The Last Master

The earth has become a veritable Utopia... By the middle of the twenty-first century the World Economic Council supplies the basic needs of every individual. And for those people who want to increase their personal value and effectiveness in society, there is Reninase-47, an intelligence-stimulating drug. In rare cases, however, R-47 does massive damage to the mind; in even fewer cases it creates a supergenius—an "R-Master." None of this interests Etter Ho, who clings fiercely to his independence, to his right simply to wander the oceans in his sloop Sarah—until his brother Wally takes R-47 and becomes a statistic on the negative side of the ledger. Now Wally's body lies encased in a cryogenic capsule, his life processes suspended. Etter, as an ordinary citizen, cannot afford the medical procedure which might revive his brother. As a step toward obtaining the status required to help Wally, Etter takes R-47 himself—freakishly emerging as an R-Master. It is a position of apparently unrestricted privilege, but when he asks to contact other R-Masters, the only one who will speak to him is an old man named Malone, a recluse with the cryptic word MOGOW scrawled across his door. Through contact with Malone, Etter begins to realize that the World Economic Council has created, not a Utopia, but a perpetual prison for mankind. His investigation of this prison brings discovery of what really crippled Wally's mind—and the price Etter himself must pay to reclaim man's future.