean hands, arms, legs or parts of them—nothing so trivial as ears, or a few feet of skin, or three or four fingers.

"It must be at least five, though more are correspondingly better. Nothing less—and please don't apply with only a minor replacement. Two donors have volunteered so far and we have fractioned and administered the blood of one with dramatic, if temporary, results. In a few hours, we'll have to use the second. After that, I don't know what we'll do."

Merrol stirred. He was deeply suspicious.

"Here's the woman," said Crander. "She needs your help."

The man across the aisle leaned forward and his head was in front of the picture. Merrol tried to see, but couldn't.

"It's up to you," said Crander as he faded from the screen.

Merrol tapped the man across the aisle. "Please repeat it."

The man glanced around and saw who it was. "Aw, you're the guy who doesn't like that stuff." He jerked his head at the broken screen.

The memory cell of the picture tube didn't have a long attention span. It could recall forty-five seconds of the past program and no longer. The broadcast might be repeated, or it might not. Did he want to wait?

He reached out his arm—the long one—and fastened onto the man's jacket, giving him a short rough shove.

"Repeat it, I said!"

The man looked down. He wasn't small himself, but it was a large fist. "Sure thing," he said, jabbing the repeat button. The scene was replayed.

"Thanks," said Merrol, letting go.

The man looked at his crumpled clothing. "Not at all," he muttered, sliding away against the wall. "Don't mention it."

The woman was Erica. It was too much of a coincidence that, among so many millions in the city, she should be the one. The hospital and Interplanet were working together and now they had brought in Erica. How gullible did they think he was and how much had they offered her for this? It might not be money, though—they might have convinced her it was to Dan's own best interest that they get in touch with him immediately.

They were baiting him crudely and if they weren't, there were others who could respond as well as he. There must be hundreds in the vicinity, scores at any rate, who could qualify. There were enough without him, depending on how often the blood fraction was needed. Crander hadn't said. It was a trick and Erica wasn't ill—or if she was, she would be safe without him. He had to make up his mind before he saw her, and he couldn't. He clenched his hands, both big and little. He had stretched Wysocki's theorem too far and it had failed.

"I had a wife once." The voice startled him, but he sat still, hoping to hear it again. Maybe they would tell him what to do. "Not so slender as Erica. Rather bouncy, in fact, but I liked her. Pity she ran away with a coleopterist. Never could understand what she saw in him." The voice grew sad. "Beetles!"

"My advice is that wives are easily come by," said a theatrical voice, modulated for effect. "But before he shuffles off this mortal coil to the last roundup, every man should have at least one wife like Erica."

"I can't speak of wives or women," said the musician. "There's so little memory left, mostly music. But you've been subconsciously humming a tune for days—and I must tell you that Beethoven didn't write anything called Erica. The correct title is Eroica."

"One fall don't mean nothing, it's always the best two out of three. The way I see it, you gotta get up. Get close to them, hold them tight, or they'll throw you outta the ring."

"This is something that can't be figured. There are some odds no one can live by. You'll have to solve this one yourself."

He sat there, not moving. They were with him always, but sometimes they weren't much help.

The plane would land on the other side of the continent. He had little money, but he could get in touch with Interplanet and they would advance him the fare back. Unfortunately, such a move would take time. There would be schedules to juggle, to say nothing of the ride back. A mere matter of hours on a fast ship—yet what if that was too long?

He got to his feet and went forward. "You can't go in there," said the stewardess.

He looked past her into the pilot's compartment. It was securely locked from this side though not on the other. He glanced down at the girl. It was a tradition that stewardesses were gorgeous creatures, though the tradition was simply not true any longer. In an age of space exploration, air travel had dispensed with glamor. But for unfathomable reasons, this stewardess was a throwback to the old days. If she didn't quite achieve real beauty, she came close enough so that no healthy male could conceivably object to her nearness.

Merrol could take the keys away from her, but she'd scream and a dozen men would come leaping to her rescue. He didn't care for the odds.

He had met three women and had he misjudged the effect of the new himself on them? First Erica—her behavior had been strange, considering that, even from the first, she must have doubted he was her husband. Then the receptionist—she had gone out of her way to get him into Crander's office when the latter was upset by the disappearance of a patient. And finally, the pathetic Miss Jerrems, who had thawed and would have descended to crooked schemes, had he encouraged her. Was this some form of pity or something quite different—or did it matter at all as long as they were not indifferent? There was a way to find out.

He raised his arm, the shorter one, and laid his hand affectionately on the stewardess' shoulder. "Isn't there a private room in back?"

She tilted her head and her lips glistened. "Yes, there is."

"Small enough for two?"

"I believe so." Her lashes trembled and lowered and she seemed surprised that they did. "That is if you—if we snuggled close."

"I'm sure we will. Why don't you find out about that room?"

"It seems like a good idea." She blushed and turned to leave.

"I'll need keys, won't I?" he said.

She leaned against him and the keys dropped into his hand. "I'll be waiting," she whispered. He watched her walk down the aisle and enjoyed the enticing sway of her hips. Under other circumstances, he might have considered joining her.

He had the keys! It had worked! He didn't know why, nor did he have time to think about it. He inserted the key and stepped inside.

"Hi, Jane," sang out the pilot, not turning, assuming he knew who it was.

Merrol located the autopilot switch and, reaching past the man, turned it on. With the same motion he whirled the pilot around. "Listen, friend, don't you want to go back?"

"No. Why should I?" The pilot was startled, but not intimidated.

"Engine trouble or something. You figure it out. I don't care what it is, as long as we get back." He half-hoped the man would object—physical action would be a relief. In an emergency, he could handle the ship himself—it was simpler than a spaceship.

The pilot squinted beyond and behind him. "Engines don't sound so good," he muttered. He was unexpectedly docile. "Safety first is the motto of this airline." It was a good rule, but it was questionable whose safety he was referring to.

The pilot was still having unaccountable difficulty with his eyes—there was a marked tendency to cross. "Sure, we'll go back," he said. "Glad you brought it to my attention. But call off your gang, will you, mister?"

Merrol turned around. He was alone. There was no one behind him, though the pilot seemed convinced there was.

He had a partial answer to the pilot's strange reaction. He was a multiple personality and, normally latent, in times of stress the multi-personality became dominant and impressed itself psychologically on the observer. And if the mind received the impression of several men, the eye tried hard to produce evidence that would confirm it.

Not everyone was as successful at self-hypnosis as the pilot, but the temptation toward it was always there. Now that he thought of it, men never had laughed at him. Instead they had been respectful. He apparently had an unsettling effect on those of his own sex he came in contact with—just how powerful it was, he didn't know yet. The complete answer would have to await investigation by trained psychologists.

Women were different. They invariably laughed first—Erica too, in spite of the general sympathy she must have felt for him. In what did the difference lie? That too he would have to determine—later.

The pilot looked at him dizzily, beseechingly. Merrol decided he must be pouring it on, though he felt no different. "Remember, I can get up here in an awful hurry," said Merrol, "so no tricks." The pilot nodded and clung helplessly to the controls. He wouldn't cause any trouble. Merrol raised his arm in a gesture. "Come on, fellows."

As an afterthought, he locked the stewardess in the private compartment and, as he did so, he could feel the plane swing in a wide arc that would take them to the station they had started from. The apathetic dozing passengers didn't even notice.

And then all six of him walked back to his seat and Merrol sat down.

VI

He slid out of the plane while it was still rolling. He didn't want to argue with the passengers, when they found they were on the wrong coast and he was to blame. Nor did he particularly want to explain to the authorities. Later he would have to, but by then he would have powerful interests behind him to smooth over the incident.

It was late and there were no cabs in sight, in air or on surface. He crossed the landing strip into the station and out of it and swept along the dark streets with a loose-jointed stride that made the distance seem less than it was. Presently, he broke into a trot and his speed was encouraging.

A hoppicopter—one of the little surface cars that could rise and fly for a short time to avoid traffic jams—bounced down and rolled alongside. A window slid open and a head popped out. "In a hurry, mister?"

He bobbed his head. "Hospital."

"Jump in and we'll take you. We're not doing anything special—just riding around." The hoppicopter stopped. This was luck—he'd get there faster.

The man in the front seat opened the door and stepped out, flashing a light on him. "Just a