Windfall

  Astounding – July 1951

  (1951)*

  Catherine Crook de Camp

  illustrated by Orban

  The old Gentlemen had retired to the Home; normally windfalls coming to such aged people became the property of the Home. But this one didn't work that way—of all things the Home did not want, it was an immortal "Guest"!

  -

  Old Julius Bassett looked upon the world as if it were a lemon—a lemon, moreover, that had gone bad in a spot or two. For one thing, the Home had proved just as dismal as he had expected. Rules, rules, rules! Why, a fellow couldn't even chat with a friend in the parlor of the women's building except on Wednesday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons!

  Besides, the fact that he could not now change his decision to go there was proving harder to take than he had thought it would. Not that he had anywhere else to go, of course. But ever since he had met Milly—warm-hearted Milly who had a smile for everyone in spite of the pain in her rheumatic hands—at a Saturday Social at the Home, he'd fingered the idea of a couple of rooms in an apartment hotel and someone to talk to whenever he wanted.

  Last year, finding himself pushing seventy with no job, few savings, no prospect of building up a patent-law practice all over again, and no posterity to rely on, he had blown his remaining four thousand three hundred forty-nine dollars as an entrance fee into the Home. Hadn't been too bad at first. But now—Bassett glowered at the back of old Mr. Wetmore—a senile wreck who talked all the time about the amorous conquests of his youth—and thought sourly of the other dodderers who shared his gilded jail. Not too well gilded, either. His glower made him look more like a snapping turtle than usual.

  "Hey! Mr. Bassett," said Jimmy, the attendant, tapping his shoulder, "your nephew, Mr. Ayre, is here to see you."

  Bassett came out of his chair by slow jerks, a snapping-turtle who has begun to find the years telling upon him, and tottered toward the reception room. Before he had taken the fatal step of immuring himself in the Home, he had hinted broadly to Bob Ayre that he would like to move in on him. But Ayre, nobody's fool, had suddenly turned deaf as the Sphinx and satisfied his conscience by coming to see his crotchety relative regularly once a month. This visit was an unexpected extra.

  "Hello, Uncle Julius," said Ayre. "Here's another look. How are you coming on Toynbee?"

  "Unh," said Bassett. "Knows a lot, but I don't take any stock in that mystical whatsit, that Kingdom-of-God stuff. Next time, wish you'd get me"—he fumbled in his pockets and came up with a piece of paper—" 'Ladies Whose Bright Eyes,' by Ford M. Hueffer. Good yarn—read it forty years ago—guy gets conked on the head, or something, and finds himself back in Medieval England."

  He passed the slip to Ayre, then noticed the signs of suppressed excitement in his nephew's behavior.

  "Here," he said, "what's on your mind, Bob?"

  "Where can we talk?"

  "Thought so. Come up to my room—No, you can't smoke in the bedroom. They're afraid one of us old galoots would get careless and burn the place down. The dive, I should say."

  "It looks pretty comfortable," said Ayre paying elaborate attention to replacing the cigarette in its case.

  Bassett snorted. "Sure. Comfortable. Tonight's hamburger night; tomorrow's stew. Don't you envy me? 'The meek shall inherit the earth'. Yah! just six feet of it. I found that out too late—But shoot."

  Ayre said, "Do you remember a man named Sidney Lipmann?"

  "Uh-huh. The big pharmaceutical man. Gave him his start, in fact. That was when I was practicing on my own, back before I joined Harrison & Zerbe. He was just a busted young inventor, the way they all are, and I paid the costs of his patent myself on that stuff ... what's the trade name? ... stuff all pregnant women take. Anyway, that got him started and made him a big bug. Haven't seen him in years. I remember when he—But what about him?"

  "He's dead."

  "He is, is he? Too bad. Ought to have looked up more of my old contacts before signing my life away in this sinkhole of creation, but I couldn't go to folks with my hat in my hand. Never could ask favors! Probably why I never got a raise all the years I slaved for old man Harrison. Well, suppose Sid Lipmann is dead; what about it?"

  "He remembered you in his will."

  Instead of showing signs of joy, Bassett looked at his nephew with narrowed eyes.

  "Did he, eh? Now isn't that nice? Too bad he didn't think of me a couple of years ago. How'd you know about this, and what did I inherit?"

  "I know his son, Henry Lipmann. Their firm competes with ours, you know. And the legacy is a stack of patents."

  Bassett kept his mouth shut like a trap for a few seconds, then reluctantly allowed two words to escape: "Worth anything?"

  "You can't tell, of course; but they might be worth all the gold in Fort Knox."

  "What on?"

  -

  Ayre took from his inside pocket a folded copy of a United States patent. "Here's the main one: 'The compound diphenylorthochlor-benzoalumino-pyrosulph—Well, anyway, it's a folic-acid derivative and described as a tissual antideteriorant.' Does that mean anything to you?"

  "Tissual antideteriorant? Bet he made that up. Suppose it's some dope to keep tissue from deteriorating. What sort of tissue, Bob?"

  "Yours. Mine," said Ayre.

  "Oh. A perpetual youth serum, is that it?"

  "You're right on the beam, Uncle."

  "Is this some sort of joke on Sid's part? Always struck me as a pretty decent fellow, though crazy like all inventors. Now, what am I supposed to do—grow a beard and set myself up in the snake-oil business?"

  "This serum works," said Ayre soberly.

  "How do you know?"

  "Because we've tried it in our own lab. Henry Lipmann gave us a gallon of the solution and asked us to try it out to check their results, which they didn't believe themselves. As head physiologist, I was in charge of the project. We have one old hamster who should have been dead three months ago, but he's as chirpy as ever. This may not be immortality, but it's the next thing to it."

  "Hm-m-m. Let's see that patent. How about the rest of them? Thanks. Hm-m-m. I see Sid's name on this one. Was he working on it himself then?"

  "Yeah. He was hot on the trail of it when he kicked off."

  "And the others are all assigned to him as employer. Don't like composition-of-matter patents much; too easy to upset on the law-of-nature defense."

  "You're the patent expert, not me," interrupted Ayre. "However, you'll notice he also got all the manufacturing .processes covered. No, he has a pretty good little network there, and anybody who tries to circumvent all those patents has his work cut out for him."

  -

  "Hm-m-m, Guess so, Bob. The old man looked up keenly. "You know the conditions I came in here under?"

  "You gave them all your cash, didn't you? Isn't that the usual arrangement?"

  "Yes and yes, but that's not all. I also contracted to give 'em any property T might come into in the future, in return for life maintenance. That's usual, too, you know."

  "Oh," said Ayre.

  "Sure. That's how come they get my old-age check signed over to them. Seemed to me I was doing the smart thing. The doc told me I could never work again; and even if the food is pretty awful here, I still eat more than I could buy with that lousy little pension. But now—"

  "I see. I see. Isn't there some way of getting out of that contract? It doesn't sound quite legal to me. I'm not a lawyer, but isn't there some rule about promising to pay somebody something you haven't got?"

  "Not in this case. Been fought out, and the courts have upheld the old-age homes." Bassett thought a moment. "Has the will been probated yet?"

  "No. It'll take a little time: Lipmann's estate was in something of a tangle."

  "What about the other terms of the will?"

  "Conventional enough. A whopping big trust fund for his widow, a lump sum to his married daughter, and the business to his son Henry. Then there were a lot of little bequests—"

  "What sort of chap is Henry Lipmann?"

  "Nice enough guy, but kind of woolly-headed. Full of high ideals. He's young yet, though."

  Bassett snorted. "Social consciousness," he snapped, looking like the Communist concept of a wicked old capitalist.

  "Exactly."

  "Damn social consciousness. The plague of our age—"

  "Here, what are you kicking about? You wouldn't have any pension without it."

  "And I'd be dead of starvation, and serve me jolly well right. Should have spent more time looking out for myself instead of being so bent on being faithful and hardworking that I never even asked old man Harrison for a raise! Say, I hope you mad scientists are keeping your traps shut about this. Might be full of dynamite."

  Ayre nodded. "Sure. It's company policy to keep all experimental work confidential; and since this is in the family, I've taken extra precautions against leaks."

  He rose. "You'll be getting a letter from Lipmann's lawyer—"

  "Oh, you going?"

  "Yep. Take care of yourself, Uncle." There was a new warmth in his handshake.

  "O.K., Bob," said Bassett. "Nice to have seen you. I'll study those patents and sound my keepers on the prospects of getting out of my contract. Wouldn't it kill you, huh? Here I work like a dog for fifty years; and when I finally get a break, I'm hog-tied! Like that man in the myths who was up to his neck in water but couldn't drink ... Tantalus? That's me."

  As Ayre departed he said: "You must come down to the city and have dinner with us soon. G'bye

." Under other circumstances even this vague invitation would have profoundly astonished Bassett; for his nephew had never asked him to dinner except at Christmastime. But today Bassett was immune to further shock.

  -

  Throughout the afternoon, Bassett brooded in sullen silence over the stack of patents. His mind licked over the claims one by one, finding a refined intellectual pleasure in testing them for loopholes. Because of the nature of the patents, only one of them, a process patent, had a drawing—a flow chart with the name of the attorneys, Nahas & O'Ryan, in a lower corner. Nahas & O'Ryan must know their stuff; why hadn't he dared to hit them for some little clerking job when the dissolution of the firm of Harrison & Zerbe had left him out in the cold? With his long reputation in the patent-law field—Oh well, too late now. Still, these patents were well-drawn, no question; even the United States Supreme Court with its anti-patent prejudice would have a hard time throwing these out unless the infringer could prove a plain anticipation.

  And what about the concept of the patents as distinct from their aspect as property? Even if the new invention didn't amount to immortality, anything that would add a few decades to this short life would be welcome.

  So there should be millions in the invention—even after that bunch in the Treasury Department had taken their cut. But how—how to realize these millions? He had no wish to let the Home garner the money if he could help it. While he was not openly at war with the Home, their relations were in a state of unfriendly neutrality; and nothing had happened since his arrival to endear them to him.

  -

  Julius Bassett sought out the Home's assistant manager, the executive officer who handled complaints and generally rode herd on the inmates.

  "What can I do for you, Mr. Bassett?" asked Mr. Keogh.

  "Just answer some questions," said Bassett hesitantly. After fifty years of kowtowing to a demanding superior, Bassett found it hard to stand his, ground in any business relationship, and he hated himself and the world for this weakness. "Do your patients ... I mean guests ... ever get fed up and try to leave?"

  Keogh looked wary. "It has been known to happen," said he with an artificial smile, "but after they've had time to think it over, they generally change their minds. They conclude that the Home is not such an intolerable place after all."

  "Suppose I wanted to leave?"

  Keogh shrugged and spread his hands. "We have no legal power to detain you. There's the door, and you can walk out of it any day you so decide. Of course, that wouldn't terminate our contract with you."

  "You mean that property clause?"

  "Precisely. Sometimes an individual gains admittance to our institution, signs over all his property to us, and then comes into a windfall and regrets his previous decision. But inasmuch as we adhere to our part of the bargain, we naturally expect our guests to do likewise."

  "Keogh," said Bassett, with a sudden rush of uncontrollable anger, "don't it make you feel like a ... what's one of those spooks that sucks ... a vampire? A vampire sucking the blood out of a lot of poor old codgers, eh?"

  Instead of being affronted, Keogh smiled again. "You'd be surprised how often I've heard that, Mr. Bassett. Any time you entertain the wish to inspect our books, you're welcome to.do so. We're a nonprofit institution and have nothing to conceal."

  "Didn't say you had," said Bassett hastily.

  "As for those windfalls, we depend on them to make up for the guests who come in with almost no property and then linger on forever, requiring a lot of expensive medical care. That is how most old-age homes are run—unless they have a large endowment. And we, I regret to say, are not that fortunate."

  "Well," said Bassett, jerking to his feet. "Go ahead and skin your flints. Just asking 'cause I'm curious, that's all."

  After Bassett had plodded out, Keogh slipped into the manager's office. "Charlie," he said, "I suspect old Bassett's up to something," and he told what had happened. "I'll make you a bet that he's anticipating a windfall."

  "Hm-m-m," said the manager. "If you're betting on it, it's a sure thing. Let's turn his description over to the dicks now in case he tries a skip." He buzzed for his secretary. "Miss Logan, please take a letter to Anton V. Havranek, Investigations. Dear Mr. Havranek: I inclose herewith—"

  -

  Bassett, however, made no effort to skip. After several days of thought, he wrote his nephew—he never squandered the microscopic allowance the Home gave him on telephone calls—and asked him to drop in as soon as possible.

  "Bob," said Bassett when the physiologist arrived, "have you tried that stuff of yours on a human being yet?"

  "No."

  "How do you think it'd work?"

  Ayre shrugged. "It might kill him, but judging from the way it works on animals, the effect would vary with the age and health of the specimen. On you, for instance, I'd expect that—over a period of several months—it would improve your general health and that regular shots thereafter would keep you going for maybe three or four decades more."

  "Would you call it rejuvenating?"

  "To some extent, yes, on an older person whose tissues had deteriorated. Not that I'd start dating the girls, if I were you. On a man in his forties, like me, it shouldn't have a rejuvenating effect; but it might prolong my life well past the century mark. Not that I'd have nerve to try it on myself until it had been thoroughly tested. Too dangerous. If only we could find a few old birds willing to risk their remaining years—"

  "You're looking at one of those old birds right now."

  "You?"

  "Me."

  "Mean you'd—"

  "Mean I'd. Feel a scheme coming on. How long d'you suppose the Home would try to hold me to my contract if they learned I was going to live forever? How long, huh?"

  Ayre eyed his uncle uncertainly. "Of course, Uncle Julius, this stuff's not genuine immortality-syrup—"

  "Never mind; all it has to do is multiply my life-expectancy by three or four, and poof, the cost of keeping me goes way up beyond what they've got out of me. How's the probate of that will coming, by the way?"

  "It's due up in Surrogate's Court in about three weeks."

  Bassett winced. "Not enough time. Maybe we could persuade young Lipmann to stall—You say he's full of ideals. Well, tell him how hard I worked, and what a poor old fossil I am and everything, and how if he don't delay the probate, the patents will go to the Home, which would make his dad spin in his grave like an ultracentrifuge ... you get the idea, huh?"

  Ayre looked dubious, but promised to see what he could do. After all, if Uncle Julius was rich and free of the Home and Ayre his only relative—

  -

  After his nephew had gone, Bassett approached the assistant manager again. "Mr. Keogh, when's the doc due round again?"

  "Tomorrow," said Keogh. "Is something ailing you?" he added in a tone so hopeful that Bassett found it positively ghoulish.

 

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