"SHUT UP!" yelled Intellect.
It was strange being integrated; Amos found he was aware on two
levels simultaneously. While he responded normally to his external
environment, a lightning inner vision saw everything in vastly greater
detail. The blink of an eye, for instance, was an amazing project. Even
as commands flashed out and before the muscles started to respond,
extra blood was rushing into the area to nourish the working parts.
Reports flowed back like battle assessments: these three muscles
were on schedule; this was lagging; that was pulling too hard. An
infinitesimal twinge of pain marked some minor accident, and correction
began at once. A censor watched the whole operation and labeled each
incoming report: trivial, do not record; trivial, do not record;
trivial, do not record; worth watching, record in temporary banks;
trivial, do not....
He felt now that he could look forward to permanent health, and so far
he didn't seem to be losing his identity or becoming a moral monster
(though certain previously buried urges--toward Alice Grant, for
instance--were now rather embarrassingly uncovered). He was not, like
Frank Barnes, inclined to slip out of the situation at once. He still
felt the responsibility to make the decision.
He carried the vial of powder and the lab records home with him,
smuggled them past his wife's garrulity (it didn't bother him now)
and hid them. He went out with her cheerfully to visit some people he
didn't like, and found himself amused at them instead of annoyed. In
general, he felt buoyant, and they stayed quite late.
* * * * *
When they did get home, an urgent message was waiting on the telephone
recorder, and it jolted him. He grabbed up the hat and coat he'd just
laid down.
"What is it?" his wife demanded.
"I've got to go down to the plant." He hesitated; it was hard to say
the words that were charged with personal significance. "The watchman
found Frank Barnes dead in the laboratory."
"Who?"
"Frank Barnes! My chief chemist!"
"Oh." She looked at him, obviously concerned only with what effect, if
any, it might have on her own circumstances. "Why do you have to get
mixed up in it?"
"I'm the boss, damn it!" He left her standing there and ran for the
garage.
The police were already at the plant when he arrived. Fred's body lay
on the floor of his office, in a corner behind some file cabinets, face
up.
"What was it?" Amos asked the man from the coroner's office, dreading
the answer he expected.
The answer wasn't the one he expected. "Heart attack."
Amos wondered if they were mistaken. He looked around the office.
Things weren't disarrayed in any way; it looked as if Frank had simply
lain down and died. "When did you find him?" he asked the watchman.
"A little after one. The door was closed and the lights were out, but I
heard the cat yowling in here, so I came in to let it out, and saw the
body."
"Any family?" one of the city men asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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