The Life Buyer

by E.C. Tubb

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Marcus King, ruthless entrepreneur and commercial giant, was a man obsessed. His obsession-staying alive! He used his millions to buy life from the bodies of others. Then someone devised a highly scientific plan to kill him-only for King to survive the attack, and plan his revenge. But who was the mastermind behind the assassination attempt? Dale Markham, chief of local police, is quickly on the crime scene. But the case is so bizarre, with far-reaching international implications, that Security is also called in and special agent Steve Delmonte is assigned to work with the police. Delmonte's investigations uncover a tangled web of sadistic intrigue and he has to follows a trail of further murders all the way to the moon before the incredible truth behind the attack is revealed.

Release date: December 30, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 248

Sample

MARCUS Edward King, eighty-seven years old, rich as Croesus, devoid of faith, sat up in bed and screamed into the darkness.

“No!”

Glass crashed as he fumbled at a bedside table, water gurgling, phials rattling, a book thudding softly to the floor. A button sank beneath a searching finger and soft rose-light flooded the room.

“No!”

The light brightened, comforting him with the revelation of familiar things; the statuette carved from Luna stone, the exotic insect trapped in a block of water-clear plastic, which stared at him with blind, iridescent eyes, wings a shimmering skein of colour. A solar clock rested diamond glitters on the hour of four.

“No,” he said for the third time. “Damn it, no!”

He sat crouched on the bed, knees drawn up to his chin, arms wrapped around his knees, the covers a crumpled mess at his feet. Warm air circulated through the chamber and dried the sweat on his body.

“Sir?”

A shadow loomed before an open door, anxious eyes searching the room, the ebon face and sombre clothing a vague silhouette against the background dimness of the antechamber.

“I’m all right.” Marcus glanced at the solar clock. The guard had been fast—but he was paid to be fast. Here, at the summit of the Palace, assassination was a remote possibility but there were other dangers and seconds could spell the difference between life and…

“I’m all right,” he repeated irritably then softened his tone. One day, perhaps, his life could depend on this man. “You were fast,” he soothed. “I shall remember that.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“That will be all,” said Marcus. “You may go.”

The guard hesitated.

“I said—never mind.” Marcus restrained his impatience. It was pointless to pay a man to do a job and then prevent him from doing it. And the man was right to be cautious. Fuming he waited as the guard searched the room; a human bloodhound smelling for traps and dangers.

“I had a dream,” said Marcus when he had finished. “A nightmare, nothing more.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It woke me up.”

“Yes, sir. I heard. Could I get you anything?”

“No—yes. Get me Fullen.”

“Right away, Mr. King.”

Marcus nodded dismissal, rising as the door closed, bare feet silent as he padded towards the shower. Chemicals laved him, water caressed him, scented air dried with sterile heat. A wall-mirror reflected his image for critical inspection.

He bared his teeth at what he saw.

The teeth were natural growths; fresh buds transplanted into his gums from the jaws of a child at a basic cost of five thousand to the mother. The hair was growing from the scalp of a twenty-year-old man who had sold it for three thousand and a dozen wigs. The heart had cost much more; bought from a worker cursed with cancerous lungs, a sense of responsibility and a beautiful young wife. The stomach had been relatively cheap, the kidneys had come from a voluntary donor, the varicosed veins which had once mottled his legs had been replaced by plastic surrogates.

For its age it was a good body. It had cost him over a quarter of a million.

Fullen was waiting when he left the shower. The medic was tall, smoothly made and his voice had the compulsion of an organ. Deep-set eyes invited trust and promised understanding. He was the topmost psychiatrist of his time before Marcus had offered him double his salary to renounce general practice—three times the salary of the President of the Federated Earth Republics.

“You sent for me, Mr. King?”

“Yes.” Marcus settled himself on the couch. “I had a nightmare. I screamed…”

“Screaming and inevitably in shock.” Fullen seated himself at the head of the couch. “Well, we must find the cause of the dream and eliminate it if we can. Shock is something we must avoid. Relax now and let yourself drift. Breath evenly, don’t strain, just settle yourself as it for sleep. That’s it. That’s fine. Now relax a little more…a little more… That’s better. You feel as if you are floating. Nothing can bother you. Nothing matters. You are utterly detached. Good. Now tell me about your dream. Tell me what you saw and felt and heard. Tell me…”

And suddenly, it was all there. All the ghastly horror of it. The sickening loneliness. The helpless despair as, within him, a countless host of tiny suns winked into darkness; expiring with the universe of his being. Then came the burrowing maggots, the thriving bacteria, the rot and putrescence of decay. The cloying stench of lilies, the numbing echo of sonorous bells, the casket, the soft, wet obscene delving of spades.

And after—

“No!”

“Steady!” Fuller was there, warm, human, alive. “It’s all right, Mr. King. It’s all right””

The guard looked into the room, saw that his master was all right, silently withdrew. Neither man noticed the intrusion.

“That was bad,” said Marcus. “Bad.”

“But not as bad as the original waking,” said Fullen quickly. His hands made firm, comforting pressures on the figure on the couch. “Pulse high, respiration ragged, but that was to be expected. You achieved almost total recall.”

“Is that good?”

“Very good, Mr. King. By reliving the incident you have diminished its importance. In fact—”

“Rubbish!”

Fullen was patient.

“Gunk!” snapped Marcus. “I could have told you what I dreamed without all this rigmarole.”

“You are in a temper,” said Fullen evenly. “You are angry, not at me, but at yourself. I am merely a convenient scapegoat.”

“So?”

“Every psychiatrist is a whipping boy. Your reaction is not unique.”

“All right,” snarled Marcus. “So I’m angry at myself. Can you tell me why?”

“Yes. You are afraid of death.”

“Brilliant!” Marcus swung himself upright on the couch. “Do I really pay you a fortune to tell me that?”

“You do not like to be afraid,” continued Fullen calmly. “You are angry with yourself for yielding to that emotion. My statement as to the cause of that fear is correct. You are afraid of death.”

“I hate it—not fear it.”

“We always hate the thing we fear, Mr. King.”

“And kill the thing we love?”

“Not always. Would you—”

“Forget it!” Marcus jerked to his feet and began to pace the floor. “Tell me about the dream.”

“It was a fear-symbol. The betrayal of a personality which is suffering from a morbid fear of death.”

“Morbid?” Marcus halted his pacing. “Is it unhealthy to fear death? Is it unnatural to want to live? Damn it, Fullen, carry what you say to its logical conclusion and every healthy person wants to die!”

“Quite a number of them do, the death-wish is very strong, but normal people have the patience to wait. They neither seek death nor worry themselves into insanity trying to avoid it. Those that do usually have a reason based on beliefs which you do not appear to hold.” Fullen paused. “They fear to die,” he said deliberately, “because they are afraid of what waits for them on the other side.”

“Nothing is on the other side.”

“No. Mr. King.”

“Nothing,” snapped Marcus. “Nothing at all.”

Irritably he resumed his pacing, passing the sightless monster, the statuette carved m the shape of a girl by some woman-hungry astronaut. His bare feet thudded on the carpet, anger weighing his tread.

“You said ‘appear’,” he accused. “You doubt it?”

“I am not sure. There is something buried deep down inside your mind which I cannot reach. You won’t permit me to reach it. But why should you dream of a grave?”

“People are buried in graves.”

“Not for the past fifty years. Cremation has been obligatory that long. But you dreamt of a grave. And lilies, another odd factor, odder still when coupled with the casket and the bells. You fear death but couple that fear with a burial in the past, not the future.” Fullen looked thoughtful, his eyes detached. “An interesting juxtaposition of diverse time-sectors which I feel would be profitable to investigate.”

“No.”

“But—”

“Forget it!”

“I really think that you should permit me to—”

“Fullen,” snarled Marcus savagely, “you are a fool! I didn’t hire you to read my mind or to amuse yourself with your probing. You had some interesting theories on psychosomatic ageing which I wanted you to investigate—or have you forgotten?”

“I have not forgotten, Mr. King.”

“When can I expect results?”

“Personal results?” Fullen hesitated. “I never claimed I could arrive at a quick solution of the problem. I suspect that ageing is caused by the conditioning that commences at birth, and which teaches that age is always accompanied by physical degeneration. But not everyone grows senile; not everyone exhibits the same degree of degeneration. There is a variable which I suspect could be attributed to an attitude of mind.”

“You have nothing concrete for me?”

“No, Mr. King. Not at the moment.”

Alone Marcus scowled at the solid wall of crystal running the entire length of the room. He barked a word the sonic device altered the polarization, the wall becoming transparent to the world outside.

Below lay the city, still dark, still twinkling with the fireflies of advertising displays, streetlights, windows, moving vehicles. The drifting lights of aircraft were a shimmering cloud of luminescent smoke. Higher the dawn was breaking, just visible from where he stood, a wash of pink and gold rising from the east. There were no clouds. It promised to be a fine day.

A bird, fooled by the transparency, dashed itself against the glass and fell with lifeless wings. Marcus hardly noticed. He was thinking of the dream and of others he had had before. They were all much the same. Dying and death and what waited beyond.

Closing his eyes he leaned against the smooth coolness of the crystal and let his mind skip back through time. Achieve total recall, Fullen had said. Discharge the emotional impact of an incident and diminish its importance. Relive it and forget it. Simple.

But could you forget murdering your father?

He smelt again the sickly scent associated with hospitals, felt the irritation of waiting, the shock of seeing what the doctors had done. They had been proud of their achievement.

“The finest piece of medical engineering to date,” one had said. He smiled at the machine beside the bed, the tubes running into the chest cavity, the grey face with sunken eyes on the pillow. He had turned and bumped into Marcus, quick with an apology because the King name, even then, had spelt power. And old J.K. owned the hospital.

Old J.K. Joseph King, seventy-five years old, finally living up to his reputation. Now, literally, he had no heart. Instead he had a machine that pumped oxygenated blood through body and brain.

Marcus hated that machine.

“How long?”

The doctor misunderstood—he tried to be optimistic.

“No one can be sure but, if there are no complications, well, your guess is as good as mine. But theoretically there is no limit. Five years. Ten. Fifty even. It is possible.”

A day was twenty-four hours too long.

Alone he had looked at the man in the bed, the machine at his side. It was powered. . .