Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein Page B

disliked the way things were being run. I just said that I couldn’t see any sense to any manner of life, in any final absolute terms.” Hamilton was feeling slightly bewildered. He had approached this interview feeling romantically heroic and expecting to be patted on the back for having unmasked the villains. But Mordan failed to get excited at the proper places, and insisted on discussing purely philosophical matters. It threw him off stride. “In any case, I don’t want to see those conceited young punks running things. I can’t see them building a Utopia.”
    “I see. Have you any more to tell me? Very well, then—” Mordan began to stir in the fashion of one about to leave.
    “Hey, wait a minute!”
    “Yes?”
    “Look, I—The fact is, since I am already on the inside, I thought I might do a little amateur sleuthing. We could arrange some way for me to report to you, or to someone.”
    “Oh, so that’s it. No, Felix, I could not approve that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Too dangerous for you.”
    “I don’t mind.”
    “I do. Your life is very valuable, from my professional point of view.”
    “ That? Hell’s delight—I thought I made it clear that there is no chance, simply none at all, of me co-operating in the genetic program.”
    “You did. But so long as you are alive and fertile, I am bound to take into account the possibility that you might change your mind. I can’t let you risk your life, therefore.”
    “Well! How are you going to stop me? You can’t coerce me—I know the law.”
    “No…no, it’s true that I can’t prevent you from risking your valuable life, but I can remove the danger, and shall. The members of the Survivors Club will be picked up at once.”
    “But, but—look, Claude. If you do that today, you haven’t a full case against them. The proper thing to do is to wait until we know all about them. Arresting this one group might mean that a hundred or a thousand others would simply take cover more thoroughly.”
    “I know that. It’s the chance the government will have to take. But we won’t risk your germ plasm.”
    Hamilton threw out his hands. “Damn it, Claude. This is blackmail. That’s what it is—blackmail! It’s sheer coercion.”
    “Not at all. I do not plan to do a thing…to you.”
    “But it is, just the same.”
    “Suppose we compromise.”
    “How?”
    “Your life is your own. If you want to lose it, playing Fearless Frank, you may. My interest is in your potentialities as an ancestor. My professional interest, that is. Personally, I like you and prefer that you live a long and happy life. But that’s beside the point. If you would deposit in the plasm bank a few million of your gametes, then I would be willing not to interfere.”
    “But that’s just what I was saying! You are trying to blackmail me into co-operating.”
    “Not so hasty. The life cells you leave with me would not be stirred into being without your consent. They would remain in escrow and you could break the escrow at will—unless you are killed in this adventure. In that case, I will use them to continue the genetic policy.”
    Hamilton sat down again. “Let’s get this straight. You wouldn’t touch them, if I don’t get knocked over. No tricks?”
    “No tricks.”
    “When it’s over, I can withdraw them. Still no tricks?”
    “Still no tricks.”
    “You wouldn’t frame me into a position where I would be darned near certain to be killed, I suppose? No, you wouldn’t do that. All right, I agree! I’ll bet my ability to stay alive when the shooting starts against your chance to use my deposit.”
    When Mordan returned to his office, he sent for his chief technician. He caused her to leave the building with him, found a suitable bit of neutral ground where there was no chance of being overheard—a bench in a deserted corner of North roofpark—and told her of his talk with Hamilton.
    “I suppose you told him that all this about the Survivors Club was no news to