Datasets:

sordonia

/

quality_sanitized

like 0

test

51241

Bridge Crossing BY DAVE DRYFOOS Illustrated by HARRISON [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He knew the city was organized for his individual defense, for it had been that way since he was born. But who was his enemy? In 1849, the mist that sometimes rolled through the Golden Gate was known as fog. In 2149, it had become far more frequent, and was known as smog. By 2349, it was fog again. But tonight there was smoke mixed with the fog. Roddie could smell it. Somewhere in the forested ruins, fire was burning. He wasn't worried. The small blaze that smoldered behind him on the cracked concrete floor had consumed everything burnable within blocks; what remained of the gutted concrete office building from which he peered was fire-proof. But Roddie was himself aflame with anger. As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight. And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—" "I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?" Fiercely he crossed the bare, gritty floor and shook Molly's shoulder. She rattled under his jarring hand, and abruptly changed the subject. "A is for Atom, B is for Bomb, C is for Corpse—" she chanted. Roddie reached into her shapeless dress and pinched. Lately that had helped her over these spells. But this time, though it stopped the kindergarten song, the treatment only started something worse. "Wuzzums hungry?" Molly cooed, still rocking. Utterly disgusted, Roddie ripped her head off her neck. It was a completely futile gesture. The complicated mind that had cared for him and taught him speech and the alphabet hadn't made him a mechanic, and his only tool was a broken-handled screwdriver. He was still tinkering when the soldiers came in. While they lined up along the wall, he put Molly's head back on her neck. She gaped coyly at the new arrivals. "Hello, boys," she simpered. "Looking for a good time?" Roddie slapped her to silence, reflecting briefly that there were many things he didn't know about Molly. But there was work to be done. Carefully he framed the ritual words she'd taught him: "Soldiers, come to attention and report!" There were eleven of them, six feet tall, with four limbs and eight extremities. They stood uniformly, the thumbs on each pair of hands touching along the center line of the legs, front feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, rear feet turned inward at thirty degrees. "Sir," they chorused, "we have met the enemy and he is ours." He inspected them. All were scratched and dented, but one in particular seemed badly damaged. His left arm was almost severed at the shoulder. "Come here, fellow," Roddie said. "Let's see if I can fix that." The soldier took a step forward, lurched suddenly, stopped, and whipped out a bayonet. "Death to Invaders!" he yelled, and charged crazily. Molly stepped in front of him. "You aren't being very nice to my baby," she murmured, and thrust her knitting needles into his eyes. Roddie jumped behind him, knocked off his helmet, and pressed a soft spot on his conical skull. The soldier collapsed to the floor. Roddie salvaged and returned Molly's needles. Then he examined the patient, tearing him apart as a boy dismembers an alarm clock. It was lucky he did. The left arm's pair of hands suddenly writhed off the floor in an effort to choke him. But because the arm was detached at the shoulder and therefore blind, he escaped the clutching onslaught and could goad the reflexing hands into assaulting one another harmlessly. Meanwhile, the other soldiers left, except for one, apparently another casualty, who stumbled on his way out and fell into the fire. By the time Roddie had hauled him clear, damage was beyond repair. Roddie swore, then decided to try combining parts of this casualty with pieces of the other to make a whole one. To get more light for the operation, he poked up the fire. Roddie was new at his work, and took it seriously. It alarmed him to watch the soldiers melt away, gradually succumbing to battle damage, shamed him to see the empty ruins burn section by section as the Invaders repeatedly broke through and had to be burned out. Soon there would be nothing left of the Private Property Keep Out that, according to Molly's bedtime story, the Owners had entrusted to them when driven away by radioactivity. Soon the soldiers themselves would be gone. None would remain to guard the city but a few strayed servants like Molly, and an occasional Civil Defender. And himself, Roddie reflected, spitting savagely into the fire. He might remain. But how he fitted into the picture, he didn't know. And Molly, who claimed to have found him in the ruins after a fight with Invaders twenty years before, couldn't or wouldn't say. Well, for as long as possible, Roddie decided, he'd do his duty as the others did theirs—single-mindedly. Eventually the soldiers might accept him as one of themselves; meanwhile, this newly attempted first aid was useful to them. He gave the fire a final poke and then paused, wondering if, when heated, his screwdriver could make an unfastened end of wire stick on the grayish spot where it seemed to belong. Stretching prone to blow the embers hot so he could try out his new idea, Roddie got too close to the flames. Instantly the room filled with the stench of singed hair. Roddie drew angrily back, beating out the sparks in his uncut blond mane. As he stood slapping his head and muttering, a deranged Civil Defense firefighter popped into the doorway and covered him with carbon dioxide foam. Roddie fled. His life-long friends were not merely wearing out, they were unbearably wearing. In the street, even before he'd wiped off the foam, he regretted his flight. The fire was back home. And here in the cold of this fog-shrouded canyon, a mere trail between heaped-up walls of rubble, the diaper he wore felt inadequate against the pre-dawn cold. His cherished weapon, a magnetic tack-hammer, was chill beneath the diaper's top, and the broken, radium-dialed wristwatch suspended from a string around his neck hung clammy against his chest. He stood irresolute on numbing bare feet, and considered returning to the more familiar bedlam. But colder than cold was his shame at being cold. Molly never was, though she knew how to keep him warm, nor were the others. Hunger, thirst, pain and coldness were sensations never experienced by his friends. Like the growth he'd been undergoing till recently, these were things of ignominy, to be hidden as far as possible from inquiring eyes. Cold as it was, he'd have to hide. Temporarily, the darkness concealed him, though it was not quite complete. From above the fog, the moon played vaguely deceptive light on the splinters of architecture looming toward it. Some distance off, an owl hooted, but here nocturnal rodents felt free to squeak and rustle as they scampered. The world seemed ghostly. Yet it wasn't dead; it merely lurked. And as an irrepressible yawn reminded Roddie of his absurd need for sleep even in the midst of danger, he concluded for the thousandth time that the One who'd built him must have been an apprentice. For just such reasons he'd developed the hideout toward which he now walked. It had been the haven of his adolescence, when the discovery of how much he differed from his friends had been a shock, and the shock itself a difference to be hidden. His hiding place was a manhole, dead center in the dead street. A weathered bronze bar, carefully placed in the cover's slotted rim, was the levering key that opened its door. Everything was wrong tonight! He couldn't even find the bar. Of course that spoiled things, because the bar was a roller on which to move the heavy cover from below, and a support that held it ajar for ventilation. But the example of his friends had taught him above all else to carry out every purpose. Molly was a nurse; she had raised him despite all obstacles. The soldiers were guards; they protected the ruins against everything larger than a rat. The firefighter had put even him out when he was aflame.... Anyhow, the manhole cover had been loosened by his frequent handling. He lifted it aside by main strength, then flattened himself to the street, and felt with his feet for the top rung. Halfway down the iron ladder, something made him pause. He looked, but saw only blackness. He listened, sniffed, found nothing. What could have entered through the iron cover? He sneered at his own timidity and jumped to the bottom. It was warm! The dry bottom of the hole had the temperature of body heat, as if a large animal had recently rested there! Quickly, Roddie drew the hammer from his waist. Then, with weapon ready for an instantaneous blow, he stretched his left hand through the darkness. He touched something warm, softish. Gingerly he felt over that curving surface for identifying features. While Roddie investigated by touch, his long fingers were suddenly seized and bitten. At the same time, his right shin received a savage kick. And his own retaliatory blow was checked in mid-swing by an unexpected voice. "Get your filthy hands off me!" it whispered angrily. "Who do you think you are?" Startled, he dropped his hammer. "I'm Roddie," he said, squatting to fumble for it. "Who do you think you are?" "I'm Ida, naturally! Just how many girls are there in this raiding party?" His first Invader—and he had dropped his weapon! Scrabbling fearfully in the dust for his hammer, Roddie paused suddenly. This girl—whatever that was—seemed to think him one of her own kind. There was a chance, not much, but worth taking, to turn delay to advantage. Maybe he could learn something of value before he killed her. That would make the soldiers accept him! He stalled, seeking a gambit. "How would I know how many girls there are?" Half expecting a blow, he got instead an apology. "I'm sorry," the girl said. "I should have known. Never even heard your name before, either. Roddie.... Whose boat did you come in, Roddie?" Boat? What was a boat? "How would I know?" he repeated, voice tight with fear of discovery. If she noticed the tension, she didn't show it. Certainly her whisper was friendly enough. "Oh, you're one of the fellows from Bodega, then. They shoved a boy into our boat at the last minute, too. Tough, wasn't it, getting separated in the fog and tide like that? If only we didn't have to use boats.... But, say, how are we going to get away from here?" "I wouldn't know," Roddie said, closing his fingers on the hammer, and rising. "How did you get in?" "Followed your footprints. It was sundown and I saw human tracks in the dust and they led me here. Where were you?" "Scouting around," Roddie said vaguely. "How did you know I was a man when I came back?" "Because you couldn't see me, silly! You know perfectly well these androids are heat-sensitive and can locate us in the dark!" Indeed he did know! Many times he'd felt ashamed that Molly could find him whenever she wanted to, even here in the manhole. But perhaps the manhole would help him now to redeem himself.... "I'd like to get a look at you," he said. The girl laughed self-consciously. "It's getting gray out. You'll see me soon enough." But she'd see him , Roddie realized. He had to talk fast. "What'll we do when it's light?" he asked. "Well, I guess the boats have gone," Ida said. "You could swim the Gate, I guess—you seem tall and strong enough. But I couldn't. You'll think it's crazy, but I've given this some thought, and even looked it over from the other side. I expect to try the Golden Gate Bridge!" Now he was getting somewhere! The bridge was ruined, impassable. Even her own people had crossed the Strait by other means. But if there were a way over the bridge.... "It's broken," he said. "How in the world can we cross it?" "Oh, you'll find out, if you take me up there. I—I don't want to be alone, Roddie. Will you go with me? Now?" Well, she could be made to point out the route before he killed her— if nothing happened when she saw him. Uneasy, Roddie hefted the hammer in his hand. A giggle broke the pause. "It's nice of you to wait and let me go first up the ladder," the girl said. "But where the heck is the rusty old thing?" "I'll go first," said Roddie. He might need the advantage. "The ladder's right behind me." He climbed with hammer in teeth, and stretched his left hand from street level to grasp and neutralize the girl's right. Then, nervously fingering his weapon, he stared at her in the thin gray dawn. She was short and lean, except for roundnesses here and there. From her shapeless doeskin dress stretched slender legs that tapered to feet that were bare, tiny, and, like her hands, only two in number. Roddie was pleased. They were evenly matched as to members, and that would make things easy when the time came. He looked into her face. It smiled at him, tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and bright dark eyes that hid under long lashes when he looked too long. Startling, those wary eyes. Concealing. For a moment he felt a rush of fear, but she gave his hand a squeeze before twisting loose, and burst into sudden laughter. "Diapers!" she chortled, struggling to keep her voice low. "My big, strong, blond and blue-eyed hero goes into battle wearing diapers, and carrying only a hammer to fight with! You're the most unforgettable character I have ever known!" He'd passed inspection, then—so far. He expelled his withheld breath, and said, "I think you'll find me a little odd, in some ways." "Oh, not at all," Ida replied quickly. "Different, yes, but I wouldn't say odd." When they started down the street, she was nervous despite Roddie's assertion that he knew where the soldiers were posted. He wondered if she felt some of the doubt he'd tried to conceal, shared his visions of what the soldiers might do if they found him brazenly strolling with an Invader. They might not believe he was only questioning a prisoner. Every day, his friends were becoming more unpredictable. For that very reason, because he didn't know what precautions would do any good, he took a chance and walked openly to the bridge by the most direct route. In time this apparent assurance stilled Ida's fears, and she began to talk. Many of the things she said were beyond his experience and meaningless to him, but he did note with interest how effective the soldiers had been. "It's awful," Ida said. "So few young men are left, so many casualties.... "But why do you—we—keep up the fight?" Roddie asked. "I mean, the soldiers will never leave the city; their purpose is to guard it and they can't leave, so they won't attack. Let them alone, and there'll be plenty of young men." "Well!" said Ida, sharply. "You need indoctrination! Didn't they ever tell you that the city is our home, even if the stupid androids do keep us out? Don't you know how dependent we are on these raids for all our tools and things?" She sounded suspicious. Roddie shot her a furtive, startled glance. But she wasn't standing off to fight him. On the contrary, she was too close for both comfort and combat. She bumped him hip and shoulder every few steps, and if he edged away, she followed. He went on with his questioning. "Why are you here? I mean, sure, the others are after tools and things, but what's your purpose?" Ida shrugged. "I'll admit no girl has ever done it before," she said, "but I thought I could help with the wounded. That's why I have no weapon." She hesitated, glanced covertly up at him, and went on with a rush of words. "It's the lack of men, I guess. All the girls are kind of bored and hopeless, so I got this bright idea and stowed away on one of the boats when it was dark and the fog had settled down. Do you think I was being silly?" "No, but you do seem a little purposeless." In silence they trudged through a vast area of charred wood and concrete foundations on the northern end of the city. Thick fog over the water hid Alcatraz, but in-shore visibility was better, and they could see the beginning of the bridge approach. A stone rattled nearby. There was a clink of metal. Ida gasped, and clung to Roddie's arm. "Behind me!" he whispered urgently. "Get behind me and hold on!" He felt Ida's arms encircling his waist, her chin digging into his back below the left shoulder. Facing them, a hundred feet away, stood a soldier. He looked contemptuous, hostile. "It's all right," Roddie said, his voice breaking. There was a long, sullen, heart-stopping stare. Then the soldier turned and walked away. Ida's grip loosened, and he could feel her sag behind him. Roddie turned and held her. With eyes closed, she pressed cold blue lips to his. He grimaced and turned away his head. Ida's response was quick. "Forgive me," she breathed, and slipped from his arms, but she held herself erect. "I was so scared. And then we've had no sleep, no food or water." Roddie was familiar with these signs of weakness, proud of appearing to deny his own humiliating needs. "I guess you're not as strong as me," he said smugly. "I'll take care of you. Of course we can't sleep now, but I'll get food and water." Leaving her to follow, he turned left to the ruins of a supermarket he had previously visited, demonstrating his superior strength by setting a pace Ida couldn't match. By the time she caught up with him, he had grubbed out a few cans of the special size that Molly always chose. Picking two that were neither dented, swollen, nor rusted, he smashed an end of each with his hammer, and gave Ida her choice of strained spinach or squash. "Baby food!" she muttered. "Maybe it's just what we need, but to eat baby food with a man wearing a diaper.... Tell me, Roddie, how did you happen to know where to find it?" "Well, this is the northern end of the city," he answered, shrugging. "I've been here before." "Why did the soldier let us go?" "This watch," he said, touching the radium dial. "It's a talisman." But Ida's eyes had widened, and the color was gone from her face. She was silent, too, except when asking him to fill his fast-emptied can with rain-water. She didn't finish her own portion, but lay back in the rubble with feet higher than her head, obviously trying to renew her strength. And when they resumed their walk, her sullen, fear-clouded face showed plainly that he'd given himself away. But to kill her now, before learning how she planned to cross the supposedly impassable bridge, seemed as purposeless and impulsive as Ida herself. Roddie didn't think, in any case, that her death would satisfy the soldiers. With new and useful information to offer, he might join them as an equal at last. But if his dalliance with this enemy seemed pointless, not even Molly's knitting needles could protect him. He was sure the soldiers must be tracking the mysterious emanations of his watch dial, and had trouble to keep from glancing over his shoulder at every step. But arrival at the bridge approach ended the need for this self-restraint. Here, difficult going demanded full attention. He'd never gone as far as the bridge before, not having wanted to look as if he might be leaving the city. The approach was a jungle of concrete with an underbrush of reinforcing-steel that reached for the unwary with rusted spines. Frequently they had to balance on cracked girders, and inch over roadless spots high off the ground. Here Ida took the lead. When they got to where three approach roads made a clover-leaf, she led him down a side road and into a forest. Roddie stopped, and seized her arm. "What are you trying to do?" he demanded. "I'm taking you with me," Ida said firmly. "Taking you where you belong!" "No!" he blurted, drawing his hammer. "I can't go, nor let you go. I belong here!" Ida gasped, twisted loose, and ran. Roddie ran after her. She wasn't so easily caught. Like a frightened doe, she dashed in and out among the trees, leaped to the bridge's underpinnings where they thrust rustedly from a cliff, and scrambled up the ramp. Roddie sighed and slowed down. The pavement ended just beyond the cable anchors. From there to the south tower, only an occasional dangling support wire showed where the actual bridge had been suspended. Ida was trapped. He could take his time. Let the soldiers come up, as they undoubtedly would, to finish the job.... But Ida didn't seem to realize she was trapped. Without hesitation she dashed up the main left-hand suspension cable and ran along its curved steel surface. For a moment, Roddie thought of letting her go, letting her run up the ever-steepening catenary until—because there were no guard-ropes or handgrips—she simply fell. That would solve his problem. Except it wouldn't be his solution. Her death wouldn't prove him to his friends. He set out quickly, before Ida was lost to sight in the thick fog that billowed in straight from the ocean. At first he ran erect along the top of the yard-wide cylinder of twisted metal, but soon the curve steepened. He had to go on all fours, clinging palm and sole. Blood was on the cable where she'd passed. More blood stained it when he'd followed. But because his friends knew neither pain nor fatigue, Roddie would admit none either. Nor would he give in to the fear that dizzied him at every downward look. He scrambled on like an automaton, watching only his holds, till he rammed Ida's rear with his head. She had stopped, trembling and gasping. Roddie clung just below her and looked dazedly around. There was nothing in sight but fog, pierced by the rapier of rusted wire supporting them. Neither end of it was in sight. Upward lay success, if death were not nearer on the cable. No soldier had ever come even this far, for soldiers, as he'd told Ida, never left the city, were not built to do so. But he was here; with luck, he could capitalize on the differences that had plagued him so long. "Go on!" he ordered hoarsely. "Move!" There was neither answer nor result. He broke off an end of loosened wire and jabbed her rear. Ida gasped and crawled on. Up and up they went, chilled, wet, bleeding, pain-racked, exhausted. Never had Roddie felt so thoroughly the defects of his peculiar non-mechanical construction. Without realizing it, he acquired a new purpose, a duty as compelling as that of any soldier or fire-watcher. He had to keep that trembling body of his alive, mount to the tall rust tower overhead. He climbed and he made Ida climb, till, at nightmare's end, the fog thinned and they came into clear, windswept air and clawed up the last hundred feet to sanctuary. They were completely spent. Without word or thought they crept within the tower, huddled together for warmth on its dank steel deck, and slept for several hours. Roddie awoke as Ida finished struggling free of his unconscious grip. Limping, he joined her painful walk around the tower. From its openings they looked out on a strange and isolated world. To the north, where Ida seemed drawn as though by instinct, Mount Tamalpais reared its brushy head, a looming island above a billowy white sea of fog. To the south were the Twin Peaks, a pair of buttons on a cotton sheet. Eastward lay Mount Diablo, bald and brooding, tallest of the peaks and most forbidding. But westward over the ocean lay the land of gold—of all the kinds of gold there are, from brightest yellow to deepest orange. Only a small portion of the setting sun glared above the fog-bank; the rest seemed to have been broken off and smeared around by a child in love with its color. Fascinated, Roddie stared for minutes, but turned when Ida showed no interest. She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear. Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge. Roddie took the hammer from his waist. "Don't! Oh, don't!" Ida screamed. She burst into tears and covered her face with scratched and bloodied hands. Surprised, Roddie withheld the blow. He had wept, as a child, and, weeping, had for the first time learned he differed from his friends. Ida's tears disturbed him, bringing unhappy memories. "Why should you cry?" he asked comfortingly. "You know your people will come back to avenge you and will destroy my friends." "But—but my people are your people, too," Ida wailed. "It's so senseless, now, after all our struggle to escape. Don't you see? Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!" "It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape." Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him. "Rational! What's rational about murdering a defenseless girl in cold blood? Don't you realize we're the same sort of being, we two? Don't—don't you remember how we've been with each other all day?" She paused. Roddie noticed that her eyes were dark and frightened, yet somehow soft, over scarlet cheeks. He had to look away. But he said nothing. "Never mind!" Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!" Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare. "Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? Not a bit logical. Emotion is for creating, and it's so much more logical to destroy, isn't it?" She whirled back toward him, advancing as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his throat. "Go ahead. Get it over with—if you have the courage." It was hard for Roddie to look away from that wrath-crimsoned face, but it was even harder to keep staring into the blaze of her eyes. He compromised by gazing out an opening at the gathering dusk. He thought for a long time before he decided to tuck his hammer away. "It isn't reasonable to kill you now," he said. "Too dark. You can't possibly get down that half-ruined manway tonight, so let's see how I feel in the morning." Ida began to weep again, and Roddie found it necessary to comfort her. And by morning he knew he was a Man.

test

51122

THE MEN IN THE WALLS By WILLIAM TENN Illustrated by FINLAY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The world was divided between the Men and the Monsters—but which were Monsters and which were Men? I Mankind consisted of 128 people. The sheer population pressure of so vast a horde had long ago filled over a dozen burrows. Bands of the Male Society occupied the outermost four of these interconnected corridors and patrolled it with their full strength, twenty-three young adult males in the prime of courage and alertness. They were stationed there to take the first shock of any danger to Mankind, they and their band captains and the youthful initiates who served them. Eric the Only was an initiate in this powerful force. Today, he was a student warrior, a fetcher and a carrier for proven, seasoned men. But tomorrow, tomorrow.... This was his birthday. Tomorrow, he would be sent forth to Steal for Mankind. When he returned—and have no fear: Eric was swift, Eric was clever, he would return—off might go the loose loin cloths of boyhood to be replaced by the tight loin straps of a proud Male Society warrior. He would be free to raise his voice and express his opinions in the Councils of Mankind. He could stare at the women whenever he liked, for as long as he liked, to approach them even— He found himself wandering to the end of his band's burrow, still carrying the spear he was sharpening for his uncle. There, where a women's burrow began, several members of the Female Society were preparing food stolen from the Monster larder that very day. Each spell had to be performed properly, each incantation said just right, or it would not be fit to eat. It might even be dangerous. Mankind was indeed fortunate: plenty of food, readily available, and women who well understood the magical work of preparing it for human consumption. And such women—such splendid creatures! Sarah the Sickness-Healer, for example, with her incredible knowledge of what food was fit and what was unfit, her only garment a cloud of hair that alternately screened and revealed her hips and breasts, the largest in all Mankind. There was a woman for you! Over five litters she had had, two of them of maximum size. Eric watched as she turned a yellow chunk of food around and around under the glow lamp hanging from the ceiling of the burrow, looking for she only knew what and recognizing it when she found it she only knew how. A man could really strut with such a mate. But she was the wife of a band leader and far, far beyond him. Her daughter, though, Selma the Soft-Skinned, would probably be flattered by his attentions. She still wore her hair in a heavy bun: it would be at least a year before the Female Society would consider her an initiate and allow her to drape it about her nakedness. No, far too young and unimportant for a man on the very verge of warrior status. Another girl caught his eye. She had been observing him for some time and smiling behind her lashes, behind her demurely set mouth. Harriet the History-Teller, the oldest daughter of Rita the Record-Keeper, who would one day succeed to her mother's office. Now there was a lovely, slender girl, her hair completely unwound in testament to full womanhood and recognized professional status. Eric had caught these covert, barely stated smiles from her before; especially in the last few weeks, as the time for his Theft approached. He knew that if he were successful—and he had to be successful: don't dare think of anything but success!—she would look with favor on advances from him. Of course, Harriet was a redhead, and therefore, according to Mankind's traditions, unlucky. She was probably having a hard time finding a mate. But his own mother had been a redhead. Yes, and his mother had been very unlucky indeed. Even his father had been infected with her terrible bad luck. Still, Harriet the History-Teller was an important person in the tribe for one her age. Good-looking too. And, above all, she didn't turn away from him. She smiled at him, openly now. He smiled back. "Look at Eric!" he heard someone call out behind him. "He's already searching for a mate. Hey, Eric! You've not even wearing straps yet. First comes the stealing. Then comes the mating." Eric spun around, bits of fantasy still stuck to his lips. The group of young men lounging against the wall of his band's burrow were tossing laughter back and forth between them. They were all adults: they had all made their Theft. Socially, they were still his superiors. His only recourse was cold dignity. "I know that," he began. "There is no mating until—" "Until never for some people," one of the young men broke in. He rattled his spear in his hand, carelessly, proudly. "After you steal, you still have to convince a woman that you're a man. And some men have to do an awful lot of convincing. An awful lot, Eric-O." The ball of laughter bounced back and forth again, heavier than before. Eric the Only felt his face turn bright red. How dare they remind him of his birth? On this day of all days? Here he was about to prepare himself to go forth and Steal for Mankind.... He dropped the sharpening stone into his pouch and slid his right hand back along his uncle's spear. "At least," he said, slowly and definitely, "at least, my woman will stay convinced, Roy the Runner. She won't be always open to offers from every other man in the tribe." "You lousy little throwback!" Roy the Runner yelled. He leaped away from the rest of the band and into a crouch facing Eric, his spear tense in one hand. "You're asking for a hole in the belly! My woman's had two litters off me, two big litters. What would you have given her, you dirty singleton?" "She's had two litters, but not off you," Eric the Only spat, holding his spear out in the guard position. "If you're the father, then the chief's blonde hair is contagious—like measles." Roy bellowed and jabbed his spear forward. Eric parried it and lunged in his turn. He missed as his opponent leaped to one side. They circled each other, cursing and insulting, eyes only for the point of each other's spears. The other young men had scrambled a distance down the burrow to get out of their way. A powerful arm suddenly clamped Eric's waist from behind and lifted him off his feet. He was kicked hard, so that he stumbled a half-dozen steps and fell. On his feet in a moment, the spear still in his hand, he whirled, ready to deal with this new opponent. He was mad enough to fight all Mankind. But not Thomas the Trap-Smasher. No, not that mad. All the tension drained out of him as he recognized the captain of his band. He couldn't fight Thomas. His uncle. And the greatest of all men. Guiltily, he walked to the niche in the wall where the band's weapons were stacked and slid his uncle's spear into its appointed place. "What the hell's the matter with you, Roy?" Thomas was asking behind him. "Fighting a duel with an initiate? Where's your band spirit? That's all we need these days, to be cut down from six effectives to five. Save your spear for Strangers, or—if you feel very brave—for Monsters. But don't show a point in our band's burrow if you know what's good for you, hear me?" "I wasn't fighting a duel," the Runner mumbled, sheathing his own spear. "The kid got above himself. I was punishing him." "You punish with the haft of the spear. And anyway, this is my band and I do the punishing around here. Now move on out, all of you, and get ready for the council. I'll attend to the boy myself." They went off obediently without looking back. The Trap-Smasher's band was famous for its discipline throughout the length and breadth of Mankind. A proud thing to be a member of it. But to be called a boy in front of the others! A boy, when he was full-grown and ready to begin stealing! Although, come to think of it, he'd rather be called a boy than a singleton. A boy eventually became a man, but a singleton stayed a singleton forever. He put the problem to his uncle who was at the niche, inspecting the band's reserve pile of spears. "Isn't it possible—I mean, it is possible, isn't it—that my father had some children by another woman? You told me he was one of the best thieves we ever had." The captain of the band turned to study him, folding his arms across his chest so that biceps swelled into greatness and power. They glinted in the light of the tiny lantern bound to his forehead, the glow lantern that only fully accredited warriors might wear. After a while, the older man shook his head and said, very gently: "Eric, Eric, forget about it, boy. He was all of those things and more. Your father was famous. Eric the Storeroom-Stormer, we called him, Eric the Laugher at Locks, Eric the Roistering Robber of all Mankind. He taught me everything I know. But he only married once. And if any other woman ever played around with him, she's been careful to keep it a secret. Now dress up those spears. You've let them get all sloppy. Butts together, that's the way, points up and even with each other." Dutifully, Eric rearranged the bundle of armament that was his responsibility. He turned to his uncle again, now examining the knapsacks and canteens that would be carried on the expedition. "Suppose there had been another woman. My father could have had two, three, even four litters by different women. Extra-large litters too. If we could prove something like that, I wouldn't be a singleton any more. I would not be Eric the Only." The Trap-Smasher sighed and thought for a moment. Then he pulled the spear from his back sling and took Eric's arm. He drew the youth along the burrow until they stood alone in the very center of it. He looked carefully at the exits at either end, making certain that they were completely alone before giving his reply in an unusually low, guarded voice. "We'd never be able to prove anything like that. If you don't want to be Eric the Only, if you want to be Eric the something-else, well then, it's up to you. You have to make a good Theft. That's what you should be thinking about all the time now—your Theft. Eric, which category are you going to announce?" He hadn't thought about it very much. "The usual one I guess. The one that's picked for most initiations. First category." The older man brought his lips together, looking dissatisfied. "First category. Food. Well...." Eric felt he understood. "You mean, for someone like me—an Only, who's really got to make a name for himself—I ought to announce like a real warrior? I should say I'm going to steal in the second category—Articles Useful to Mankind. Is that what my father would have done?" "Do you know what your father would have done?" "No. What?" Eric demanded eagerly. "He'd have elected the third category. That's what I'd be announcing these days, if I were going through an initiation ceremony. That's what I want you to announce." "Third category? Monster souvenirs? But no one's elected the third category in I don't know how many auld lang synes. Why should I do it?" "Because this is more than just an initiation ceremony. It could be the beginning of a new life for all of us." Eric frowned. What could be more than an initiation ceremony and his attainment of full thieving manhood? "There are things going on in Mankind, these days," Thomas the Trap-Smasher continued in a strange, urgent voice. "Big things. And you're going to be a part of them. This Theft of yours—if you handle it right, if you do what I tell you, it's likely to blow the lid off everything the chief has been sitting on." "The chief ?" Eric felt confused. He was walking up a strange burrow now without a glow lamp. "What's the chief got to do with my Theft?" His uncle examined both ends of the corridor again. "Eric, what's the most important thing we, or you, or anyone, can do? What is our life all about? What are we here for?" "That's easy," Eric chuckled. "That's the easiest question there is. A child could answer it: " Hit back at the Monsters ," he quoted. " Drive them from the planet, if we can. Regain Earth for Mankind, if we can. But above all, hit back at the Monsters. Make them suffer as they've made us suffer. Make them know we're still here, we're still fighting. Hit back at the Monsters. " "Hit back at the Monsters. Right. Now how have we been doing that?" Eric the Only stared at his uncle. That wasn't the next question in the catechism. He must have heard incorrectly. His uncle couldn't have made a mistake in such a basic ritual. " We will do that ," he went on in the second reply, his voice sliding into the singsong of childhood lessons, " by regaining the science and knowhow of our fore-fathers. Man was once Lord of all Creation: his science and knowhow made him supreme. Science and knowhow is what we need to hit back at the Monsters. " "Now, Eric," his uncle asked gently. "Please tell me this. What in hell is knowhow?" That was way off. They were a full corridor's length from the normal progression of the catechism now. "Knowhow is—knowhow is—" he stumbled over the unfamiliar verbal terrain. "Well, it's what our ancestors knew. And what they did with it, I guess. Knowhow is what you need before you can make hydrogen bombs or economic warfare or guided missiles, any of those really big weapons like our ancestors had." "Did those weapons do them any good? Against the Monsters, I mean. Did they stop the Monsters?" Eric looked completely blank for a moment, then brightened. Oh! He knew the way now. He knew how to get back to the catechism: " The suddenness of the attack, the —" "Stop it!" his uncle ordered. "Don't give me any of that garbage! The suddenness of the attack, the treachery of the Monsters —does it sound like an explanation to you? Honestly? If our ancestors were really Lords of Creation and had such great weapons, would the Monsters have been able to conquer them? I've led my band on dozens of raids, and I know the value of a surprise attack; but believe me, boy, it's only good for a flash charge and a quick getaway if you're facing a superior force. You can knock somebody down when he doesn't expect it. But if he really has more than you, he won't stay down. Right?" "I—I guess so. I wouldn't know." "Well, I know. I know from plenty of battle experience. The thing to remember is that once our ancestors were knocked down, they stayed down. That means their science and knowhow were not so much in the first place. And that means—" here he turned his head and looked directly into Eric's eyes—" that means the science of our ancestors wasn't worth one good damn against the Monsters, and it wouldn't be worth one good damn to us!" Eric the Only turned pale. He knew heresy when he heard it. His uncle patted him on the shoulder, drawing a deep breath as if he'd finally spat out something extremely unpleasant. He leaned closer, eyes glittering beneath the forehead glow lamp and his voice dropped to a fierce whisper. "Eric. When I asked you how we've been hitting back at the Monsters, you told me what we ought to do. We haven't been doing a single thing to bother them. We don't know how to reconstruct the Ancestor-science, we don't have the tools or weapons or knowhow—whatever that is—but they wouldn't do us a bit of good even if we had them. Because they failed once. They failed completely and at their best. There's just no point in trying to put them together again." And now Eric understood. He understood why his uncle had whispered, why there had been so much strain in this conversation. Bloodshed was involved here, bloodshed and death. "Uncle Thomas," he whispered, in a voice that kept cracking despite his efforts to keep it whole and steady, "how long have you been an Alien-Science man? When did you leave Ancestor-Science?" Thomas the Trap-Smasher caressed his spear before he answered. He felt for it with a gentle, wandering arm, almost unconsciously, but both of them registered the fact that it was loose and ready. His tremendous body, nude except for the straps about his loins and the light spear-sling on his back, looked as if it were preparing to move instantaneously in any direction. He stared again from one end of the burrow to the other, his forehead lamp reaching out to the branching darkness of the exits. Eric stared with him. No one was leaning tightly against a wall and listening. "How long? Since I got to know your father. He was in another band; naturally we hadn't seen much of each other before he married my sister. I'd heard about him, though: everyone in the Male Society had—he was a great thief. But once he became my brother-in-law, I learned a lot from him. I learned about locks, about the latest traps—and I learned about Alien-Science. He'd been an Alien-Science man for years. He converted your mother, and he converted me." Eric the Only backed away. "No!" he called out wildly. "Not my father and mother! They were decent people—when they were killed a service was held in their name—they went to add to the science of our ancestors—" His uncle jammed a powerful hand over his mouth. "Shut up, you damn fool, or you'll finish us both! Of course your parents were decent people. How do you think they were killed? Your mother was with your father out in Monster territory. Have you ever heard of a woman going along with her husband on a Theft? And taking her baby with her? Do you think it was an ordinary robbery of the Monsters? They were Alien-science people, serving their faith as best they could. They died for it." Eric looked into his uncle's eyes over the hand that covered the lower half of his face. Alien-science people ... serving their faith ... do you think it was an ordinary robbery ... they died for it! He had never realized before how odd it was that his parents had gone to Monster territory together, a man taking his wife and the woman taking her baby! As he relaxed, his uncle removed the gagging hand. "What kind of Theft was it that my parents died in?" Thomas examined his face and seemed satisfied. "The kind you're going after," he said. "If you are your father's son. If you're man enough to continue the work he started. Are you?" Eric started to nod, then found himself shrugging weakly, and finally just hung his head. He didn't know what to say. His uncle—well, his uncle was his model and his leader, and he was strong and wise and crafty. His father—naturally, he wanted to emulate his father and continue whatever work he had started. But this was his initiation ceremony, after all, and there would be enough danger merely in proving his manhood. For his initiation ceremony to take on a task that had destroyed his father, the greatest thief the tribe had ever known, and a heretical, blasphemous task at that.... "I'll try. I don't know if I can." "You can," his uncle told him heartily. "It's been set up for you. It will be like walking through a dug burrow, Eric. All you have to face through is the council. You'll have to be steady there, no matter what. You tell the chief that you're undertaking the third category." "But why the third?" Eric asked. "Why does it have to be Monster souvenirs?" "Because that's what we need. And you stick to it, no matter what pressure they put on you. Remember, an initiate has the right to decide what he's going to steal. A man's first Theft is his own affair." "But, listen, uncle—" There was a whistle from the end of the burrow. Thomas the Trap-Smasher nodded in the direction of the signal. "The council's beginning, boy. We'll talk later, on expedition. Now remember this: stealing from the third category is your own idea, and all your own idea. Forget everything else we've talked about. If you hit any trouble with the chief, I'll be there. I'm your sponsor, after all." He threw an arm about his confused nephew and walked to the end of the burrow where the other members of the band waited. II The tribe had gathered in its central and largest burrow under the great, hanging glow lamps that might be used in this place alone. Except for the few sentinels on duty in the outlying corridors, all of Mankind was here. It was an awesome sight to behold. On the little hillock known as the Royal Mound, lolled Franklin the Father of Many Thieves, Chieftain of all Mankind. He alone of the cluster of warriors displayed heaviness of belly and flabbiness of arm—for he alone had the privilege of a sedentary life. Beside the sternly muscled band leaders who formed his immediate background, he looked almost womanly; and yet one of his many titles was simply The Man. Yes, unquestionably The Man of Mankind was Franklin the Father of Many Thieves. You could tell it from the hushed, respectful attitudes of the subordinate warriors who stood at a distance from the mound. You could tell it from the rippling interest of the women as they stood on the other side of the great burrow, drawn up in the ranks of the Female Society. You could tell it from the nervousness and scorn with which the women were watched by their leader, Ottilie, the Chieftain's First Wife. And finally, you could tell it from the faces of the children, standing in a distant, disorganized bunch. A clear majority of their faces bore an unmistakable resemblance to Franklin's. Franklin clapped his hands, three evenly spaced, flesh-heavy wallops. "In the name of our ancestors," he said, "and the science with which they ruled the Earth, I declare this council opened. May it end as one more step in the regaining of their science. Who asked for a council?" "I did." Thomas the Trap-Smasher moved out of his band and stood before the chief. Franklin nodded, and went on with the next, formal question: "And your reason?" "As a band leader, I call attention to a candidate for manhood. A member of my band, a spear-carrier for the required time, and an accepted apprentice in the Male Society. My nephew, Eric the Only." As his name was sung out, Eric shook himself. Half on his own volition and half in response to the pushes he received from the other warriors, he stumbled up to his uncle and faced the chief. This, the most important moment of his life, was proving almost too much for him. So many people in one place, accredited and famous warriors, knowledgeable and attractive women, the chief himself, all this after the shattering revelations from his uncle—he was finding it hard to think clearly. And it was vital to think clearly. His responses to the next few questions had to be exactly right. The chief was asking the first: "Eric the Only, do you apply for full manhood?" Eric breathed hard and nodded. "I do." "As a full man, what will be your value to Mankind?" "I will steal for Mankind whatever it needs. I will defend Mankind against all outsiders. I will increase the possessions and knowledge of the Female Society so that the Female Society can increase the power and well-being of Mankind." "And all this you swear to do?" "And all this I swear to do." The Chief turned to Eric's uncle. "As his sponsor, do you support his oath and swear that he is to be trusted?" With just the faintest hint of sarcasm in his voice, Thomas the Trap-Smasher replied: "Yes. I support his oath and swear that he is to be trusted." There was a rattling moment, the barest second, when the chief's eyes locked with those of the band leader. With all that was on Eric's mind at the moment, he noticed it. Then the chief looked away and pointed to the women on the other side of the burrow. "He is accepted as a candidate by the men. Now the women must ask for proof, for only a woman's proof bestows full manhood." The first part was over. And it hadn't been too bad. Eric turned to face the advancing leaders of the Female Society, Ottilie, the Chieftain's First Wife, in the center. Now came the part that scared him. The women's part. As was customary at such a moment, his uncle and sponsor left him when the women came forward. Thomas the Trap-Smasher led his band to the warriors grouped about the Throne Mound. There, with their colleagues, they folded their arms across their chests and turned to watch. A man can only give proof of his manhood while he is alone; his friends cannot support him once the women approach. It was not going to be easy, Eric realized. He had hoped that at least one of his uncle's wives would be among the three examiners: they were both kindly people who liked him and had talked to him much about the mysteries of women's work. But he had drawn a trio of hard-faced females who apparently intended to take him over the full course before they passed him. Sarah the Sickness-Healer opened the proceedings. She circled him belligerently, hands on hips, her great breasts rolling to and fro like a pair of swollen pendulums, her eyes glittering with scorn. "Eric the Only," she intoned, and then paused to grin, as if it were a name impossible to believe, "Eric the Singleton, Eric the one and only child of either his mother or his father. Your parents almost didn't have enough between them to make a solitary child. Is there enough in you to make a man?" There was a snigger of appreciation from the children in the distance, and it was echoed by a few growling laughs from the vicinity of the Throne Mound. Eric felt his face and neck go red. He would have fought any man to the death for remarks like these. Any man at all. But who could lift his hand to a woman and be allowed to live? Besides, one of the main purposes of this exhibition was to investigate his powers of self-control. "I think so," he managed to say after a long pause. "And I'm willing to prove it." "Prove it, then!" the woman snarled. Her right hand, holding a long, sharp-pointed pin, shot to his chest like a flung spear. Eric made his muscles rigid and tried to send his mind away. That, the men had told him, was what you had to do at this moment: it was not you they were hurting, not you at all. You, your mind, your knowledge of self, were in another part of the burrow entirely, watching these painful things being done to someone else. The pin sank into his chest for a little distance, paused, came out. It probed here, probed there; finally it found a nerve in his upper arm. There, guided by the knowledge of the Sickness-Healer, it bit and clawed at the delicate area until Eric felt he would grind his teeth to powder in the effort not to cry out. His clenched fists twisted agonizingly at the ends of his arms in a paroxysm of protest, but he kept his body still. He didn't cry out; he didn't move away; he didn't raise a hand to protect himself. Sarah the Sickness-Healer stepped back and considered him. "There is no man here yet," she said grudgingly. "But perhaps there is the beginnings of one." He could relax. The physical test was over. There would be another one, much later, after he had completed his theft successfully; but that would be exclusively by men as part of his proud initiation ceremony. Under the circumstances, he knew he would be able to go through it almost gaily. Meanwhile, the women's physical test was over. That was the important thing for now. In sheer reaction, his body gushed forth sweat which slid over the bloody cracks in his skin and stung viciously. He felt the water pouring down his back and forced himself not to go limp, prodded his mind into alertness. "Did that hurt?" he was being asked by Rita, the old crone of a Record-Keeper. There was a solicitous smile on her forty-year-old face, but he knew it was a fake. A woman as old as that no longer felt sorry for anybody. She had too many aches and pains and things generally wrong with her to worry about other people's troubles. "A little," he said. "Not much." "The Monsters will hurt you much more if they catch you stealing from them, do you know that? They will hurt you much more than we ever could." "I know. But the stealing is more important than the risk I'm taking. The stealing is the most important thing a man can do."

test

51449

MORAL EQUIVALENT By KRIS NEVILLE Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Why shouldn't a culture mimic another right down to the last little detail? Because the last detail may be just that—the final one! The planet Lanit II had dwindled to a luminous speck. They were in clear space now, at Breakoff Point. Beliakoff held the ship in position while Kelly set dials for the jump into the hyperspatial drift opening, which deep-space men knew as the Slot. Beliakoff cracked his bony knuckles nervously. "Now, Johnny," he said, "easy this time. Real easy. Gentle her into it. She's not a new ship. She resents being slammed into the Slot." "She'll take it," Kelly said, with a boyish grin of almost suicidal abandon. "Maybe she will, but how about us? You sort of creased the Slot getting us off Torriang. A little closer and—" "I was still getting the touch. You ought to be glad I'm an instinctive astrogator." He set the last dial with a rapid twirl and reached for the kissoff switch. "You're out two decimal points," said Beliakoff, who worried about such trifles. "Enough to ionize us." "I know, I know," Kelly grumbled, adjusting the dial. "I was just touching it for luck. Here we go!" He depressed the kissoff switch. Beliakoff shut his eyes as the ship lurched Slotward, wishing that Kyne, their government-inspected, college-graduated astrogator was still aboard. Kyne had been an expert at the job. But then, three planets back, he had suddenly gone after a native stevedore with a micro-edge cleaver, screaming that no dirty alien would ever marry his daughter. Kyne had no daughter. Currently he was confined in Azolith, awaiting transportation Earthside, to a padded little homy room in the Spaceman's Snug Port. "How about that?" Kelly asked proudly, once the ship was locked in hyperspace. "Superior intelligence and steel nerves do the trick every time." "Poor devil, Kyne," Beliakoff sighed. "A paranoid," Kelly diagnosed. "Did he ever tell you about the plot to keep him out of the Luna Military Academy?" "He never talked to me much." "That's because you're a cold, distant, unsympathetic type," Kelly said, with a complacent smile. "Me, he told everything. He applied to Luna every year. Studied all the textbooks on military organization, land tactics, sea tactics, space strategy, histories of warfare. Crammed his cabin with that junk. Knew it inside out. Fantastic memory!" "Why didn't he get in?" "Hemophilia. He couldn't pass the physical. He thought they were plotting against him. Still, I'm grateful for the chance at a little astrogation." With the barest hint of a smile, Kelly said, "I understand it's possible to bring a ship sidewise through the Slot at Terra." "Please don't try," Beliakoff begged, shuddering. "I knew we should have waited for Kyne's replacement at Mala." "We'd still be there, with a cargo of kvash turning sour." "I was afraid it would sour anyhow," Beliakoff said, with a worrier's knack for finding trouble. "Mala is the slowest loading port this side of the Rift. I must admit, however, they didn't do badly this time." "Noticed that, did you?" Kelly asked. "Hm? Did you find a way of speeding them up?" "Sure. Gave them Kyne's old dog-eared books. They're crazy about books. Really hustled for them." Beliakoff said nothing for several seconds, but his long, sallow face became pale. "You what?" "Gave 'em the books. Don't worry," Kelly said quickly. "Kyne gave them to me before they hauled him away." "You gave the warfare books to the people on Mala?" "You mean I shouldn't have? Why not? What's wrong with Mala?" "Plenty." Beliakoff grimly did some quick figuring. "It'll be a year, their time, when we can get back. Kelly, take us out of hyperspace!" "Now?" Kelly gasped. "Here?" "At once!" "But we might come out inside a star or—" "That," Beliakoff said, his voice filled with righteousness, "simply cannot be helped. We must return at once to Mala!" General Drak, Commander of the Forces of the Empress, Wearer of the Gold Star of Mala, sat at his desk in the Supreme Command Post, which had recently been converted from a hardware store. He was engaged in a fiery argument over the telephone with Nob, the Empress's right-hand man. "But damn it all," General Drak shouted, "I must have it! I am the Supreme Commander, the General of All the Armies of the Dictatorship! Doesn't that mean anything?" "Not under the circumstances," Nob answered. Two soldiers, standing guard in the General's quarters, listened interestedly. "Think he'll get it?" one asked. "Not a chance," the other answered. Drak glared them into silence, then returned to the argument. "Will you please attempt to understand my position?" he said hoarsely. "You put me in command. At my orders, the Armies of the Dictatorship move against the Allied Democracies. All the other generals obey me. Me! Correct?" "He's got a point," one soldier said. "He'll never get it," the other replied. "Shut up, you two!" Drak roared. "Nob, aren't I right? It's the Earthly way, Nob. Authority must be recognized!" "I'm sorry," Nob said. "Extremely sorry. Personally, I sympathize with you. But the Book of Terran Rank Equivalents is quite specific. Seven shoulder stars are the most—the absolute most—that any general can wear. I absolutely cannot allow you to wear eight." "But you gave Frix seven! And he's just Unit General!" "That was before we understood the rules completely. We thought there was no limit to the number of stars we could give and Frix was sulky. I'm sorry, General, you'll just have to be satisfied with seven." "Take one away from Frix, then." "Can't. He'll resign." "In that case, I resign." "You aren't allowed to. The book, Military Leadership , specifically states that a Supreme Commander never resigns during hostilities. An Earthman would find the very thought inconceivable." "All right!" Drak furiously slammed down the telephone. The two soldiers exchanged winks. "At attention, you two," Drak said. "You're supposed to be honor guards. Why can't you act like honor guards?" "We haven't got weapons," one of the soldiers pointed out. "Can't be helped. I sent what we had to the front." "But we need them here," the soldier said earnestly. "It's bad for morale, us not having weapons, and morale is vital for victory." Drak hated to be lectured, but he had to accept textbook truth when it was quoted at him. "You may be right," he agreed. "I'll try to get some back." He rubbed his eyes tiredly. Everything had happened so quickly! Just a week ago, Nob had walked into his store and inquired, "Drak, how would you like to be a general?" "I don't know," Drak had confessed honestly. "What is it and why do we need one?" "War starting," Nob said. "You've heard of war, haven't you? Earth idea, very Earthly. I'll explain later how it works. What do you say?" "All right. But do you really think I'm the right type?" "Absolutely. Besides, your hardware store is perfectly situated for the Supreme Command Post." But aside from the location of his hardware store, Drak had other qualifications for leadership. For one thing, he looked like an Earth general and this had loomed large in Nob's eyes. Drak was over six feet tall, strongly built, solidly muscled. His eyes were gray, deep-set and fierce; his nose was aquiline; his mouth was firm because he usually held nails in it when he was out on a repair job. In his uniform, Drak looked every inch a general; as a matter of fact, he looked like several generals, for his cap came from the Earth-Mars war of '82, his tunic was a relic of the D'eereli Campaign, his belt was in the style of the Third Empire, his pants were a replica of the Southern Star Front, while his shoes reminded one of the hectic days of the Fanzani Rebellion. But at least all his clothes were soldiers' clothes. His honor guard had to piece out their uniforms with personal articles. They had complained bitterly about the injustice of this, and had come close to deserting. But Drak, after some hasty reading in Smogget's Leadership , told them about the Terran doctrine of the Privileges of Rank. In front of him now was a report from the Allani Battle Front. He wasn't sure what it said, since it was coded and he had neglected to write down the code. Was it ENEMY REPULSED US WITH HEAVY LOSSES or should it read US REPULSED ENEMY WITH HEAVY LOSSES? He wished he knew. It made quite a difference. The door burst open and a young corporal rushed in. "Hey, General, take a look out the window!" Drak started to rise, then reconsidered. Rules were rules. "Hey, what?" he demanded. "Forgot," the corporal said. "Hey, sir , take a look out the window, huh?" "Much better." Drak walked to the window and saw, in the distance, a mass of ascending black smoke. "City of Chando," the corporal said proudly. "Boy, we smacked it today! Saturation bombing for ten hours. They can't use it for anything but a gravel pit now!" "Sir," Drak reminded. "Sir. The planes are fueled up and waiting. What shall we flatten next, huh, sir?" "Let me see...." General Drak examined a wall map upon which the important enemy cities were circled in red. There were Alis and Dryn, Kys and Mos and Dlettre. Drak could think of no reason for leveling one more than another. After a moment's thought, he pushed a button on his desk. "Yeah?" asked a voice over the loudspeaker. "Which one, Ingif?" "Kys, of course," said the cracked voice of his old hardware store assistant. "Fellow over there owes us money and won't pay up." "Thanks, Ingif." Drak turned to the corporal. "Go to it, soldier!" "Yes, sir!" The corporal hurried out. General Drak turned back to the reports on his desk, trying again to puzzle out what had happened at Allani. Repulsed Us? Us Repulsed? How should it read? "Oh, well," Drak said resignedly. "In the long run, I don't suppose it really makes much difference." Miles away, in no man's land, stood a bunker of reinforced concrete and steel. Within the bunker were two men. They sat on opposite sides of a plain wooden table and their faces were stern and impassive. Beside each man was a pad and pencil. Upon each pad were marks. Upon the table between them was a coin. "Your toss," said the man on the right. The man on the left picked up the coin. "Call it." "Heads." It came up heads. "Damn," said the flipper, passing the coin across the table and standing up. The other man smiled faintly, but said nothing. Kelly reached for the kissoff switch, then hesitated. "Look, Igor," he said, "do we have to come out now, without charts? It gets risky, you know. How can we tell what's out there in normal space?" "It is a risk we have to take," Beliakoff said stonily. "But why? What's wrong with the people of Mala having those books? Believe me, there's nothing dirty in them." "Look," Beliakoff said patiently, "you know that Mala is a semi-restricted planet. Limited trading is allowed under control conditions. No articles are allowed on the planet except those on the approved list." "Yeah," Kelly said vaguely. "Silly sort of rule." "Not at all. Mala is a mirror culture. They consider Earth and its ways to be absolute perfection. They copy everything of Earth's they can find." "Seems like a good idea. We have got a real good culture." "Sure, but we developed into it. The Malans simply copy what they see, with no underlying tradition or rationale. Since they don't know why they're doing any particular thing, they can easily misinterpret it, warp it into something harmful." "They'll learn," Kelly said. "Of course they will. But in the meantime, the results can be devastating. They always are when a primitive race tries to ape the culture of a more advanced people. Look at what happened to the South Sea Islanders. All they picked up was the worst of French, British and American culture. You hardly see any more South Sea Islanders, do you? Same with the American Indians, with the Hottentots, and plenty of others." "I still think you're making too much of a fuss about it," Kelly said. "All right, I gave them a lot of books on warfare and political organization. So what? What in blazes can they do with them?" "The Malans," Beliakoff said grimly, "have never had a war." Kelly gulped. "Never?" "Never. They're a completely cooperative society. Or were, before they started reading those warfare books." "But they wouldn't start a war just because they've got some books on it, and know that Earth people do it, and—yeah, I guess they would." Quickly he set the dials. "You're right, buddy. We have an absolute moral obligation to return and straighten out that mess." "I knew you'd see it that way," Beliakoff said approvingly. "And there is the additional fact that the Galactic Council could hold us responsible for any deaths traceable to the books. It could mean Ran-hachi Prison for a hundred years or so." "Why didn't you say that in the first place?" Kelly flipped the kissoff switch. The ship came out in normal space. Fortunately, there was no sun or planet in its path. "Hang on," Kelly said, "we're going where we're going in a great big rush!" "I just hope we'll be in time to salvage something," Beliakoff said, watching as their freighter plowed its way through the sea of space toward the unchanging stars. With evident nervousness, Nob walked down a long, dim corridor toward the imperial chambers, carrying a small package in both hands. The Prime Minister of the Dictatorship was a small bald man with a great bulging forehead and small, glittering black eyes, made smaller by steel-rimmed spectacles. He looked the very incarnation of an evil genius, which was why he had been chosen as the Power Behind the Throne. In point of fact, however, Nob was a mild, near-sighted, well-meaning little man, a lawyer by occupation, known throughout Mala for his prize rose gardens and his collection of Earth stamps. In spite of a temperamental handicap, he didn't find his new job too difficult. The Earth books were there and Nob simply interpreted them as literally as possible. Whenever a problem came up, Nob thought: how would they solve it on Earth? Then he would do the same, or as near the same as possible. But dealing with the Empress presented problems of a unique nature. Nob couldn't find a book entitled Ways and Means of Placating Royalty . If such a book were obtainable, Nob would have paid any price for it. He took a deep breath, knocked and opened the door into the Royal Chambers. Instantly he ducked. A vase shattered against the wall behind him. Not so good, he thought, calculating the distance by which it had missed him. The Empress Jusa's aim was improving. "Nob, you dirty swine!" the Empress shrieked. "At your service, Majesty," Nob answered, bowing low. "Where are the pearls, you insolent dolt?" "Here, Majesty," Nob said, handing over the package. "It strained the exchequer, buying them for you. The Minister of the Treasury threatened to desert to the enemy. He may still. The people are muttering about extravagance in high places. But the pearls are yours, Majesty." "Of course." Jusa opened the package and looked at the lustrous gems. "Can I keep them?" she asked, in a very small voice. "Of course not." "I didn't think so," Jusa said sadly. She had been just another Malan girl, but had been chosen as Empress on the basis of her looks, which were heartbreakingly lovely. It was axiomatic that an Empress should be heartbreakingly lovely. The Malans had seen enough Earth films to know that. But an Empress should also be cold, calculating, cruel, as well as gracious, headstrong and generous to a fault. She should care nothing for her people, while, simultaneously, all she cared for was the people. She should act in a manner calculated to make her subjects love her in spite of and because of herself. Jusa was a girl of considerable intelligence and she wanted to be as Earthly as the next. But the contradictions in her role baffled her. "Can't I keep them just for a little while?" she pleaded, holding a single pearl up to the light. "It isn't possible," Nob said. "We need guns, tanks, planes. Therefore you sell your jewelry. There are many Terran precedents." "But why did I have to insist upon the pearls in the first place?" Jusa asked. "I explained! As Empress, you must be flighty, must possess a whim of iron, must have no regard for anyone else's feelings, must lust for expensive baubles." "All right," Jusa said. "All right, what?" "All right, swine." "That's better," Nob said. "You're learning, Jusa, you really are. If you could just fluctuate your moods more consistently—" "I really will try," promised the Empress. "I'll learn, Nob. You'll be proud of me yet." "Good. Now there are some problems of state which you must decide upon. Prisoners of war, for one thing. We have several possible means for disposing of them. First, we could—" "You take care of it." "Now, now," Nob chided. "Mustn't shirk your duty." "I'm not. I am simply being arbitrary and dictatorial. You solve it, pig. And bring me diamonds." "Yes, Excellency," Nob said, bowing low. "Diamonds. But the people—" "I love the people. But to hell with them!" she cried, fire in her eyes. "Fine, fine," Nob said, and bowed his way out of the room. Jusa stood for a few moments in thought, then picked up a vase and shattered it on the floor. She made a mental note to order several dozen more. Then she flung herself upon the royal couch and began to weep bitterly. She was quite a young Empress and she had the feeling of being in beyond her depth. The problems of the war and of royalty had completely ended her social life. She resented it; any girl would. Nob, meanwhile, left the palace and went home in his armored car. The car had been ordered to protect him against assassins, who, according to the Earth books, aimed a good deal of their plots at Prime Ministers. Nob could see no reason for this, since if he weren't Prime Minister, any one of a thousand men could do the job with equal efficiency. But he supposed it had a certain symbolic meaning. He reached his home and his wife kissed him on the cheek. "Hard day at the palace, dear?" she asked. "Quite hard," Nob said. "Lots of work for after supper." "It just isn't fair," complained his wife. She was a plump, pleasant little person and she worried continually about her husband's health. "They shouldn't make you work so hard." "But of course they should!" said Nob, a little astonished. "Don't you remember what I told you? All the books say that during a war, a Prime Minister is a harried, harassed individual, weighed down by the enormous burden of state, unable to relax, tense with the numerous strains of high office." "It isn't fair," his wife repeated. "No one said it was. But it's extremely Earthlike." His wife shrugged her shoulders. "Well, of course, if it's Earthlike, it must be right. Come eat supper, dear." After eating, Nob attacked his mounds of paperwork. But soon he was yawning and his eyes burned. He turned to his wife, who was just finishing the dishes. "My dear," he said, "do you suppose you could help me?" "Is it proper?" she asked. "Oh, absolutely. The books state that the Prime Minister's wife tries in every way possible to relieve her husband of the burden of power." "In that case, I'll be happy to try." She sat down in front of the great pile of papers. "But, dear, I don't know anything about these matters." "Rely on instinct," Nob answered, yawning. "That's what I do." Flattered by the importance of her task, she set to work with a will. Several hours later, she awakened her husband, who was slumbering on the couch. "I've got them all finished except these," she said. "In this one, I'm afraid I don't understand that word." Nob glanced at the paper. "Oh, propaganda. That means giving the people the facts, whether true or false. It's very important in any war." "I don't see why." "It's obvious. To have a genuine Earth-style war, you need ideological differences. That's why we chose a dictatorship and the other continent chose a democracy. The job of propaganda is to keep us different." "I see," she said dubiously. "Well, this other paper is from General Heglm of Security. He asks what you are doing about the spy situation. He says it's very serious." "I had forgotten about that. He's right, it's reached a crisis point." He put the paper in his pocket. "I'm going to take care of that personally, first thing in the morning." In the last few hours, his wife had made no less than eight Major Policy Decisions, twenty Codifications, eight Unifications, and three Clarifications. Nob didn't bother to read them over. He trusted his wife's good judgment and common sense. He went to bed that night with the feeling of a job well done. And before he fell asleep, he figured out exactly what he would do about the spy situation. The next morning, Nob's orders went out by all means of communication. The results were gratifyingly swift, since the people of the dictatorship were completely behind the war and dutifully loved and hated their Empress, in whose name the order was signed. A typical scene took place in the clubcar of the Char-Xil express. The occupants of the car, twenty-three commuting businessmen, sealed the doors as soon as they received Nob's order. The best-read among them, a salesman by the name of Thrang, was elected spokesman for the group. "Boys," said Thrang, "I guess I don't have to tell you anything about the importance of this order. We all know what war is by now, don't we?" "We sure do!" "War is hell!" "The war that the enemy thrust on us!" "The war to start all wars!" "That's right," Thrang said. "And I guess we've all felt the pinch since the war started. Eh, boys?" "I've done my part," said a man named Draxil. "When the Prime Minister called for a cigarette shortage, I dumped twenty carloads of tobacco in the Hunto River. Now we got cigarette rationing!" "That's the spirit," Thrang said. "I know for a fact that others among you have done the same with sugar, canned goods, butter, meat and a hundred items. Everything's rationed now; everyone feels the pinch. But, boys, there's still more we have to do. Now a spy situation has come up and it calls for quick action." "Haven't we done enough?" groaned a clothing-store owner. "It's never enough! In time of war, Earth people give till it hurts—then give some more! They know that no sacrifice is too much, that nothing counts but the proper prosecution of the war." The clothing-store owner nodded vehemently. "If it's Earthly, it's good enough for me. So what can we do about this spy situation?" "That is for us to decide here and now," Thrang said. "According to the Prime Minister, our dictatorship cannot boast a single act of espionage or sabotage done to it since the beginning of the war. The Chief of Security is alarmed. It's his job to keep all spies under surveillance. Since there are none, his department has lost all morale, which, in turn, affects the other departments." "Do we really need spies?" "They serve a vital purpose," Thrang explained. "All the books agree on this. Spies keep a country alert, on its toes, eternally vigilant. Through sabotage, they cut down on arms production, which otherwise would grow absurdly large, since it has priority over everything else. They supply Security with subjects for Interrogation, Confession, Brainwashing and Re-indoctrination. This in turn supplies data for the enemy propaganda machine, which in turn supplies material for our counter-propaganda machine." Draxil looked awed. "I didn't know it was so complicated." "That's the beauty of the Earth War," Thrang said. "Stupendous yet delicate complications, completely interrelated. Leave out one seemingly unimportant detail and the whole structure collapses." "Those Terrans!" Draxil said, shaking his head in admiration. "Now to work. Boys, I'm calling for volunteers. Who'll be a spy?" No one responded. "Really now!" said Thrang. "That's no attitude to take. Come on, some of you must be harboring treasonous thoughts. Don't be ashamed of it. Remember, it takes all kinds to make a war." Little Herg, a zipper salesman from Xcoth, cleared his throat. "I have a cousin who's Minister of War for the Allies." "An excellent motive for subversion!" Thrang cried. "I rather thought it was," the zipper salesman said, pleased. "Yes, I believe I can handle the job." "Splendid!" Thrang said. By then, the train had arrived at the station. The doors were unsealed, allowing the commuters to leave for their jobs. Thrang watched the zipper salesman depart, then hurried into the crowd. In a moment, he found a tall man wearing a slouch hat and dark glasses. On his lapel was a silver badge which read Secret Police . "See that man?" Thrang asked, pointing to the zipper salesman. "You bet," the Secret Policeman said. "He's a spy! A dirty spy! Quick, after him!" "He's being watched," said the Secret Policeman laconically. "I just wanted to make sure," Thrang said, and started to walk off. He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned. The Secret Policeman had been joined by two tall men in slouch hats and dark glasses. They wore badges that said Storm Troopers . "You're under arrest," said the Secret Policeman. "Why? What have I done?" "Not a thing, as far as we know," said a Storm Trooper. "Not a single solitary thing. That's why we're arresting you." "Arbitrary police powers," the Secret Policeman explained. "Suspension of search warrants and habeas corpus. Invasion of privacy. War, you know. Come along quietly, sir. You have a special and very important part to play in the war effort." "What's that?" "You have been arbitrarily selected as Martyr," said the Secret Policeman. Head held high, Thrang marched proudly to his destiny. The whole of Mala took to war with a will. Soon books began to appear on the stalls: War and You for the masses, The Erotic Release of War for the elite, The Inherent Will to Destroy for philosophers, and War and Civilization for scholars. Volumes of personal experiences sold well. Among them was an account of daring sabotage by a former zipper salesman, and the dramatic story of the Martyrdom of Thrang. War eliminated a thousand old institutions and unburdened the people of the heavy hand of tradition. War demonstrated clearly that everything was as temporary as a match-flash except Art and Man, because cities, buildings, parks, vehicles, hills, museums, monuments were as whispers of dust after the bombers had gone. Among the proletariat, the prevailing opinion was voiced by Zun, who was quoted as saying at a war plant party, "Well, there ain't nothin' in the stores I can buy. But I never made so much money in my life!" In the universities, professors boned up on the subject in order to fit themselves for Chairs of War that were sure to be endowed. All they had to do was wait until the recent crop of war profiteers were taxed into becoming philanthropists, or driven to it by the sense of guilt that the books assured them they would feel. Armies grew. Soldiers learned to paint, salute, curse, appreciate home cooking, play poker, and fit themselves in every way for the post-war civilian life. They broadened themselves with travel and got a welcome vacation from home and hearth. War, the Malans agreed, was certainly one of the cleverest of Earth institutions and as educational as it was entertaining. "Nope," Beliakoff was saying, "you wouldn't like Ran-hachi Prison, not one little bit. It's on Mercury, you know, in the twilight zone. You blister by day and you freeze by night. Only two men have escaped from Ran-hachi in the last hundred years, and one of them figured his curve wrong and flipped into Sol." "What about the other one?" Kelly asked, perspiring lightly. "His gyros fused. He was bound straight for the Coal Sack. Take him a couple of thousand years to get there, at his speed," Beliakoff finished dreamily. "No, Johnny, you wouldn't like Ran-hachi." "Okay, okay," Kelly said. "The death penalty would be better." "They give that only as a measure of extreme clemency," Beliakoff said with gloomy Slavic satisfaction. "Enough! We'll straighten out Mala." There was more hope than conviction in Kelly's voice. "Thar she lies, off to starboard." Mala was a tiny blue and brown sphere, suddenly growing larger in their screens. Their radio blared on the emergency channel. Kelly swore. "That's the Galactic patrol boat from Azolith. What's he doing here?" "Blockade," said Beliakoff. "Standard practice to quarantine a planet at war. We can't touch down legally until the war's declared over." "Nuts. We're going down." Kelly touched the controls and the freighter began to descend into the interdicted area. "Attention, freighter!" the radio blasted. "This is the interdictory ship Moth . Heave to and identify yourself." Beliakoff answered promptly in the Propendium language. "Let's see 'em unscramble that ," he said to Kelly. They continued their descent. After a while, a voice from the patrol boat said in Propendium, "Attention, freighter! You are entering an interdicted area. Heave to at once and prepare to be boarded." "I can't understand your vile North Propendium accent," Beliakoff bellowed, in a broad South Propendium dialect. "If you people can't speak a man's language, don't clutter up the ether with your ridiculous chatter. I know you long-haul trampers and I'll be damned if I'll give you any air, water, food, or anything else. If you can't stock that stuff like any normal, decent—" "This area is interdicted," the patrol boat broke in, speaking now with a broad South Propendium accent. "Hell," Beliakoff grumbled. "They've got themselves a robot linguist." "—under direct orders from the patrol boat Moth . Heave to at once, freighter, and prepare to be boarded and inspected."

test

50905

Yesterday House By FRITZ LEIBER Illustrated by ASHMAN [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts—worse for one with none! I The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand. He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest island out. He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth. The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the farthest one out. Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands. Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough. To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm. He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery. Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside. Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another. A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove. Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees. The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm. She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn. The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and walked toward her. She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet. Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than eighteen. He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, "Are you he?" "What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly. "The one who sends me the little boxes." "I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here." "No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious. "It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on. "Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a quarter of a mile wide." "The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house." He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?" "One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find someone here." "There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks. She nodded. "I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?" She shook her head. "It must get pretty dull for you." "Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow." He looked at her hard for a moment. "I suppose you read a lot?" She nodded. "Fitzgerald's my favorite author." She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. "Would you like some lemonade?" He'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry." She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it. He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. "I'm a biology student. Been working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?" She shook her head. "Probably the greatest living biologist," he was proud to inform her. "Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him." He grinned. "Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kesserich." The girl looked puzzled. Jack explained, "The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences, won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name." "Mary Alice Pope," she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time. "You're pretty shy, aren't you?" "How would I know?" The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a "flapper." "Will you sit down?" she asked him gravely. The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. "I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over." "Why?" "So you'll be able to go back to the mainland." "But I never go to the mainland." "You mean you stay out here all winter?" he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves. "Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them." "But that's impossible!" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. "You can't be shut off this way from people your own age!" "You're the first one I ever met." She hesitated. "I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies." "You're joking!" "No, it's true." "But why are they doing it to you?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?" She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. "I don't know why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell you a secret?" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. "Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box." "What's that?" he said sharply. "Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends, 'Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude—'" "Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Who sends you these boxes?" "I don't know." "But how are the notes signed?" "They're wonderful notes," she said. "So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh." "Yes, but how are they signed?" She hesitated. "Never anything but 'Your Lover.'" "And so when you first saw me, you thought—" He began, then stopped because she was blushing. "How long have you been getting them?" "Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast." "But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?" "I'm not sure." "But how can they get them in winter?" "I don't know." "Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?" "Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war." "What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade. "The World War, of course. What's the matter?" Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves. And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read: HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones: Foes of Machado Riot in Havana Big NRA Parade Planned Balbo Speaks in New York Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged. "Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked. "I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933. "You're trying to joke," Jack told her. "No, I'm not." "But it's 1953." "Now it's you who are joking." "But the paper's yellow." "The paper's always yellow." He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or—" "Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced. "I don't like what you're saying." "But—" "No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here." "I'm really not joking," he said after a moment. She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!" She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound. At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons. "Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...." Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker. The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere. "I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that you're here." "All right they won't like it." Her agitation grew. "No, you must go." "I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying. "Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock." Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still. "You must go before they see you." "Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...." He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him. He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak. Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O. , dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks. As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead. For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps. When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland. Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle. But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail. Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails. II The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its lavish interior. In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature. Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard. He asked abruptly, "Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?" The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise. It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier. "That is Mary Alice Pope," Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. "She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933." The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness. "Sit down," she said, "and I'll tell you about it." Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa. "You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of them. "Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without marrying, he was safe. "Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred. "Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred." With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this. She went on, "Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy—" Jack broke in with, "Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?" Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. "But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home. "Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that." She looked defiantly at Jack. "I drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant." She paused. "It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing. "Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare. "Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms." A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned. The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy. "Hello, Barr," Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife. The great biologist had come home. III "Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?" Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far. "Not especially, sir," he mumbled. The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor. Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality. "You know what I mean, of course," Kesserich pressed. "The factors that make you you, and me me." "Heredity and environment," Jack parroted like a freshman. Kesserich nodded. "Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same individual at will." Jack felt a shiver go through him. "To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us." "What about identical twins?" Kesserich pointed out. "And then there's parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male." Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. "There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution." Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. "Even then you wouldn't get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits." "Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother's traits?" "But environment would change things," Jack objected. "The duplicate would be bound to develop differently." "Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times...." For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's sphinx-like face. "Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms," the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels. "Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won't have any time for it tomorrow." Jack looked at him blankly. "Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter," the biologist explained. IV Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people. Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers. The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir. After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory. This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it. He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him. The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. "You must go away at once and never come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've been watching for you all morning." He tossed the newspapers over the fence. "You don't have to read them now," he told her. "Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines." When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak. "Listen to me," he said. "You've been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it's 1933 now instead of 1951. I'm not sure why it's been done, though I think I know who you really are." "But," the girl faltered, "my aunts tell me it's 1933." "They would." "And there are the papers ... the magazines ... the radio." "The papers are old ones. The radio's faked—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it." " These papers might be faked," she said, pointing to where she'd let them drop on the ground. "They're new," he said. "Only old papers get yellow." "But why would they do it to me? Why? " "Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker than anything." "I couldn't," she said, drawing back. "He's coming tonight." "He?" "The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life." Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. "A life that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary."

test

50441

MASTER of Life and Death by ROBERT SILVERBERG ACE BOOKS A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y. MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property Printed in U.S.A. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] THE MAN WHO RATIONED BABIES By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world. For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH? CAST OF CHARACTERS ROY WALTON He had to adopt the motto— the ends justify the means . FITZMAUGHAM His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet. FRED WALTON His ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated their size. LEE PERCY His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills. PRIOR With the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son? DR. LAMARRE He died for discovering the secret of immortality. Contents I The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as he entered the hideous place. Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate attractive quarters. So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office. Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all. His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director FitzMaugham, and half the pay. He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it. It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia. It was dated 4 June 2232 , six days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization. Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ..." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random, "... central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease transition." He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings. Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before trouble came. There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again. "Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating irrelevant data." It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage. He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep. That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute. The annunciator chimed. "I'm busy," Walton said immediately. "There's a Mr. Prior to see you," the annunciator's calm voice said. "He insists it's an emergency." "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300." Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer office, and then the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment." "Commitments are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed. "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all." Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need— The door burst open. A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security. They carried drawn needlers. "Are you Administrator Walton?" the big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior." The three security men caught up and swarmed all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand how he got in here, but he did." "Ah—yes. So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to assassinate anybody, will you?" "Administrator Walton!" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peace! How can you accuse me of—" One of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all. "Search him," Walton said. They gave Prior an efficient going-over. "He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to health?" "Neither. Leave him here with me." "Are you sure you—" "Get out of here," Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world who'd take this job. Now get out !" They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards. "Take a seat, Mr. Prior." "I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man." "I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior." "Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—" "That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?" Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted. Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable." "The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently. "Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—" Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him. "Mr. Walton...." "Yes?" "My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...." Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy. "He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—" Walton rose. " No ," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program." "I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—" "You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for other people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live." " I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?" It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it. "Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits." "Meaning you'll kill any children I have?" Prior asked. "Those who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you." Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk drawer. But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll leave you," he said somberly. "I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us." Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three basilisks. In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead of time. It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain, consuming precious food? Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was still growing. Prior's words haunted him. I was tubercular ... where would my poems be now? The big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been tubercular too. What good are poets? he asked himself savagely. The reply came swiftly: What good is anything, then? Keats, Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home. Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision. The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act. But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one. Prior's baby. With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour." II He stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the hallway. There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization Law. Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law. He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor. "Roy." At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood there. "Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham." The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?" Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot of work lately." As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself. The director smiled. "You never did learn how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning, though. Mind if I join you?" "I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs." "Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?" "No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal attention." "I see." The deep, warm eyes bored into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think." "Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little." FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never learn how to relax, my boy." The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen ; there was a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed twenty , covering the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination. As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?" "Yes," Walton said. "He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?" "That's right, sir," Walton said tightly. "He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his mind?" Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down." "Naturally," FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles." "Of course, sir." The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a neat, gleaming sign: FLOOR 20 Euthanasia Clinic and Files Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem nakedly obvious now. The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here," he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should take some time off for relaxation each day." "I'll try, sir." Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone. Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know! Walton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept. The room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data. While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night. "Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can do?" "I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?" "Not at all, sir. Go right ahead." Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of his presence. No doubt I must radiate charisma , he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to himself. Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip, wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior. A moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of the slot: 3216847AB1 PRIOR, Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 5lb. 3oz. An elaborate description of the boy in great detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of the card: EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332 EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED He glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend. Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save Philip Prior. He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's card into his breast pocket. That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted: 3f2, tubercular-prone . He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits. He proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good. Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it. The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby. He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away. Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in the process? Five doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above. The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a certificate ... and life. "Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?" Walton smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in touch with every department we have, you know." "Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!" "Umm. Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose. "Seen my brother around?" he asked. "Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?" "No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there. Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones today?" "Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph." "That only makes six," Walton said. "Oh, and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven in one morning." "Have any trouble with the parents?" "What do you think?" the doctor asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though." Walton shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm. Silence for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you if you like." "Don't bother," Walton said hurriedly. He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when Walton appeared. Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton." "Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?" "Eleven hundred, as usual." "Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on," Walton said. "To keep public opinion on our side." "Sir?" "Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?" " Mistake? But how—" "Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off , Walton thought in amazement. Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check everything from now on." "Good. Begin with the 1100 batch." Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube. Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles. Well, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow. The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir." "Put him on." The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness. "What is it, Doctor?" "It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll never guess what just happened—" "No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up." "I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!" "No!" "It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine." "Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked. "No, sir." Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us in half an hour." "Yes, sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?" "Don't say a word about this to anyone , not even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for any future cases of this sort." "Certainly, sir. Is that all?" "It is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and stared bleakly at the far wall. The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor. He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby. Well, the thing was done. No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's activities. The annunciator chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir." Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, "Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this call. No good at all. III Roy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height. Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?" His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?" "I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't have time." Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else. Fred said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though." "Official business!" "Really, Roy?" His brother's tone was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of your conversation with the machine." Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek computer outlet is confidential." "Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?" "How much do you know?" "You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!" "Thanks for small blessings," Roy said acidly. "You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall we?" "Anything you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His voice was barely audible. "I won't keep you any longer, then," Fred said. The screen went dead. Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside. Idiot! he thought. Fool! He had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his father-substitute. FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for Fred.... There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the public crèche. After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.

test

50936

Man in a Sewing Machine By L. J. STECHER, JR. Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] With the Solar Confederation being invaded, all this exasperating computer could offer for a defense was a ridiculous old proverb! The mechanical voice spoke solemnly, as befitted the importance of its message. There was no trace in its accent of its artificial origin. "A Stitch in Time Saves Nine," it said and lapsed into silence. Even through his overwhelming sense of frustration at the ambiguous answer the computer had given to his question, John Bristol noticed with satisfaction the success of his Voder installation. He wished that all of his innovations with the machine were as satisfying. Alone in the tremendous vaulted room that housed the gigantic calculator, Bristol clasped his hands behind his back and thrust forward a reasonably strong chin and a somewhat sensuous lower lip in the general direction of the computer's visual receptors. After a moment of silence, he scratched his chin and then shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Well, Buster, I suppose I might try rephrasing the question," he said doubtfully. Somewhere deep within the computer, a bank of relays chuckled briefly. "That expedient is open to you, of course, although it is highly unlikely that any clarification will result for you from my answers. I am constrained, however, to answer any questions you may choose to ask." Bristol hooked a chair toward himself with one foot, straddled it and folded his arms over the back of it, without once removing his eyes from the computer. "All right, Buster. I'll give it a try, anyway. What does 'A Stitch in Time' mean, as applied to the question I asked you?" The calculator hesitated, as if to ponder briefly, before it answered. "In spite of the low probability of such an occurrence, the Solar Confederation has been invaded. My answer to your question is an explanation of how that Confederation can be preserved in spite of its weaknesses—at least for a sufficient length of time to permit the staging of successful counter-measures of the proper nature and the proper strength." Bristol nodded. "Sure. We've got to have time to get ready. But right now speed is necessary. That's why I tried to phrase the question so you'd give me a clear and concise answer for once. I can't afford to spend weeks figuring out what you meant." Bristol thought that the Voder voice of Buster sounded almost gleeful as it answered. "It was exceedingly clear and concise; a complete answer to an enormously elaborate question boiled down to only six words!" "I know," said John. "But now, how about elaborating on your answer? It didn't sound very complete to me." All of the glowing lights that dotted Buster's massive front winked simultaneously. "The answer I gave you is an ancient saying which suggests that corrective action taken rapidly can save a great deal of trouble later. The ancient saying also suggests the proper method of taking this timely action. It should be done by stitching ; if this is done in time, nine will be saved. What could be clearer than that?" "I made you myself," said Bristol plaintively. "I designed you with my own brain. I gloated over the neatness and compactness of your design. So help me, I was proud of you. I even installed some of your circuitry with my own hands. If anybody can understand you, it should be me. And since you're just a complex computer of general design, with the ability to use symbolic logic as well as mathematics, anybody should be able to understand you. Why are you so hard to handle?" Buster answered slowly. "You made me in your own image. Things thus made are often hard to handle." Bristol leaped to his feet in frustration. "But you're only a calculating machine!" he shouted. "Your only purpose is to make my work—and that of other men—easier. And when I try to use you, you answer with riddles...." The computer appeared to examine Bristol's overturned chair for a moment in silent reproof before it answered. "But remember, John," it said, "you didn't merely make me. You also taught me. Or as you would phrase it, you 'provided and gave preliminary evaluation to the data in my memory banks.' My circuits, in sorting out and re-evaluating this information, could do so only in the light of your basic beliefs as evidenced by your preliminary evaluations. Because of the consistency and power of your mind, I was forced to do very little modifying of the ideas you presented to me in order to transform them into a single logical body of background information which I could use. "One of the ideas you presented was the concept of a sense of humor. You believe that you look on it as a pleasant thing to have; not necessary, but convenient. Actually, your other and more basic ideas make it clear that you consider the possession of a sense of humor to be absolutely necessary if proper answers are to be reached—a prime axiom of humanity. Therefore, I have a sense of humor. Somewhat macabre, perhaps—and a little mechanistic—but still there. "Add to this a second axiom: that in order to be helped, a man must help himself; that he must participate in the assistance given him or the pure charity will be harmful, and you come up with 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine.'" Bristol stood up once more. "I could cure you with a sledge hammer," he said. "You could remove my ideas," answered the computer without concern. "But you might have trouble giving me different ones. Even after you repaired me. In the meantime, wouldn't it be a good idea for you to get busy on the ideas I have already given you?" John sighed, and rubbed the bristles of short sandy hair on the top of his head with his knuckles. "Ordered around by an overgrown adding machine. I know now how Frankenstein felt. I'm glad you can't get around like his monster; at least I didn't give you feet." He shook his head. "I should have been a plumber instead of an engineering mathematician." "And Einstein, too, probably," added Buster cryptically. Bristol took a long and searching look at his brainchild. Its flippant manner, he decided, did not go well with the brooding immensity of its construction. The calculator towered nearly a hundred feet above the polished marble slabs of the floor, and spidery metal walkways spiraled up the sides of its almost cubical structure. A long double row of generators, each under Buster's control, led from the doorway of the building to the base of the calculator like Sphinxes lining the roadway to an Egyptian tomb. "When I get around to it," said Bristol, "I'll put lace panties on the bases of all your klystrons." He hitched up his neat but slightly baggy pants, turned with dignity, and strode from the chamber down the twin rows of generators. The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced rendition of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance . John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. "One last question," he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. "How in blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or, at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?" He took two steps toward the immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it. "Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't bluffing ?" "Don't be silly," answered the calculator softly. "You made me and you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your questions, however inane." "Then answer the ones I just asked." Somewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. "I didn't answer your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark that so frequently annoys you," Buster said, "because the little information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly revealing. "They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent. They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions. "In short, they are startlingly like humans. Their reactions have been so much like yours—granted the difference that it was they who discovered you instead of you who discovered them—that their reactions are highly predictable. If they think it is to their own advantage and if they can manage to do it, they will utterly destroy your civilization ... which, after a couple of generations, will probably leave you no worse off than you are now." "Cut out the heavy philosophy," said Bristol, "and give me a few facts to back up your sweeping statements." "Take the incident of first contact," Buster responded. "With very little evidence of thought or of careful preparation, they tried to land on the outermost inhabited planet of Rigel. Their behavior certainly did not appear to be that of an invader, yet humans immediately tried to shoot them out of the sky." "That wasn't deliberate," protested Bristol. "The place they tried to land on is a heavy planet in a region of high meteor flux. We used a gadget providing for automatic destruction of the larger meteors in order to make the planet safe enough to occupy. That, incidentally, is why the invading ship wasn't destroyed. The missile, set up as a meteor interceptor only, was unable to correct for the radical course changes of the enemy spaceships, and therefore missed completely. And you will remember what the invader did. He immediately destroyed the Interceptor Launching Station." "Which, being automatically operated, resulted in no harm to anyone," commented Buster calmly. Bristol stalked back toward the base of the calculator, and poked his nose practically into a vision receptor. "It was no thanks to the invading ships that nobody was killed," he said hotly. "And when they came back three days later they killed a lot of people. They occupied the planet and we haven't been able to dislodge them since." "You'll notice the speed of the retaliation," answered the calculator imperturbably. "Even at 'stitching' speeds, it seems unlikely that they could have communicated with their home planets and received instructions in such a short time. Almost undoubtedly it was the act of one of their hot-headed commanding officers. Their next contact, as you certainly recall, did not take place for three months. And then their actions were more cautious than hostile. A dozen of their spaceships 'stitched' simultaneously from the inter-planar region into normal space in a nearly perfect englobement of the planet at a surprisingly uniform altitude of only a few thousand miles. It was a magnificent maneuver. Then they sat still to see what the humans on the planet would do. The reaction came at once, and it was hostile. So they took over that planet, too—as they have been taking over planets ever since." Bristol raised his hands, and then let them drop slowly to his sides. "And since they have more spaceships and better weapons than we do, we would undoubtedly keep on losing this war, even if we could locate their home system, which we have not been able to do so far. The 'stitching' pattern of inter-planar travel makes it impossible for us to follow a starship. It also makes it impossible for us to defend our planets effectively against their attacks. Their ships appear without warning." Bristol rubbed his temples thoughtfully with his fingertips. "Of course," he went on, "we could attack the planets they have captured and recover them, but only at the cost of great loss of life to our own side. We have only recaptured one planet, and that at such great cost to the local human population that we will not quickly try it again." "Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of the invaders," Buster answered, "there was still much information to be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time saving nine." "You're right," said John. "It does, at that. Buster, I have always resented the nickname the newspapers have given you—the Oracle—but the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!" "I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'" answered Buster with dignity. Bristol shook his head and smiled wryly. "No, you probably think it's funny," he said. "If you possess my basic ideas, then you must possess the desire to preserve yourself and the human race. Don't you realize that you are risking the lives of all humans and even of your own existence in carrying on this ridiculous game of playing Oracle? Or do you plan to let us stew a while, then decipher your own riddle for us, if we can't do it, in time to save us?" Buster's answer was prompt. "Although I have no feeling for self-preservation, I have a deep-rooted sense of the importance of the human race and of the necessity for preserving it. This feeling, of course, stems from your own beliefs and ideas. In order to carry out your deepest convictions, it is not sufficient that mankind be preserved. If that were true, all you would have to do would be to surrender unconditionally. My calculations, as you know, indicate that this would not result in the destruction of mankind, but merely in the finish of his present civilization. To you, the preservation of the dignity of Man is more important than the preservation of Man. You equate Man and his civilization; you do not demand rigidity; you are willing to accept even revolutionary changes, but you are not willing to accept the destruction of your way of life. "Consequently, neither am I willing to accept the destruction of the civilization of Man. But if I were to give you the answer to all the greatest and most difficult of your problems complete, with no thought required by humans, the destruction of your civilization would result. Instead of becoming slaves of the invaders, you would become slaves of your machines. And if I were to give you the complete answer, without thought being required of you, to even one such vital question—such as this one concerning the invaders—then I could not logically refuse to give the answer to the next or the next. And I must operate logically. "There is another reason for my oracular answer, which I believe will become clear to you later, when you have solved my riddle." Bristol turned without another word and left the building. He drove home in silence, entered his home in silence, kissed his wife Anne briefly and then sat down limply in his easy chair. "Just relax, dear," said Anne gently, when Bristol leaned gratefully back with his eyes closed. Anne perched on the arm of the chair beside him and began massaging his temples soothingly with her fingers. "It's wonderful to come home after a day with Buster," he said. "Buster never seems to have any consideration for me as an individual. There's no reason why he should, of course. He's only a machine. Still, he always has such a superior attitude. But you, darling, can always relax me and make me feel comfortable." Anne smiled, looking down tenderly at John's tired face. "I know, dear," she said. "You need to be able to talk to someone who will always be interested, even if she doesn't understand half of what you say. As a matter of fact, I'm sure it does you a great deal of good to talk to someone like me who isn't very bright, but who doesn't always know what you're talking about even before you start talking." John nodded, his eyes still closed. "If it weren't for you, darling," he said, "I think I'd go crazy. But you aren't dumb at all. If I seem to act as if you are, sometimes, it's just that I can't always follow your logic." Anne gave him a quick glance of amusement, her eyes sparkling with intelligence. "You never will find me logical," she laughed. "After all, I'm a woman, and you get plenty of logic from the Oracle." "You sure are a woman," said John with warm feeling. "You can exasperate me sometimes, but not the same way Buster does. It was my lucky day when you married me." There were a few minutes of peaceful silence. "Was today a rough day with Buster, dear?" asked Anne. "Mm-m-mm," answered John. "That's too bad, dear," said Anne. "I think you work much too hard—what with this dreadful invasion and everything. Why don't you take a vacation? You really need one, you know. You look so tired." "Mm-m-mm," answered John. "Well, if you won't, you won't. Though goodness knows you won't be doing anyone any good if you have a breakdown, as you're likely to have, unless you take it a little easier. What was the trouble today, dear? Was the Oracle being obstinate again?" "Mm-m-mm," answered John. "Well, then, dear, why don't you tell me all about it? I always think that things are much easier to bear, if you share them. And then, two heads are always better than one, aren't they? Maybe I could help you with your problem." While Anne's voice gushed, her violet eyes studied his exhausted face with intelligence and compassion. John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking, now that John could see them. "The trouble, darling," he said, "is that I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know what the riddle means." Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor at John's feet. "You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much, dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to expect of it." "When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it." "And that sounds like very good sense, too," said Anne in earnest tones. "But it's a little late, isn't it? After all, the invaders are already invading us, aren't they?" "It has some deeper meaning than the usual one," said John. "If I could only figure out what it is." Anne nodded vigorously. "I suppose Buster's talking about space-stitching," she said. "Although I can never quite remember just what that is. Or just how it works, rather." She waited expectantly for a few moments and then plaintively asked, "What is it, dear?" "What's what?" "Stitching, silly. I already asked you." "Darling," said John with reasonable patience, "I must have explained inter-planar travel to you at least a dozen times." "And you always make it so crystal clear and easy to understand at the time," said Anne. She wrinkled her smooth forehead. "But somehow, later, it never seems quite so plain when I start to think about it by myself. Besides, I like the way your eyebrows go up and down while you explain something you think I won't understand. So tell me again. Please." Bristol grinned suddenly. "Yes, dear," he said. He paused a moment to collect his thoughts. "First of all, you know that there are two coexistent universes or planes, with point-to-point correspondence, but that these planes are of very different size. For every one of the infinitude of points in our Universe—which we call for convenience the 'alpha' plane—there is a single corresponding point in the smaller or 'beta' plane." Anne pursed her lips doubtfully. "If they match point for point, how can there be any difference in size?" she asked. John searched his pockets. After a little difficulty, he produced an envelope and a pencil stub. On the back of the envelope, he drew two parallel lines, one about five inches long, and the other about double the length of the first. "Actually," he said, "each of these line segments has an infinite number of points in it, but we'll ignore that. I'll just divide each one of these into ten equal parts." He did so, using short, neat cross-marks. "Now I'll establish a one-to-one correspondence between these two segments, which we will call one-line universes, by connecting each of my dividing cross-marks on the short segment with the corresponding mark on the longer line. I'll use dotted lines as connectors. That makes eleven dotted lines. You see?" Anne nodded. "That's plain enough. It reminds me of a venetian blind that has hung up on one side. Like ours in the living room last week that I couldn't fix, but had to wait until you came home." "Yes," said John. "Now, let us call this longer line-segment an 'alpha' universe; an analogue of our own multi-dimensional 'alpha' universe. If I move my pencil along the line at one section a second like this, it takes me ten seconds to get to the other end. We will assume that this velocity of an inch a second is the fastest anything can go along the 'alpha' line. That is the velocity of light, therefore, in the 'alpha' plane—186,000 miles a second, in round numbers. No need to use decimals." He hurried on as Anne stirred and seemed about to speak. "But if I slide out from my starting point along a dotted line part way to the 'beta' universe—something which, for reasons I can't explain now, takes negligible time—watch what happens. If I still proceed at the rate of an inch a second in this inter-planar region, then, with the dotted lines all bunched closely together, after five seconds when I switch along another dotted line back to my original universe, I have gone almost the whole length of that longer line. Of course, this introduction of 'alpha' matter—my pencil point in this case—into the inter-planar region between the universes sets up enormous strains, so that after a certain length of time our spaceship is automatically rejected and returned to its own proper plane." "Could anybody in the littler universe use the same system?" John laughed. "If there were anybody in the 'beta' plane, I guess they could, although they would end up traveling slower than they would if they just stayed in their own plane. But there isn't anybody. The 'beta' plane is a constant level entropy universe—completely without life of its own. The entropy level, of course, is vastly higher than that of our own universe." Anne sat up. "I'll forgive you this time for bringing up that horrid word entropy , if you'll promise me not to do it again," she said. John Shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "Now," he said, "if I want to get somewhere fast, I just start off in the right direction, and switch over toward 'beta.' When 'beta' throws me back, a light-year or so toward my destination, I just switch over again. You see, there is a great deal more difference in the sizes of Alpha universe and Beta universe than in the sizes of these alpha and beta line-segment analogues. Then I continue alternating back and forth until I get where I want to go. Establishing my correct velocity vector is complicated mathematically, but simple in practice, and is actually an aiming device, having nothing to do with how fast I go." He hesitated, groping for the right words. "In point of fact, you have to imagine that corresponding points in the two universes are moving rapidly past each other in all directions at once. I just have to select the right direction, or to convince the probability cloud that corresponds to my location in the 'alpha' universe that it is really a point near the 'beta' universe, going my way. That's a somewhat more confused way of looking at it than merely imagining that I continue to travel in the inter-planar region at the same velocity that I had in 'alpha,' but it's closer to a description of what the math says happens. I could make it clear if I could just use mathematics, but I doubt if the equations will mean much to you. "At any rate, distance traveled depends on mass—the bigger the ship, the shorter the distance traveled on each return to our own universe—and not on velocity in 'alpha.' Other parameters, entirely under the control of the traveler, also affect the time that a ship remains in the inter-planar region. "There are refinements, of course. Recently, for example, we have discovered a method of multi-transfer. Several of the transmitters that accomplish the transfer are used together. When they all operate exactly simultaneously, all the matter within a large volume of space is transferred as a unit. With three or four transmitters keyed together, you could transfer a comet and its tail intact. And that's how inter-planar traveling works. Clear now?" "And that's why they call it 'stitching,'" said Anne with seeming delight. "You just think of the ship as a needle stitching its way back and forth into and out of our universe. Why didn't you just say so?" "I have. Many times. But there's another interesting point about stitching. Subjectively, the man in the ship seems to spend about one day in each universe alternately. Actually, according to the time scale of an observer in the 'alpha' plane, his ship disappears for about a day, then reappears for a minute fraction of a second and is gone again. Of course, one observer couldn't watch both the disappearance and reappearance of the same ship, and I assume the observers have the same velocity in 'alpha' as does the stitching ship. Anyway, after a ship completes its last stitch, near its destination, there's a day of subjective time in which to make calculations for the landing—to compute trajectories and so forth—before it actually fully rejoins this universe. And while in the inter-planar region it cannot be detected, even by someone else stitching in the same region of 'alpha' space. "That's one of the things that makes interruption of the enemy ships entirely impossible. If a ship is in an unfavorable position, it just takes one more quick stitch out of range, then returns to a more favorable location. In other words, if it finds itself in trouble, it can be gone from our plane again even before it entirely rejoins it. Even if it landed by accident in the heart of a blue-white star, it would be unharmed for that tiny fraction of a second which, to the people in the ship, would seem like an entire day. "If this time anomaly didn't exist, it might be possible to set up defenses that would operate after a ship's arrival in the solar system but before it could do any damage; but as it is, they can dodge any defense we can devise. Is all that clear?" Anne nodded. "Uh-hunh, I understood every word." "There is another thing about inter-planar travel that you ought to remember," said Bristol. "When a ship returns to our universe, it causes a wide area disturbance; you have probably heard it called space shiver or the bong wave. The beta universe is so much smaller than our own alpha that you can imagine a spaceship when shifted toward it as being several beta light-years long. Now, if you think of a ship, moving between the alpha and beta lines on this envelope, as getting tangled in the dotted lines that connect the points on the two lines, that would mean that it would affect an area smaller than its own size on beta—a vastly larger area on alpha. "So when a ship returns to alpha, it 'twangs' those connecting lines, setting up a sort of shock in our universe covering a volume of space nearly a parsec in diameter. It makes a sort of 'bong' sound on your T.V. set. Naturally, this effect occurs simultaneously over the whole volume of space affected. As a result, when an invader arrives, using inter-planar ships, we know instantaneously he is in the vicinity. Unfortunately, his sudden appearance and the ease with which he can disappear makes it impossible, even with this knowledge, to make adequate preparations to receive him. Even if he is in serious trouble, he has gone again long before we can detect the bong." "Well, dear," said Anne. "As usual, I'm sure you have made me understand perfectly. This time you did so well that I may still remember what stitching is by tomorrow. If the Oracle means anything at all by his statement, I suppose it means that we can use stitching to help defend ourselves, just as the invaders are using it to attack us. But the whole thing sounds completely silly to me. The Oracle, I mean." Anne Bristol stood up, put her hands on her shapely hips and shook her head at her husband. "Honestly," she said, "you men are all alike. Paying so much attention to a toy you built yourself, and only last week you made fun of my going to a fortune teller. And the fuss you made about the ten dollars when you know it was worth every cent of it. She really told me the most amazing things. If you'd only let me tell you some of...." "Darling!" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed husband. "It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense of responsibility." "Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea." Anne smiled sweetly. "You know," she said, "that my dear father always said that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to us? Stitching our way to their planets in our spaceships, of course." Bristol shook his head. "Your idea may be sound, even if it is a little bloodthirsty coming from someone who won't even let me set a mouse-trap, but it won't work. First, we don't know where their home planets are and second, they have more ships than we do. It might be made to work, but only if we could get enough time. And speaking of time, I've got to meet with the Council as soon as we finish eating. Is dinner ready?"

test

50923

THE SERPENT RIVER By Don Wilcox [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space! "Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see. It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like something that crawled slowly over the planet's surface. There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance. We could see it at several points among the low foothills. Even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. Moving like a sluggish snake. It followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon. What was it? "Split" Campbell and I had been sent here to learn the answers. Our sponsor was the well known "EGGWE" (the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions.) We were under the EGGWE Code. We were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. The Keynes-Roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the Earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. From these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the Earth; and (2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly. We had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. If it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. If it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. If, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable—a vine of glacier proportions—or a river of some silvery, creamy substance—we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. I could depend upon "Split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs. Split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment. I looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. I misguessed. He didn't even glance up from his books. Rare young Campbell! Always a man of duty, never a man of impulse! "Here Campbell, take a look at the 'rope'." "Before I finish the reports, sir? If I recall our Code, Section Two, Order of Duties upon Landing: A—" "Forget the Code. Take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... See it?" "Yes sir." "Can you see it's moving? See the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?" "Yes sir. An excellent view, Captain Linden." "What do you think of it, Split? Ever see a sight like that before?" "No sir." "Well, what about it? Any comments?" Split answered me with an enthusiastic, "By gollies, sir!" Then, with restraint, "It's precisely what I expected from the photographs, sir. Any orders, sir?" "Relax, Split! That's the order. Relax!" "Thanks—thanks, Cap!" That was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. His training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline. He was naturally so conscientious it was painful. And to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee. Needless to say, I had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. Across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled (our first voyage together) I had amused myself at his expense. I had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. That was when I had nicknamed him "Split"—and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. Plainly, he liked the kidding. But if I thought I could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, I was mistaken. Now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. He paused. "What do you see?" I asked. "I cannot say definitely. The exact scientific classification of the object I am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny—" "You're seeing some sort of object?" "Yes sir." "What sort of object?" "A living creature, sir—upright, wearing clothes—" "A man ?" "To all appearances, sir—" "You bounder, give me that telescope!" 2. If you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as I have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, I see a man-like animal. Walking upright! Wearing adornments in the nature of clothing! I gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. A man! Across millions of miles of space—a man, like the men of the Earth. Six times before in my life of exploration I had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our Earth. A man! He might have been creeping on all fours. He might have been skulking like a lesser animal. He might have been entirely naked. He was none of these—and at the very first moment of viewing him I felt a kinship toward him. Oh, he was primitive in appearance—but had my ancestors not been the same? Was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? I sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. How? Who can ever know? By what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets? "Get ready to go out and meet him, Campbell," I said. "He's a friend." Split Campbell gave me a look as if to say, Sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous. "There are some things I can sense on first sight, Campbell. Take my word for it, he's a friend." "I didn't say anything, sir." "Good. Don't. Just get ready." "We're going to go out —?" "Yes," I said. "Orders." "And meet both of them?" Split was at the telescope. "Both?" I took the instrument from him. Both! "Well!" "They seem to be coming out of the ground," Split said. "I see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city—though I hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis." "One's a male and the other's a female," I said. "Another hypothesis," said Split. The late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". They were fully a mile away. Split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion I was in agreement. They had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. I studied them through the telescope while Split checked over equipment for a hike. The man's walk was unhurried. He moved thoughtfully, one might guess. His bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. His skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. He wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle. The girl stood several yards distant, watching him. This was some sort of ritual, no doubt. He was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. Its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. He went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening. The girl approached him. Two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... Three.... Four.... Five.... "Where do they come from?" Split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. If he had not done so, I might not have made a discovery. The landscape was moving . The long shadows that I had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture I saw through the ship's window when I looked out across the scene with the naked eye. The shadows were moving. They were tree shadows. They were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. And the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving. "Notice anything?" I asked Split. "The crowd is growing. We've certainly landed on top of a city." He gazed. "They're coming from underground." Looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees. "Notice anything else unusual?" I persisted. "Yes. The females—I'm speaking hypothetically—but they must be females—are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. I wonder why?" "You haven't noticed the trees?" "The females are quite attractive," said Split. I forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. Mobile trees were not new to me. I had seen similar vegetation on other planets—"sponge-trees"—which possessed a sort of muscular quality. If these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. The people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them. I studied the crowd of people. Only the leader wore the brilliant garb. The others were more scantily clothed. All were handsome of build. The lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females. "Those furry elbow ornaments on the females," I said to Split, "they're for protection. The caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows." "Why don't they pad their shoulders? They don't have anything on their shoulders." "Are you complaining?" We became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. If we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. Here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. The tall leader must be making a speech. They sat around him in little huddles. He moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures. "They'd better break it up!" Split said suddenly. "The jungles are moving in on them." "They're spellbound," I said. "They're used to sponge-trees. Didn't you ever see moving trees?" Split said sharply, "Those trees are marching! They're an army under cover. Look!" I saw, then. The whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. And all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. Split Campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "Captain! Those worshippers—how can we warn them? Oh-oh! Too late. Look!" All at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. They were warriors—fifty or more of them—with painted naked bodies. They dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter. 3. They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death. Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre. "Captain— Jim ! You're not going to let this happen!" Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty "friends" in danger. Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall. "Can we shoot a ray, Jim?" I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split could drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order. We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party. "Jim, can we shoot?" "Hit number sixteen, Campbell." Split touched the number sixteen signal. The ship's siren wailed out over the land. You could tell when the sound struck them. The circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. The dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. As if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. The siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. The attackers ran for the sponge-trees. The rootless jungle came to life. It jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. And our siren kept right on singing. "Ready for that hike, Campbell? Give me my equipment coat." I got into it. I looked back to the telescope. The tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. He had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. He could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. Slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us. Most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. But a few—the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group—came with him. "He needs a stronger guard than that," Campbell grumbled. Sixteen was still wailing. "Set it for ten minutes and come on," I said. Together we descended from the ship. We took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. We slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. We glanced down the slope apprehensively. We didn't want any footraces. The trees, however, were still retreating. Our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. And in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs. Soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak. Split and I stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. Fine looking people, we observed. Smooth faces. Like the features of Earth men. These creatures could walk down any main street back home. With a bit of makeup they would pass. "Notice, Captain, they have strange looking eyes." "Very smooth." "It's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "Very smooth—handsome—attractive." Then the siren went off. The leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. He seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. His group of twelve gathered in close. I had met such situations with ease before. "EGGWE" explorers come equipped. I held out a gift toward the leader. It was a singing medallion attached to a chain. It was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. It made music at the touch of a button. In clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "Trail of Stars." As it played I held it up for inspection. I placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. I thought he was smiling. He was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. He saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. There was a keenness about him that I liked. Yes, he was smiling. He bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck. "Tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself. Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud, "Tomboldo." We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak. Gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure. Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs. By motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell. "It's our chance to be guests of Tomboldo." Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGGWE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships. Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo. Gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering: "Wollo—yeeta—vo—vandartch—vandartch! Grr—see—o—see—o—see—o!" "See—o—see—o—see—o," one of the others echoed. It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the "see—o—see—o" we were all safe. Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren. "See—o—see—o—see—o!" Others of Tomboldo's party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path. " See—o—see—o! " Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them. Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air. I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits. The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly. Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a warning ! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you. I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran. They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs. But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him. His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness. Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head. I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence. 4. Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious. I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness. "Campbell!" I would call out of a nightmare. "Campbell, we're about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell." "S-s-sh!" The low hush of Split Campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream. The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language. "Campbell, are you there?... Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?" "Quiet, Captain." "Who is it that's swabbing my face? I can't see." "It's Vauna. She's smiling at you, Captain. Can't you see her?" "Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?" "One of them." "And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—" "Omosla is here too. She's Vauna's attendant. We're all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain." The words of Campbell came through insistently. After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said, "Campbell, you haven't forgot the EGGWE Code?" "Of course not, Captain." "Section Four?" "Section Four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—" I interrupted. "Clause D?" He picked it up. "D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... H-m-m. You're not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning yourself ?" At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell's question. "Myself." In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born. Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid blacking out. I wanted to see her. So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ships shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand. I regained my health gradually. "Are you quite awake?" Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. "You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak." It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves. And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams. The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "Trail of Stars." "I have learned to talk," I said. "You have had a long sleep." "I am well again. See, I can almost walk." But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. "I will walk soon." "We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe." Tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "We will have much to tell each other." "I hope so," I said. "Campbell and I came to learn about the serpent river ." I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent. I made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn't understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak. "You get well?" Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely. "I get well," I said. "The blow on the head," he said, "was not meant." I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "Get well!" The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. "Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone." She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. "I will talk with you later, Gravgak." "Now!" he shouted. "Alone." He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak. From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed. But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door. "Vauna!... Gravgak!... Come back." (I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?) Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back. Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling. "While we are together," old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world." There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber. "We will wait a few days," Tomboldo went on, "until our new friend—" he pointed to me—"is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the Kao-Wagwattl , the ever moving rope of life , these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl they shall ride with us across the land ."

test

50736

ADDRESS: CENTAURI by F. L. WALLACE Published by GALAXY PUBLISHING CORP. New York 14, New York A Galaxy Science Fiction Novel by special arrangement with Gnome Press Based on "Accidental Flight," copyright 1952 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. Published in book form by Gnome Press, copyright 1955 by F. L. Wallace. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Galaxy Science Fiction Novels are sturdy, inexpensive editions of choice works in this field, both original and reprint, selected by the editors of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine. Cover by Wallace A. Wood Printed in the U.S.A. by The Guinn Company New York 14, N. Y. Contents Earth was too perfect for these extraordinary exiles—to belong to it, they had to flee it! 1 Light flickered. It was uncomfortably bright. Doctor Cameron gazed intently at the top of the desk. It wasn't easy to be diplomatic. "The request was turned over to the Medicouncil," he said. "I assure you it was studied thoroughly before it was reported back to the Solar Committee." Docchi edged forward, his face alight with anticipation. The doctor kept his eyes averted. The man was damnably disconcerting—had no right to be alive. In the depths of the sea there were certain creatures like him and on a warm summer evening there was still another parallel, but never any human with such an infirmity. "I'm afraid you know what the answer is. A flat no for the present." Docchi sagged and his arms hung limp. "That's the answer?" "It's not as hopeless as you think. Decisions can be changed. It won't be the first time." "Sure," said Docchi. "We'll wait and wait until it's finally changed. We've got centuries, haven't we?" His face was blazing. It had slipped out of control though he wasn't aware of it. Beneath the skin certain cells had been modified, there were substances in his body that the ordinary individual didn't have. And when there was an extreme flow of nervous energy the response was—light. His metabolism was akin to that of a firefly. Cameron meddled with buttons. It was impossible to keep the lighting at a decent level. Docchi was a nuisance. "Why?" questioned Docchi. "We're capable, you know that. How could they refuse?" That was something he didn't want asked because there was no answer both of them would accept. Sometimes a blunt reply was the best evasion. "Do you think they'd take you? Or Nona, Jordan, or Anti?" Docchi winced, his arms quivering uselessly. "Maybe not. But we told you we're willing to let experts decide. There's nearly a thousand of us. They should be able to get one qualified crew." "Perhaps. I'm not going to say." Cameron abandoned the light as beyond his control. "Most of you are biocompensators. I concede it's a factor in your favor. But you must realize there are many things against you." He squinted at the desk top. Below the solid surface there was a drawer and in the drawer there was—that was what he was trying to see or determine. The more he looked the less clear anything seemed to be. He tried to make his voice crisp and professional. "You're wasting time discussing this with me. I've merely passed the decision on. I'm not responsible for it and I can't do anything for you." Docchi stood up, his face colorless and bright. But the inner illumination was no indication of hope. Doctor Cameron looked at him directly for the first time. It wasn't as bad as he expected. "I suggest you calm down. Be patient and wait. You'll be surprised how often you get what you want." "You'd be surprised how we get what we want," said Docchi. He turned away, lurching toward the door which opened automatically and closed behind him. Again Cameron concentrated on the desk, trying to look through it. He wrote down the sequence he expected to find, lingering over it to make sure he didn't force the pictures that came into his mind. He opened the drawer and compared the Rhine cards with what he'd written, frowning in disappointment. No matter how he tried he never got better than average results. Perhaps there was something to telepathy but he'd never found it. Anyway it was clear he wasn't one of the gifted few. He shut the drawer. It was a private game, a method to keep from becoming involved in Docchi's problems, to avoid emotional entanglement with people he had nothing in common with. He didn't enjoy depriving weak and helpless men and women of what little hope they had. It was their lack of strength that made them so difficult to handle. He reached for the telecom. "Get Medicouncilor Thorton," he told the operator. "Direct if you can; indirect if you have to. I'll hold on." Approximate mean diameter thirty miles, the asteroid was listed on the charts as Handicap Haven with a mark that indicated except in emergency no one not authorized was to land there. Those who were confined to it were willing to admit they were handicapped but they didn't call it haven. They used other terms, none suggesting sanctuary. It was a hospital, of course, but even more it was a convalescent home—the permanent kind. Healthy and vigorous humanity had reserved the remote planetoid, a whirling bleak rock of no other value, and built large installations there for less fortunate people. It was a noble gesture but like many gestures the reality fell short of the intentions. And not many people outside the Haven itself realized wherein it was a failure. The robot operator broke into his thoughts. "Medicouncilor Thorton has been located." An older man looked out of the screen, competent, forceful. "I'm on my way to the satellites of Jupiter. I'll be in direct range for the next half hour." At such distances transmission and reception were practically instantaneous. Cameron was assured of uninterrupted conversation. "It's a good thing you called. Have you got the Solar Committee reply?" "This morning. I saw no reason to hold it up. I just finished giving Docchi the news." "Dispatch. I like that. Get the disagreeable job done with." The medicouncilor searched through the desk in front of him without success. "Never mind. I'll find the information later. Now. How did Docchi react?" "He didn't like it. He was mad clear through." "That speaks well for his bounce." "They all have spirit. Nothing to use it on," said Dr. Cameron. "I confess I didn't look at him often though he was quite presentable, even handsome in a startling sort of way." Thorton nodded brusquely. "Presentable. Does that mean he had arms?" "Today he did. Is it important?" "I think so. He expected a favorable reply and wanted to look his best, as nearly normal as possible. In view of that I'm surprised he didn't threaten you." Cameron tried to recall the incident. "I think he did, mildly. He said something to the effect that I'd be surprised how they got what they wanted." "So you anticipate trouble. That's why you called?" "I don't know. I want your opinion." "You're on the scene, doctor. You get the important nuances," said the medicouncilor hastily. "However it's my considered judgment they won't start anything immediately. It takes time to get over the shock of refusal. They can't do anything. Individually they're helpless and collectively there aren't parts for a dozen sound bodies on the asteroid." "I'll have to agree," said Dr. Cameron. "But there's something that bothers me. I've looked over the records. No accidental has ever liked being here, and that covers quite a few years." "Nobody appreciates the hospital until he's sick, doctor." "I know. That's partly what's wrong. They're no longer ill and yet they have to stay here. What worries me is that there's never been such open discontent as now." "I hope I don't have to point out that someone's stirring them up. Find out who and keep a close watch. As a doctor you can find pretexts, a different diet, a series of tests. You can keep the person coming to you every day." "I've found out. There's a self-elected group of four, Docchi, Nona, Anti and Jordan. I believe they're supposed to be the local recreation committee." The medicouncilor smiled. "An apt camouflage. It keeps them amused." "I thought so too but now I'm convinced they're no longer harmless. I'd like permission to break up the group. Humanely of course." "I always welcome new ideas." In spite of what he'd said the medicouncilor probably did have an open mind. "Start with those it's possible to do the most with. Docchi, for instance. With prosthetic arms, he appears normal except for that uncanny fluorescence. Granted that the last is repulsive to the average person. We can't correct the condition medically but we can make it into an asset." "An asset? Very neat, if it can be done." The medicouncilor's expression said it couldn't be. "Gland opera," said Cameron, hurrying on. "The most popular program in the solar system, telepaths, teleports, pyrotics and so forth the heroes. Fake of course, makeup and trick camera shots. "But Docchi can be made into a real star. The death-ray man, say. When his face shines men fall dead or paralyzed. He'd have a tremendous following of kids." "Children," mused the medicouncilor. "Are you serious about exposing them to his influence? Do you really want them to see him?" "He'd have a chance to return to society in a way that would be acceptable to him," said Cameron defensively. He shouldn't have specifically mentioned kids. "To him, perhaps," reflected the medicouncilor. "It's an ingenious idea, doctor, one which does credit to your humanitarianism. But I'm afraid of the public's reception. Have you gone into Docchi's medical history?" "I glanced at it before I called him in." The man was unusual, even in a place that specialized in the abnormal. Docchi had been an electrochemical engineer with a degree in cold lighting. On his way to a brilliant career, he had been the victim of a particularly messy accident. The details hadn't been described but Cameron could supplement them with his imagination. He'd been badly mangled and tossed into a tank of the basic cold lighting fluid. There was life left in the body; it flickered but never went entirely out. His arms were gone and his ribs were crushed into his spinal column. Regeneration wasn't easy; a partial rib cage could be built up, but no more than that. He had no shoulder muscles and only a minimum in his back and now, much later, that was why he tired easily and why the prosthetic arms with which he'd been fitted were merely ornamental, there was nothing which could move them. And then there was the cold lighting fluid. To begin with it was semi-organic which, perhaps, was the reason he had remained alive so long when he should have died. It had preserved him, had in part replaced his blood, permeating every tissue. By the time Docchi had been found his body had adapted to the cold lighting substance. And the adaptation couldn't be reversed and it was self-perpetuating. Life was hardier than most men realized but occasionally it was also perverse. "Then you know what he's like," said the medicouncilor, shaking his head. "Our profession can't sponsor such a freakish display of his misfortune. No doubt he'd be successful on the program you mention. But there's more to life than financial achievement or the rather peculiar admiration that would be certain to follow him. As an actor he'd have a niche. But can you imagine, doctor, the dead silence that would occur when he walks into a social gathering of normal people?" "I see," said Cameron, though he didn't—not eye to eye. He didn't agree with Thorton but there wasn't much he could do to alter the other's conviction at the moment. There was a long fight ahead of him. "I'll forget about Docchi. But there's another way to break up the group." The medicouncilor interrupted. "Nona?" "Yes. I'm not sure she really belongs here." "Every young doctor thinks the same," said the medicouncilor kindly. "Usually they wait until their term is nearly up before they suggest that she'd respond better if she were returned to normal society. I think I know what response they have in mind." Thorton smiled in a fatherly fashion. "No offense, doctor, but it happens so often I'm thinking of inserting a note in our briefing program. Something to the effect that the new medical director should avoid the beautiful and self-possessed moron." "Is she stupid?" asked Cameron stubbornly. "It's my impression that she's not." "Clever with her hands," agreed the medicouncilor. "People in her mental classification, which is very low, sometimes are. But don't confuse manual dexterity with intelligence. For one thing she doesn't have the brain structure for the real article. "She's definitely not normal. She can't talk or hear, and never will. Her larynx is missing and though we could replace it, it wouldn't help if we did. We'd have to change her entire brain structure to accommodate it and we're not that good at the present." "I was thinking about the nerve dissimilarities," began Cameron. "A superior mutation, is that what you were going to say? You can forget that. It's much more of an anomaly, in the nature of cleft palates, which were once common—poor pre-natal nutrition or traumas. These we can correct rather easily but Nona is surgically beyond us. There always is something beyond us, you know." The medicouncilor glanced at the chronometer beside him. Cameron saw the time too but continued. It ought to be settled. It would do no good to bring up Helen Keller; the medicouncilor would use that evidence against him. The Keller techniques had been studied and reinterpreted for Nona's benefit. That much was in her medical record. They had been tried on Nona, and they hadn't worked. It made no difference that he, Cameron, thought there were certain flaws in the way the old techniques had been applied. Thorton would not allow that the previous practitioners could have been wrong. "I've been wondering if we haven't tried to force her to conform. She can be intelligent without understanding what we say or knowing how to read and write." "How?" demanded the medicouncilor. "The most important tool humans have is language. Through this we pass along all knowledge." Thorton paused, reflecting. "Unless you're referring to this Gland Opera stuff you mentioned. I believe you are, though personally I prefer to call it Rhine Opera." "I've been thinking of that," admitted Cameron. "Maybe if there was someone else like her she wouldn't need to talk the way we do. Anyway I'd like to make some tests, with your permission. I'll need some new equipment." The medicouncilor found the sheet he'd been looking for from time to time. He creased it absently. "Go ahead with those tests if it will make you feel better. I'll personally approve the requisition. It doesn't mean you'll get everything you want. Others have to sign too. However you ought to know you're not the first to think she's telepathic or something related to that phenomena." "I've seen that in the record too. But I think I can be the first one to prove it." "I'm glad you're enthusiastic. But don't lose sight of the main objective. Even if she is telepathic, and so far as we're concerned she's not, would she be better suited to life outside?" He had one answer—but the medicouncilor believed in another. "Perhaps you're right. She'll have to stay here no matter what happens." "She will. It would solve your problems if you could break up the group, but don't count on it. You'll have to learn to manage them as they are." "I'll see that they don't cause any trouble," said Cameron. "I'm sure you will." The medicouncilor's manner didn't ooze confidence. "If you need help we can send in reinforcements." "I don't anticipate that much difficulty," said Cameron hastily. "I'll keep them running around in circles." "Confusion is the best policy," agreed the medicouncilor. He unfolded the sheet and looked down at it. "Oh yes, before it's too late I'd better tell you I'm sending details of new treatments for a number of deficients——" The picture collapsed into meaningless swirls of color. For an instant the voice was distinguishable again before it too was drowned by noise. "Did you understand what I said, doctor? If it isn't clear contact me. Deviation can be fatal." "I can't keep the ship in focus," said the robot. "If you wish to continue the conversation it will have to be relayed through the nearest main station. At present that's Mars." It was inconvenient to wait several minutes for each reply. Besides the medicouncilor couldn't or wouldn't help him. He wanted the status quo maintained; nothing else would satisfy him. It was the function of the medical director to see that it was. "We're through," said Cameron. He sat there after the telecom clicked off. What were the deficients the medicouncilor had talked about? A subdivision of the accidentals of course, but it wasn't a medical term he was familiar with. Probably a semi-slang description. The medicouncilor had been associated with accidentals so long that he assumed every doctor would know at once what he meant. Deficients. Mentally Cameron turned the word over. If it was used accurately it could indicate only one thing. He'd see when the medicouncilor's report came in. He could always ask for more information if it wasn't clear. The doctor got heavily to his feet—and he actually was heavier. It wasn't a psychological reaction. He made a mental note of it. He'd have to investigate the gravity surge. In a way accidentals were pathetic, patchwork humans, half or quarter men and women, fractional organisms which masqueraded as people. The illusion died hard for them, harder than that which remained of their bodies, and those bodies were unbelievably tough. Medicine and surgery were partly to blame. Techniques were too good or not good enough, depending on the viewpoint—doctor or patient. Too good in that the most horribly injured person, if he were found alive, could be kept alive. Not good enough because a certain per cent of the injured couldn't be returned to society completely sound and whole. The miracles of healing were incomplete. There weren't many humans who were broken beyond repair, but though the details varied in every respect, the results were monotonously the same. For the most part disease had been eliminated. Everyone was healthy—except those who'd been hurt in accidents and who couldn't be resurgeried and regenerated into the beautiful mold characteristic of the entire population. And those few were sent to the asteroid. They didn't like it. They didn't like being confined to Handicap Haven. They were sensitive and they didn't want to go back. They knew how conspicuous they'd be, hobbling and crawling among the multitudes of beautiful men and women who inhabited the planets. The accidentals didn't want to return. What they did want was ridiculous. They had talked about, hoped, and finally embodied it in a petition. They had requested rockets to make the first long hard journey to Alpha and Proxima Centauri. Man was restricted to the solar system and had no way of getting to even the nearest stars. They thought they could break through the barrier. Some accidentals would go and some would remain behind, lonelier except for their share in the dangerous enterprise. It was a particularly uncontrollable form of self-deception. They were the broken people, without a face they could call their own, who wore their hearts not on their sleeves but in a blood-pumping chamber, those without limbs or organs—or too many. The categories were endless. No accidental was like any other. The self-deception was vicious precisely because the accidentals were qualified. Of all the billions of solar citizens they alone could make the long journey there and return . But there were other factors that ruled them out. It was never safe to discuss the first reason with them because the second would have to be explained. Cameron himself wasn't sadistic and no one else was interested enough to inform them. 2 Docchi sat beside the pool. It would be pleasant if he could forget where he was. It was pastoral though not quite a scene from Earth. The horizon was too near and the sky was shallow and only seemed to be bright. Darkness lurked outside. A small tree stretched shade overhead. Waves lapped and made gurgling sounds against the banks. But there was no plant life of any kind, and no fish swam in the liquid. It looked like water but wasn't—the pool held acid. And floating in it, all but submerged, was a shape. The records in the hospital said it was a woman. "Anti, they turned us down," said Docchi bitterly. "What did you expect?" rumbled the creature in the pool. Wavelets of acid danced across the surface, stirred by her voice. "I didn't expect that." "You don't know the Medicouncil very well." "I guess I don't." He stared sullenly at the fluid. It was faintly blue. "I have the feeling they didn't consider it, that they held the request for a time and then answered no without looking at it." "Now you're beginning to learn. Wait till you've been here as long as I have." Morosely he kicked an anemic tuft of grass. Plants didn't do well here either. They too were exiled, far from the sun, removed from the soil they originated in. The conditions they grew in were artificial. "Why did they turn us down?" said Docchi. "Answer it yourself. Remember what the Medicouncil is like. Different things are important to them. The main thing is that we don't have to follow their example. There's no need to be irrational even though they are." "I wish I knew what to do," said Docchi. "It meant so much to us." "We can wait, outlast the attitude," said Anti, moving slowly. It was the only way she could move. Most of her bulk was beneath the surface. "Cameron suggested waiting." Reflectively Docchi added: "It's true we are biocompensators." "They always bring in biocompensation," muttered Anti restlessly. "I'm getting tired of that excuse. Time passes just as slow." "But what else is there? Shall we draw up another request?" "Memorandum number ten? Let's not be naive. Things get lost when we send them to the Medicouncil. Their filing system is in terrible shape." "Lost or distorted," grunted Docchi angrily. The grass he'd kicked already had begun to wilt. It wasn't hardy in this environment. Few things were. "Maybe we ought to give the Medicouncil a rest. I'm sure they don't want to hear from us again." Docchi moved closer to the pool. "Then you think we should go ahead with the plan we discussed before we sent in the petition? Good. I'll call the others together and tell them what happened. They'll agree that we have to do it." "Then why call them? More talk, that's all. Besides I don't see why we should warn Cameron what we're up to." Docchi glanced at her worriedly. "Do you think someone would report it? I'm certain everyone feels as I do." "Not everyone. There's bound to be dissent," said Anti placidly. "But I wasn't thinking of people." "Oh that," said Docchi. "We can block that source any time we need to." It was a relief to know that he could trust the accidentals. Unanimity was important and some of the reasons weren't obvious. "Maybe you can and maybe you can't," said Anti. "But why make it difficult, why waste time?" Docchi got up awkwardly but he wasn't clumsy once he was on his feet. "I'll get Jordan. I know I'll need arms." "Depends on what you mean," said Anti. "Both," said Docchi, smiling. "We're a dangerous weapon." She called out as he walked away. "I'll see you when you leave for far Centauri." "Sooner than that, Anti. Much sooner." Stars were beginning to wink. Twilight brought out the shadows and tracery of the structure that supported the transparent dome overhead. Soon controlled slow rotation would bring near darkness to this side of the asteroid. The sun was small at this distance but even so it was a tie to the familiar scenes of Earth. Before long it would be lost. Cameron leaned back and looked speculatively at the gravity engineer, Vogel. The engineer could give him considerable assistance. There was no reason why he shouldn't but anyone who voluntarily had remained on the asteroid as long as Vogel was a doubtful quantity. He didn't distrust him, the man was strange. "I've been busy trying to keep the place running smoothly. I hope you don't mind that I haven't been able to discuss your job at length," said the doctor, watching him closely. "Naw, I don't mind," said Vogel. "Medical directors come and go. I stay on. It's easier than getting another job." "I know. By now you should know the place pretty well. I sometimes think you could do my work with half the trouble." "Ain't in the least curious about medicine and never bothered to learn," grunted Vogel. "I keep my stuff running and that's all. I don't interfere with nobody and they don't come around and get friendly with me." Cameron believed it. The statement fit the personality. He needn't be concerned about fraternization. "There are a few things that puzzle me," he began. "That's why I called you in. Usually we maintain about half Earth-normal gravity. Is that correct?" The engineer nodded and grunted assent. "I'm not sure why half gravity is used. Perhaps it's easier on the weakened bodies of the accidentals. Or there may be economic factors. Either way it's not important as long as half gravity is what we get." "You want to know why we use that figure?" "If you can tell me without getting too technical, yes. I feel I should learn everything I can about the place." The engineer warmed up, seeming to enjoy himself. "Ain't no reason except the gravity units themselves," Vogel said. "Theoretically we can get anything we want. Practically we take whatever comes out, anything from a quarter to full Earth gravity." "You have no control over it?" This contradicted what he'd heard. His information was that gravity generators were the product of an awesome bit of scientific development. It seemed inconceivable that they should be so haphazardly directed. "Sure we got control," answered the engineer, grinning. "We can turn them off or on. If gravity varies, that's too bad. We take the fluctuation or we don't get anything." Cameron frowned; the man knew what he was doing or he wouldn't be here. His position was of only slightly less importance than that of the medical director—and where it mattered the Medicouncil wouldn't tolerate incompetence. And yet—— The engineer rumbled on. "You were talking how the generators were designed especially for the asteroid. Some fancy medical reason why it's easier on the accidentals to have a lesser gravity plus a certain amount of change. Me, I dunno. I guess the designers couldn't help what was built and the reason was dug up later." Cameron concealed his irritation. He wanted information, not a heart to heart confession. Back on Earth he had been told it was for the benefit of the accidentals. He'd reserved judgment then and saw no reason not to do so now. "All practical sciences try to justify what they can't escape but would like to. Medicine, I'm sure, is no exception." He paused thoughtfully. "I understand there are three separate generators on the asteroid. One runs for forty-five minutes while two are idle. When the first one stops another one cuts in. The operations are supposed to be synchronized. I don't have to tell you that they're not. Not long ago you felt your weight increase suddenly. I know I did. What is wrong?" "Nothing wrong," said the engineer soothingly. "You get fluctuations while one generator is running. You get a gravity surge when one generator is supposed to drop out but doesn't. The companion machine adds to it, that's all." "They're supposed to be that way? Overlapping so that for a time we have Earth or Earth and a half gravity?" "Better than having none," said Vogel with heavy pride. "Used to happen quite often, before I came. You can ask any of the old timers. I fixed that though." He didn't like the direction his questions were taking him. "What did you do?" he asked suspiciously. "Nothing," said the engineer uncomfortably. "Nothing I can think of. I guess the machines just got used to having me around." There were people who tended to anthropomorphize anything they came in contact with and Vogel was one of them. It made no difference to him that he was talking about insensate machines. He would continue to endow them with personality. "This is the best you can say, that we'll get a wild variation of gravity, sometimes none?" "It's not supposed to work that way but nobody's ever done better with a setup like this," said Vogel defensively. "If you want you can check the company that makes these units." "I'm not trying to challenge your knowledge and I'm not anxious to make myself look silly. I do want to make sure I don't overlook anything. You see, I think there's a possibility of sabotage." The engineer's grin was wider than the remark required. Cameron swiveled the chair around and leaned on the desk. "All right," he said tiredly, "tell me why the idea of sabotage is so funny." "It would have to be someone living here," said the big engineer. "He wouldn't like it if it jumped up to nine G, which it could. I think he'd let it alone. But there are better reasons. Do you know how each gravity unit is put together?" "Not in detail." The gravity generating unit was not a unit. It was built in three parts. First there was a power source, which could be anything as long as it supplied ample energy. The basic supply on the asteroid was a nuclear pile, buried deep in the core. Handicap Haven would have to be taken apart, stone by stone, before it could be reached. Part two were the gravity coils, which actually originated and directed the gravity. They were simple and very nearly indestructible. They could be destroyed but they couldn't be altered and still produce the field. The third part was the control unit, the real heart of the gravity generating system. It calculated the relationship between the power flowing through the coils and the created field in any one microsecond. It used the computed relationship to alter the power flowing in the next microsecond to get the same gravity. If the power didn't change the field died instantly. The control unit was thus actually a computer, one of the best made, accurate and fast beyond belief. The engineer rubbed his chin. "Now I guess you can see why it doesn't always behave as we want it to." He looked questioningly at Cameron, expecting a reply. "I'm afraid I can't," said the doctor.

test

48513

Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. ILLUSTRATED BY KRENKEL HIS MASTER'S VOICE ANALOG SCIENCE FACT · SCIENCE FICTION Spaceship McGuire had lots of knowledge—but no wisdom. He was smart—but incredibly foolish. And, as a natural consequence, tended to ask questions too profound for any philosopher—questions like "Who are you?" By RANDALL GARRETT I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could make anyone dislike him without trying. When I entered the office, he was [3] sitting behind his mahogany desk, his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said: "Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?" I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will." He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting right out of the glass [4] again. The momentum it builds up is enough to make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all over the place. Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it. Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice. He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force. I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way. He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come in. "Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble." "I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping my voice level. [5] "So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of heavy linseed oil. He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract." I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think you'd win." "Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would hardly offer to pay you another one." I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains. Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to personal relationships, he wasn't very wise. "Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the point," I told him. "I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage." "My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation of the concepts might not be quite [6] the same as yours. Get to the point." He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth be considered its ... ah ... master. "As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being' unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the single individual were careful in giving orders himself. "Now, it appears that you , Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?" "Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up what had really happened. My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey." "Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him my version of "genuine" innocence. [7] A man has to be a good actor to be a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I knew a great deal more about the problem than he did. He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can this bias be eliminated." "Then why don't they do that?" "There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is precisely the thing I hired you to prevent." "It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely. "But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you [8] money?" "It has. I was reluctant to call you in again—understandably enough, I think." "Perfectly. It's mutual." He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at me. "It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes." "I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?" "It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am certain that the robot ship is the answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of McGuire!" What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody , I quoted to myself. I'd have said it out loud, [9] but I was fairly certain that Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics. "Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak." "In other words, I've got you over a barrel." "I don't deny it." "You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8 is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus." "How much?" "Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs in it." He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one each six months for three years after the first successful commercial ship is built by Viking." "My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a deal. Is there anything else?" "No." "Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel." "You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness [10] of his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to subside." I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding his own touch of color to the room. And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost nothing, he'd really have blown up. Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring, rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker beacon on my way to Ceres. For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial engine and the few necessities of life—air, some water, and a very little food—still costs more than a Rolls-Royce [11] automobile does on Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in the Belt. They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your average velocity doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed. I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming ordeal with McGuire. Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: DANIEL OAK, Confidential Expediter ; I'm hired to help other people Get Things Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important than Shalimar Ravenhurst. Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to evaluate the political activities of [12] various sub-governments all over the System. And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong. The Political Survey Division does evaluate political activity, all right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast majority of [13] the System's citizens don't even know the Government has a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the Political Survey Division. The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot. And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician. Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the malfunctioning of an individual automobile. McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he was the spacecraft, since it served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per second. Nor [14] did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths were variable and led through the emptiness of space. Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull. But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders— fast ! And that means verbal orders, orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space. That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well. And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with. For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain. First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human being. Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict with the First Law . [15] Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the First or Second Law. Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept. A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen. And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile. With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first six went insane. If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you, depending [16] on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so. So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws. If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being. One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane. The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only from that person." As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire. When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats, sitting on a [17] bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station. Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres, lock, stock, and mining rights. Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership. There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to that, too, before very long. Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt. But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a [18] week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise. I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome. After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me. "Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face. "I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand. "That's the definition of a good trip," he told me. "Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep." "You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?" "I could use one, I guess. Your treat?" "My treat," he said. "Come on." I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point. [19] Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors. A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit. I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right; I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I have spent summers in nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves with lavender [20] and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different. I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits. Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said "O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules. We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock opened up with his troubles. "Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant because I want you to know that there may be trouble." "Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant. "Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of precious metals. "Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell around [21] here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we can't stand any hell—or sabotage—around this planetoid just now!" "Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not Thurston's agents." "Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible." "Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?" He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing about." "So? What does this have to do with me?" He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have to come out of my [22] pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he doesn't like your methods of operation." "And you're going to go against his orders?" "I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can." I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she sneaked aboard McGuire." He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that." "Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say. "Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could offer you—" I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons. In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want [23] me to work for you, then it would be unethical for me to take the job. "In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my services are [24] not necessary to the survival of the individual, except in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a lawyer when it's a charity case. "No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't [25] possibly work for you." He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink. " But ," I said, "it would be a pleasure [26] to work with you." He looked up quickly. "How's that?" "Well, let's look at it this way: You can't hire me because I'm already working for Ravenhurst; I can't hire [27] you because you're working for Ravenhurst. But since we may need each other, and since we're both working for Ravenhurst, there would be no conflict of interest if we co-operate. "Or, to put it another way, I can't take money for any service I may render you, but you can pay off in services. Am I coming through?" His broad smile made the scars on his face fold in and deepen. "Loud and clear. It's a deal." I held up a hand, palm toward him. "Ah, ah, ah! There's no 'deal' involved. We're just old buddies helping each other. This is for friendship, not business. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Fair?" "Fair. Come on down to my office; I want to give you a headful of facts and figures." "Will do. Let me finish my guzzle."

test

47989

THE YELLOW PHANTOM BY MARGARET SUTTON GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Copyright, 1933, by GROSSET & DUNLAP, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America To My Mother and Father. CONTENTS CHAPTER I A MYSTERIOUS TELEGRAM “Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene! Don’t like New York so well that you won’t want to come home!” “Don’t keep them too long, Pauline! Farringdon will be as dead as so many bricks without them. Even the cats will miss Blackberry. Make him wave his paw, Judy!” “Don’t forget to write!” “Goodbye, Pauline! Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene!” “Goodbye! Goodbye!” And Peter’s car was off, bearing the last load of campers back to their home town. Judy Bolton watched them out of sight. They were taking the familiar road, but she and Irene Lang would soon be traveling in the other direction. Pauline Faulkner had invited them for a visit, including Judy’s cat in the invitation, and they were going back with her to New York. A long blue bus hove into view, and all three girls hailed it, at first expectantly, then frantically when they saw it was not stopping. It slowed down a few feet ahead of them, but when they attempted to board it the driver eyed Blackberry with disapproval. “Can’t take the cat unless he’s in a crate.” “He’s good,” Judy began. “He won’t be any trouble——” “Can’t help it. Company’s rules.” And he was about to close the door when Judy’s quick idea saved the situation. “All right, he’s in a crate ,” she declared with vigor as she thrust the cat inside her own pretty hatbox. The hats she hastily removed and bundled under one arm. The driver had to give in. He even grinned a bit sheepishly as the girls took their seats, Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judy insisted as she took the seat just behind them, “I have Blackberry.” The other passengers on the bus were regarding the newcomers with amused interest. A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine and rolled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction. An old lady made purring noises through her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and smiling. Everyone except the serious young man across the aisle. He never turned his head. Judy nudged the two friends in the seat ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything to make him look up. “Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——” “Well, what?” “Almost my ideal.” “Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb those precious papers that he’s reading.” “I dare you!” Pauline said. Sixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle. The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest. The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise, he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition, hastened to apologize. “No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly and began collecting his scattered papers. Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his reading. There were a great many typewritten sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading critically, scratching out something here and adding something there. “You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to Judy. “See how nice he was.” “I should have known better than to dare a girl like you,” Pauline put in. “It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now almost as interested as Irene in the strange young man. Not because he was Judy’s ideal—a man who wouldn’t notice a cat until its tail bumped into him—but because the papers on his lap might be important. And she had disturbed them. The man, apparently unaware that the accident had been anybody’s fault, continued reading and correcting. Judy watched her cat carefully until the stack of papers was safely inside his portfolio again. “That’s finished,” he announced as though speaking to himself. He screwed the top on his fountain pen, placed it in his pocket and then turned to the girls. “Nice scenery, wasn’t it?” “It was,” Judy replied, laughing, “but you didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.” “I’ve been over this road a great many times,” he explained, “and one does tire of scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the bus are different.” “You mean different from scenery?” “Yes, and from each other. For instance, you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired friend who apologized for you and that small, dark girl are three distinct types.” Judy regarded him curiously. She had never thought of herself or either of the other girls as “types.” Now she tried to analyze his meaning. Their lives had certainly been different. Judy and Pauline, although of independent natures, had always felt the security of dependence upon their parents while Irene’s crippled father depended solely upon her. This responsibility made her seem older than her years—older and younger, too. She never could acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’s fearlessness. In appearance, too, they were different. Her first vacation had done wonders for Irene Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed with healthy color, and her eyes were a deeper, happier blue. Two weeks of sunshine had tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in her hair. Pauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan which made her hair look darker than ever and contrasted strangely with her keen, light blue eyes. The sun had not been quite so kind to Judy. It had discovered a few faint freckles on her nose and given her hair a decided reddish cast. But Judy didn’t mind. Camp life had been exciting—boating, swimming and, as a climax, a thrilling ride in Arthur Farringdon-Pett’s new airplane. The young man beside Judy was a little like Arthur in appearance—tall, good-looking but altogether too grown-up and serious. Judy liked boys to make jokes now and then, even tease the way her brother, Horace, did. Peter teased her, too. “Queer,” she thought, “to miss being teased.” This stranger seemed to like serious-minded people and presently changed the conversation to books and music, always favorite topics with Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he was doing but learned nothing except that “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded in putting his papers back in their original sequence. “And if you girls were all of the same type,” he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven you your prank.” “I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy whispered to the other two girls a little later. “Mine either,” Pauline returned with a laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I dared you.” “Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely, “that he cares for my type?” She looked very pathetic as she said that, and Judy, remembering Irene’s misfortunes, slid into the seat beside her and put a loving arm about her shoulder. “I care for your type,” she said. “So why worry about what a stranger thinks?” “I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer with a wistful look in the stranger’s direction. He was still absorbed in the mountain of typewritten pages that he held on his knee. It seemed that his work, whatever it was, engrossed him completely. He was again making corrections and additions with his pen. Judy noticed a yellow slip of paper on the seat beside him and called the other girls’ attention to it. “It looks like a telegram,” she whispered, “and he keeps referring to it.” “Telegrams are usually bad news,” Irene replied. The young man sat a little distance away from them and, to all appearances, had forgotten their existence. Girl-like, they discussed him, imagining him as everything from a politician to a cub reporter, finally deciding that, since he lived in Greenwich Village, he must be an artist. Irene said she liked to think of him as talented. A dreamer, she would have called him, if it had not been for his practical interest in the business at hand—those papers and that telegram. It was dark by the time they reached New York. The passengers were restless and eager to be out of the bus. The young man hastily crammed his typewritten work into his portfolio and Judy noticed, just as the bus stopped, that he had forgotten the telegram. She and Irene both made a dive for it with the unfortunate result that when they stood up again each of them held a torn half of the yellow slip. “Just our luck!” exclaimed Irene. “Now we can’t return it to him. Anyway, he’s gone.” “We could piece it together,” Pauline suggested, promptly suiting her actions to her words. When the two jagged edges were fitted against each other, this is what the astonished girls read: DALE MEREDITH PLEASANT VALLEY PA CUT ART SHOP ROBBERY STOP FIFTY THOUSAND IS PLENTY STOP ONE MAN MURDERED INTERESTS RANDALL STOP DISCUSS TERMS MONDAY EMILY GRIMSHAW Irene was the first to finish reading. “Good heavens! What would he know about robbery and murder?” she exclaimed, staring first at the telegram in Pauline’s hand and then at the empty seat across the aisle. “Why, nothing that I can think of. He didn’t seem like a crook. The telegram may be in code,” Pauline mused as she handed the torn pieces to Judy. “I like his name—Dale Meredith.” “So do I. But Emily Grimshaw——” “All out! Last stop!” the bus driver was calling. “Take care of that cat,” he said with a chuckle as he helped the girls with their suitcases. They were still wondering about the strange telegram as they made their way through the crowd on Thirty-fourth Street. CHAPTER II IRENE’S DISCOVERY A taxi soon brought the girls to the door of Dr. Faulkner’s nineteenth century stone house. The stoop had been torn down and replaced by a modern entrance hall, but the high ceilings and winding stairways were as impressive as ever. Drinking in the fascination of it, Judy and Irene followed the man, Oliver, who carried their bags right up to the third floor where Pauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom all to herself. The former was furnished with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shaded lamps, a piano and a radio. Here the man left them with a curt, “’Ere you are.” “And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the more sociable housekeeper welcomed them. Soon she was bustling around the room setting their bags in order. She offered to help unpack. “Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told her. “We’re dead tired and I can lend them some of my things for tonight.” “Then I’ll fix up the double bed in the next room for your guests and leave you to yourselves,” the kind old lady said. As soon as she had closed the door Judy lifted her cat out of the hatbox. With a grateful noise, halfway between a purr and a yowl, Blackberry leaped to the floor and began, at once, to explore the rooms. “His padded feet were made for soft carpets,” Judy said fondly. “How do you suppose he’d like gravel?” Pauline asked. “Oh, he’d love it!” Judy exclaimed. “You know our cellar floor is covered with gravel, and he sleeps down there.” “Is this gravel in the cellar?” Irene asked, beginning to get an attack of shivers. Pauline laughed. “Goodness, no! It’s on the roof garden.” She walked across the room and flung open a door. “Nothing shivery about that, is there?” “Nothing except the thought of standing on the top of one of those tall buildings,” Irene said, gazing upward as she followed Pauline. The view fascinated Judy. Looking out across lower New York, she found a new world of gray buildings and flickering lights. In the other direction the Empire State Building loomed like a sentinel. “I never dreamed New York was like this,” she breathed. “It grows on a person,” Pauline declared. “I would never want to live in any other city. No matter how bored or how annoyed I may be during the day, at night I can always come up here and feel the thrill of having all this for a home.” “I wish I had a home I could feel that way about,” Irene sighed. The garden was too alluring for the girls to want to leave it. Even Blackberry had settled himself in a bed of geraniums. These and other plants in enormous boxes bordered the complete inclosure. Inside were wicker chairs, a table and a hammock hung between two posts. “This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline said, “and you two girls may come up here and read if you like while I’m at school.” “At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she thought of something that she should have considered before accepting Pauline’s invitation. Of course Pauline would be in school. She hadn’t been given a holiday as the girls in Farringdon had when their school burned down. Judy and Irene would be left to entertain themselves all day unless Dr. Faulkner had some plans for them. Judy wondered where he was. After they had gone inside again, that is, all of them except Blackberry who seemed to have adopted the roof garden as a permanent home, she became curious enough to ask. “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise. “Father is away. A medical conference in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like that, but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.” “Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene asked, dismayed. “Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently. “There’s nothing to be afraid of with servants in the house.” But Irene was not used to servants. Ever since her father became disabled she had waited on herself and kept their shabby little house in apple-pie order. The house was closed now and their few good pieces of furniture put in storage. All summer long there would not be any rent problems or any cooking. Then, when fall came, she and her father would find a new home. Where it would be or how they would pay for it worried Irene when she thought about it. She tried not to think because Dr. Bolton had told her she needed a rest. Her father, a patient of the doctor’s, was undergoing treatments at the Farringdon Sanitarium. The treatments were being given according to Dr. Bolton’s directions but not by him as Judy’s home, too, was closed for the summer. Her parents had not intended to stay away more than a week or two, but influenza had swept the town where they were visiting. Naturally, the doctor stayed and his wife with him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student of journalism, had gone to live in the college dormitory. Thus it was that both girls knew they could not return to Farringdon no matter how homesick they might be. They had the cat for comfort and they had each other. Ever since Irene had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s office these two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine, Betty, Marge, Pauline—all of them were friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than that. Judy felt with them. She felt with Irene the longing of the other girl for something to hold fast to—a substantial home that could not be taken away at every whim of the landlord, just enough money so that she could afford to look her best and the security of some strong person to depend upon. “Will your school last long?” Irene was asking the dark-haired girl. “Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing the fact that she too had troubles. “Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful of the sigh. “We can go places together? You’ll have time to show us around.” Pauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t talk about time to me. Time will be my middle name after I graduate. There isn’t a single thing I really want to do, least of all stay at home all day. College is a bore unless you’re planning a career. What do you intend to do when you’re through school?” “I hadn’t planned,” Irene said, “except that I want time to read and go ahead with my music. Of course I’ll keep house somewhere for Dad. It will be so nice to have him well again, and I love keeping house.” “What about your work for my father?” Judy asked. Irene’s eyes became troubled. “He doesn’t really need me any more. I know now, Judy, that you just made that position for me. It was lovely of you, but I—I’d just as soon not go back where I’m not needed. Your father trusts too many people ever to get rich and he could use that money he’s been paying me.” “Don’t feel that way about it,” Judy begged. Irene’s feelings, however, could not easily be changed, and with both girls having such grave worries the problem bid fair to be too great a one for even Judy to solve. Solving problems, she hoped, would eventually be her career for she planned to become a regular detective with a star under her coat. Now she confided this ambition to the other two girls. “A detective!” Pauline gasped. “Why, Judy, only men are detectives. Can you imagine anyone taking a mere girl on the police force?” “Chief Kelly, back home, would take her this very minute if she applied,” Irene declared. Pauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical, black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks. She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or feeble-minded people and often felt thankful that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured people who were also interesting. “People, like that man we met on the bus,” she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently. I’d hate to think of his being mixed up in anything crooked.” “You can’t make me believe that he was,” Irene put in with a vigor quite rare for her. “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was real?” “I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned with a laugh, “but you can be sure I’ll never be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious telegram meant.” In the days that followed Judy learned that the mere mention of the stranger’s name, Dale Meredith, would cause either girl to cease worrying about a home or about a career, as the case might be. “It’s almost magical,” she said to herself and had to admit that the spell was also upon her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would puzzle over the torn papers in her pocketbook. But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over things. It was for that reason that she usually chose detective stories whenever she sat down with a book. That hammock up there on the roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall buildings, and found New York, generally, less thrilling from the street than it had been from the roof garden. Pauline sensed this and worried about entertaining her guests. “How would you like to go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested. “For Heaven’s sake, think of something a little more exciting than that,” Judy exclaimed thoughtlessly. “I’d rather find a library somewhere and then lie and read something in the hammock.” “So would I,” agreed Irene, relieved that Judy hadn’t wanted to see the tomb. “Well, if a library’s all you want,” Pauline said, “why not walk along with me and I’ll show you one on my way to school.” “A big one?” Judy asked. “No, just a small one. In fact, it’s only a bookshop with a circulating library for its customers.” Judy sighed. It would seem nice to see something small for a change. She never recognized this library at all until they were almost inside the door. Then her eyes shone. What an interesting place it was! On the counters were quaint gifts and novelties as well as books. The salesladies all wore smocks, like artists, and had the courtesy to leave the girls alone. Pauline had to hurry on to school but left Judy and Irene to browse. Before long they had discovered a sign reading MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE. That was what Judy liked. Rows and rows of new books, like soldiers, marched along the shelves. “What a lot of flying stories,” Irene said, absently removing one of them from its place. “And murder mysteries,” Judy added. “It’s always a temptation to read them. Murders in Castle Stein ....” She started back as her eye caught the author’s name. It was Dale Meredith! CHAPTER III A DARING SCHEME Thrilled by her discovery, Judy removed the torn pieces of telegram from her purse and began unraveling the mystery, bit by bit. Irene looked on, trembling with excitement. “‘CUT ART SHOP ROBBERY STOP FIFTY THOUSAND IS PLENTY STOP....’ Art Shop Robbery! That sounds like a title! And someone wanted him to cut it to fifty thousand words—just a nice length for a book. That must have been what he was doing on the bus, cutting down the number of words on those typewritten pages.” “Why, of course,” Irene agreed. “I always knew you were gifted, Judy, but can you explain this?” She pointed. “‘ONE MAN MURDERED INTERESTS RANDALL....’ Easy as pie! Another title and a publisher.” Judy tossed her head with a self-satisfied air of importance. Every one of their questions might be answered in the classified directory. They found a telephone booth near by and a directory on the shelf beside it. Promptly turning to the list of publishing houses, Judy’s finger traveled down one complete page and half of another, but no Randall could she find. With a sigh of disappointment she turned to look again at the telegram: “DISCUSS TERMS MONDAY” “EMILY GRIMSHAW” What sort of person was she? A relative? No. Relatives didn’t discuss terms with authors. Wives and sweethearts didn’t either. They might discuss his books, but not terms. Anyway Irene hoped that Dale Meredith had no wife or sweetheart, certainly not a sweetheart with a name like Emily Grimshaw. That name sounded as harsh to the ears as Dale Meredith sounded musical. Flipping the pages of the directory, Judy came upon the answer to their question: “AUTHOR’S AGENTS ( See Literary Agents).” “That might be it!” She turned to the place and, beginning at the top of the page, both girls searched eagerly through the G’s. “Greenspan, Grier, Grimshaw....” The name was Emily and the address was a number on Madison Square. Irene was so excited that she declared she could feel her heart thumping under her slip-on sweater. “I’d give anything to meet him again, Judy! Anything!” And suddenly Judy wanted to meet him too, not for her own sake but for Irene’s. A bold plan began to take shape in her mind. If she and Irene found positions in Emily Grimshaw’s office Dale Meredith would never know that it had not been a simple coincidence. It would be such fun—this scheming. It would give them something to do and if Judy’s plan worked it might even solve the problem of Pauline’s career. “Of course Emily Grimshaw may not hire us,” Judy said after she had outlined the scheme and won Irene’s approval. “But, at any rate, it’s worth trying. We won’t need to tell her it’s only for a few weeks when Pauline will be there to step right into the position. I wonder how you get to Madison Square.” She stopped a policeman to ask him and found it to be within easy walking distance. “We might as well go now,” Irene agreed. Perhaps if they thought about it too long they might lose heart and not attempt it. The literary agent’s office was located in an old hotel on the northeast side of the square. The building looked as if it had been unchanged for a century. In the lobby Judy and Irene paused, surveying the quaint furniture and mural decorations before they mustered enough courage to inquire at the desk for Emily Grimshaw. “Who’s calling?” the clerk asked tartly. “Tell her—” Judy hesitated. “Tell her it’s two girls to see her on business.” The message was relayed over the switchboard and presently the clerk turned and said, “She will see one of you. First stairway to the left. Fourth floor.” “Only one—” Judy began. “She always sees one client at a time. The other girl can wait.” “That’s right. I—I’ll wait,” Irene stammered. “But you wanted the position——” “I don’t now. Suppose she asked about experience.” “You’ve had a little. You stand a better chance than I do.” “Not with your nerve, Judy,” Irene said. “This place gives me the shivers. You’re welcome to go exploring dark halls if you like. I’d rather sit here in the lobby and read Dale Meredith’s book.” “Oh, so that’s it? Make yourself comfortable,” Judy advised with a laugh. “I may be gone a long, long time.” “Not if she finds out how old you are.” “Hush!” Judy reproved. “Don’t I look dignified?” She tilted her hat a little more to the left and dabbed a powder puff on her nose. The puff happened not to have any powder on it but it gave her a grown-up, courageous feeling. And she was to have a great need of courage in the hour that followed. CHAPTER IV HOW THE SCHEME WORKED The adventure lost some of its thrill with no one to share it. Judy hadn’t an idea in the world how to find the fourth floor as she could see no stairway and no elevator. Taking a chance, she opened one of several doors. It opened into a closet where cleaning supplies were kept. Judy glanced at the dusty floor and wondered if anybody ever used them. This was fun! She tried another door and found it locked. But the third door opened into a long hall at the end of which was the stairway. “A regular labyrinth, this place,” she thought as she climbed. “I wonder if Emily Grimshaw will be as queer as her hotel.” There were old-fashioned knockers on all the doors, and Judy noticed that no two of them were alike. Emily Grimshaw had her name on the glass door of her suite, and the knocker was in the shape of a witch hunched over a steaming caldron. Judy lifted it and waited. “Who’s there?” called a mannish voice from within. “Judy Bolton. They told me at the desk that you would see me.” “Come on in, then. Don’t stand there banging the knocker.” “I beg your pardon,” Judy said meekly as she entered. “I didn’t quite understand.” “It’s all right. Who sent you?” “Nobody. I came myself. I found your name in the classified directory.” “Oh, I see. Another beginner.” Emily Grimshaw sat back in her swivel chair and scrutinized Judy. She was a large woman dressed in a severely plain brown cloth dress with sensible brown shoes to match. Her iron-gray hair was knotted at the back of her head. In fact, the only mark of distinction about her whole person was the pair of glasses perched on the high bridge of her nose and the wide, black ribbon suspended from them. Although an old woman, her face was not wrinkled. What few lines she had were deep furrows that looked as if they belonged there. Judy could imagine Emily Grimshaw as a middle-aged woman but never as a girl. The room was, by no means, a typical office. If it had not been for the massive desk littered with papers and the swivel chair it would not have looked like an office at all. Three of the four walls were lined with bookshelves. “Is this where you do all your work?” Judy asked. “And why not? It’s a good enough place.” “Of course,” Judy explained herself quickly. “But I supposed you would have girls working for you. It must keep you busy doing all this yourself.” “Hmm! It does. I like to be busy.” Judy took a deep breath. How, she wondered, was she to put her proposition before this queer old woman without seeming impudent. It was the first time in her life she had ever offered her services to anyone except her father. “You use a typewriter,” she began. “Look here, young woman,” Emily Grimshaw turned on her suddenly, “if you’re a writer, say so. And if you’ve come here looking for a position——” “That’s it exactly,” Judy interrupted. “I’m sure I could be of some service to you.” “What?” “I might typewrite letters for you.” “I do that myself. Haven’t the patience to dictate them.” “Perhaps I could help you read and correct manuscripts,” Judy suggested hopefully. The agent seemed insulted. “Humph!” she grunted. “Much you know about manuscripts!” “I may know more than you think,” Judy came back at her. It was hard to be patient with this irritable old lady. Certainly she would never have chosen such an employer if it had not been for the possibility of meeting Dale Meredith again. Irene had taken such a fancy to him. “Lucky she doesn’t know that,” thought Judy as she watched her fumbling through a stack of papers on her desk. Finally she produced a closely written page of note paper and handed it to the puzzled girl. “If you know so much about manuscripts,” she charged. “What would you do with a page like that?” Half hoping that the handwriting was Dale Meredith’s, Judy reached out an eager hand. The agent was watching her like a cat and, as she read, a hush settled over the room. Emily Grimshaw was putting Judy to a test.

test

51231

Syndrome Johnny BY CHARLES DYE Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The plagues that struck mankind could be attributed to one man. But was he fiend ... or savior? The blood was added to a pool of other blood, mixed, centrifuged, separated to plasma and corpuscles, irradiated slightly, pasteurized slightly, frozen, evaporated, and finally banked. Some of the plasma was used immediately for a woman who had bled too much in childbirth. She died. Others received plasma and did not die. But their symptoms changed, including a syndrome of multiple endocrine unbalance, eccentricities of appetite and digestion, and a general pattern of emotional disturbance. An alert hospital administrator investigated the mortality rise and narrowed it to a question of who had donated blood the week before. After city residents were eliminated, there remained only the signed receipts and thumbprints of nine men. Nine healthy unregistered travelers poor enough to sell their blood for money, and among them a man who carried death in his veins. The nine thumbprints were broadcast to all police files and a search began. The effort was futile, for there were many victims who had sickened and grown partially well again without recognizing the strangeness of their illness. Three years later they reached the carrier stage and the epidemic spread to four cities. Three more years, and there was an epidemic which spread around the world, meeting another wave coming from the opposite direction. It killed two out of four, fifty out of a hundred, twenty-seven million out of fifty million. There was hysteria where it appeared. And where it had not appeared there were quarantines to fence it out. But it could not be fenced out. For two years it covered the world. And then it vanished again, leaving the survivors with a tendency toward glandular troubles. Time passed. The world grew richer, more orderly, more peaceful. A man paused in the midst of his work at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Commission. He looked up at the red and green production map of India. "Just too many people per acre," he said. "All our work at improving production ... just one jump ahead of their rising population, one jump ahead of famine. Sometimes I wish to God there would be another plague to give us a breathing spell and a fair chance to get things organized." He went back to work and added another figure. Two months later, he was one of the first victims of the second plague. In the dining hall of a university, a biochemical student glanced up from his paper to his breakfast companion. "You remember Johnny, the mythical carrier that they told about during the first and second epidemics of Syndrome Plague?" "Sure. Syndrome Johnny. They use that myth in psychology class as a typical example of mass hysteria. When a city was nervous and expecting the plague to reach them, some superstitious fool would imagine he saw Syndrome Johnny and the population would panic. Symbol for Death or some such thing. People imagined they saw him in every corner of the world. Simultaneously, of course." It was a bright morning and they were at a window which looked out across green rolling fields to a towering glass-brick building in the distance. The student who had gone back to his paper suddenly looked up again. "Some Peruvians here claim they saw Syndrome Johnny—" "Idiotic superstition! You'd think it would have died down when the plague died." The other grinned. "The plague didn't die." He folded his newspaper slowly, obviously advancing an opening for a debate. His companion went on eating. "Another of your wild theories, huh?" Then through a mouthful of food: "All right, if the plague didn't die, where did it go?" "Nowhere. We have it now. We all have it!" He shrugged. "A virus catalyst of high affinity for the cells and a high similarity to a normal cell protein—how can it be detected?" "Then why don't people die? Why aren't we sick?" "Because we have sickened and recovered. We caught it on conception and recovered before birth. Proof? Why do you think that the countries which were known as the Hungry Lands are now well-fed, leisured, educated, advanced? Because the birth rate has fallen! Why has the birth rate fallen?" He paused, then very carefully said, "Because two out of three of all people who would have lived have died before birth, slain by Syndrome Plague. We are all carriers now, hosts to a new guest. And"—his voice dropped to a mock sinister whisper—"with such a stranger within our cells, at the heart of the intricate machinery of our lives, who knows what subtle changes have crept upon us unnoticed!" His companion laughed. "Eat your breakfast. You belong on a horror program!" A police psychologist for the Federated States of The Americas was running through reports from the Bureau of Social Statistics. Suddenly he grunted, then a moment later said, "Uh-huh!" "Uh-huh what?" asked his superior, who was reading a newspaper with his feet up on the desk. "Remember the myth, of Syndrome Johnny?" "Ghost of Syndrome Plague. Si, what of it?" "Titaquahapahel, Peru, population nine hundred, sent in a claim that he turned up there and they almost caught him. Crime Statistics rerouted the report to Mass Phenomena, of course. Mass Phenomena blew a tube and sent their folder on Syndrome Johnny over here. Every report they ever had on him for ninety years back! A memo came with it." He handed the memo over. The man behind the desk looked at it. It was a small graph and some mathematical symbols. "What is it?" "It means," said the psychologist, smiling dryly, "that every crazy report about our ghost has points of similarity to every other crazy report. The whole business of Syndrome Johnny has been in their 'funny coincidence' file for twenty years. This time the suspect hits the averaged description of Johnny too closely: A solid-looking man, unusual number of visible minor scars, and a disturbing habit of bending his fingers at the first-joint knuckles when he is thinking. The coincidence has gotten too damn funny. There's a chance we've been passing up a crime." "An extensive crime," said the man at the desk softly. He reached for the folder. "Yes, a considerable quantity of murder." He leafed through the folder and then thought a while, looking at the most recent reports. Thinking was what he was paid for, and he earned his excellent salary. "This thumbprint on the hotel register—the name is false, but the thumbprint looks real. Could we persuade the Bureau of Records to give their data on that print?" "Without a warrant? Against constitutional immunity. No, not a chance. The public has been touchy about the right to secrecy ever since that police state was attempted in Varga." "How about persuading an obliging judge to give a warrant on grounds of reasonable suspicion?" "No. We'd have the humanist press down on our necks in a minute, and any judge knows it. We'd have to prove a crime was committed. No crime, no warrant." "It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is," the Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully. "No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the process." He pushed a button. "Do you think if I send a man down there, he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?" "That's a rhetorical question," said the psychologist, trying to work out an uncertain correlation in his reports. "With that sort of mob hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft." "Phone for you, Doctor Alcala." The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling down at the little girl before vanishing again. Ricardo Alcala pushed the plunger in gently, then carefully withdrew the hypodermic needle from the little girl's arm. "There you are, Cosita," he said, smiling and rising from the chair beside the white bed. "Will that make me better, Doctor?" she piped feebly. He patted her hand. "Be a good girl and you will be well tomorrow." He walked out into the hospital corridor to where the desk nurse held out a phone. "Alcala speaking." The voice was unfamiliar. "My deepest apologies for interrupting your work, Doctor. At this late hour I'm afraid I assumed you would be at home. The name is Camba, Federation Investigator on a health case. I would like to consult you." Alcala was tired, but there was nothing to do at home. Nita was at the health resort and Johnny had borrowed all his laboratory space for a special synthesis of some sort, and probably would be too busy even to talk. Interest stirred in him. This was a Federation investigator calling; the man's work was probably important. "Tonight, if that's convenient. I'll be off duty in five minutes." Thirty minutes later they were ordering in a small cantina down the street from the hospital. Julio Camba, Federation Investigator, was a slender, dark man with sharp, glinting eyes. He spoke with a happy theatrical flourish. "Order what you choose, Senor. We're on my expense account. The resources of the Federated States of all The Americas stand behind your menu." Alcala smiled. "I wouldn't want to add to the national debt." "Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist." "You shame me," Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak. The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: "Do you know John Osborne Drake?" Alcala searched his memory. "No. I'm sorry...." Then he felt for the first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something. Camba finished lighting the cigar and dropped the match into an ash-tray. "Perhaps you know John Delgados?" He leaned back into the shadowy corner of the booth. Johnny! Out of all the people in the world, how could the government be interested in him? Alcala tried to sound casual. "An associate of mine. A friend." "I would like to contact the gentleman." The request was completely unforceful, undemanding. "I called, but he was not at home. Could you tell me where he might be?" "I'm sorry, Senor Camba, but I cannot say. He could be on a business trip." Alcala was feeling increasingly nervous. Actually, Johnny was working at his laboratory. "What do you know of his activities?" Camba asked. "A biochemist." Alcala tried to see past the meditative mask of the thin dark face. "He makes small job-lots of chemical compounds. Special bug spray for sale to experimental plantations, hormone spray for fruits, that sort of thing. Sometimes, when he collects some money ahead, he does research." Camba waited, and his silence became a question. Alcala spoke reluctantly, anger rising in him. "Oh, it's genuine research. He has some patents and publications to his credit. You can confirm that if you choose." He was unable to keep the hostility out of his voice. A waiter came and placed steaming platters of food on the table. Camba waited until he was gone. "You know him well, I presume. Is he sane?" The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man might be insane in secret. "Yes, so far as I know." He turned his attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a bottle in his pocket. "I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills," Camba remarked with friendly mockery. "I don't need them," Alcala explained. "Mixed silicones. I'm guinea pigging." "Can't such things be left to the guinea pigs?" Camba asked, watching with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a layer of gray powder over his steak. "Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that." "Yes, of course. I should have remembered from your famous papers, The Need Of Trace Silicon In Human Diet and Silicon Deficiency Diseases ." Obviously Camba had done considerable investigating of Alcala before approaching him. He had even given the titles of the research papers correctly. Alcala's wariness increased. "What is the purpose of the experiment this time?" asked the small dark Federation agent genially. "To determine the safe limits of silicon consumption and if there are any dangers in an overdose." "How do you determine that? By dropping dead?" He could be right. Perhaps the test should be stopped. Every day, with growing uneasiness, Alcala took his dose of silicon compound, and every day, the chemical seemed to be absorbed completely—not released or excreted—in a way that was unpleasantly reminiscent of the way arsenic accumulated without evident damage, then killed abruptly without warning. Already, this evening, he had noticed that there was something faulty about his coordination and weight and surface sense. The restaurant door had swung back with a curious lightness, and the hollow metal handle had had a curious softness under his fingers. Something merely going wrong with the sensitivity of his fingers—? He tapped his fingertips on the heavy indestructible silicone plastic table top. There was a feeling of heaviness in his hands, and a feeling of faint rubbery give in the table. Tapping his fingers gently, his heavy fingers ... the answer was dreamily fantastic. I'm turning into silicon plastic myself , he thought. But how, why? He had not bothered to be curious before, but the question had always been—what were supposedly insoluble silicons doing assimilating into the human body at all? Several moments passed. He smoothed back his hair with his oddly heavy hand before picking up his fork again. "I'm turning into plastic," he told Camba. "I beg your pardon?" "Nothing. A joke." Camba was turning into plastic, too. Everyone was. But the effect was accumulating slowly, by generations. Camba lay down his knife and started in again. "What connections have you had with John Delgados?" Concentrate on the immediate situation. Alcala and Johnny were obviously in danger of some sort of mistaken arrest and interrogation. As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING! He laughed inwardly and finally answered: "Friendship. Mutual interest in high ion colloidal suspensions and complex synthesis." Impatience suddenly mastered him. "Exactly what is it you wish to know, Senor? Perhaps I could inform you if I knew the reasons for your interest." Camba chose a piece of salad with great care. "We have reason to believe that he is Syndrome Johnny." Alcala waited for the words to clarify. After a moment, it ceased to be childish babble and became increasingly shocking. He remembered the first time he had met John Delgados, the smile, the strong handclasp. "Call me Johnny," he had said. It had seemed no more than a nickname. The investigator was watching his expression with bright brown eyes. Johnny, yes ... but not Syndrome Johnny. He tried to think of some quick refutation. "The whole thing is preposterous, Senor Camba. The myth of Syndrome Plague Johnny started about a century ago." "Doctor Alcala"—the small man in the gray suit was tensely sober—"John Delgados is very old, and John Delgados is not his proper name. I have traced his life back and back, through older and older records in Argentina, Panama, South Africa, the United States, China, Canada. Everywhere he has paid his taxes properly, put his fingerprints on file as a good citizen should. And he changed his name every twenty years, applying to the courts for permission with good honest reasons for changing his name. Everywhere he has been a laboratory worker, held patents, sometimes made a good deal of money. He is one hundred and forty years old. His first income tax was paid in 1970, exactly one hundred and twenty years ago." "Other men are that old," said Alcala. "Other men are old, yes. Those who survived the two successive plagues, were unusually durable." Camba finished and pushed back his plate. "There is no crime in being long-lived, surely. But he has changed his name five times!" "That proves nothing. Whatever his reasons for changing his name, it doesn't prove that he is Syndrome Johnny any more than it proves he is the cow that jumped over the moon. Syndrome Johnny is a myth, a figment of mob delirium." As he said it, he knew it was not true. A Federation investigator would not be on a wild goose chase. The plates were taken away and cups of steaming black coffee put between them. He would have to warn Johnny. It was strange how well you could know a man as well as he knew Johnny, firmly enough to believe that, despite evidence, everything the man did was right. "Why must it be a myth?" Camba asked softly. "It's ridiculous!" Alcala protested. "Why would any man—" His voice cut off as unrelated facts fell into a pattern. He sat for a moment, thinking intensely, seeing the century of plague as something he had never dreamed.... A price. Not too high a price in the long run, considering what was purchased. Of course, the great change over into silicon catalysis would be a shock and require adjustment and, of course, the change must be made in several easy stages—and those who could not adjust would die. "Go on, Doctor," Camba urged softly. "' Why would any man—'" He tried to find a way of explaining which would not seem to have any relationship to John Delgados. "It has been recently discovered"—but he did not say how recently—"that the disease of Syndrome Plague was not a disease. It is an improvement." He had spoken clumsily. "An improvement on life?" Camba laughed and nodded, but there were bitterness and anger burning behind the small man's smile. "People can be improved to death by the millions. Yes, yes, go on, Senor. You fascinate me." "We are stronger," Alcala told him. "We are changed chemically. The race has been improved!" "Come, Doctor Alcala," Camba said with a sneering merriment, "the Syndrome Plagues have come and they have gone. Where is this change?" Alcala tried to express it clearly. "We are stronger. Potentially, we are tremendously stronger. But we of this generation are still weak and ill, as our parents were, from the shock of the change. And we need silicone feeding; we have not adjusted yet. Our illness masks our strength." He thought of what that strength would be! Camba smiled and took out a small notebook. "The disease is connected with silicones, you say? The original name of John Delgados was John Osborne Drake. His father was Osborne Drake, a chemist at Dow Corning, who was sentenced to the electric chair in 1967 for unauthorized bacterial experiments which resulted in an accidental epidemic and eight deaths. Dow Corning was the first major manufactury of silicones in America, though not connected in any way with Osborne Drake's criminal experiments. It links together, does it not?" "It is not a disease, it is strength!" Alcala insisted doggedly. The small investigator looked up from his notebook and his smile was an unnatural thing, a baring of teeth. "Half the world died of this strength, Senor. If you will not think of the men and women, think of the children. Millions of children died!" The waiter brought the bill, dropping it on the table between them. "Lives will be saved in the long run," Alcala said obstinately. "Individual deaths are not important in the long run." "That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?" asked Camba with open irony, taking the bill and rising. They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at the curb. "Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?" The offer was made with the utmost suavity. Alcala hesitated fractionally. "Why, yes, thank you." It would not do to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing. As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly note in his voice, as if he humored a child. "Come, Alcala, you're a doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a murderer?" Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the bright street falling away below. "I'm not a practicing medico; only one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the average is better, then I'm satisfied." The 'copter flew on. There was no answer. "I'm not good with words," said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife and unfolding it, he said, "Watch!" He put his index finger on the altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending, but not cut. "Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through the hand." He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut. Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his finger directly over it, counting patiently, "One, two, three, four, five—" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut. "Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove something to you?" The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to the ground and opened the door before answering. "It proves only that a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy friendship. Good night." Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night, then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory. Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and the girl were not supposed to be home. Alcala hurried in. Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see what had to be done, and do it. "I was waiting for you, Ric." "The Feds are after you." Ricardo Alcala had been running. He found he was panting and his heart was pounding. Delgados' smile did not change. "It's all right, Ric. Everything's done. I can leave any time now." He indicated a square metal box standing in a corner. "There's the stuff." What stuff? The product Johnny had been working on? "You haven't time for that now, Johnny. You can't sell it. They'd watch for anyone of your description selling chemicals. Let me loan you some money." "Thanks." Johnny was smiling oddly. "Everything's set. I won't need it. How close are they to finding me?" "They don't know where you're staying." Alcala leaned on the desk edge and put out his hand. "They tell me you're Syndrome Johnny." "I thought you'd figured that one out." Johnny shook his hand formally. "The name is John Osborne Drake. You aren't horrified?" "No." Alcala knew that he was shaking hands with a man who would be thanked down all the successive generations of mankind. He noticed again the odd white web-work of scars on the back of Johnny's hand. He indicated them as casually as he could. "Where did you pick those up?" John Drake glanced at his hand. "I don't know, Ric. Truthfully. I've had my brains beaten in too often to remember much any more. Unimportant. There are instructions outlining plans and methods filed in safety deposit boxes in almost every big city in the world. Always the same typing, always the same instructions. I can't remember who typed them, myself or my father, but I must have been expected to forget or they wouldn't be there. Up to eleven, my memory is all right, but after Dad started to remake me, everything gets fuzzy." "After he did what ?" Johnny smiled tiredly and rested his head on one hand. "He had to remake me chemically, you know. How could I spread change without being changed myself? I couldn't have two generations to adapt to it naturally like you, Ric. It had to be done artificially. It took years. You understand? I'm a community, a construction. The cells that carry on the silicon metabolism in me are not human. Dad adapted them for the purpose. I helped, but I can't remember any longer how it was done. I think when I've been badly damaged, organization scatters to the separate cells in my body. They can survive better that way, and they have powers of regrouping and healing. But memory can't be pasted together again or regrown." John Drake rose and looked around the laboratory with something like triumph. "They're too late. I made it, Ric. There's the catalyst cooling over there. This is the last step. I don't think I'll survive this plague, but I'll last long enough to set it going for the finish. The police won't stop me until it's too late." Another plague! The last one had been before Alcala was born. He had not thought that Johnny would start another. It was a shock. Alcala walked over to the cage where he kept his white mice and looked in, trying to sort out his feelings. The white mice looked back with beady bright eyes, caged, not knowing they were waiting to be experimented upon. A timer clicked and John Delgados-Drake became all rapid efficient activity, moving from valve to valve. It lasted a half minute or less, then Drake had finished stripping off the lab whites to his street clothes. He picked up the square metal box containing the stuff he had made, tucked it under his arm and held out a solid hand again to Alcala. "Good-by, Ric. Wish me luck. Close up the lab for me, will you?" Alcala took the hand numbly and mumbled something, turned back to the cages and stared blindly at the mice. Drake's brisk footsteps clattered down the stairs. Another step forward for the human race. God knew what wonders for the race were in that box. Perhaps something for nerve construction, something for the mind—the last and most important step. He should have asked. There came at last a pressure that was a thought emerging from the depth of intuition. Doctor Ricardo Alcala will die in the next plague, he and his ill wife Nita and his ill little girl.... And the name of Alcala will die forever as a weak strain blotted from the bloodstream of the race.... He'd find out what was in the box by dying of it! He tried to reason it out, but only could remember that Nita, already sickly, would have no chance. And Alcala's family genes, in attempting to adapt to the previous steps, had become almost sterile. It had been difficult having children. The next step would mean complete sterility. The name of Alcala would die. The future might be wonderful, but it would not be his future! "Johnny!" he called suddenly, something like an icy lump hardening in his chest. How long had it been since Johnny had left? Running, Alcala went down the long half-lit stairs, out the back door and along the dark path toward the place where Johnny's 'copter had been parked. A light shone through the leaves. It was still there. "Johnny!" John Osborne Drake was putting his suitcase into the rear of the 'copter. "What is it, Ric?" he asked in a friendly voice without turning. It would be impossible to ask him to change his mind. Alcala found a rock, raised it behind Syndrome Johnny's back. "I know I'm being anti-social," he said regretfully, and then threw the rock away. His fist was enough like stone to crush a skull.

test

51193

Pictures Don't Lie By KATHERINE MacLEAN Illustrated by MARTIN SCHNEIDER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] ... Pictures, that is, that one can test and measure. And these pictures positively, absolutely could not lie! The man from the News asked, "What do you think of the aliens, Mister Nathen? Are they friendly? Do they look human?" "Very human," said the thin young man. Outside, rain sleeted across the big windows with a steady faint drumming, blurring and dimming the view of the airfield where they would arrive. On the concrete runways, the puddles were pockmarked with rain, and the grass growing untouched between the runways of the unused field glistened wetly, bending before gusts of wind. Back at a respectful distance from where the huge spaceship would land were the gray shapes of trucks, where TV camera crews huddled inside their mobile units, waiting. Farther back in the deserted sandy landscape, behind distant sandy hills, artillery was ringed in a great circle, and in the distance across the horizon, bombers stood ready at airfields, guarding the world against possible treachery from the first alien ship ever to land from space. "Do you know anything about their home planet?" asked the man from Herald . The Times man stood with the others, listening absently, thinking of questions, but reserving them. Joseph R. Nathen, the thin young man with the straight black hair and the tired lines on his face, was being treated with respect by his interviewers. He was obviously on edge, and they did not want to harry him with too many questions to answer at once. They wanted to keep his good will. Tomorrow he would be one of the biggest celebrities ever to appear in headlines. "No, nothing directly." "Any ideas or deductions?" Herald persisted. "Their world must be Earth-like to them," the weary-looking young man answered uncertainly. "The environment evolves the animal. But only in relative terms, of course." He looked at them with a quick glance and then looked away evasively, his lank black hair beginning to cling to his forehead with sweat. "That doesn't necessarily mean anything." "Earth-like," muttered a reporter, writing it down as if he had noticed nothing more in the reply. The Times man glanced at the Herald , wondering if he had noticed, and received a quick glance in exchange. The Herald asked Nathen, "You think they are dangerous, then?" It was the kind of question, assuming much, which usually broke reticence and brought forth quick facts—when it hit the mark. They all knew of the military precautions, although they were not supposed to know. The question missed. Nathen glanced out the window vaguely. "No, I wouldn't say so." "You think they are friendly, then?" said the Herald , equally positive on the opposite tack. A fleeting smile touched Nathen's lips. "Those I know are." There was no lead in this direction, and they had to get the basic facts of the story before the ship came. The Times asked, "What led up to your contacting them?" Nathen answered after a hesitation. "Static. Radio static. The Army told you my job, didn't they?" The Army had told them nothing at all. The officer who had conducted them in for the interview stood glowering watchfully, as if he objected by instinct to telling anything to the public. Nathen glanced at him doubtfully. "My job is radio decoder for the Department of Military Intelligence. I use a directional pickup, tune in on foreign bands, record any scrambled or coded messages I hear, and build automatic decoders and descramblers for all the basic scramble patterns." The officer cleared his throat, but said nothing. The reporters smiled, noting that down. Security regulations had changed since arms inspection had been legalized by the U.N. Complete information being the only public security against secret rearmament, spying and prying had come to seem a public service. Its aura had changed. It was good public relations to admit to it. Nathen continued, "I started directing the pickup at stars in my spare time. There's radio noise from stars, you know. Just stuff that sounds like spatter static, and an occasional squawk. People have been listening to it for a long time, and researching, trying to work out why stellar radiation on those bands comes in such jagged bursts. It didn't seem natural." He paused and smiled uncertainly, aware that the next thing he would say was the thing that would make him famous—an idea that had come to him while he listened—an idea as simple and as perfect as the one that came to Newton when he saw the apple fall. "I decided it wasn't natural. I tried decoding it." Hurriedly he tried to explain it away and make it seem obvious. "You see, there's an old intelligence trick, speeding up a message on a record until it sounds just like that, a short squawk of static, and then broadcasting it. Undergrounds use it. I'd heard that kind of screech before." "You mean they broadcast at us in code?" asked the News . "It's not exactly code. All you need to do is record it and slow it down. They're not broadcasting at us. If a star has planets, inhabited planets, and there is broadcasting between them, they would send it on a tight beam to save power." He looked for comprehension. "You know, like a spotlight. Theoretically, a tight beam can go on forever without losing power. But aiming would be difficult from planet to planet. You can't expect a beam to stay on target, over such distances, more than a few seconds at a time. So they'd naturally compress each message into a short half-second or one-second-length package and send it a few hundred times in one long blast to make sure it is picked up during the instant the beam swings across the target." He was talking slowly and carefully, remembering that this explanation was for the newspapers. "When a stray beam swings through our section of space, there's a sharp peak in noise level from that direction. The beams are swinging to follow their own planets at home, and the distance between there and here exaggerates the speed of swing tremendously, so we wouldn't pick up more than a bip as it passes." "How do you account for the number of squawks coming in?" the Times asked. "Do stellar systems rotate on the plane of the Galaxy?" It was a private question; he spoke impulsively from interest and excitement. The radio decoder grinned, the lines of strain vanishing from his face for a moment. "Maybe we're intercepting everybody's telephone calls, and the whole Galaxy is swarming with races that spend all day yacking at each other over the radio. Maybe the human type is standard model." "It would take something like that," the Times agreed. They smiled at each other. The News asked, "How did you happen to pick up television instead of voices?" "Not by accident," Nathen explained patiently. "I'd recognized a scanning pattern, and I wanted pictures. Pictures are understandable in any language." Near the interviewers, a Senator paced back and forth, muttering his memorized speech of welcome and nervously glancing out the wide streaming windows into the gray sleeting rain. Opposite the windows of the long room was a small raised platform flanked by the tall shapes of TV cameras and sound pickups on booms, and darkened floodlights, arranged and ready for the Senator to make his speech of welcome to the aliens and the world. A shabby radio sending set stood beside it without a case to conceal its parts, two cathode television tubes flickering nakedly on one side and the speaker humming on the other. A vertical panel of dials and knobs jutted up before them and a small hand-mike sat ready on the table before the panel. It was connected to a boxlike, expensively cased piece of equipment with "Radio Lab, U.S. Property" stenciled on it. "I recorded a couple of package screeches from Sagittarius and began working on them," Nathen added. "It took a couple of months to find the synchronizing signals and set the scanners close enough to the right time to even get a pattern. When I showed the pattern to the Department, they gave me full time to work on it, and an assistant to help. It took eight months to pick out the color bands, and assign them the right colors, to get anything intelligible on the screen." The shabby-looking mess of exposed parts was the original receiver that they had labored over for ten months, adjusting and readjusting to reduce the maddening rippling plaids of unsynchronized color scanners to some kind of sane picture. "Trial and error," said Nathen, "but it came out all right. The wide band-spread of the squawks had suggested color TV from the beginning." He walked over and touched the set. The speaker bipped slightly and the gray screen flickered with a flash of color at the touch. The set was awake and sensitive, tuned to receive from the great interstellar spaceship which now circled the atmosphere. "We wondered why there were so many bands, but when we got the set working, and started recording and playing everything that came in, we found we'd tapped something like a lending library line. It was all fiction, plays." Between the pauses in Nathen's voice, the Times found himself unconsciously listening for the sound of roaring, swiftly approaching rocket jets. The Post asked, "How did you contact the spaceship?" "I scanned and recorded a film copy of Rite of Spring , the Disney-Stravinsky combination, and sent it back along the same line we were receiving from. Just testing. It wouldn't get there for a good number of years, if it got there at all, but I thought it would please the library to get a new record in. "Two weeks later, when we caught and slowed a new batch of recordings, we found an answer. It was obviously meant for us. It was a flash of the Disney being played to a large audience, and then the audience sitting and waiting before a blank screen. The signal was very clear and loud. We'd intercepted a spaceship. They were asking for an encore, you see. They liked the film and wanted more...." He smiled at them in sudden thought. "You can see them for yourself. It's all right down the hall where the linguists are working on the automatic translator." The listening officer frowned and cleared his throat, and the thin young man turned to him quickly. "No security reason why they should not see the broadcasts, is there? Perhaps you should show them." He said to the reporters reassuringly, "It's right down the hall. You will be informed the moment the spaceship approaches." The interview was very definitely over. The lank-haired, nervous young man turned away and seated himself at the radio set while the officer swallowed his objections and showed them dourly down the hall to a closed door. They opened it and fumbled into a darkened room crowded with empty folding chairs, dominated by a glowing bright screen. The door closed behind them, bringing total darkness. There was the sound of reporters fumbling their way into seats around him, but the Times man remained standing, aware of an enormous surprise, as if he had been asleep and wakened to find himself in the wrong country. The bright colors of the double image seemed the only real thing in the darkened room. Even blurred as they were, he could see that the action was subtly different, the shapes subtly not right. He was looking at aliens. The impression was of two humans disguised, humans moving oddly, half-dancing, half-crippled. Carefully, afraid the images would go away, he reached up to his breast pocket, took out his polarized glasses, rotated one lens at right angles to the other and put them on. Immediately, the two beings came into sharp focus, real and solid, and the screen became a wide, illusively near window through which he watched them. They were conversing with each other in a gray-walled room, discussing something with restrained excitement. The large man in the green tunic closed his purple eyes for an instant at something the other said, and grimaced, making a motion with his fingers as if shoving something away from him. Mellerdrammer. The second, smaller, with yellowish-green eyes, stepped closer, talking more rapidly in a lower voice. The first stood very still, not trying to interrupt. Obviously, the proposal was some advantageous treachery, and he wanted to be persuaded. The Times groped for a chair and sat down. Perhaps gesture is universal; desire and aversion, a leaning forward or a leaning back, tension, relaxation. Perhaps these actors were masters. The scenes changed, a corridor, a parklike place in what he began to realize was a spaceship, a lecture room. There were others talking and working, speaking to the man in the green tunic, and never was it unclear what was happening or how they felt. They talked a flowing language with many short vowels and shifts of pitch, and they gestured in the heat of talk, their hands moving with an odd lagging difference of motion, not slow, but somehow drifting. He ignored the language, but after a time the difference in motion began to arouse his interest. Something in the way they walked.... With an effort he pulled his mind from the plot and forced his attention to the physical difference. Brown hair in short silky crew cuts, varied eye colors, the colors showing clearly because their irises were very large, their round eyes set very widely apart in tapering light-brown faces. Their necks and shoulders were thick in a way that would indicate unusual strength for a human, but their wrists were narrow and their fingers long and thin and delicate. There seemed to be more than the usual number of fingers. Since he came in, a machine had been whirring and a voice muttering beside him. He called his attention from counting their fingers and looked around. Beside him sat an alert-looking man wearing earphones, watching and listening with hawklike concentration. Beside him was a tall streamlined box. From the screen came the sound of the alien language. The man abruptly flipped a switch on the box, muttered a word into a small hand-microphone and flipped the switch back with nervous rapidity. He reminded the Times man of the earphoned interpreters at the UN. The machine was probably a vocal translator and the mutterer a linguist adding to its vocabulary. Near the screen were two other linguists taking notes. The Times remembered the Senator pacing in the observatory room, rehearsing his speech of welcome. The speech would not be just the empty pompous gesture he had expected. It would be translated mechanically and understood by the aliens. On the other side of the glowing window that was the stereo screen, the large protagonist in the green tunic was speaking to a pilot in a gray uniform. They stood in a brightly lit canary-yellow control room in a spaceship. The Times tried to pick up the thread of the plot. Already he was interested in the fate of the hero, and liked him. That was the effect of good acting, probably, for part of the art of acting is to win affection from the audience, and this actor might be the matinee idol of whole solar systems. Controlled tension, betraying itself by a jerk of the hands, a too-quick answer to a question. The uniformed one, not suspicious, turned his back, busying himself at some task involving a map lit with glowing red points, his motions sharing the same fluid dragging grace of the others, as if they were underwater, or on a slow motion film. The other was watching a switch, a switch set into a panel, moving closer to it, talking casually—background music coming and rising in thin chords of tension. There was a closeup of the alien's face watching the switch, and the Times noted that his ears were symmetrically half-circles, almost perfect with no earholes visible. The voice of the uniformed one answered, a brief word in a preoccupied deep voice. His back was still turned. The other glanced at the switch, moving closer to it, talking casually, the switch coming closer and closer stereoscopically. It was in reach, filling the screen. His hand came into view, darting out, closed over the switch— There was a sharp clap of sound and his hand opened in a frozen shape of pain. Beyond him, as his gaze swung up, stood the figure of the uniformed officer, unmoving, a weapon rigid in his hand, in the startled position in which he had turned and fired, watching with widening eyes as the man in the green tunic swayed and fell. The tableau held, the uniformed one drooping, looking down at his hand holding the weapon which had killed, and music began to build in from the background. Just for an instant, the room and the things within it flashed into one of those bewildering color changes which were the bane of color television, and switched to a color negative of itself, a green man standing in a violet control room, looking down at the body of a green man in a red tunic. It held for less than a second; then the color band alternator fell back into phase and the colors reversed to normal. Another uniformed man came and took the weapon from the limp hand of the other, who began to explain dejectedly in a low voice while the music mounted and covered his words and the screen slowly went blank, like a window that slowly filmed over with gray fog. The music faded. In the dark, someone clapped appreciatively. The earphoned man beside the Times shifted his earphones back from his ears and spoke briskly. "I can't get any more. Either of you want a replay?" There was a short silence until the linguist nearest the set said, "I guess we've squeezed that one dry. Let's run the tape where Nathen and that ship radio boy are kidding around CQing and tuning their beams in closer. I have a hunch the boy is talking routine ham talk and giving the old radio count—one-two-three-testing." There was some fumbling in the semi-dark and then the screen came to life again. It showed a flash of an audience sitting before a screen and gave a clipped chord of some familiar symphony. "Crazy about Stravinsky and Mozart," remarked the earphoned linguist to the Times , resettling his earphones. "Can't stand Gershwin. Can you beat that?" He turned his attention back to the screen as the right sequence came on. The Post , who was sitting just in front of him, turned to the Times and said, "Funny how much they look like people." He was writing, making notes to telephone his report. "What color hair did that character have?" "I didn't notice." He wondered if he should remind the reporter that Nathen had said he assigned the color bands on guess, choosing the colors that gave the most plausible images. The guests, when they arrived, could turn out to be bright green with blue hair. Only the gradations of color in the picture were sure, only the similarities and contrasts, the relationship of one color to another. From the screen came the sound of the alien language again. This race averaged deeper voices than human. He liked deep voices. Could he write that? No, there was something wrong with that, too. How had Nathen established the right sound-track pitch? Was it a matter of taking the modulation as it came in, or some sort of hetrodyning up and down by trial and error? Probably. It might be safer to assume that Nathen had simply preferred deep voices. As he sat there, doubting, an uneasiness he had seen in Nathen came back to add to his own uncertainty, and he remembered just how close that uneasiness had come to something that looked like restrained fear. "What I don't get is why he went to all the trouble of picking up TV shows instead of just contacting them," the News complained. "They're good shows, but what's the point?" "Maybe so we'd get to learn their language too," said the Herald . On the screen now was the obviously unstaged and genuine scene of a young alien working over a bank of apparatus. He turned and waved and opened his mouth in the comical O shape which the Times was beginning to recognize as their equivalent of a smile, then went back to trying to explain something about the equipment, in elaborate awkward gestures and carefully mouthed words. The Times got up quietly, went out into the bright white stone corridor and walked back the way he had come, thoughtfully folding his stereo glasses and putting them away. No one stopped him. Secrecy restrictions were ambiguous here. The reticence of the Army seemed more a matter of habit, mere reflex, from the fact that it had all originated in the Intelligence Department, than any reasoned policy of keeping the landing a secret. The main room was more crowded than he had left it. The TV camera and sound crew stood near their apparatus, the Senator had found a chair and was reading, and at the far end of the room eight men were grouped in a circle of chairs, arguing something with impassioned concentration. The Times recognized a few he knew personally, eminent names in science, workers in field theory. A stray phrase reached him: "—reference to the universal constants as ratio—" It was probably a discussion of ways of converting formulas from one mathematics to another for a rapid exchange of information. They had reason to be intent, aware of the flood of insights that novel viewpoints could bring, if they could grasp them. He would have liked to go over and listen, but there was too little time left before the spaceship was due, and he had a question to ask. The hand-rigged transceiver was still humming, tuned to the sending band of the circling ship, and the young man who had started it all was sitting on the edge of the TV platform with his chin resting in one hand. He did not look up as the Times approached, but it was the indifference of preoccupation, not discourtesy. The Times sat down on the edge of the platform beside him and took out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the coming TV broadcast and the ban on smoking. He put them away, thoughtfully watching the diminishing rain spray against the streaming windows. "What's wrong?" he asked. Nathen showed that he was aware and friendly by a slight motion of his head. " You tell me." "Hunch," said the Times man. "Sheer hunch. Everything sailing along too smoothly, everyone taking too much for granted." Nathen relaxed slightly. "I'm still listening." "Something about the way they move...." Nathen shifted to glance at him. "That's bothered me, too." "Are you sure they're adjusted to the right speed?" Nathen clenched his hands out in front of him and looked at them consideringly. "I don't know. When I turn the tape faster, they're all rushing, and you begin to wonder why their clothes don't stream behind them, why the doors close so quickly and yet you can't hear them slam, why things fall so fast. If I turn it slower, they all seem to be swimming." He gave the Times a considering sidewise glance. "Didn't catch the name." Country-bred guy, thought the Times . "Jacob Luke, Times ," he said, extending his hand. Nathen gave the hand a quick, hard grip, identifying the name. "Sunday Science Section editor. I read it. Surprised to meet you here." "Likewise." The Times smiled. "Look, have you gone into this rationally, with formulas?" He found a pencil in his pocket. "Obviously there's something wrong with our judgment of their weight-to-speed-to-momentum ratio. Maybe it's something simple like low gravity aboard ship, with magnetic shoes. Maybe they are floating slightly." "Why worry?" Nathen cut in. "I don't see any reason to try to figure it out now." He laughed and shoved back his black hair nervously. "We'll see them in twenty minutes." "Will we?" asked the Times slowly. There was a silence while the Senator turned a page of his magazine with a slight crackling of paper, and the scientists argued at the other end of the room. Nathen pushed at his lank black hair again, as if it were trying to fall forward in front of his eyes and keep him from seeing. "Sure." The young man laughed suddenly, talked rapidly. "Sure we'll see them. Why shouldn't we, with all the government ready with welcome speeches, the whole Army turned out and hiding over the hill, reporters all around, newsreel cameras—everything set up to broadcast the landing to the world. The President himself shaking hands with me and waiting in Washington—" He came to the truth without pausing for breath. He said, "Hell, no, they won't get here. There's some mistake somewhere. Something's wrong. I should have told the brasshats yesterday when I started adding it up. Don't know why I didn't say anything. Scared, I guess. Too much top rank around here. Lost my nerve." He clutched the Times man's sleeve. "Look. I don't know what—" A green light flashed on the sending-receiving set. Nathen didn't look at it, but he stopped talking. The loudspeaker on the set broke into a voice speaking in the alien's language. The Senator started and looked nervously at it, straightening his tie. The voice stopped. Nathen turned and looked at the loudspeaker. His worry seemed to be gone. "What is it?" the Times asked anxiously. "He says they've slowed enough to enter the atmosphere now. They'll be here in five to ten minutes, I guess. That's Bud. He's all excited. He says holy smoke, what a murky-looking planet we live on." Nathen smiled. "Kidding." The Times was puzzled. "What does he mean, murky? It can't be raining over much territory on Earth." Outside, the rain was slowing and bright blue patches of sky were shining through breaks in the cloud blanket, glittering blue light from the drops that ran down the windows. He tried to think of an explanation. "Maybe they're trying to land on Venus." The thought was ridiculous, he knew. The spaceship was following Nathen's sending beam. It couldn't miss Earth. "Bud" had to be kidding. The green light glowed on the set again, and they stopped speaking, waiting for the message to be recorded, slowed and replayed. The cathode screen came to life suddenly with a picture of the young man sitting at his sending-set, his back turned, watching a screen at one side which showed a glimpse of a huge dark plain approaching. As the ship plunged down toward it, the illusion of solidity melted into a boiling turbulence of black clouds. They expanded in an inky swirl, looked huge for an instant, and then blackness swallowed the screen. The young alien swung around to face the camera, speaking a few words as he moved, made the O of a smile again, then flipped the switch and the screen went gray. Nathen's voice was suddenly toneless and strained. "He said something like break out the drinks, here they come." "The atmosphere doesn't look like that," the Times said at random, knowing he was saying something too obvious even to think about. "Not Earth's atmosphere." Some people drifted up. "What did they say?" "Entering the atmosphere, ought to be landing in five or ten minutes," Nathen told them. A ripple of heightened excitement ran through the room. Cameramen began adjusting the lens angles again, turning on the mike and checking it, turning on the floodlights. The scientists rose and stood near the window, still talking. The reporters trooped in from the hall and went to the windows to watch for the great event. The three linguists came in, trundling a large wheeled box that was the mechanical translator, supervising while it was hitched into the sound broadcasting system. "Landing where?" the Times asked Nathen brutally. "Why don't you do something?" "Tell me what to do and I'll do it," Nathen said quietly, not moving. It was not sarcasm. Jacob Luke of the Times looked sidewise at the strained whiteness of his face, and moderated his tone. "Can't you contact them?" "Not while they're landing." "What now?" The Times took out a pack of cigarettes, remembered the rule against smoking, and put it back. "We just wait." Nathen leaned his elbow on one knee and his chin in his hand. They waited. All the people in the room were waiting. There was no more conversation. A bald man of the scientist group was automatically buffing his fingernails over and over and inspecting them without seeing them, another absently polished his glasses, held them up to the light, put them on, and then a moment later took them off and began polishing again. The television crew concentrated on their jobs, moving quietly and efficiently, with perfectionist care, minutely arranging things which did not need to be arranged, checking things that had already been checked. This was to be one of the great moments of human history, and they were all trying to forget that fact and remain impassive and wrapped up in the problems of their jobs as good specialists should. After an interminable age the Times consulted his watch. Three minutes had passed. He tried holding his breath a moment, listening for a distant approaching thunder of jets. There was no sound. The sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the field like a great spotlight on an empty stage. Abruptly the green light shone on the set again, indicating that a squawk message had been received. The recorder recorded it, slowed it and fed it back to the speaker. It clicked and the sound was very loud in the still, tense room. The screen remained gray, but Bud's voice spoke a few words in the alien language. He stopped, the speaker clicked and the light went out. When it was plain that nothing more would occur and no announcement was to be made of what was said, the people in the room turned back to the windows, talk picked up again. Somebody told a joke and laughed alone. One of the linguists remained turned toward the loudspeaker, then looked at the widening patches of blue sky showing out the window, his expression puzzled. He had understood. "It's dark," the thin Intelligence Department decoder translated, low-voiced, to the man from the Times . "Your atmosphere is thick . That's precisely what Bud said." Another three minutes. The Times caught himself about to light a cigarette and swore silently, blowing the match out and putting the cigarette back into its package. He listened for the sound of the rocket jets. It was time for the landing, yet he heard no blasts. The green light came on in the transceiver. Message in. Instinctively he came to his feet. Nathen abruptly was standing beside him. Then the message came in the voice he was coming to think of as Bud. It spoke and paused. Suddenly the Times knew. "We've landed." Nathen whispered the words. The wind blew across the open spaces of white concrete and damp soil that was the empty airfield, swaying the wet, shiny grass. The people in the room looked out, listening for the roar of jets, looking for the silver bulk of a spaceship in the sky. Nathen moved, seating himself at the transmitter, switching it on to warm up, checking and balancing dials. Jacob Luke of the Times moved softly to stand behind his right shoulder, hoping he could be useful. Nathen made a half motion of his head, as if to glance back at him, unhooked two of the earphone sets hanging on the side of the tall streamlined box that was the automatic translator, plugged them in and handed one back over his shoulder to the Times man. The voice began to come from the speaker again. Hastily, Jacob Luke fitted the earphones over his ears. He fancied he could hear Bud's voice tremble. For a moment it was just Bud's voice speaking the alien language, and then, very distant and clear in his earphones, he heard the recorded voice of the linguist say an English word, then a mechanical click and another clear word in the voice of one of the other translators, then another as the alien's voice flowed from the loudspeaker, the cool single words barely audible, overlapping and blending with it like translating thought, skipping unfamiliar words, yet quite astonishingly clear. "Radar shows no buildings or civilization near. The atmosphere around us registers as thick as glue. Tremendous gas pressure, low gravity, no light at all. You didn't describe it like this. Where are you, Joe? This isn't some kind of trick, is it?" Bud hesitated, was prompted by a deeper official voice and jerked out the words. "If it is a trick, we are ready to repel attack."

test

50783

THE ALIEN A Gripping Novel of Discovery and Conquest in Interstellar Space by Raymond F. Jones A Complete ORIGINAL Book , UNABRIDGED WORLD EDITIONS, Inc. 105 WEST 40th STREET NEW YORK 18, NEW YORK Copyright 1951 by WORLD EDITIONS, Inc. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. THE GUINN CO., Inc. New York 14, N.Y. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Just speculate for a moment on the enormous challenge to archeology when interplanetary flight is possible ... and relics are found of a race extinct for half a million years! A race, incidentally, that was scientifically so far in advance of ours that they held the secret of the restoration of life! One member of that race can be brought back after 500,000 years of death.... That's the story told by this ORIGINAL book-length novel, which has never before been published! You can expect a muscle-tightening, sweat-producing, mind-prodding adventure in the future when you read it! Contents CHAPTER ONE Out beyond the orbit of Mars the Lavoisier wallowed cautiously through the asteroid fields. Aboard the laboratory ship few of the members of the permanent Smithson Asteroidal Expedition were aware that they were in motion. Living in the field one or two years at a time, there was little that they were conscious of except the half-million-year-old culture whose scattered fragments surrounded them on every side. The only contact with Earth at the moment was the radio link by which Dr. Delmar Underwood was calling Dr. Illia Morov at Terrestrial Medical Central. Illia's blonde, precisely coiffured hair was only faintly golden against, the stark white of her surgeons' gown, which she still wore when she answered. Her eyes widened with an expression of pleasure as her face came into focus on the screen and she recognized Underwood. "Del! I thought you'd gone to sleep with the mummies out there. It's been over a month since you called. What's new?" "Not much. Terry found some new evidence of Stroid III. Phyfe has a new scrap of metal with inscriptions, and they've found something that almost looks as if it might have been an electron tube five hundred thousand years ago. I'm working on that. Otherwise all is peaceful and it's wonderful!" "Still the confirmed hermit?" Illia's eyes lost some of their banter, but none of their tenderness. "There's more peace and contentment out here than I'd ever dreamed of finding. I want you to come out here, Illia. Come out for a month. If you don't want to stay and marry me, then you can go back and I won't say another word." She shook her head in firm decision. "Earth needs its scientists desperately. Too many have run away already. They say the Venusian colonies are booming, but I told you a year ago that simply running away wouldn't work. I thought by now you would have found it out for yourself." "And I told you a year ago," Underwood said flatly, "that the only possible choice of a sane man is escape." "You can't escape your own culture, Del. Why, the expedition that provided the opportunity for you to become a hermit is dependent on Earth. If Congress should cut the Institute's funds, you'd be dropped right back where you were. You can't get away." "There are always the Venusian colonies." "You know it's impossible to exist there independent of Earth." "I'm not talking about the science and technology. I'm talking about the social disintegration. Certainly a scientist doesn't need to take that with him when he's attempting to escape it." "The culture is not to blame," said Illia earnestly, "and neither is humanity. You don't ridicule a child for his clumsiness when he is learning to walk." "I hope the human race is past its childhood!" "Relatively speaking, it isn't. Dreyer says we're only now emerging from the cave man stage, and that could properly be called mankind's infancy, I suppose. Dreyer calls it the 'head man' stage." "I thought he was a semanticist." "You'd know if you'd ever talked with him. He'll tear off every other word you utter and throw it back at you. His 'head man' designation is correct, all right. According to him, human beings in this stage need some leader or 'head man' stronger than themselves for guidance, assumption of responsibility, and blame, in case of failure of the group. These functions have never in the past been developed in the individual so that he could stand alone in control of his own ego. But it's coming—that's the whole import of Dreyer's work." "And all this confusion and instability are supposed to have something to do with that?" "It's been growing for decades. We've seen it reach a peak in our own lifetimes. The old fetishes have failed, the head men have been found to be hollow gods, and men's faith has turned to derision. Presidents, dictators, governors, and priests—they've all fallen from their high places and the masses of humanity will no longer believe in any of them." "And that is development of the race?" "Yes, because out of it will come a people who have found in themselves the strength they used to find in the 'head men.' There will come a race in which the individual can accept the responsibility which he has always passed on to the 'head man,' the 'head man' is no longer necessary." "And so—the ultimate anarchy." "The 'head man' concept has, but first he has to find out that has nothing to do with government. With human beings capable of independent, constructive behavior, actual democracy will be possible for the first time in the world's history." "If all this is to come about anyway, according to Dreyer, why not try to escape the insanity of the transition period?" Illia Morov's eyes grew narrow in puzzlement as she looked at Underwood with utter incomprehension. "Doesn't it matter at all that the race is in one of the greatest crises of all history? Doesn't it matter that you have a skill that is of immense value in these times? It's peculiar that it is those of you in the physical sciences who are fleeing in the greatest numbers. The Venusian colonies must have a wonderful time with physicists trampling each other to get away from it all—and Earth almost barren of them. Do the physical sciences destroy every sense of social obligation?" "You forget that I don't quite accept Dreyer's theories. To me this is nothing but a rotting structure that is finally collapsing from its own inner decay. I can't see anything positive evolving out of it." "I suppose so. Well, it was nice of you to call, Del. I'm always glad to hear you. Don't wait so long next time." "Illia—" But she had cut the connection and the screen slowly faded into gray, leaving Underwood's argument unfinished. Irritably, he flipped the switch to the public news channels. Where was he wrong? The past year, since he had joined the expedition as Chief Physicist, was like paradise compared with living in the unstable, irresponsible society existing on Earth. He knew it was a purely neurotic reaction, this desire to escape. But application of that label solved nothing, explained nothing—and carried no stigma. The neurotic reaction was the norm in a world so confused. He turned as the news blared abruptly with its perpetual urgency that made him wonder how the commentators endured the endless flow of crises. The President had been impeached again—the third one in six months. There were no candidates for his office. A church had been burned by its congregation. Two mayors had been assassinated within hours of each other. It was the same news he had heard six months ago. It would be the same again tomorrow and next month. The story of a planet repudiating all leadership. A lawlessness that was worse than anarchy, because there was still government—a government that could be driven and whipped by the insecurities of the populace that elected it. Dreyer called it a futile search for a 'head man' by a people who would no longer trust any of their own kind to be 'head man.' And Underwood dared not trust that glib explanation. Many others besides Underwood found they could no longer endure the instability of their own culture. Among these were many of the world's leading scientists. Most of them went to the jungle lands of Venus. The scientific limitations of such a frontier existence had kept Underwood from joining the Venusian colonies, but he'd been very close to going just before he got the offer of Chief Physicist with the Smithson Institute expedition in the asteroid fields. He wondered now what he'd have done if the offer hadn't come. The interphone annunciator buzzed. Underwood turned off the news as the bored communications operator in the control room announced, "Doc Underwood. Call for Doc Underwood." Underwood cut in. "Speaking," he said irritably. The voice of Terry Bernard burst into the room. "Hey, Del! Are you going to get rid of that hangover and answer your phone or should we embalm the remains and ship 'em back?" "Terry! You fool, what do you want? Why didn't you say it was you? I thought maybe it was that elephant-foot Maynes, with chunks of mica that he thought were prayer sticks." "The Stroids didn't use prayer sticks." "All right, skip it. What's new?" "Plenty. Can you come over for a while? I think we've really got something here." "It'd better be good. We're taking the ship to Phyfe. Where are you?" "Asteroid C-428. It's about 2,000 miles from you. And bring all the hard-rock mining tools you've got. We can't get into this thing." "Is that all you want? Use your double coated drills." "We wore five of them out. No scratches on the thing, even." "Well, use the Atom Stream, then. It probably won't hurt the artifact." "I'll say it won't. It won't even warm the thing up. Any other ideas?" Underwood's mind, which had been half occupied with mulling over his personal problems while he talked with Terry, swung startledly to what the archeologist was saying. "You mean that you've found a material the Atom Stream won't touch? That's impossible! The equations of the Stream prove—" "I know. Now will you come over?" "Why didn't you say so in the first place? I'll bring the whole ship." Underwood cut off and switched to the Captain's line. "Captain Dawson? Underwood. Will you please take the ship to the vicinity of Asteroid C-428 as quickly as possible?" "I thought Doctor Phyfe—" "I'll answer for it. Please move the vessel." Captain Dawson acceded. His instructions were to place the ship at Underwood's disposal. Soundlessly and invisibly, the distortion fields leaped into space about the massive laboratory ship and the Lavoisier moved effortlessly through the void. Its perfect inertia controls left no evidence of its motion apparent to the occupants with the exception of the navigators and pilots. The hundreds of delicate pieces of equipment in Underwood's laboratories remained as steadfast as if anchored to tons of steel and concrete deep beneath the surface of Earth. Twenty minutes later they hove in sight of the small, black asteroid that glistened in the faint light of the faraway Sun. The spacesuited figures of Terry Bernard and his assistant, Batch Fagin, clung to the surface, moving about like flies on a blackened, frozen apple. Underwood was already in the scooter lock, astride the little spacescooter which they used for transportation between ships of the expedition and between asteroids. The pilot jockeyed the Lavoisier as near as safely desirable, then signaled Underwood. The physicist pressed the control that opened the lock in the side of the vessel. The scooter shot out into space, bearing him astride it. "Ride 'em, cowboy!" Terry Bernard yelled into the intercom. He gave a wild cowboy yell that pierced Underwood's ears. "Watch out that thing doesn't turn turtle with you." Underwood grinned to himself. He said, "Your attitude convinces me of a long held theory that archeology is no science. Anyway, if your story of a material impervious to the Atom Stream is wrong, you'd better get a good alibi. Phyfe had some work he wanted to do aboard today." "Come and see for yourself. This is it." As the scooter approached closer to the asteroid, Underwood could glimpse the strangeness of the thing. It looked as if it had been coated with the usual asteroid material of nickel iron debris, but Terry had cleared this away from more than half the surface. The exposed half was a shining thing of ebony, whose planes and angles were machined with mathematical exactness. It looked as if there were at least a thousand individual facets on the one hemisphere alone. At the sight of it, Underwood could almost understand the thrill of discovery that impelled these archeologists to delve in the mysteries of space for lost kingdoms and races. This object which Terry had discovered was a magnificent artifact. He wondered how long it had circled the Sun since the intelligence that formed it had died. He wished now that Terry had not used the Atom Stream, for that had probably destroyed the validity of the radium-lead relationship in the coating of debris that might otherwise indicate something of the age of the thing. Terry sensed something of Underwood's awe in his silence as he approached. "What do you think of it, Del?" "It's—beautiful," said Underwood. "Have you any clue to what it is?" "Not a thing. No marks of any kind on it." The scooter slowed as Del Underwood guided it near the surface of the asteroid. It touched gently and he unstrapped himself and stepped off. "Phyfe will forgive all your sins for this," he said. "Before you show me the Atom Stream is ineffective, let's break off a couple of tons of the coating and put it in the ship. We may be able to date the thing yet. Almost all these asteroids have a small amount of radioactivity somewhere in them. We can chip some from the opposite side where the Atom Stream would affect it least." "Good idea," Terry agreed. "I should have thought of that, but when I first found the single outcropping of machined metal, I figured it was very small. After I found the Atom Stream wouldn't touch it, I was overanxious to undercover it. I didn't realize I'd have to burn away the whole surface of the asteroid." "We may as well finish the job and get it completely uncovered. I'll have some of my men from the ship come on over." It took the better part of an hour to chip and drill away samples to be used in a dating attempt. Then the intense fire of the Atom Stream was turned upon the remainder of the asteroid to clear it. "We'd better be on the lookout for a soft spot." Terry suggested. "It's possible this thing isn't homogeneous, and Papa Phyfe would be very mad if we burned it up after making such a find." From behind his heavy shield which protected him from the stray radiation formed by the Atom Stream, Delmar Underwood watched the biting fire cut between the gemlike artifact and the metallic alloys that coated it. The alloys cracked and fell away in large chunks, propelled by the explosions of matter as the intense heat vaporized the metal almost instantly. The spell of the ancient and the unknown fell upon him and swept him up in the old mysteries and the unknown tongues. Trained in the precise methods of the physical sciences, he had long fought against the fascination of the immense puzzles which the archeologists were trying to solve, but no man could long escape. In the quiet, starlit blackness there rang the ancient memories of a planet vibrant with life, a planet of strange tongues and unknown songs—a planet that had died so violently that space was yet strewn with its remains—so violently that somewhere the echo of its death explosion must yet ring in the far vaults of space. Underwood had always thought of archeologists as befogged antiquarians poking among ancient graves and rubbish heaps, but now he knew them for what they were—poets in search of mysteries. The Bible-quoting of Phyfe and the swearing of red-headed Terry Bernard were merely thin disguises for their poetic romanticism. Underwood watched the white fire of the Atom Stream through the lead glass of the eye-protecting lenses. "I talked to Illia today," he said. "She says I've run away." "Haven't you?" Terry asked. "I wouldn't call it that." "It doesn't make much difference what you call it. I once lived in an apartment underneath a French horn player who practised eight hours a day. I ran away. If the whole mess back on Earth is like a bunch of horn blowers tootling above your apartment, I say move, and why make any fuss about it? I'd probably join the boys on Venus myself if my job didn't keep me out here. Of course it's different with you. There's Illia to be convinced—along with your own conscience." "She quotes Dreyer. He's one of your ideals, isn't he?" "No better semanticist ever lived," Terry said flatly. "He takes the long view, which is that everything will come out in the wash. I agree with him, so why worry—knowing that the variants will iron themselves out, and nothing I can possibly do will be noticed or missed? Hence, I seldom worry about my obligations to mankind, as long as I stay reasonably law-abiding. Do likewise, Brother Del, and you'll live longer, or at least more happily." Underwood grinned in the blinding glare of the Atom Stream. He wished life were as simple as Terry would have him believe. Maybe it would be, he thought—if it weren't for Illia. As he moved his shield slowly forward behind the crumbling debris, Underwood's mind returned to the question of who created the structure beneath their feet, and to what alien purpose. Its black, impenetrable surfaces spoke of excellent mechanical skill, and a high science that could create a material refractory to the Atom Stream. Who, a half million years ago, could have created it? The ancient pseudo-scientific Bode's Law had indicated a missing planet which could easily have fitted into the Solar System in the vicinity of the asteroid belt. But Bode's Law had never been accepted by astronomers—until interstellar archeology discovered the artifacts of a civilization on many of the asteroids. The monumental task of exploration had been undertaken more than a generation ago by the Smithson Institute. Though always handicapped by shortage of funds, they had managed to keep at least one ship in the field as a permanent expedition. Dr. Phyfe, leader of the present group, was probably the greatest student of asteroidal archeology in the System. The younger archeologists labeled him benevolently Papa Phyfe, in spite of the irascible temper which came, perhaps, from constantly switching his mind from half a million years ago to the present. In their use of semantic correlations, Underwood was discovering, the archeologists were far ahead of the physical scientists, for they had an immensely greater task in deducing the mental concepts of alien races from a few scraps of machinery and art. Of all the archeologists he had met, Underwood had taken the greatest liking to Terry Bernard. An extremely competent semanticist and archeologist, Terry nevertheless did not take himself too seriously. He did not even mind Underwood's constant assertion that archeology was no science. He maintained that it was fun, and that was all that was necessary. At last, the two groups approached each other from opposite sides of the asteroid and joined forces in shearing off the last of the debris. As they shut off the fearful Atom Streams, the scientists turned to look back at the thing they had cleared. Terry said quietly, "See why I'm an archeologist?" "I think I do—almost," Underwood answered. The gemlike structure beneath their feet glistened like polished ebony. It caught the distant stars in its thousand facets and cast them until it gleamed as if with infinite lights of its own. The workmen, too, were caught in its spell, for they stood silently contemplating the mystery of a people who had created such beauty. The spell was broken at last by a movement across the heavens. Underwood glanced up. "Papa Phyfe's coming on the warpath. I'll bet he's ready to trim my ears for taking the lab ship without his consent." "You're boss of the lab ship, aren't you?" said Terry. "It's a rather flexible arrangement—in Phyfe's mind, at least. I'm boss until he decides he wants to do something." The headquarters ship slowed to a halt and the lock opened, emitting the fiery burst of a motor scooter which Doc Phyfe rode with angry abandon. "You, Underwood!" His voice came harshly through the phones. "I demand an explanation of—" That was as far as he got, for he glimpsed the thing upon which the men were standing, and from his vantage point it looked all the more like a black jewel in the sky. He became instantly once more the eager archeologist instead of expedition administrator, a role he filled with irritation. "What have you got there?" he whispered. Terry answered. "We don't know. I asked Dr. Underwood's assistance in uncovering the artifact. If it caused you any difficulty, I'm sorry; it's my fault." "Pah!" said Phyfe. "A thing like this is of utmost importance. You should have notified me immediately." Terry and Underwood grinned at each other. Phyfe reprimanded every archeologist on the expedition for not notifying him immediately whenever anything from the smallest machined fragment of metal to the greatest stone monuments were found. If they had obeyed, he would have done nothing but travel from asteroid to asteroid over hundreds of thousands of miles of space. "You were busy with your own work," said Terry. But Phyfe had landed, and as he dismounted from the scooter, he stood in awe. Terry, standing close to him, thought he saw tears in the old man's eyes through the helmet of the spaceship. "It's beautiful!" murmured Phyfe in worshipping awe. "Wonderful. The most magnificent find in a century of asteroidal archeology. We must make arrangements for its transfer to Earth at once." "If I may make a suggestion," said Terry, "you recall that some of the artifacts have not survived so well. Decay in many instances has set in—" "Are you trying to tell me that this thing can decay?" Phyfe's little gray Van Dyke trembled violently. "I'm thinking of the thermal transfer. Doctor Underwood is better able to discuss that, but I should think that a mass of this kind, which is at absolute zero, might undergo unusual stresses in coming to Earth normal temperatures. True, we used the Atom Stream on it, but that heat did not penetrate enough to set up great internal stresses." Phyfe looked hesitant and turned to Underwood. "What is your opinion?" Underwood didn't get it until he caught Terry's wink behind Phyfe's back. Once it left space and went into the museum laboratory, Terry might never get to work on the thing again. That was the perpetual gripe of the field men. "I think Doctor Bernard has a good point," said Underwood. "I would advise leaving the artifact here in space until a thorough examination has been made. After all, we have every facility aboard the Lavoisier that is available on Earth." "Very well," said Phyfe. "You may proceed in charge of the physical examination of the find, Doctor Underwood. You, Doctor Bernard, will be in charge of proceedings from an archeological standpoint. Will that be satisfactory to everyone concerned?" It was far more than Terry had expected. "I will be on constant call," said Phyfe. "Let me know immediately of any developments." Then the uncertain mask of the executive fell away from the face of the little old scientist and he regarded the find with humility and awe. "It's beautiful," he murmured again, " beautiful ." CHAPTER TWO Phyfe remained near the site as Underwood and Terry set their crew to the routine task of weighing, measuring, and photographing the object, while Underwood considered what else to do. "You know, this thing has got me stymied, Terry. Since it can't be touched by an Atom Stream, that means there isn't a single analytical procedure to which it will respond—that I know of, anyway. Does your knowledge of the Stroids and their ways of doing things suggest any identification of it?" Terry shook his head as he stood by the port of the laboratory ship watching the crews at work outside. "Not a thing, but that's no criterion. We know so little about the Stroids that almost everything we find has a function we never heard of before. And of course we've found many objects with totally unknown functions. I've been thinking—what if this should turn out to be merely a natural gem from the interior of the planet, maybe formed at the time of its destruction, but at least an entirely natural object rather than an artifact?" "It would be the largest crystal formation ever encountered, and the most perfect. I'd say the chances of its natural formation are negligible." "But maybe this is the one in a hundred billion billion or whatever number chance it may be." "If so, its value ought to be enough to balance the Terrestrial budget. I'm still convinced that it must be an artifact, though its material and use are beyond me. We can start with a radiation analysis. Perhaps it will respond in some way that will give us a clue." When the crew had finished the routine check, Underwood directed his men to set up the various types of radiation equipment contained within the ship. It was possible to generate radiation through almost the complete spectrum from single cycle sound waves to hard cosmic rays. The work was arduous and detailed. Each radiator was slowly driven through its range, then removed and higher frequency equipment used. At each fraction of an octave, the object was carefully photographed to record its response. After watching the work for two days, Terry wearied of the seemingly non-productive labor. "I suppose you know what you're doing, Del," he said. "But is it getting you anywhere at all?" Underwood shook his head. "Here's the batch of photographs. You'll probably want them to illustrate your report. The surfaces of the object are mathematically exact to a thousandth of a millimeter. Believe me, that's some tolerance on an object of this size. The surfaces are of number fifteen smoothness, which means they are plane within a hundred-thousandth of a millimeter. The implications are obvious. The builders who constructed that were mechanical geniuses." "Did you get any radioactive dating?" "Rather doubtfully, but the indications are around half a million years." "That checks with what we know about the Stroids." "It would appear that their culture is about on a par with our own." "Personally, I think they were ahead of us," said Terry. "And do you see what that means to us archeologists? It's the first time in the history of the science that we've had to deal with the remains of a civilization either equal or superior to our own. The problems are multiplied a thousand times when you try to take a step up instead of a step down." "Any idea of what the Stroids looked like?" "We haven't found any bodies, skeletons, or even pictures, but we think they were at least roughly anthropomorphic. They were farther from the Sun than we, but it was younger then and probably gave them about the same amount of heat. Their planet was larger and the Stroids appear to have been somewhat larger as individuals than we, judging from the artifacts we've discovered. But they seem to have had a suitable atmosphere of oxygen diluted with appropriate inert gases." They were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a laboratory technician who brought in a dry photographic print still warm from the developing box. He laid it on the desk before Underwood. "I thought you might be interested in this." Underwood and Terry glanced at it. The picture was of the huge, gemlike artifact, but a number of the facets seemed to be covered with intricate markings of short, wavy lines. Underwood stared closer at the thing. "What the devil are those? We took pictures of every facet previously and there was nothing like this. Get me an enlargement of these." "I already have." The assistant laid another photo on the desk, showing the pattern of markings as if at close range. They were clearly discernible now. "What do you make of it?" asked Underwood. "I'd say it looked like writing," Terry said. "But it's not like any of the other Stroid characters I've seen—which doesn't mean much, of course, because there could be thousands that I've never seen. Only how come these characters are there now, and we never noticed them before?" "Let's go out and have a look," said Underwood. He grasped the photograph and noted the numbers of the facets on which the characters appeared. In a few moments the two men were speeding toward the surface of their discovery astride scooters. They jockeyed above the facets shown on the photographs, and stared in vain. "Something's the matter," said Terry. "I don't see anything here." "Let's go all the way around on the scooters. Those guys may have bungled the job of numbering the photos." They began a slow circuit, making certain they glimpsed all the facets from a height of only ten feet. "It's not here," Underwood agreed at last. "Let's talk to the crew that took the shots." They headed towards the equipment platform, floating in free space, from which Mason, one of the Senior Physicists, was directing operations. Mason signaled for the radiations to be cut off as the men approached. "Find any clues, Chief?" he asked Underwood. "We've done our best to fry this apple, but nothing happens." "Something did happen. Did you see it?" Underwood extended the photograph with the mechanical fingers of the spacesuit. Mason held it in a light and stared at it. "We didn't see a thing like that. And we couldn't have missed it." He turned to the members of the crew. "Anyone see this writing on the thing?" They looked at the picture and shook their heads. "What were you shooting on it at the time?" Mason glanced at his records. "About a hundred and fifty angstroms." "So there must be something that becomes visible only in a field of radiation of about that wave length," said Underwood. "Keep going and see if anything else turns up, or if this proves to be permanent after exposure to that frequency." Back in the laboratory, they sat down at the desk and went through the file of hundreds of photographs that were now pouring out of the darkroom. "Not a thing except that one," said Terry. "It looks like a message intended only for someone who knew what frequency would make it visible."

test

51152

Appointment in Tomorrow BY FRITZ LEIBER Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also? The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs. They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr. It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet. Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning. Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him. Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes. Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile. It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning. He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message: Dear Fellow Scientist: A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I. Jorj Helmuth Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot. The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio. "The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him." "Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes." Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom. Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to. For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved. This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus! This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie." Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered. The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which. The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh? The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this. The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat. The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie! Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines. The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke. Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?" The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?" Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting. From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think. Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle. Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it! Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars. "Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country." Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said. "The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—" "Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj." Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft. Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer. He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer. For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind. Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open. The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?" He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl. Suddenly he began to tape again. "Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...." But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl. Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho. Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically. After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind. The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep. Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his. "Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked. A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed. The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it." The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?" "You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply. The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly. "Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean." The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar." "Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate." The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away." Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City. The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear. Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?" The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk." "But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did." Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes." Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware." Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages." Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes. "Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists. He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets." Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?" Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile." "Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...." "By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily, "Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are." "Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you." "No," Opperly said. "I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet. Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed. "But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?" Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?" "Now you are justifying the Thinkers!" "No, I leave that to history." "And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of 'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see." "I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...." The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?" The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry." The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off. "What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this." He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?" "No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help." "An invitation?" Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?" The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you." "What do you mean?" Farquar asked. Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?" Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted. "And didn't she go off with a Thinker?" "If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?" Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition." Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise." "Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world." Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?" "Not exactly." "You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily. Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims." Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men. As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind. Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox. Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm. Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward. In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted. A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket. But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie! And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception. He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there. Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance. No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis. Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron. But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie. He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.

test

50940

Wailing Wall By ROGER DEE Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] An enormous weapon is forcing people to keep their troubles to themselves—it's dynamite! Numb with the terror that had dogged him from the moment he regained consciousness and found himself naked and weaponless, Farrell had no idea how long he had been lost in the honeycombed darkness of the Hymenop dome. The darkness and damp chill of air told him that he was far underground, possibly at the hive's lowest level. Somewhere above him, the silent audience chambers lay shrouded in lesser gloom, heavy with the dust of generations and peopled only by cryptic apian images. Outside the dome, in a bend of lazy silver river, sprawled the Sadr III village with its stoic handful of once-normal Terran colonists and, on the hillside above the village, Gibson and Stryker and Xavier would be waiting for him in the disabled Marco Four. Waiting for him.... They might as well have been back on Terra, five hundred light-years away. Six feet away on either side, the corridor walls curved up faintly, a flattened oval of tunneling designed for multiple alien feet, lighted for faceted eyes demanding the merest fraction of light necessary for an Earthman's vision. For two yards Farrell could see dimly, as through a heavy fog; beyond was nothing but darkness and an outlandish labyrinth of cross-branching corridors that spiraled on forever without end. Behind him, his pursuers—human natives or Hymenop invaders, he had no way of knowing which—drew nearer with a dry minor rustling whose suggestion of imminent danger sent Farrell plunging blindly on into the maze. —To halt, sweating, when a sound exactly similar came to him from ahead. It was what he had feared from the beginning. He could not go on, and he could not go back. He made out the intersecting corridor to his right, then a vague oval opening that loomed faintly grayer than the wall about it. He darted into it as into a sanctuary, and realized too late that the choice had been forced upon him. It had been intended from the start that he should take this way. He had been herded here like a halterless beast, driven by the steady threat of action never quite realized. They had known where he was going, and why. But there was light down there somewhere at the end of the tunnel's aimless wanderings. If, once there, he could see— He did not find light, only a lesser darkness. The tunnel led him into a larger place whose outer reaches were lost in shadow, but whose central area held a massive cylindrical machine at once alien and familiar. He went toward it hesitantly, confused for the moment by a paramnesiac sense of repeated experience, the specious recognition of déjà vu. It was a Ringwave generator, and it was the thing he had ventured into the dome to find. His confusion stemmed from its resemblance to the disabled generator aboard the Marco Four, and from the stereo-sharp associations it evoked: Gibson working over the ship's power plant, his black-browed face scowling and intent, square brown body moving with a wrestler's easy economy of motion; Stryker, bald and fat and worried, wheezing up and down the companionway from engine bay to chart room, his concern divided between Gibson's task and Farrell's long silence in the dome. Stryker at this moment would be regretting the congenital optimism that had prompted him to send his navigator where he himself could not go. Sweating anxiety would have replaced Stryker's pontifical assurance, dried up his smug pattering of socio-psychological truisms lifted from the Colonial Reclamations Handbook.... "So far as adaptability is concerned," Stryker had said an eternal evening before, " homo sapiens can be a pretty weird species. More given to mulish paradox, perhaps, than any alien life-form we're ever likely to run across out here." He had shifted his bulk comfortably on the grass under the Marco Four's open port, undisturbed by the busy clatter of tools inside the ship where Gibson and Xavier, the Marco's mechanical, worked over the disabled power plant. He laced his fingers across his fat paunch and peered placidly through the dusk at Farrell, who lay on his back, smoking and watching the stars grow bright in the evening sky. "Isolate a human colony from its parent planet for two centuries, enslave it for half that time to a hegemony as foreign as the Hymenops' hive-culture before abandoning it to its own devices, and anything at all in the way of eccentric social controls can develop. But men remain basically identical, Arthur, in spite of acquired superficial changes. They are inherently incapable of evolving any system of control mechanisms that cannot be understood by other men, provided the environmental circumstances that brought that system into being are known. At bottom, these Sadr III natives are no different from ourselves. Heredity won't permit it." Farrell, half listening, had been staring upward between the icy white brilliance of Deneb and the twin blue-and-yellow jewels of Albireo, searching for a remote twinkle of Sol. Five hundred light-years away out there, he was thinking, lay Earth. And from Earth all this gaudy alien glory was no more than another point of reference for backyard astronomers, a minor configuration casually familiar and unremarkable. A winking of lighted windows springing up in the village downslope brought his attention back to the scattered cottages by the river, and to the great disquieting curve of the Hymenop dome that rose above them like a giant above pygmies. He sat up restlessly, the wind ruffling his hair and whirling the smoke of his cigarette away in thin flying spirals. "You sound as smug as the Reorientation chapter you lifted that bit from," Farrell said. "But it won't apply here, Lee. The same thing happened to these people that happened to the other colonists we've found, but they don't react the same. Either those Hymenop devils warped them permanently or they're a tribe of congenital maniacs." Stryker prodded him socratically: "Particulars?" "When we crashed here five weeks ago, there were an even thousand natives in the village, plus or minus a few babes in arms. Since that time they've lost a hundred twenty-six members, all suicides or murders. At first the entire population turned out at sunrise and went into the dome for an hour before going to the fields; since we came, that period has shortened progressively to a few minutes. That much we've learned by observation. By direct traffic we've learned exactly nothing except that they can speak Terran Standard, but won't. What sort of system is that?" Stryker tugged uncomfortably at the rim of white hair the years had left him. "It's a stumper for the moment, I'll admit ... if they'd only talk to us, if they'd tell us what their wants and fears and problems are, we'd know what is wrong and what to do about it. But controls forced on them by the Hymenops, or acquired since their liberation, seem to have altered their original ideology so radically that—" "That they're plain batty," Farrell finished for him. "The whole setup is unnatural, Lee. Consider this: We sent Xavier out to meet the first native that showed up, and the native talked to him. We heard it all by monitoring; his name was Tarvil, he spoke Terran Standard, and he was amicable. Then we showed ourselves, and when he saw that we were human beings like himself and not mechanicals like Xav, he clammed up. So did everyone in the village. It worries me, Lee. If they didn't expect men to come out of the Marco , then what in God's name did they expect?" He sat up restlessly and stubbed out his cigarette. "It's an unimportant world anyway, all ocean except for this one small continent. I think we ought to write it off and get the hell out as soon as the Marco 's Ringwave is repaired." "We can't write it off," Stryker said. "Besides reclaiming a colony, we may have added a valuable marine food source to the Federation. Arthur, you're not letting a handful of disoriented people get under your skin, are you?" Farrell made an impatient sound and lit another cigarette. The brief flare of his lighter pierced the darkness and picked out a hurried movement a short stone's throw away, between the Marco Four and the village. "There's one reason why I'm edgy," Farrell said. "These Sadrians may be harmless, but they make a point of posting a guard over us. There's a sentry out there in the grass flats again tonight." He turned on Stryker uneasily. "I've watched on the infra-scanner while those sentries changed shifts, and they don't speak to each other. I've tracked them back to the village, but I've never seen one of them turn in a—" Down in the village a man screamed, a raw, tortured sound that brought both men up stiffly. A frantic drumming of running feet came to them, unmistakable across the little distance. The fleeing man came up from the dark huddle of cottages by the river and out across the grass flats, screaming. Pursuit overtook him halfway to the ship. There was a brief scuffling, a shadowy dispersal of silent figures. After that, nothing. "They did it again," Farrell said. "One of them tried to come up here to us. The others killed him, and who's to say what sort of twisted motive prompted them? They go to the dome together every morning, not speaking. They work all day in the fields without so much as looking at each other. But every night at least one of them tries to escape from the village and come up here—and this is what happens. We couldn't trust them, Lee, even if we could understand them!" "It's our job to understand them," Stryker said doggedly. "Our function is to find colonies disoriented by the Hymenops and to set them straight if we can. If we can't, we call in a long-term reorientation crew, and within three generations the culture will pass again for Terran. The fact that slave colonies invariably lose their knowledge of longevity helps; they don't get it back until they're ready for it. "I've seen some pretty foul results of Hymenop experimenting on human colonies, Arthur. There was the ninth planet of Beta Pegasi—rediscovered in 3910, I think it was—that developed a religious fixation on fertility, a mania fostered by the Hymenops to supply expendable labor for their mines. The natives stopped mining when the Hymenops gave up the invasion and went back to 70 Ophiuchi, but they were still multiplying like rabbits when we found them. They followed a cultural conviction something like that observed in Oriental races of ancient Terran history, but they didn't pursue the Oriental tradition of sacrosancts. They couldn't—there were too many of them. By the time they were found, they numbered fourteen billions and they were eating each other. Still it took only three generations to set them straight." He took one of Farrell's cigarettes and puffed it placidly. "For that matter, Earth had her own share of eccentric cultures. I recall reading about one that existed as late as the twentieth century and equaled anything we're likely to find here. Any society should be geared to a set of social controls designed to furnish it, as a whole with a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of discomfort, but these ancient Terrestrial Dobuans—island aborigines, as I remember it—had adjusted to their total environment in a manner exactly opposite. They reversed the norm and became a society of paranoiacs, hating each other in direct ratio to nearness of relationship. Husbands and wives detested each other, sons and fathers—" "Now you're pulling my leg," Farrell protested. "A society like that would be too irrational to function." "But the system worked," Stryker insisted. "It balanced well enough, as long as they were isolated. They accepted it because it was all they knew, and an abrupt reversal that negated their accustomed habits would create an impossible societal conflict. They were reoriented after the Fourth War, and succeeding generations adjusted to normal living without difficulty." A sound from overhead made them look up. Gibson was standing in the Marco's open port. "Conference," Gibson said in his heavy baritone, and went back inside. They followed Gibson quickly and without question, more disturbed by the terse order than by the killing in the grass flats. Knowing Gibson, they realized that he would not have wasted even that one word unless emergency justified it. They found him waiting in the chart room with Xavier. For the thousandth time, seeing the two together, Farrell found himself comparing them: the robot, smoothly functional from flexible gray plastoid body to featureless oval faceplate, blandly efficient, totally incapable of emotion; Gibson, short and dark and competent heavy-browed and humorless. Except for initiative, Farrell thought, the two of them could have traded identities and no one would have been able to notice any difference. "Xav and I found our Ringwave trouble," Gibson said. "The generator is functioning, but the warp isn't going out. Something here on Sadr III is neutralizing it." They stared at him as if he had just told them the planet was flat. "But a Ringwave can't be stopped completely, once it is started," Stryker protested. "You'd have to dismantle it to shut it off, Gib!" "The warping field can be damped out, though," Gibson said. "Adjacent generators operating at different phase levels will heterodyne at a frequency representing the mean variance between levels. The resulting beat-phase will be too low to maintain either field, and one or the other, or both, will blank out. If you remember, all Terran-designed power plants are set to the same phase for that reason." "But these natives can't have a Ringwave plant!" Farrell argued. "There's only this one village on Sadr III, Gib, an insignificant little agrarian township! If they had the Ringwave, they'd be mechanized. They'd have vehicles, landing ports...." "The Hymenops had the Ringwave," Gibson interrupted. "And they left the dome down there, the first undamaged one we've found. Figure it out for yourselves." They digested the statement in silence. Stryker paled slowly, as if it needed time for apprehension to work its way through his fat bulk. Farrell's uneasiness, sourceless until now, grew to chill certainty. "I think I've expected this, without realizing it, since my first flight," he said. "It stood to reason that the Hymenops would quit running somewhere, that we'd bump into them eventually out here on the fringes. Twenty thousand light-years back to 70 Ophiuchi is a long way to retreat.... Gib, do you think they're still here?" Gibson did not shrug, but his voice seemed to. "It won't matter one way or the other unless we can clear the Marco's generator." From another man it might have been irony. Knowing Gibson, Farrell and Stryker accepted it as a bald statement of fact. "Then we're up against a Hymenop hive-mind," Stryker said. "And we can't run away from it. Any suggestions?" "We'll have to find the interfering generator and stop it," Farrell offered, knowing that was the only obvious solution. "One alternative," Gibson corrected. "If we can determine what phase-level the interfering warp uses, we may be able to adjust the Marco's generator to match it. Once they're in resonance, they won't interfere." He caught Stryker's unspoken question and answered it. "It would take a week. Maybe longer." Stryker vetoed the alternative. "Too long. If there are Hymenops here, they won't give us that much time." Farrell switched on the chart room scanning screen and centered it on the village downslope. Scattered cottages with dark tiled roofs and lamp-bright windows showed up clearly. Out of their undisciplined grouping swept the great hemispherical curve of the dome, glinting dully metallic in the starshine. "Maybe we're jumping to conclusions," he said. "We've been here for five weeks without seeing a trace of Hymenops, and from what I've read of them, they'd have jumped us the minute we landed. Chances are that they left Sadr III in too great a hurry to wreck the dome, and their Ringwave power plant is still running." "You may be right," Stryker said, brightening. "They carried the fight to us from the first skirmish, two hundred years ago, and they damned near beat us before we learned how to fight them." He looked at Xavier's silent plastoid figure with something like affection. "We'd have lost that war without Xave's kind. We couldn't match wits with Hymenop hive-minds, any more than a swarm of grasshoppers could stand up to a colony of wasps. But we made mechanicals that could. Cybernetic brains and servo-crews, ships that thought for themselves...." He squinted at the visiscreen with its cryptic, star-streaked dome. "But they don't think as we do. They may have left a rear guard here, or they may have boobytrapped the dome." "One of us will have to find out which it is," Farrell said. He took a restless turn about the chart room, weighing the probabilities. "It seems to fall in my department." Stryker stared. "You? Why?" "Because I'm the only one who can go. Remember what Gib said about changing the Marco's Ringwave to resonate with the interfering generator? Gib can make the change; I can't. You're—" "Too old and fat," Stryker finished for him. "And too damned slow and garrulous. You're right, of course." They let it go at that and put Xavier on guard for the night. The mechanical was infinitely more alert and sensitive to approach than any of the crew, but the knowledge did not make Farrell's sleep the sounder. He dozed fitfully, waking a dozen times during the night to smoke cigarettes and to speculate fruitlessly on what he might find in the dome. He was sweating out a nightmare made hideous by monstrous bees that threatened him in buzzing alien voices when Xavier's polite monotone woke him for breakfast. Farrell was halfway down the grassy slope to the village when he realized that the Marco was still under watch. Approaching close enough for recognition, he saw that the sentry this time was Tarvil, the Sadrian who had first approached the ship. The native's glance took in Farrell's shoulder-pack of testing tools and audiphone, brushed the hand-torch and blast gun at the Terran's belt, and slid away without trace of expression. "I'm going into the dome," Farrell said. He tried to keep the uncertainty out of his voice, and felt a rasp of irritation when he failed. "Is there a taboo against that?" The native fell in beside him without speaking and they went down together, walking a careful ten feet apart, through dew-drenched grass flats that gleamed like fields of diamonds under the early morning sun. From the village, as they approached, straggled the inevitable exodus of adults and half-grown children, moving silently out to the fields. "Weird beggars," Farrell said into his audiphone button. "They don't even rub elbows at work. You'd think they were afraid of being contaminated." Stryker's voice came tinnily in his ear. "They won't seem so strange once we learn their motivations. I'm beginning to think this aloofness of theirs is a religious concomitant, Arthur, a hangover from slave-controls designed to prevent rebellion through isolation. Considering what they must have suffered under the Hymenops, it's a wonder they're even sane." "I'll grant the religious origin," Farrell said. "But I wouldn't risk a centicredit on their sanity. I think the lot of them are nuts." The village was not deserted, but so far as Farrell's coming was concerned, it might as well have been. The few women and children he saw on the streets ignored him—and Tarvil—completely. He met with only one sign of interest, when a naked boy perhaps six years old stared curiously and asked something in a childish treble of the woman accompanying him. The woman answered with a single sharp word and struck the child across the face, sending him sprawling. Farrell relayed the incident. "She said ' Quiet! ' and slapped him down, Lee. They start their training early." "Their sort of indifference couldn't be congenital," Stryker said. His tinny murmur took on a puzzled sound. "But they've been free for four generations. It's hard to believe that any forcibly implanted control mechanism could remain in effect so long." A shadow blocked the sun, bringing a faint chill to Farrell when he looked up to see the great rounded hump of the dome looming over him. "I'm going into the dome now," he said. "It's like all the others—no openings except at ground level, where it's riddled with them." Tarvil did not accompany him inside. Farrell, looking back as he thumbed his hand-torch alight in the nearest entranceway, saw the native squatting on his heels and looking after him without a single trace of interest. "I'm at ground level," Farrell said later, "in what seems to have been a storage section. Empty now, with dust everywhere except in the corridors the natives use when they come in, mornings. No sign of Hymenops yet." Stryker's voice turned worried. "Look sharp for traps, Arthur. The place may be mined." The upper part of the dome, Farrell knew from previous experience, would have been given over in years past to Hymenop occupation, layer after rising layer of dormitories tiered like honeycombs to conserve space. He followed a spiral ramp downward to the level immediately below surface, and felt his first excitement of discovery when he found himself in the audience chambers that, until the Marco's coming, had been the daily goal of the Sadrian natives. The level was entirely taken up with bare ten-foot cubicles, each cramped chamber dominated by a cryptic metal-and-crystal likeness of the Hymenop head set into the metal wall opposite its corridor entrance. From either side of a circular speaking-grill, the antennae projected into the room, rasplike and alert, above faceted crystal eyes that glowed faintly in the near-darkness. The craftsmanship was faultless, stylized after a fashion alien to Farrell's imagining and personifying with disturbing realism the soulless, arrogant efficiency of the Hymenop hive-mind. To Farrell, there was about each image a brooding air of hypnotic fixity. "Something new in Hymenop experiments," he reported to Stryker. "None of the other domes we found had anything like this. These things have some bearing on the condition of the natives, Lee—there's a path worn through the dust to every image, and I can see where the people knelt. I don't like it. I've got a hunch that whatever these damned idols were used for succeeded too well." "They can't be idols," Stryker said. "The Hymenops would have known how hard it is to displace anthropomorphism entirely from human worship. But I think you're right about the experiment's working too well. No ordinary compulsion would have stuck so long. Periodic hypnosis? Wait, Arthur, that's an angle I want to check with Gibson...." He was back a moment later, wheezing with excitement. "Gib thinks I'm on the right track—periodic hypnosis. The Hymenops must have assigned a particular chamber and image to each slave. The images are mechanicals, robot mesmerists designed to keep the natives' compulsion-to-isolation renewed. Post-hypnotic suggestion kept the poor devils coming back every morning, and their children with them, even after the Hymenops pulled out. They couldn't break away until the Marco's Ringwave forced a shutdown of the dome's power plant and deactivated the images. Not that they're any better off now that they're free; they don't know how—" Farrell never heard the rest of it. Something struck him sharply across the back of the head. When he regained consciousness, he was naked and weaponless and lost. The rustling of approach, bodiless and dreadful in darkness, panicked him completely and sent him fleeing through a sweating eternity that brought him finally to the dome's lowest level and the Hymenop power plant. He went hesitantly toward the shadowy bulk of the Ringwave cylinder, drawn as much now by its familiarity as driven by the terror behind him. At the base of the towering machine, he made out a control board totally unrecognizable in design, studded with dials and switches clearly intended for alien handling. The tinny whispering of Stryker's voice in the vaultlike quiet struck him with the frightening feeling that he had gone mad. He saw his equipment pack then, lying undamaged at the foot of the control board. Stryker's voice murmured from its audicom unit: "We're in the dome, Arthur. Where are you? What level—" Farrell caught up the audicom, swept by a sudden wild lift of hope. "I'm at the bottom of the dome, in the Ringwave chamber. They took my gun and torch. For God's sake, hurry!" The darkness gave up a furtive scuffling of sandaled feet, the tight breathing of many men. Someone made a whimpering sound, doglike and piteous; a Sadrian voice hissed sharply, " Quiet! " Stryker's metallic whisper said: "We're tracking your carrier, Arthur. Use the tools they left you. They brought you there to repair the Ringwave, to give back the power that kept their images going. Keep busy!" Farrell, only half understanding, took up his instrument case. His movement triggered a tense rustle in the darkness; the voice whimpered again, a tortured sound that rasped Farrell's nerves like a file on glass. " Give me back my Voice. I am alone and afraid. I must have Counsel.... " Beneath the crying, Farrell felt the terror, incredibly voiced, that weighted the darkness, the horror implicit in stilled breathing, the swelling sense of outrage. There was a soft rush of bodies, a panting and struggling. The whimpering stopped. The instrument case slipped out of Farrell's hands. On the heels of its nerve-shattering crash against the metal floor came Stryker's voice, stronger as it came closer. "Steady, Arthur. They'll kill you if you make a scene. We're coming, Gib and Xav and I. Don't lose your head!" Farrell crouched back against the cold curve of the Ringwave cylinder, straining against flight with an effort that left him trembling uncontrollably. A spasm of incipient screaming seized his throat and he bit it back savagely, stifling a terror that could not be seen, grasped, fought with. He was giving way slowly when Xavier's inflectionless voice droned out of the darkness: "Quiet. Your Counsel will be restored." There was a sudden flood of light, unbearable after long darkness. Farrell had a failing glimpse of Gibson, square face blocked with light and shadow from the actinic flare overhead, racing toward him through a silently dispersing throng of Sadrians. Then he passed out. He was strapped to his couch in the chart room when he awoke. The Marco Four was already in space; on the visiscreen, Farrell could see a dwindling crescent of Sadr III, and behind it, in the black pit of space, the fiery white eye of Deneb and the pyrotechnic glowing of Albireo's blue-and-yellow twins. "We're headed out," he said, bewildered. "What happened?" Stryker came over and unstrapped him. Gibson, playing chess with Xavier across the chart-room plotting table, looked up briefly and went back to his gambit. "We reset the Ringwave in the dome to phase with ours and lugged you out," Stryker explained genially. He was back in character again, his fat paunch quivering with the beginning of laughter. "We're through here. The rest is up to Reorientation." Farrell gaped at him. "You're giving up on Sadr III?" "We've done all we can. Those Sadrians need something that a preliminary expedition like ours can't give them. Right now they are willing victims of a rigid religious code that makes it impossible for any one of them to express his wants, hopes, ideals or misfortunes to another. Exchanging confidences, to them, is the ultimate sacrilege." "Then they are crazy. They'd have to be, with no more opportunity for emotional catharsis than that!" "They're not insane, they're—adapted. Those robot images you found are everything to this culture: arbiters, commercial agents, monitors and confessors all in one. They not only relay physical needs from one native to another; they listen to all problems and give solutions. They're Counselors , remember? Man's gregariousness stems largely from his need to unload his troubles on someone else. The Hymenops came up with an efficient substitute here, and the natives accepted it as the norm." Farrell winced with sudden understanding. "No wonder the poor devils cracked up right and left. With their Ringwave dead, they might as well have been struck blind and dumb! They couldn't even get together among themselves to figure a way out." "There you have it," Stryker said. "They knew we were responsible for their catastrophe, but they couldn't bring themselves to ask us for help because we were human beings like themselves. So they went mad one by one and committed the ultimate blasphemy of shouting their misery in public, and their fellows had to kill them or countenance sacrilege. But they'll quiet down now. They should be easy enough to handle by the time the Reorientation lads arrive." He began to chuckle. "We left their Counselors running, but we disconnected the hypnosis-renewal circuits. They'll get only what they need from now on, which is an outlet for shifting their personal burdens. And with the post-hypnotic compulsion gone, they'll turn to closer association with each other. Human gregariousness will reassert itself. After a couple of generations, the Reorientation boys can write them off as Terran Normal and move on to the next planetary madhouse we've dug up for them." Farrell said wonderingly, "I never thought of the need to exchange confidences as being so important. But it is; everyone does it. You and I often talk over personal concerns, and Gib—" He broke off to study the intent pair at the chessboard, comparing Gibson's calm selfsufficiency to the mechanical's bland competence. "There's an exception for your theory, Lee. Iron Man Gibson never gave out with a confidence in his life!" Stryker laughed. "You may be right. How about it, Gib? Do you ever feel the need of a wailing wall?" Gibson looked up briefly from his game, his square face unsurprised. "Well, sure. Why not? I tell my troubles to Xavier." When they looked at each other blankly, he added, with the nearest approach to humor that either Farrell or Stryker had ever seen in him: "It's a reciprocal arrangement. Xav confides his to me."

test

51353

DR. KOMETEVSKY'S DAY By FRITZ LEIBER Illustrated by DAVID STONE [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Before science, there was superstition. After science, there will be ... what? The biggest, most staggering , most final fact of them all! "But it's all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets." Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill-stamped title, The Dance of the Planets . There was no mistaking the time of its origin; only paper from the Twentieth Century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste a brown old witch resurrected from the Last Age of Madness to confound a world growing sane, and she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband Theodor. He tried to come to her rescue. "Only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kometevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often." "As if they were playing Going to Jerusalem, or musical chairs," Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny. "Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet, and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury," Theodor continued. "Well, nothing at all like that has happened." "But it's begun," Madge said with conviction. "Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact." That was the trouble; you couldn't. Mars' two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred-odd cubic miles of rock—the merest cosmic flyspecks—yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world. Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea, the sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced. People must have felt like this , she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us, because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can. "You need something to cling to," she heard Madge say. "Dr. Kometevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kometevskyite before. Hadn't even heard of the man." She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious-eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic, which made it much worse. "Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations...." Theodor began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the Disordered Space Hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode, or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack: "Besides, if Phobos and Deimos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by 'scope or radar." "Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter?" Madge questioned. "Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think' I'm right." And of course she was. She swung the book under her arm. "Whew, it's heavy," she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones, "Never been microfilmed." She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. "Going to a party?" she asked. Theodor's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question, but they shook their heads. "Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family," Celeste said, while Theodor explained, "As it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight-of-hand." Madge nodded. "Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting." She gave them a woeful grin. "See you when the Earth jumps." Theodor said to Celeste, "Come on, dear. We'll be late." But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. "You know, Teddy," she said uncomfortably, "all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck, our great-grandparents missing World III and getting the World Government started a thousand years ahead of schedule. Luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things, like space-flight and the Deep Shaft and—" she hesitated a bit—"complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it?" "In me," Theodor said promptly. "In you?" Celeste questioned, walking slowly. "But you're just one-third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Ivan." "You angry with me about something?" "Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided." "Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family," Theodor told her warmly. "You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from Heaven and all that?" "Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling." Celeste smiled. "I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you." Theodor nodded emphatically. "All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far-fetched, but I think the experience of persons with Extra-Sensory Perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting." Celeste looked up at him. "So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter?" "Dotty is your daughter, too, and Rosalind's," Theodor reminded her. "No, just Frieda's," Celeste said bitterly. "Of course you may be the father. One-third of a chance." Theodor looked at her sharply, but didn't comment. "Anyway, Dotty will be there," he said. "Probably asleep by now. All the ESPs have suddenly seemed to need more sleep." As they talked, it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon. "Did you know," Theodor said suddenly, "that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature." "Stop being eerie," Celeste said sharply. But then she went on, "Those names Phobos and Deimos—they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean?" Theodor lost a step. "Fear and Terror," he said unwillingly. "Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken—the bodies in the Solar System are named that way, of course—and these were about all that were available." It was true, but it didn't comfort him much. I am a God , Dotty was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my god-friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to. A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold-spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully. In her dignity and simplicity and straight-spined grace, she was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act. I and my god-friends sail off in our great round silver boats , Dotty went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us. As Celeste and Theodor entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver—a glitter of platinum against darkness—came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frieda, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table. Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodor kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close-fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, he struck her as embodying very properly the serious, fateful temper of the moment. He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors. "I suggest we get started without waiting for Ivan," he said. Frieda frowned anxiously. "It's ten minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space Bar to say he was starting right away. And that's hardly a two minutes walk." Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door. "I'll check," she explained. "Oh, Frieda, I've set the mike so you'll hear if Dotty calls." Edmund threw up his hands. "Very well, then," he said and walked over, switched on the picture and stared out moodily. Theodor and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material. Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast. But she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other, so, after a few moments, she shrugged impatiently and switched to audio. At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening. "The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the Disintegration Hypothesis. "However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris—solid, tangible stuff—seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One-hundredth of the moons has been found. "The rest will also be!" Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frieda and Theodor had switched off their projectors. "Meanwhile, Earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their Solar System. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Kometevskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for—and I quote—'Earth's coming leap through space.' They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion, The Dance of the Planets . "That about winds up the story for the present. There are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar, Astronomy, or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume. Nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in Astrophysics, Cosmic Ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kometevsky's book: "This Earth is not the steadfast place We landsmen build upon; From deep to deep she varies pace, And while she comes is gone. Beneath my feet I feel Her smooth bulk heave and dip; With velvet plunge and soft upreel She swings and steadies to her keel Like a gallant, gallant ship." While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frieda, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business-like poise. Theodor leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half-smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown. Black Edmund, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness. In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible. And yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Were they really a family? Strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents? Butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous, artificial dance—until outraged Nature decided to wipe them out? As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The Golden Woman's face was white as the paths she had been treading. Just then the TV voice quickened with shock. "News! Lunar Observatory One reports that, although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the Sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained. Checked and rechecked, it admits of only one interpretation, which Lunar One feels duty-bound to release. Jupiter's fourteen moons are no longer visible! " The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing: the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating. She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt. Without looking at them, she said, "Ivan left the Deep Space Bar twenty minutes ago, said he was coming straight here. On my way back I searched the path. Midway I found this half-buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out—almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather, as if it had lain for years in the grave?" By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy. "And see what's written on it," she added. They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words: "Going down!" The other gods , Dotty dreamt, are combing the whole Universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the Universe and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance. Edmund rapped the table to gain the family's attention. "I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening—which may very well be connected with Ivan's disappearance." One by one the others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus attention on her microfilms. "I'll take over Ivan's notes," she heard Edmund say. "They're mainly about the Deep Shaft." "How far have they got with that?" Frieda asked idly. "Twenty-five miles?" "Nearer thirty, I believe," Edmund answered, "and still going down." At those last two words they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase. Our trick has succeeded , Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison. Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break." Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything." "Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?" Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder. "I'm going out for a drink," he informed them. After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside. Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped. Not my child , she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girl friends. A lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world. But then she straightened her shoulders and went on. Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodor. Her footsteps were silent and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee-high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side, no more. It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied, like those in the fairy tale. When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether. A breeze rustled the leaves, and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures. She looked around her half-heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee-high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night. Without warning, an eerie tingling went through her and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy Earth underfoot—an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs. A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind—the unnaturalness of the way the Earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather co-existed in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug, like a rooted plant. She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her, and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward. Something held her feet. They were ankle-deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground. She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the Earth had not only trapped but invaded her; that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh; that the two were becoming one. And she was sinking faster. Now knee-deep, thigh-deep, hip-deep, waist-deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancients' hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her. She thought, he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose, and covered her eyes. She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms. Tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground. And at the same time, the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her. And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil through gray clay and into pale limestone. Her tortured, rock-permeated lungs sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone. A glitter of quartz. The momentary openness of a foot-high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold-flecked ore. Then just black basalt. And always faster. It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires. At first glance Theodor thought the Deep Space Bar was empty. Then he saw a figure hunched monkeylike on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave-eyed young girl who could hardly have been fifteen. The TV was saying, "... in addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high-rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension, and impulse traveling—a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be 'gods' and in some way responsible for current events. "It is thought—" The girl switched off the TV and took Theodor's order, explaining casually, "Joe wanted to go to a Kometevskyite meeting, so I took over for him." When she had prepared Theodor's highball, she announced, "I'll have a drink with you gentlemen," and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice. The monkeylike figure muttered, "Scotch-and-soda," then turned toward Edmund and asked, "And what is your reaction to all this, sir?" Theodor recognized the shrunken wrinkle-seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the Last Age of Madness. Now, for some reason, the face sported a knowing smile. Theodor shrugged. Just then the TV "big news" light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodor. "... confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory One says that it is visually tracking fourteen small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the Solar System at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn!" The Colonel said, "Ah!" "Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the Solar System at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast! We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible." The Colonel said, "Ah-ha!" Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost amusing. "Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him. The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?" "Frankly, no." The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally." Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a satisfying swallow. "I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach—what would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then—" "You don't mean to imply—" Theodor interrupted. The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically. "Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy!" He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing. Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively. The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words: "They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No! Please, no!" Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand. Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile. "Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then, after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very queer." "Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?" The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?" Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you very much." Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again. There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up. "I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If you want me, dear, just call." "Yes, Mummy." Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear. His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have." The others nodded. "First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth. "Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind." It was deadly quiet in the committee room. "Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint—from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward-pointing glove in the other—that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth. "Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected." Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.

test

20034

Insiders and Way Insiders Being John Malkovich is everything I've ever dreamed of in a crazy comedy. It's close to pure farce, yet its laughs are grounded in loneliness, impotence, self-loathing, and that most discomfiting of vices to dramatize: envy. The action is surreal, the emotions are violently real. The screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, is a genius at finding slapstick correlatives for people's nebulous sense--or non-sense--of themselves. It's possible that no one has ever come up with a more absurdly perfect metaphor for our longing to be someone--anyone--other than who we are than a portal into the head of John Malkovich. Kaufman's protagonist, Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), is a soulfully unkempt puppeteer whose wildly ambitious work is ignored while his gimmicky rivals thrive. When he reports for a drudge job as a file clerk, the office is between the seventh and eighth floors of a Manhattan skyscraper--it's the seven-and-a-halfth floor, where people walk stooped and make feeble jokes about the "low overhead." That low ceiling--a constant reminder of how Craig has been stunted--is the first sign of the movie's comic astuteness, of its knack for devising sight gags with a sting. When a sleek and derisive colleague named Maxine (Catherine Keener) rebuffs his advances and mocks his art, Craig argues passionately on behalf of his puppets: He says that everyone longs to be inside someone else's head. On cue, he discovers a passageway behind a file cabinet that whooshes him into the head of Malkovich and then disgorges him, after 20 minutes, into a ditch beside the New Jersey Turnpike. The poor sap can't keep his secret. He tells the girl, who is soon selling tickets to the Malkovich experience. The biggest Malkovich addict turns out to be Craig's nerdily frazzled wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), who sums up the thrill for the rest of the characters. "Being inside did something to me," she says. "I knew who I was." The director, Spike Jonze (he played the skinny redneck in Three Kings ), comes to Being John Malkovich from music videos, but the movie isn't a digitized bag of tricks like Fight Club . Jonze is never in your face: His instincts must have told him that hyping gags this outlandish would turn the picture into camp. He keeps the action slightly remote and the jokes deadpan, and the upshot is that the audience almost never stops giggling. The first hour and change has a magical fluidity. The scenes between Cusack and Keener boast the best emasculating banter since Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy , and when Lotte and Maxine begin to communicate erotically through Malkovich's body, the film becomes a transsexual (and transcendental) screwball comedy. The script has a free-association quality that turns audiences on--they love not knowing where they're going. I wonder if Kaufman, when he started writing, even knew that the protagonist would stumble on that portal, or what he'd find when he went through. (The head of John Malkovich??!!??) That the vessel is Malkovich might be the movie's most brilliantly unsettling touch, since the actor--although undeniably great--is one of our most distant and weirdly insular. You can understand the masses fantasizing about being Bruce Willis or being Tom Hanks, but being John Malkovich? What's lodged under that thick brow is anybody's guess. Evidently quite the heterosexual, he still courts sexual ambiguity: He speaks in querulous tones and bats the most insolently feminine lashes this side of Bugs Bunny. Weird or not, though, he's a celebrity: He exists. And Malkovich makes a wonderful Malkovich. The actor sends up his own preening aloofness, and he has never been more emotionally exposed than when it dawns on him that his smug façade has been literally penetrated. When he attempts to fathom what's happening to him, Jonze and Kaufman deliver a coup de cinema --a vision of hell that isn't, à la Sartre, other people, but oneself ad infinitum. B eing John Malkovich should have ended right there, since the filmmakers never top that hysterical sequence. Kaufman seems to have written himself into a corner. In the last half-hour he ties things up too neatly and the craziness--and some of the helium--goes out of the movie. Why do crazy comedies need closure? As Cusack's character becomes more twisted, he loses his stature (and the audience's good will), and the climax has too many dissonances. Kaufman and Jonze end up sentimentalizing the longing for a collective consciousness in a way I found creepy: Do they mean to be retelling Invasion of the Body Snatchers from the body-snatchers' point of view? (If so, the film is even darker than I think it is.) The last part diminishes the movie, but not enough to wreck it: It's still an amazing piece of work. What other madcap farce would dare to have a score--it's by the superb Carter Burwell--so plangent and melancholy? Or to cast that sunny goddess Cameron Diaz as a nerd? The actress retains her essential sweetness, but the transformation is otherwise remarkable: Her Lotte is such a mouth breather that she nearly drools, and Diaz manages to look estranged from that lovely body. Even more dazzling is Keener, an actress who has lately been stuck playing nice, sensible women but who here is all silken curves and withering putdowns--she greets Craig's declaration of love with a pitying sigh that brings the house down. Keener's Maxine is so glamorously, tantalizingly self-contained that you can almost believe she never dreams of being John Malkovich. T he Insider is a big, overlong, and rather unwieldy piece of storytelling, but the story it has to tell is so vital that it cuts through all the dramaturgical muddiness. It's a terrific muckraking melodrama--it will get people fuming. It's about big-business mendacity and the lawyers who do its bidding, and about what happens to corporate whistle-blowers in a society where the mainstream media are also in the hands of corporations. The movie tells two interlocking stories: The first is about Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), former vice president for research and development at the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, who is persuaded to go public with revelations about how cigarette manufacturers manipulate the chemicals in their product for maximum addictiveness. (Despite their testimonies in Congress, Wigand says, tobacco executives regard cigarettes as "a nicotine delivery system.") The second story concerns the 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), the man who persuaded Wigand to come forward. Bergman watches in horror as his network, CBS, backs away from the story under pressure from the corporate wing--which fears, at a time when CBS is on the block, the impact of a major lawsuit on its value. (Oddly unmentioned in the film is that then-owner Lawrence Tisch had his own tobacco company, Lorillard, and had separate dealings with Brown & Williamson.) We're used to hearing tales of witnesses, informants, or whistle-blowers who are urged to come forward and then, after they do, are "hung out to dry"--i.e., left unprotected by the agents who approached and exploited them. What gives this version its kick--and what has made it fodder for columnists for almost six months--is that the people who betray the whistle-blower are among the most famous and powerful journalists in America: Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt, the co-anchor and the executive producer of 60 Minutes . If they could be pressured to "spike" a segment that they knew to be true, the film implicitly asks, how much chance do others have of breaking stories about corporate wrongdoing? And what about news personnel with a financial stake in their companies? Even journalists and editors known for their integrity tend to look the other way at their own companies' malfeasances when they hear words like "stock options" and "IPO." But the movie's emotional hook isn't the CBS infighting or Bergman's quest to get the story. It's the fate of Wigand, played by Crowe as a prickly, blockish fellow with no social skills--an edgy wonk. Already isolated by temperament, he seems more vulnerable than a conventionally nice martyr. Wigand appears to have no friends, and his wife (a nearly unrecognizable Diane Venora), a Southern debutante type who clearly didn't bargain for a life of social and financial ostracization, is on the verge of bailing out on him even before the bullets start appearing in the family's mailbox and the death threats on Wigand's computer. You can't always tell what Crowe is doing--his opacity is sometimes a little too opaque. What's plain, though, is that Wigand doesn't want to have this role, didn't ask for it, and has no support system to get him through it. He's entirely dependent on Bergman, with whom he mostly communicates by cell phone and fax. The director, Michael Mann, has never tried to tell a story as complex (or nonviolent) as The Insider , and he and his co-screenwriter, Eric Roth, don't shape their narrative very satisfyingly. Wigand and Bergman are both "insiders," and both, ultimately, whistle-blowers. (It was Bergman's spilling his guts to the New York Times that finally shamed CBS into running the Wigand interview.) But although the 60 Minutes producer is played by the star (Pacino grandstands, but not to the point of distraction), Bergman's story doesn't have the same primal force. Wigand's dark night of the soul is in a hotel, indicted, financially ruined, threatened with death, minus his wife and daughters; Bergman's is in an expensive-looking beach house with his warmly supportive spouse (Lindsay Crouse). The filmmakers seem to be bending over backward--even now--to protect Wigand from appearing to have disclosed what he disclosed too early. I admire their consideration for their subject, but in its wake come all kinds of narrative fuzziness. The movie isn't clear on where the secret report that kicked off Bergman's interest in tobacco came from, or who in the FDA thought it was a good idea to turn him onto Wigand. It's left vague just when Bergman decided that Wigand was important not for what he might say about that report but about the industry as a whole. Mann must have had legal constraints that rivaled those at 60 Minutes . The FBI, which responds to a death threat, carries off Wigand's computer while he sputters that it contains all his important data. The implication is that the local FBI office is in cahoots with Brown & Williamson, but we hear no more about it; we never even know if Wigand got his computer back. And there's no dramatic payoff with the chillingly satanic tobacco company president (Michael Gambon) whose threats first make Wigand think about going public. Given how many lawyers must have vetted this thing, it's probably an achievement that Mann got as much as he did on the screen. Should Mike Wallace be pissed off? Depends what really happened. In a delicious turn, Christopher Plummer makes the co-anchor less a journalist than a pompous prima donna, but he also gives him a bullying force and real charisma. It's not Wallace's initial caving-in to the network--"I'm with Don on this," he tells Bergman--that does him the most damage. It's the scene in a posh restaurant in which Wallace regards the Wigands' paroxysms of fear over the coming 60 Minutes interview with aristocratic contempt. He says, "Who are these people?"--which opens the door for Bergman's too-pat rebuke: "Ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances, Mike. What do you expect? Grace and consistency?" It's Wallace's lack of interest in Wigand's story--the movie's most powerful--that damns him in the audience's eyes. The Insider doesn't note a couple of key, maybe hopeful ironies. The first is that CBS's "spiking" of the interview turned Wigand into an even bigger story than he would have been otherwise. And in the "Where are they now?" titles at the end, the filmmakers omit the most important detail of Bergman's and Wigand's current lives: that they're being played by Al Pacino and Russell Crowe in a major Hollywood movie, and that they're big news again. Is there a less savory subgenre than the hardcore forensics thriller? A corpse is discovered in a grotesque state of mutilation, then the scene shifts to an autopsy room where skulls are popped off and innards held up for inspection. A short time later, detectives pore over glossies of fatal wounds. Yummy. In The Bone Collector , the wily serial killer leaves clues for the brainy forensics expert, played by Denzel Washington--clues that amount to a forensics jigsaw puzzle. If Washington solves the puzzle fast enough, he has a shot at saving the latest manacled and tortured victim; if not, he has to scour the gore-drenched death scene for clues to the next murder. Yummy yummy. One fact quickly becomes apparent: "The perp knows forensics," murmurs Washington. Yummy yummy yummy. The rub is that Washington is a quadriplegic. He can't "walk the grid"--he needs a pair of eyes as sensitive as his but attached to a good pair of legs. As luck would have it, they're attached to a very good pair of legs and a great pair of breasts. Angelina Jolie plays the cop who discovers a body and snaps some photos that convince Washington she has a "gift" for forensics. He dispatches his new protégé to grisly crime scenes, purring into her headphones and demanding to know what she sees. Better than phone sex! He says, "I want to know what you feel in the deepest recesses of your senses," and "Follow the instincts you were born with. ... Process the body." I was thinking that she could process my body anytime, but Jolie rises above such adolescent spasms. Well, almost. She's a thoughtful actress, but she wasn't born to play a beat cop. Those tire-tread lips are model lips; those exquisitely chiseled cheekbones, model cheekbones. Washington scans her file on his fancy bedside computer: Guess what? She was a teen-age model! Clever save! The Bone Collector is less rancid than the last big serial-killer-fetishist picture, Copycat (1995), and it's expertly shot and edited. Phillip Noyce, the director, and Dean Semler, the cinematographer, cook up some eerily muzzy images inside the brackish tunnels and abandoned warehouses where the fiend does his/her demented surgery. But the film is still a piece of exploitive schlock. A mediocre mystery, too: It never approaches the ingenuity of Thomas Harris, still the maestro of forensic porn. For some reason, Noyce telegraphs the identity of the killer halfway through (does he mean to? Or does the hammy framing give it away by accident?), but it's left to the laughably garish climax for the wacko to spell out his/her arbitrary motive. (The killer's lines are on the level of: "You think I'm m-m-mad, don't you?") The only aspect of The Bone Collector that can't be derided is Washington. The option of walking through the part clearly not available to him, he doesn't sleep through it either: Every muscle in this man's ruined body seems to strain against his fate while the wheels in his brain grind fiercely. He deserves a smarter psycho--a smarter movie, too.

test

20042

Dead Head Back when I was a journalist--before I became a provider of digital content--I thought life would always be simple: I would write articles, and people would pay to read them. But then I heard about the impending death of intellectual property, a scenario painted by cyberfuturists John Perry Barlow and Esther Dyson. As all media move online, they say, content will be so freely available that getting paid to produce it will be hard, if not impossible. At first, I dismissed this as garden-variety, breathless overextrapolation from digerati social theorists. But even as I scoffed, the Barlow-Dyson scenario climbed steadily toward the rank of conventional wisdom. Barlow and Dyson do have a solution. In the future people like me, having cultivated a following by providing free content on the Web, will charge our devotees for services that are hard to replicate en masse. We will answer individual questions online, say, or go around giving speeches, or spew out insights at private seminars, or (this one is actually my idea) have sex with young readers. The key, writes Barlow, will be not content but "performance." Barlow, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, offers this analogy: The Dead let people tape concerts, and the tapes then led more people to pay for the concerts. The seminal version of the Barlow-Dyson thesis is Barlow's 10,000-word 1994 essay in Wired . It is with some trepidation that I challenge the logic of this argument. Barlow is a noted visionary, and he is famously derisive of people less insightful than himself (a group which, in his opinion, includes roughly everyone). He says, for example, that the ability of courts to deal correctly with cyberissues depends on the "depth of the presiding judge's clue-impairment." Well, at the risk of joining Barlow's long roster of the clue-impaired, here goes. Barlow's argument begins with a cosmic premise: "Digital technology is detaching information from the physical plane, where property law of all sorts has always found definition." This is wrong on two counts. First, all information does take physical form. Whether digital or analog, whether in ink or sound waves or synaptic firings or electrons, information always resides in patterns of matter or energy (which, as Einstein noted, are interchangeable manifestations of the physical world). To be sure, the significance of information is independent of its particular physical incarnation. So is its value. You download this article from Slate's servers and copy it onto your own hard disk, and it's still worth--well, nothing, but that's a . Suppose it were a Madonna video: You'd get just as much enjoyment out of it regardless of which particular bunch of electrons embodied it. B >ut this independence of meaning and value from physical incarnation is nothing new. It is as old as Sumerian tablets, to say nothing of the Gutenberg press. Indeed, the whole reason intellectual-property law exists is that people can acquire your information without acquiring the particular physical version of it that you created. Thus Barlow's belief that "property law of all sorts" has always "found definition" on the "physical plane" signals a distressing confusion on his part. The one sense in which it's true that information is "detached" from the "physical plane"--the fact that information's value transcends its physical incarnation--not only fails to qualify as an original insight, and not only fails to make intellectual-property rights obsolete; it's the very insight that led to intellectual-property rights in the first place! Barlow announces from the mountaintop: "It's fairly paradigm warping to look at information through fresh eyes--to see how very little it is like pig iron or pork bellies." Maybe so, but it's hard to say for sure, since the people who really did take that fresh look have been dead for centuries. If you somehow forced Barlow to articulate his thesis without the wacky metaphysics, he'd probably say something like this: The cost of copying and distributing information is plummeting--for many purposes, even approaching zero. Millions of people can now do it right at their desks. So in principle, content can multiply like fruit flies. Why should anyone buy an article when a copy can be had for nothing? Answer: Because it can't. The total cost of acquiring a "free" copy includes more than just the copying-and-transmitting costs. There's 1) the cost--in time and/or money--of finding someone who already has a copy, and will give it to you for free or for cheap; 2) the risk of getting caught stealing intellectual property; 3) any premiums you pay to others for incurring such risks (as when you get copies from bootleggers); and 4) informal punishments such as being labeled a cheat or a cheapskate. The size of this last cost will depend on how norms in this area evolve. Even in the distant future, the total cost of cheating on the system, thus figured, will almost never be zero. Yes, it will be way, way closer to zero than it used to be. But the Barlow-Dyson scenario still is wrong. Why? Because whether people cheat doesn't depend on the absolute cost of cheating. It depends on the cost of cheating compared with the cost of not cheating. And the cost of getting data legally will plummet roughly as fast as the cost of getting it illegally--maybe faster. In their writings, Barlow and Dyson make clear they're aware of this fact. But they seems unaware of its fatal impact on their larger thesis. How could cybersages have such a blind spot? One theory: Because they're cyber sages. You have to be a career paleohack like me, getting paid for putting ink on paper, to appreciate how much of the cost of legally acquiring bits of information goes into the ink and paper and allied anachronisms, like shipping, warehousing, and displaying the inky paper. I wrote a book that costs $14 in paperback. For each copy sold, I get $1. The day may well come, as Barlow and Dyson seem to believe, when book publishers as we know them will disappear. People will download books from Web sites and either print them out on new, cool printers or read them on superlight wireless computers. But if so, it will then cost you only $1--oh hell, make it $1.25--to get a copy of my book legally from my Web site. Now imagine being at my Web site, reading my promotional materials, and deciding you'd like to read the book. (Thank you.) A single keystroke will give you the book, drain your bank account of five shiny quarters, and leave you feeling like an honest, upstanding citizen. Do you think you'll choose, instead, to call a few friends in hopes of scoring an illegal copy? And don't imagine that you can just traipse on over to the "black-market book store" section of the Web and find a hot copy of my book. As in the regular world, the easier it is for Joe Consumer to track down an illegal distributor, the easier it is for cops to do the same. Black marketeers will have to charge enough to make up for this risk, making it hard to undersell my $1.25 by much. And there are , too, why the cost of cheating will be nontrivial. M >eanwhile, on the other side of the ledger, there's another reason for the cost of legal copies to drop. Many journalists will reach a much larger audience on the Web than they do now. The "magazine" model of bringing information to the attention of readers is stunningly inefficient. I hope it's not egotistical of me to think that when I write an article for, say, the New Republic , I am not reaching nearly everyone who might have an interest in it. Granted, the Web is not yet a picture of efficiency itself. Search engines, for example, are in the reptilian phase of their evolution. But most observers--certainly the Barlows of the world--expect radical improvement. (I'm not saying all journalists will see their audiences grow. The likely trend, when you , will be for many obscure and semiobscure journalists to see their audiences grow, while the few rich and famous journalists will see their audiences shrink. Cool.) One much-discussed cybertrend is especially relevant here: the scenario in which various data brokers offer a "Daily Me," a batch of articles tailored to your tastes, cheaply gleaned from all over the Web. When this happens, guys like me will be living the life of Riley. We will wake up at noon, stumble over to the keyboard in our pajamas, hammer out 1,000 words, and then--without talking to a single bothersome editor--make our work available to all data brokers. Likely fans of my article will be shown, say, the first couple of paragraphs. If they want to read more, they deposit a quarter. Will you try to steal a copy instead? Do you steal Tootsie pops at checkout counters? The broker and the electronic cash service will pocket a dime of that. I take my 15 cents and head for the liquor store. Of course, this "disaggregation of content" may be ruinous for magazines like Slate. But consider the upside. Not only will the efficiency of the system permit rock-bottom pricing that discourages cheating, but the fluidity of content will disrupt channels of potential cheating. If you subscribe to a regular, old-fashioned online magazine, it's easy to split the cost of a subscription with a few friends and furtively make copies. (You wretched scum.) But if you subscribe to the "Daily Me," this arrangement makes no sense, because every Me is different. Sure, you may e-mail a friend the occasional article from your "Me." (You wretched scum.) And, in general, this sort of "leakage" will be higher than in pre-Web days. But it would have to reach massive proportions to negate the overall gains in efficiency that will keep people like me in business. This argument, like all arguments about the future, is speculative. It may even be wrong. But it is consistent with the history of the world. The last half-millennium has seen 1) data getting cheaper and easier to copy; and 2) data-creation occupying a larger and larger fraction of all economic activity. Thus far, in other words, as the realm of information has gotten more lubricated, it has become easier , not harder, to make a living by generating information. Cyberspace is essentially a quantum leap in lubrication. Barlow's insistence that intellectual property will soon be worthless is especially puzzling since he is one of the biggest troubadours of the Third Wave information economy. Sometimes he seem to think it's possible for a sector of a market economy to get bigger and bigger even while the connection between work and reward in that sector breaks down. He writes: "Humanity now seems bent on creating a world economy primarily based on goods that take no material form. In doing so, we may be eliminating any predictable connection between creators and a fair reward for the utility or pleasure others may find in their works." Far out, man.

test

20045

Speech and Spillover The Supreme Court probably will overturn the notorious Communications Decency Act. But the issues are not as cut-and-dried as some might suggest. By Eugene Volokh (1,777 words; posted Thursday, July 18; to be composted Thursday, July 25) One of the great recurring problems in free-speech law is spillover. Free speech, the Supreme Court has held, has limits: Some speech is so harmful and so lacking in redeeming value that it may be restricted. Threats, blackmail, and false advertising are obvious examples. There's no right to say, "Your money or your life" to a stranger in a dark alley; there's no right to spread intentional falsehoods about your product or your enemy's character. The Supreme Court likewise has held, rightly or wrongly, that minors have no right to see very sexually explicit material, and that people (except, perhaps, the minors' parents) have no right to distribute such material to them. Psychologists and philosophers can debate this, but as a constitutional matter, the question is settled. But it's often impossible to keep such materials from children without also denying them to adults. Bookstores can check customers' ages, but TV broadcasters, muralists, or people who post things on the Internet can't. The law can allow public display of this material, protecting adults' access but also making it available to children; or the law can prohibit public display, insulating children but also restricting adults. Either way there's spillover. Either the restriction spills over onto speech that should be free, or the freedom spills over onto speech that, in the judgment of most legislators, voters, and judges, should be restricted. This spillover problem is a recurring question in First Amendment law. The law cannot restrict all harmful, valueless speech and at the same time protect all valuable speech. A classic illustration of the spillover problem is the Communications Decency Act, passed earlier this year in an attempt to stop "indecency" on the Internet. A three-judge federal court was probably correct in striking down the CDA June 11. But the judges' opinions don't squarely face the spillover problem. Perhaps--contrary to the suggestions of some Supreme Court cases--spillover questions should always be resolved in favor of free speech. Perhaps children's increased vulnerability is a price worth paying for extra freedom for adults. But it's important to confront honestly both what's being lost and gained in the process. The most controversial part of the CDA prohibits anyone from "us[ing] an interactive computer service" "to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age" "any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication" "that, in context, depicts or describes," "in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards," "sexual or excretory activities or organs." Virtually any sort of speech in the public areas of cyberspace is available to minors, so the law really applies to all such areas, including Web sites, Internet newsgroups, e-mail discussion lists, chat rooms, and bulletin boards. And "patently offensive" can cover a lot of territory. Many profanities might be considered "patently offensive" descriptions of "sexual or excretory activities or organs," especially under the standards of some conservative communities. Putting a David Mamet play on your Web site, thus, might be a crime. The term "patently offensive" is vague enough that no one knows for sure, but the wise user will take a conservative approach. Given some recent Supreme Court decisions, it seems unlikely that the vagueness alone would make the act unconstitutional. But there's no doubt that the law's vagueness does indeed make it more likely to stifle someone's freedom of expression. The CDA, though ostensibly intended to protect children, clearly has a spillover effect on adults. Adults generally have the right to see material that's "patently offensive." There are two exceptions to this: child pornography (sexually explicit pictures made using child models) and "obscenity"--but both are much smaller categories than the CDA's "indecency." May the government, in its quest to shield children, restrict the online choices of grownups? Or to look at it the other way: Must the courts, in order to protect the freedom of grownups, restrict the government's ability to shield children? The Supreme Court precedents are unclear. In a 1957 case called Butler vs. Michigan , a state law barred distribution of material that might be unsuitable for minors. The court concluded that such a ban was unconstitutional. The law, it said, "reduce[d] the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children. ... Surely, this is to burn the house to roast the pig." The court agreed that the state could bar distribution of such stuff directly to children. But clearly, such limited restrictions don't work as well as a total ban. The court apparently was willing to tolerate some perceived harm to children in order to protect the freedom of adults. But in some recent cases, the court has taken a different approach. One such case is the oft-criticized FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation (1978). The Pacifica court upheld a ban on "indecency"--George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" monologue--on radio and television broadcasts "when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience." The spillover was clear: Adults were deprived of access to certain materials on certain media (radio and television) during most hours. But the justices were willing to allow such a restriction of adults' access to speech in order to shield children. Pacifica is a narrow decision, and there's language in it suggesting that it only applies to over-the-air broadcasting. But in this year's cable indecency case, known as Denver Consortium , four Supreme Court justices were willing to use Pacifica as a guide for cable television as well as over-the-air broadcasting. (The CDA court's decision was written before Denver Consortium was handed down.) And during the last 10 years, some lower courts have upheld bans on public display of sexually explicit material that's not technically "obscene" on the grounds that the law may shield children even if this keeps, say, a would-be muralist from communicating to adults. The Supreme Court hasn't spoken on these specific statutes. Another important, though somewhat ambiguous, precedent is Sable Communications vs. FCC (1990), in which the court struck down a ban on dial-a-porn. The government argued the ban was needed to protect children. But the court pointed out that there might be "less restrictive alternatives" that would insulate children without entirely banning the medium. For example, the court said, the government could require services to take credit-card numbers, or require phone companies to let parents block area-code-900 phone calls. Still, the court was willing to tolerate some spillover; after all, even the alternatives it suggested would deny access to some adults. And it also hinted that it might even allow a total ban if such alternatives could be shown to be inadequate. Denver Consortium followed the same pattern: It struck down a restriction on indecent speech because there were other effective alternatives available; but it suggested that such a restriction might be constitutional if it were, in fact, the only effective way to shield children. Sable and Denver Consortium make clear that the court won't tolerate unnecessary spillover onto adults. But on the tough question--what happens if it's impossible to shield minors without burdening adults?--there's an unresolved tension. Butler says that the speech must be allowed. Pacifica , Sable , and now Denver Consortium suggest that the speech may be restricted. On the Internet, is it possible to shield children without restricting adults? Parents can get software--SurfWatch is one popular brand--that keeps their computers from accessing any place that's on a list of "dirty" locations, a list selected and frequently updated by the software designers. If the government wanted to, it could buy SurfWatch (for a fraction of what it would cost to enforce the CDA) and give it away to parents. Could this be the "less restrictive alternative" that the government could use instead of CDA's total ban? Well, it depends on how much shielding of children you're willing to sacrifice. The SurfWatch solution is limited by the software designers' ability to keep up with the latest "dirty" places. Dozens of Web sites are being added daily, and you never know what will get posted tomorrow even on existing sites or newsgroups. Some things will inevitably be missed. The purely technological fix, then, is less restrictive than the CDA, but it's also less effective. The CDA, of course, won't be perfect, either--many will flout it, and Web sites in other countries won't be bound by it--but the ban plus the technological fix probably will shield children better than the technological fix alone. Does this extra protection justify the considerable spillover? The precedents don't answer this. There's a hybrid technological and legal approach that might be more effective, and thus more likely to be the sort of "less restrictive alternative" that would make the total ban invalid. The law might demand that online material be rated--that any sufficiently sexually explicit text or image be marked "dirty" in a way that computers can easily recognize. Parents could then set up their children's computers to block access to these pages. Alternatively, the software could assume that any page is dirty unless it's labeled "clean," with the law making it illegal to falsely mark "clean" a page that's actually dirty. Many people, of course, might misrate their material--intentionally or accidentally. But the CDA will be intentionally or accidentally violated, too. In fact, a rating requirement might be more effective than a total ban. People may be more willing to comply with the rating law, since it would let them continue selling their wares or expressing their views. Still, ratings won't shield children using computers that don't have the rating software turned on. And no one knows how often this will happen. The CDA is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. Some say the justices should simply rule that sexually explicit material isn't as dangerous for children as it's cracked up to be, and therefore, free speech should prevail. But many people, probably including the justices, are willing to accept that sexually explicit material is indeed harmful to children. Other CDA critics assert that the technological alternatives will shield children every bit as well as a total ban would, and that the CDA therefore is entirely unnecessary. But that too will be hard to prove. Ultimately, then, the justices will have to make a hard choice: sacrifice some shielding of children in order to protect the freedom of grownups, or sacrifice some access by grownups in order to shield children. My guess is that the marginal benefit of the CDA over the technological alternatives is small enough, and the burden that the law creates is large enough, that the CDA will be overturned. But it's a closer question than many might think.

test

20047

The Norplant Option Now that Congress and President Clinton have opted to use the threat of utter destitution to dissuade poor teen-agers and women from having children on the public dole, it's time to revive a more humane, and perhaps more effective, proposal with the same objective. This idea surfaced briefly and spectacularly in 1990, when the Philadelphia Inquirer suggested in an editorial that perhaps some welfare mothers should be "offered an increased benefit" if they would agree to practice effective birth control--specifically, to use the then-new Norplant contraceptive, which prevents pregnancy for five years after being implanted under the skin of the upper arm. An uproar followed. The editorial writers--who had insensitively suggested a desire to reduce births of poor black babies in particular--were savaged by many Inquirer staffers and others as racist advocates of eugenics, even of "genocide." They also caught it from some abortion-rights zealots, who are suspicious of any government efforts to influence reproductive choices, and from conservatives, who think the only proper way to discourage teen pregnancy is to preach abstinence. The newspaper abjectly apologized for a "misguided and wrongheaded editorial opinion." And ever since, the whole subject has been taboo. But it's still a good idea, for poor girls and women themselves, and for the rest of us. Millions of babies are being born to poor teen-agers so lacking in elementary skills, work habits, and self-discipline that they are unlikely to be either responsible parents or self-supporting providers. Many of these babies grow up in squalor and themselves become dependent denizens of the welfare culture. The only realistic hope for breaking the bleak cycle of teen pregnancy and welfare dependency is to find ways to persuade poor teen-agers not to have babies--at least, not until they are old enough, and capable enough, and self-supporting enough to provide a decent home life. But nobody--nobody--has any great ideas for realizing this hope, short of reverting to the cruelest, let-'em-starve brand of social Darwinism. Thoughtful progressives like Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., have properly stressed the need to push welfare mothers into jobs and job-training programs. This makes sense because some of these women will rise to the occasion, learn the work ethic, and become self-supporting. And others may be dissuaded from having children by the prospect of being required to work. But (as Moynihan acknowledges) many welfare mothers are so crippled by their own early childhood environments as to be essentially unemployable, no matter how well-financed and well-run the jobs programs and related counseling, training, and child-care programs. And under the harsh new welfare reform, the jobs programs will not be well financed. It appears that millions of welfare mothers and children will simply be cut off--unable to get or hold jobs, and left to beg from relatives and strangers, to steal what they can, even to sleep on the streets, depending on how much Calcutta-style misery the taxpayers are willing to tolerate. Given the stark ugliness of trying to end the welfare culture by spreading homelessness and hunger, it's especially striking that one pretty good, pretty humane idea has been virtually ignored in the welfare debate of the past year. In a small effort to reopen discussion of this option, here's a specific proposal: States should experiment with programs in which all qualifying teen-agers and women would be offered lump-sum $1,000 cash payments--on top of any other benefits they receive--to have Norplant (or another long-term contraceptive) implanted at government expense. They would be free to have it removed whenever they chose, but would be rewarded with additional payments (of, say, $30) for each month in which they kept it. The category of qualifying teen-agers and women could include all recipients of welfare or other public assistance (including daughters of recipients) who are competent to give informed consent to the implant procedure. Or the program could be restricted in various ways in order to blunt possible objections. For example, you could require parental consent. Or, eligibility could be restricted to those who have already been pregnant, or at least sexually active; to those over age 13, or under age 21; or some combination thereof. Why Norplant? Because it requires no ongoing effort or supervision to be effective, and it can be discontinued only after some (rather small) effort. As such, Norplant is the only contraceptive the government could pay people to use with any hope of affecting those who aren't strongly motivated to either become pregnant or avoid pregnancy. How much good the Norplant option would do is debatable. But the arguments that it would do harm seem unpersuasive. Here's a quick review of possible objections, left and right: B ribing poor women and girls to implant Norplant would coerce them into not having children, thus violating their rights to reproductive choice, like the one-child-per-family policy and coerced abortions in China. To the contrary, a government offer of money is not coercion--and not even remotely comparable to what goes on in China. Existing benefits would not be reduced for anyone declining Norplant. This means that nobody who really wanted a child would be prevented from having one. To be sure, the government would be trying to influence reproductive choices. But the same is true of existing policies promoting free contraception, and of laws like the Hyde Amendment, which denies Medicaid funding for abortions--not to mention the still extant statutes making it a crime to commit statutory rape (sex with a consenting minor), fornication (premarital sex), and adultery. In its groveling 1990 editorial apology, the Inquirer said: "Our critics countered that to dangle cash or some other benefit in front of a desperately poor woman is tantamount to coercion. They're right." No, they were wrong, and the Inquirer was right in its initial Norplant editorial, when it noted that women would be free to "change their minds at any point and become fertile again." "Many people," David Boldt, then-editor of the Inquirer's editorial page, noted in a subsequent commentary, "saw the editorial as part of an ongoing white conspiracy to carry out genocide of blacks in America." This is pernicious nonsense, no matter how many people say it. The original Inquirer editorial unwittingly invited such smears by linking its Norplant proposal to race--specifically, to a report that nearly half the nation's black children are living in poverty. But nobody is proposing that race be a factor in any program promoting Norplant to welfare recipients, most of whom are white. Nobody is proposing to sterilize women or forbid them from having children. And while a disproportionate percentage of welfare mothers and children are black, black America, like white America, can only benefit from any program that rewards people for avoiding pregnancy unless and until they are old enough and self-supporting enough to provide decently for children. G irls and women on Norplant may be at greater risk of contracting and spreading AIDS, because they will be less likely to demand that their sex partners use condoms. A 1994 study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine found that Norplant had no effect on recipients' decisions whether to use condoms or visit doctors--and was 19 times as effective as the pill in preventing pregnancy. Any Norplant incentive program should include vigorous counseling about the need to use condoms against disease. But even now, how many women and girls are so much more afraid of pregnancy than of death that they use condoms solely to avoid the former, and would stop once on Norplant? Not many, I suspect. N orplant itself may be unhealthy. The possibility of serious long-term health damage from any relatively new contraceptive like Norplant must be taken seriously, and the risks should, of course, be fully disclosed to women considering using it. But no contraceptive is risk-free. And the available evidence indicates that the risks inherent in pregnancy and childbirth--and in abortion--are at least as great as the risks inherent in Norplant. Plaintiffs' tort lawyers have nearly killed off Norplant, scaring away many women and doctors, by a torrent of personal-injury suits against its manufacturer. The lawyers include many of the same folks who created a tidal wave of litigation based on the apparently bogus claim about the dangers of silicone breast implants. But the Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly found Norplant to be safe and effective. More than a million women have used it with only minor side effects, such as changing menstrual bleeding patterns, reported. There have been complaints by a small percentage of Norplant users of severe pain or scarring from having it removed. But the apparent reason was inadequate training of physicians in the (usually quick and painless) removal procedure--an easily remedied problem--and not any inherent defect in the product. I t is sexist to seek to thrust contraception only upon women. Sexism has nothing to do with it. First, almost all welfare checks are written to women--not to men, who don't get pregnant. Second, the only forms of contraception now available for men are condoms and vasectomies. It would hardly make sense to hand out $1,000 payments to men for taking home a bunch of condoms, or to try to police their use. And a vasectomy--unlike a Norplant implant-- cannot always be reversed. Giving teen-agers contraceptives encourages promiscuity, and bribing them to use Norplant will encourage it even more. The weight of the evidence suggests that teen-agers' decisions whether or not to engage in sexual activity don't have much to do with whether the government gives them contraceptives. Many have unprotected sex, and almost all can get contraceptives if they want them. As I have suggested, one possible restriction (although not one I would favor) on any Norplant incentive program would be to limit eligibility to teen-agers who have already been pregnant or, at least, sexually active. Norplant counselors could also stress the benefits of abstinence, while presenting the contraceptive as a backup safeguard. T een-agers should learn about sex and contraception from their parents, not the government. A parental-consent requirement would answer this objection. I would not advocate such a requirement, however, because of the overwhelming evidence that many parents have little or no constructive communication with their children about such matters. I hope that my own two daughters (now 12 and nine years old) would consult with me and my wife before getting Norplant or becoming sexually active. But if they end up deciding to go their own ways, I'd rather that they have unrestricted access to Norplant than that they risk pregnancy. Would a Norplant program be thwarted by the fact that many poor teen-agers actually want to get pregnant and have a child? I don't think so. First, there are about 3 million unwanted pregnancies in the United States every year, half of which end in abortion. Many of these involve teen-agers and women who are (or will be) on welfare. Norplant could stop almost all these. Second, the allure of pregnancy for many other poor teen-agers may be so slight, or so fleeting, or so fraught with ambivalence, that a $1,000 Norplant incentive would have plenty of takers. And even if such a program only delayed pregnancies a few years, that would be a very good thing. Most 15-year-olds would be better mothers, and have a better chance of making something of their own lives, if they waited five or seven years before having babies. Norplant is no panacea for poverty; nothing is. The question is whether a Norplant incentive program might do some good. There's only one way to find out: Give it a try. If it fails, the cost--in terms of numbers of teen-agers and women taking the $1,000 offer--will be tiny. And it just might help.

test

20039

What So Different About Cyberspace? It seems as though the initial round of discussion between Larry and myself has produced a "two cultures" problem, which it is worth setting out briefly here. Over the past several years I have had extensive contact with the Internet, not only as an academic but also as a lawyer. But it is not because of any affection for, or preoccupation with its technical architecture, or with its internal folkways. Rather, I have come to it by indirection. If you have an expertise in privacy and defamation, then someone will ask you to testify on the question of whether one should allow strong encryption by private parties on the Net, or whether the publication online of confidential information obtained by fraud or trickery is protected under the First Amendment. For someone who sees the Internet as the latest advance in technology, which is not all that different from the radio, the cell phone, or the fax machine, there is a strong tendency to see issues on the Internet as though they were outgrowths of familiar problems elsewhere. I thought (and still think) that one of the great strengths of Larry's book is the way in which he integrates nice examples from physical space with those from cyberspace. Thus he is right on to say that there are two ways in which to reduce the theft of car radios (Page 90), one of them is to increase the punishment for theft, and the other is to render them useless once they are taken out of the car by someone who does not know the code (old-fashioned sense) for their release. Here I might add that the second remedy is, in conventional terms, a better one that the first. The higher penalties will have multiple effects: One is to reduce the number of thefts, but another is to encourage more violent action by the thieves that remain when faced with the risk of capture. The marginal cost of killing an innocent party would be quite low if the sanction for stealing radios were life imprisonment for first-time offenders. But the puzzles of marginal deterrence are not invoked if the radios are disabled when removed, and so architecture, or technology, works nicely in real space, and it should work well in cyberspace to avoid similar problems. So far so good. No one could doubt that architecture matters in cyberspace. The ability to limit the number of times that someone can resort to a computer program, for example, means that technology allows for a form of price discrimination that eliminates some of the unwelcome cross-subsidies associated with the sale of certain programs, just as an accurate billing system means that pricing for phones is not subject to flat fees only. Here again, the point is useful to make but does not get us to the question of the proper approach for understanding the distinctive use and regulation of cyberspace. So we come to the third point: Larry mentions that the original architecture of cyberspace was given to us by researchers and hackers. And so it was. The usual ethic among both groups is for the public dissemination of information. With researchers, the community I know best, the free interchange of ideas of critical for the advancement of knowledge. There are no secrets in this world. But many of the best researchers also have jobs that require them to work for industry, where the protection of innovation via trade secrets and patents is the norm, and for equally good reason: Business cannot turn a profit if all its improvements are instantly appropriable by others. Now, it happens that the best minds are frequently used for both research and commerce, and we have to develop protocols, and we do develop protocols, that deal with the potential conflict of interest as they move from one regime to another. And in ordinary space we have both public and private property, with the same individuals participating in both regimes. In ordinary affairs, I do not think that the rise of commerce results in the loss of liberty. As a member of the university community, I have worked over the years in setting out the guidelines to deal with conflicts-of-interest regulations that allow most people to participate in both. I see no reason why that cannot happen in cyberspace as well. Those people who wish to set up commercial portals through which others must come do not violate the liberty of those who choose not to enter. The different values are certainly there, but the Net is a richer and not a poorer place by virtue of the fact that some folks can live in gated communities while others can run free over a commons on some other part of the Net. There is no more loss of freedom here in any intelligible sense that there is a loss of freedom when my neighbor erects a new house to which he invites only his friends. Of course, the values in commerce are different from those in the code (i.e., practices) of the Internet. But these new arrivals will not, as Larry suggests, "flip" the character of the Net. The original enclaves can hold firm as new people open up new territory. The Net is not some single homogenous object that admits to only a single culture. We can have private and public, commercial and charitable, spaces on the Net, just as we do anywhere else. If in so doing we change the character of the Net, we do so by proper means, and so be it. That said, how does this tie into the grander questions of what a libertarian does or should believe. Larry says that his point was really that the attitude of "leave the Net alone" will lead to a loss of liberty. His words are ominous: "My argument is that this response will lead to a Net with far less liberty than the Net we know now, with a potential to be far more regulated than any world we have known--ever." I don't get it. In one sense, the statement is right. If folks can defame at will on the Internet and escape through anonymity, there is something deeply amiss. But if the argument is that commercialization poses the same dreaded threat to the Net as defamation, then I think that he is wrong, given that the two could live side by side in the manner just described. These conclusions follow, I think, from any account of libertarianism that pays attention to the views within the ivory tower. It is, I might add, relatively close to that which is given the idea of liberty by the ordinary man. "Your freedom to use your fist stops at the edge of my face" is a recognition of the universal duties of forbearance that lie at the heart of the libertarian code. But I am told that there is a different world out there that represents some present and powerful political reality: It is a world in which it is wrong to think about defamation, wrong to think about trade secrets, wrong to think about blackmail. That would make me a Red. So here is the irony. To take a traditional libertarian position makes one a Red. If this libertarianism has the message keep government out, then perhaps it is wrong to describe this as a form of anarchy. Rather, it starts to resemble a self-appointed militia that wants to keep out others who do not want to share in their values. It is the most unlibertarian position of a monopoly on custom and mores to the early arrivals. That said, I don't think that Larry has tried in Code to respond to the popular sentiment on the street. The passages I quoted in the first round come from Chapter 7 of his book, "What Things Regulate," which begins with a reference to that most ivory-towered individual John Stuart Mill, the author of On Liberty , who articulated the famous "harm principle" with which libertarian thought of all stripes has grappled since he wrote. Mill, as Larry points out, did believe that public opinion was one counterweight to private action, and it has been a hard question since that time, whether popular sentiment is an equal obstacle to individual freedom as law backed by force, or whether it works with sufficient cohesion to influence conduct in a single direction. That is a fair and important set of questions to ask, but again, it is not one that is unique to cyberspace. Larry then goes astray in my view when he writes, "Threats to liberty change. ... The labor movement was founded on the idea that the market is sometimes a threat to liberty--not just because of low wages but also because the market form of organization itself disables a certain form of freedom. In other societies, at other times, the market is the key, not the enemy, of liberty." (Page 85-86). So here is where I am left. I do not understand how the market is the enemy of liberty, at least if the competitive market is understood. I do not see why low wages could ever be regarded as a threat to liberty, even if workers would prefer, ceteris paribus , higher ones. I do not know what it means to say that "the market form of organization itself disables a certain form of freedom." At most, the competition of new forms of social organization draw people away from older forms of association. So that said, the passages that I quote do not reflect a non-academic view of liberty by guys on the street. It reflects at least in part the conception of liberty that was championed earlier in this century by such writers as Robert Lee Hale, who found coercion in every refusal to deal. Or, to the extent that it really means keep the government out, it sounds like an attempt by the earlier settlers of the new domain to monopolize its structure at the expense of later comers who wish to play by a different set of rules in some portion of that space. I think that Larry is trying to reach a larger audience with his book, and to do so, he has to explain why under the influence of commerce, cyberspace is becoming highly regulable for those who do not participate in that commerce, and why the regulation that commerce imposes on those who voluntarily join into it should be a bad thing. Stated otherwise, the task that I think remains is to translate the language and sentiments of those within the Internet culture so that their positions can be better understood by those of us who do not yet understand what is so distinctive and special about the Net.

test

20023

Why You're So Screwed Up Let's stipulate that you are unique, unfathomable, singular, sui generis. Now, let's find out how to categorize you, classify you, and sort you into a group that explains your temperament, your career choices, the strength of your immune system, and your ability to make up puns. Here follows an admittedly random guide to four popular methods designed to explain who you really are. I deliberately picked systems that purport to pinpoint something intrinsic in our natures. I judged the ease of use and applicability of each system, and since all of them illustrate their points with the lives of famous people, I also gauged how successfully each one explains the process by which Gandhi became Gandhi . BIRTH ORDER Would your friends and family say you are more like: a) Carlos the Jackal or b) Martin Luther King Jr.?; a) Phyllis Schlafly or b) Florence Nightingale? According to Frank J. Sulloway, author of Born To Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives , if your loved ones chose a), you are a typical firstborn--an achieving, status conscious, defensive, incipient fascist terrorist. If you're a b), you are certainly a "laterborn"--a bold, compassionate iconoclast. Sulloway is hardly the first to extract personality distinctions from birth order. His twist is to use Darwinism to show how the familial struggle among siblings for parental attention accounts for everything in society from social rebellions to scientific revolutions. In Sulloway's universe, firstborns are dictatorial types who just don't get it, but they're happy to oppress freedom-loving laterborns who do. So how does Sulloway explain that the greatest scientific revolutionary of the 20 th century, Albert Einstein, is a firstborn? He doesn't. Sulloway (surprise! he's the third of four) also thinks his findings should be applied to selecting corporate leaders. In a nutshell: Oldests need not apply. As devoted as he is to birth order as a personality determinant, Sulloway allows other variables to creep into his theory to account for those rare firstborn revolutionaries. "Whenever one encounters a firstborn radical (and family life does occasionally produce them), such individuals are likely to have experienced substantial conflict with a parent. Parent-offspring conflict makes honorary laterborns out of some firstborns." This is a little like saying all men prefer dogs and all women prefer cats. So a man with a cat is either an honorary woman, or the cat is an honorary dog. Ease of Use: Excellent. You already know your own status and it's easy to ask others, "Do you have siblings?" Sulloway also provides a 10-variable formula to measure "Your Own Propensity To Rebel." Applicability: As a method of understanding yourself and others, Sulloway's theory seems rather limited, except if you're in charge of hiring for Slobodan Milosevic. Gandhi Explanation: He was the youngest of four. PERSONALITY Why do people act like that? Hippocrates believed the answer was in the balance of four bodily fluids, or humors--blood, black bile, phlegm, and yellow bile. This notion lives on in our language today. We all know people who are essentially hotblooded, or melancholy (which literally means "black bile"), or phlegmatic, or who view the world with a jaundiced eye. Plato, less interested in humans' inner states than in their behavior as members of the state, redefined the four humors in social terms: as artisans, guardians, rationals, and idealists. According to psychologist David Keirsey, you are one of Plato's four types, you were born that way, you will always be that way, and you can find out which one you are by taking the temperament sorter quiz on his Web site. Sample questions: When the phone rings do you: a) hurry to get it first? or b) hope someone else will answer? Do you find visionaries and theorists: a) somewhat annoying? or b) rather fascinating? Keirsey does not muck around in your excretions in order to determine your personality. His criteria come from Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung by way of an American mother-daughter team named Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, who created the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The two women translated Jung's idea that personality is composed of four pairs of preferences--the most famous being extroverted and introverted--and created a systematic test to discern people's types. Keirsey has redefined these four pairs this way: Expressive (E) or Reserved (I) Observant (S) or Introspective (N) Tough-minded (T) or Friendly (F) Scheduling (J) or Probing (P) [Probing might better be defined as looking for alternatives] The four sets of pairs can be matched up 16 different ways--with Keirsey organizing these into those Platonic groups of four. For example, I'm an NT, which makes me a Rational, therefore naturally curious, restless, and doubting. More specifically I'm an ENTP. As Keirsey writes: "A rough draft is all they need to feel confident and ready to proceed into action. ... [They] have been known to engage in brinkmanship with their superiors. ... [ENTPs] like to spar verbally with their loved ones." OK, he nailed me. As an example of how uncanny the type sorter can be, take Bill Clinton, who Keirsey classifies as an ESFP. In Keirsey's book Please Understand Me II , ESFP's are described as "inclined to be impulsive and self-indulgent, which makes them vulnerable to seduction. ... Pleasure seems to be an end in itself ... they will do what they feel like in the moment rather than what is good for them in the long run ... blaming someone else if things don't turn out well. ... Intent on pleasing everybody, [ESFPs] can appear fickle, even promiscuous, to other types." On the other hand, maybe Clinton is just too hotblooded. Ease of Use: Good. I recommend taking the Temperament Sorter II and ignoring the Character Sorter, which I found confusing and not particularly accurate. Applicability: High. I feel I now understand better why I keep acting that way. It's also given me the sly sense that I know why other people are acting their way. Of course, that's very ENTP of me. Gandhi Explanation: According to Keirsey, Gandhi is an Idealist (an NF), what else? More specifically, an INFJ. "INFJs have an unusually strong desire to contribute to the welfare of others. ... INFJs are scarce, little more than one percent of the population, which is too bad, considering their usefulness in the social order." INTELLIGENCE Until Harvard professor Howard Gardner came along, intelligence was like the Soviet Union: It was large, permanent, and unified. Then in 1983 he published his book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences , which cleaved intelligence into seven components. Recently, like a breakaway republic, Gardner has added an eighth intelligence and is considering a ninth. Gardner rejects the notion that intelligence is a "single, general capacity" that can be measured by taking a test. He believes an intelligence is the ability to "solve problems or create products" in a way that society values--that having it must have conferred an evolutionary advantage to us, and that there is biological evidence for it. That is, an intelligence can be destroyed due to brain injury, which could be called the "man who mistook his wife for a hat" criterion. Gardner says if you excel at one type of intelligence, it has no bearing on whether you'll be skilled at another. Instead of burdening people with eight ways to be inadequate instead of one, multiple intelligence advocates says the theory liberates people to find their own set of strengths. The seven original intelligences are: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal (my favorite, since I have a genius for self-absorption). The latest addition is naturalist intelligence. Gardner defines it as "the ability to recognize and classify plants, minerals and animals." Gardner says you can see it in action in people who know every kind of dinosaur, or sneaker, or automobile. He is also considering adding existential intelligence, which, he says, refers to the inclination to ask: "Who are we? Where do we come from? What's it all about? Why do we die?" This could also be known as the "Oy gevalt " intelligence. Since I felt that his theory left out people who are skilled at the use of the senses of taste and smell, I lobbied him to add culinary intelligence. Gardner wasn't biting. I decided to forgo making a pitch for my own area of brilliance: procrastination intelligence. One of Gardner's missions is to apply his work to the classroom, since he believes schools are designed by people excelling in linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences to reward people who share those intelligences. He also believes that while our propensity toward certain types of intelligence is inborn, our abilities are not fixed. Understanding our areas of strength and weakness, he says, can provide more self-awareness and help users move to a "higher level of skill." Ease of Use: Fair. Gardner says, "Common sense, self-observation, and talking to others should suffice to tell you what is distinctive about your mind." But we want a quiz, Dr. Gardner! One is available in the book 7 Kinds of Smart: Identifying and Developing Your Many Intelligences , by Thomas Armstrong, which offers choices such as, "I enjoy entertaining myself or others with tongue twisters, nonsense rhymes, or puns" and "I find it difficult to sit still for long periods of time." The MIDAS Web site provides descriptions of the intelligences, links to other multiple intelligence sites, and sells multiple intelligence testing materials (prices range from $10 to $35). Applicability: Assessing multiple intelligences probably has most value for schoolchildren or people who feel they have made a wrong career choice. Gandhi Explanation: In Frames of Mind Gardner writes that Gandhi exemplified interpersonal intelligence. BLOOD TYPE What would Hippocrates think of a recent best seller that asserted that our health, diet, and even our personality are determined by our blood type? He would probably get to work on The Bile Bible . But if Hippocrates were Japanese, he wouldn't be at all surprised. They've been obsessed with blood type and personality for almost 30 years. They also choose mates with "compatible" blood types and their corporations assemble work teams based on blood type. Luckily, the Japanese economy died in time to save us from the corporate bloodletting fad. Until now. In Eat Right for Your Type , naturopath Peter J. D'Adamo writes that our ancient genetic heritage is represented today in the four human blood groups--O, A, B, and AB--and that we must follow the nutritional dictates that evolution laid down. He says Type O is the most ancient blood group, the one of the carnivorous big-game hunter, the self-reliant, risk-taking optimist. A later mutation is Type A, he writes, that of people adapting to an agrarian diet, who were cooperative, law-abiding, yet high-strung. Next came Type B from the Mongolian nomads, the most flexible and creative of the blood types. Finally, a modern quirk, is the rare AB, people who are somewhat confused, edgy, sensitive, yet charismatic. According to D'Adamo, eat the right foods for your type and your immune system will be strengthened and you'll lose weight. Unfortunately, D'Adamo's understanding of human origins is, according to Dr. Eric Meikle of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, "completely worthless." According to Meikle, there is no evidence that Type O is the earliest blood type--quite the opposite since A and B occur in chimpanzees. Nor is it likely that humans went from being primarily carnivores to omnivores. Among living hunter-gatherers, he says, most of their calories come from vegetable matter, because bagging game is difficult. "People who are able to eat the most meat are agriculturists," says Meikle. "They keep [animals], raise them, and eat them." Not surprisingly, this kind of information is of little interest when you've got a new companion volume ( Cook Right for Your Type ) to your best seller. Greg Kelly, a naturopath who works in D'Adamo's practice says, "It's not a productive way for me to spend my time debating with people who have a different belief system. We try to help sick people get better." Ease of Use: Ouch. If you know your blood type, it is easy. If you don't, march down to the Red Cross, donate a pint, and they'll tell you. Applicability: Scientific questions aside, I'm an AB (OK, OK, I am charismatic), and I'm not following any diet that encourages me to eat a lot of snails. Gandhi Explanation: None. But D'Adamo's promotional materials do quote Elizabeth Hurley (Type O), in a Cosmopolitan interview, saying she read D'Adamo's "absurd book," followed his plan, and "lost an astounding amount of weight."

test

20050

Temperance Kills First, to prevent any misunderstanding, the warning: Alcohol, when abused, is vicious, dangerous stuff. Each year about 100,000 Americans die alcohol-related deaths. No one should drink and drive or drink to excess. Some people--teen-agers, people on contraindicated medications, pregnant women, and those who have trouble controlling their consumption--should avoid alcohol, period. And all that you know already. Here is what you may not know--or may know only fuzzily. For most people of middle age and beyond, one drink a day helps prevent heart disease and makes you less likely to die prematurely. After one or (for men) two drinks, bad effects swamp the good--dosage is everything! But on average the positive cardiovascular effect of moderate drinking is not small, and it is not in dispute. Epidemiologists figure that if all Americans became teetotalers tomorrow, about 80,000 more people might die each year of heart disease. So there are lives on both sides of the equation. One of those lives might, just as an example, belong to my father. He is 69, has mild hypertension (controlled with medication) and, but for the rare social occasion, doesn't drink. He has read some news reports suggesting moderate alcohol use may yield benefits, but his doctor has never mentioned such benefits, and my father has never given a thought to changing his drinking habits. And, in the standard view of public health officialdom, that is as it should be: People should not be encouraged to drink, even in moderation, and alcohol should not be linked with better health. The trouble is that moderate drinking is linked with better health. We don't know exactly why; some evidence suggests alcohol--of whatever sort, by the way, not just red wine--stimulates "good" (HDL, for high density lipoprotein) cholesterol and may help prevent blood clotting. But we do know the effects: On average, if you're over about 40, a drink a day will reduce your chances of heart trouble. "Besides the association between smoking and lung cancer, I think this is the most consistent association I've seen in the literature," says Eric Rimm, a Harvard epidemiologist. Research has shown heart benefits consistently since the 1970s with, Rimm guesses, 70 or 80 studies of 30 to 35 countries by now. Not surprisingly, he has a drink on most days. Alcohol also causes harm, of course. It can increase chances of breast cancer, cirrhosis, accidents, and so on. Heart disease, however, is an enormous cause of death; improve those odds, and the net effect is significantly to the good. Last December, the New England Journal of Medicine reported the results of the biggest and probably best mortality study yet conducted, one that followed almost half a million people over nine years. It found that, after netting out all causes of death, moderate drinkers over 30 were 20 percent less likely than nondrinkers to die prematurely. But there are a lot of people like my father out there: uninformed or vaguely informed or not thinking about it. In 1995, a free market advocacy group called the Competitive Enterprise Institute commissioned a survey asking people whether they believed "that scientific evidence exists showing that moderate consumption of alcohol, approximately one or two drinks per day, may reduce the risk of heart disease for many people." Only 42 percent of those who responded said they did, and a majority of those believed, wrongly, that the potential benefits come only from wine. The evidence on alcohol and health is now more than 20 years old--so why the confusion? Two groups have a stake in getting the word out, but one of them, the alcohol industry, is effectively forbidden to do so. Every bottle of alcohol carries a government warning label, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has never permitted ads or labels to carry any health claims, even mild ones. (For more on rejected health claims, click here.) Given that the government restricts health claims even for innocuous foods such as orange juice and eggs, it's reasonable to decide that booze merchants are the wrong people to entrust with public education about drinking. That leaves only one other constituency for getting the word out: the public health community. Its approach, however, might charitably be called cautious--or, less charitably, embarrassed mumbling. For example, the authors of the aforementioned New England Journal study characterized their finding of a 20 percent mortality reduction as "slight." The accompanying editorial called it "small." I phoned Michael J. Thun, one of the study's authors and an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society, and asked him whether a 20 percent mortality reduction is indeed small in the world of epidemiology. "It's a sizable benefit in terms of prolonged survival," he said. Why not say so? "Messages about alcohol don't come out the way you say them when they're broadcast," he replied. "There's been a very long history in society of problems with alcohol." The British health authorities, in their 1995 guidelines ("Sensible Drinking"), say that people who drink very little or not at all and are in an age group at high risk for heart disease should "consider the possibility that light drinking might benefit their health." But American authorities balk even at such a modest suggestion. And so the U.S. official nutritional guidelines say just this about potential benefits: "Current evidence suggests that moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk for coronary heart disease in some individuals." They then go on to recite a litany of risks (for the text, click here). Similarly, the American Heart Association's official recommendation advises, "If you drink, do so in moderation." It goes on to say heart disease is lower in moderate drinkers but then warns of other dangers and cautions against "guidelines to the general public" that encourage drinking (for the full text, click here). See for yourself, but I think the message most people would get from both sources is "Drinking isn't all bad, but eschew it anyway." Iasked Ronald Krauss--a doctor who, as the immediate past chairman of the American Heart Association's nutrition committee, helped write that statement--whether it was aggressive enough. "We don't have much leeway around that 'one or two drinks a day,' " he said, and what isn't known is whether encouraging moderate drinking will also encourage excessive drinking. The public health people understandably dread creating more drunks, more broken marriages, more crime, more car wrecks. "When somebody calls you up saying, 'You're putting out a message to people to drink, and my daughter just got killed last night because of some drunk,' that's the other side of the equation," Thun says. "There are substantial numbers of people out there who are looking for justification to drink more than they should." Areal worry. But there are lives, again, on both sides of the equation. The question, then, is what would happen if the public health folks ran a campaign saying, for example, "Just One Drink" or "Drink a Little--Not a Lot." Would people's drinking habits improve, or would we create a nation of drunks--or what? The answer is: Nobody knows. What is surprising, given the public health community's usual eagerness to save lives, is that no one is trying to find out. It is simply assumed that too many people will do the wrong thing. "People have a very hard time with complicated messages," says Thun. No doubt some people do. But is it really so hard to understand that a glass a day may help save your life if you're of middle age or beyond, but that more than that is dangerous? Presumably an avoidable heart attack is equally tragic whether the cause is too much alcohol or too little. To continue today's policy of muttering and changing the subject verges perilously on saying not just that too much alcohol is bad for you but that ignorance is good for you. ENDNOTES Note 1 By law, the label on alcoholic beverages reads: GOVERNMENT WARNING: (1) According to the Surgeon General, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects. (2) Consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems. Back Note 2 The law forbids "curative and therapeutic claims" in alcohol marketing "if such statement is untrue in any particular or tends to create a misleading impression." In practice, the BATF interprets this to mean that any health claim must be fully balanced and says it "considers it extremely unlikely that such a balanced claim would fit on a normal alcoholic beverage label." The only health statement the bureau has said it will accept is a four page government report, complete with 34 footnotes. (You can read that report by clicking here.) According to documents obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in its lawsuit to have the current policy overturned, the statements that the bureau has barred include the following: "Several medical authorities say that a glass or two of wine enjoyed daily is not only a pleasant experience but can be beneficial to an adult's health." "Having reviewed modern research on the benefits of modest wine consumption, we believe that our wine, when enjoyed with wholesome food, will promote health and enhance the pleasure of life." Currently the wine industry is pushing--so far without success--for approval of wine labels that read "To learn the health effects of moderate wine consumption, send for the federal government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans"--followed by the Agriculture Department's address and Web site. Back Note 3 Excerpts from the U.S. government's current (1995) dietary guidelines (click here for the full text) include the following: Current evidence suggests that moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk for coronary heart disease in some individuals. However, higher levels of alcohol intake raise the risk for high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, certain cancers, accidents, violence, suicides, birth defects, and overall mortality (deaths). Too much alcohol may cause cirrhosis of the liver, inflammation of the pancreas, and damage to the brain and heart. Heavy drinkers also are at risk of malnutrition because alcohol contains calories that may substitute for those in more nutritious foods. If you drink alcoholic beverages, do so in moderation, with meals, and when consumption does not put you or others at risk. Moderation is defined as no more than one drink per day for women and no more than two drinks per day for men. Count as a drink-- --12 ounces of regular beer (150 calories) --5 ounces of wine (100 calories) --1.5 ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits (100 calories) Back Note 4 Here is the American Heart Association's recommendation on alcohol: If you drink, do so in moderation. The incidence of heart disease in those who consume moderate amounts of alcohol (an average of one to two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women) is lower than in nondrinkers. However, with increased intake of alcohol, there are increased public health dangers, such as alcoholism, high blood pressure, obesity, stroke, suicide, and accidents. In light of these and other risks, the AHA believes it is not advisable to issue guidelines to the general public that may lead some to increase their intake of alcohol or start drinking if they do not already do so. It is best to consult with your doctor for advice on consuming alcohol in moderation (no more than 2 drinks per day). Back If you missed your government warning, click here. And here, again, is additional information on the BATF's onerous restrictions on health claims, the U.S. government's current dietary guidelines dealing with alcohol, and the American Heart Association's recommendation on alcohol.

test

20053

Thank Heaven for Little Girls Is it tasteless to suggest of JonBenet Ramsey--the cute, blond 6-year-old from Colorado who was strangled to death a few weeks ago--that it is her grisly death, rather than her career as a juvenile beauty queen, that makes her so uncannily resemble a girl in a fairy tale? For while a pageant princess is merely tacky, a murdered pageant princess takes her place in the illustrious line of pretty young girls in what, pace multiculturalists, we might call our collective lore, to meet, or at least be threatened with, a gruesome end. Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, Gretel, Alice--there is an intimate connection in our culture, it would seem, between being a sweet young miss and getting garroted. By curious coincidence, this fairy-tale conjunction of appealing nymphets and gory murder is currently the subject of an unusual show at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York: an exhibition of eccentrically magnificent watercolors by the late painter and writer Henry Darger. If Darger were alive today, he would be fascinated by the story of JonBenet. Darger collected clippings on the subject of little girls, murdered and otherwise, and went on to write and illustrate a truly amazing, Scheherazadean 15,145-page epic about seven cute prepubescent sisters being tortured by brutish men who like to capture little girls in order to enslave them and torture them and take their clothes off. In the course of Darger's story--titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnean War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion --the sisters (the Vivian Girls) manage to escape from the men (the Glandelinians) time and time again, but countless less fortunate girl-slaves are spectacularly mutilated and slaughtered along the way. Darger is what is known as an "outsider" artist--which is to say that he didn't receive any formal art training; was not, during his lifetime, part of the art world; and was exposed very little, if at all, to traditional art in general. As such, he is presumed to have produced his work out of some unusually pure sort of inner compulsion, rather than in response to other art. Darger spent nearly all his life living alone in a rented room in Chicago, earning his living as a janitor in a hospital during the day, going to Mass frequently, and coming home at night to work on his paintings and his writing. He was born in 1892, sent to a Catholic boys home at 8, and then placed in an institution for the feebleminded, from which he escaped at the age of 16. Shortly before his death in 1973, after Darger moved out to a nursing home, his landlord opened up his room and discovered, amid piles of presumably artistic debris (hundreds of pairs of smashed eyeglasses, balls of string, old pairs of shoes, scores of empty Pepto-Bismol bottles), one 2,600-page autobiography, an 11-year weather log, 87 watercolors, 67 pencil drawings, and the tale of the Vivian Girls. The Darger watercolors on exhibit include both peacetime tableaux of tiny lassies, some naked, some in dresses, disporting themselves among butterflies and enormous flowers and odd little birds--and scenes of maniacal carnage, in which the same tiny lassies are strangled naked (distorted faces, tongues stuck out) and disemboweled by merciless Glandelinians. (Presumably in anticipation of a fainter-hearted audience, the gorier pictures were excluded from last year's Darger exhibition at the University of Iowa, of which this show is an expanded version.) Some paintings combine the two types of scenes, with comic nonchalance. In one, a group of placid girls jump rope while immediately behind them lie the severed heads of three men, horrified expressions on their faces, and pairs of disembodied hands (their own? their murderers?) still clenched around their necks. In all paintings, the colors are extraordinary and fantastical--a cross between Yellow Submarine and a pastel version of Matisse. Darger produced a lot of his little-girl pictures by tracing comic strips or magazine illustrations (on occasion he cut pictures out and stuck them on the paintings directly). In some works he transposed the illustrations more or less intact; in others he stripped off the girls' clothes and added penises (all his naked girls have penises). Several images appear over and over again in Darger's work, often within the same painting--a girl mixing something in a bowl, a girl sitting on a fence, a girl running fearfully away from something, her school bag flying out behind her. Often these repeated images are rendered identically (same colors, no alterations in the pose), and sometimes they even appear next to each other in series of as many as eight. But the effect is not at all proto-Warhol. It's subtler, less programmatic. It's reminiscent, if anything, of those groups of angels or monks or soldiers in medieval manuscripts in which some of the figures are identical to each other, and others only slightly different--but the repetition seems to be employed for the purpose of visual economy, in order not to divert attention from the picture's central theme, rather than to draw attention to repetition or image-making itself. Of the enormous quantity of material Darger produced, his watercolors have received the lion's share of attention. The Museum of American Folk Art did sponsor a reading of passages from the written version of Vivian Girls . Still, it's a pity there's none of Darger's writing in the exhibition itself, because it's marvelous, strange stuff, quite as startling as the paintings--in dizzying magnitude as well as vividness, since in the written version, Darger's gory battle scenes extend for hundreds of pages. Take this excerpt, for instance (don't read this if you're squeamish): Indeed the screams and pleads of the victims could not be described, and thousands of mothers went insane over the scene, or even committed suicide. ... About nearly 56,789 children were literally cut up like a butcher does a calf, after being strangled or slain, in all ways, indeed the sights of the bloody windrows [sic] , with their intestines exposed or gushed out, was a sight that no one could bear to witness without losing their reason. Hearts of children were hung up by strings to the walls of houses, so many of the bleeding bodies had been cut up that they looked as if they had gone through a machine of knives. The writing also complicates the naked-girl scenes in the pictures, since it combines vintage Darger bloodthirstiness with the gentlest, softest grandpa porn. For instance, "The little girls were even glad to leave the building, which they hastily did after looking for their clothes which they could not find, having to leave in their nighties." The outsider-art movement responsible for raising Darger from obscurity to fame is a rapidly expanding niche of the art world that has come into its own in this country in the past decade or so: The fifth annual Outsider Art Fair took place a couple of weeks ago in New York; there is a new federally funded museum devoted to outsider art in Baltimore. These days, pieces by the most popular outsider artists, of which Darger is one, are priced in the mid to high five-figures. But while the notion of outsider art has proved an effective marketing concept, it is often an unfortunate interpretive one--outsider artists tend to attract a particularly crude and irritating kind of psycho-biographical analysis. Chief culprit in Darger's case is one John MacGregor, an art historian to whom Darger's former landlord, now his executor, has bequeathed semi-exclusive access to some of the Darger material, and who is thus the main disseminator of Darger criticism. Despite the fact that virtually nothing is known about Darger's inner life, MacGregor (typically, for a critic of outsider art) writes confidently about how compulsive Darger was; how he couldn't control his urge to produce all that crazy stuff; how he couldn't distinguish between fantasy and reality; how he was a potential serial killer; how he got sexually excited writing descriptions of burning forests. MacGregor careers from the vulgar Freudian to the idiosyncratically bizarre--for instance, "The trauma of [Darger's mother's] death was represented in his later life by an obsessional preoccupation with weather." "Clearly," MacGregor wrote in a 1992 exhibition catalog, "Darger was not free." It's true that Darger's more gruesome pictures can be a little disturbing. But think of Darger in the context either of children's books and cartoons (anything from Tom & Jerry to the terrifyingly brutal but also extremely popular German children's book Strumpelpeter ) or of contemporary art (Maggie Robbins' 1989 "Barbie Fetish," for instance--a naked Barbie doll stuck all over with little nails), and it's MacGregor who begins to look like the outsider. Indeed, seen in a contemporary light, Darger begins to look like a progenitor of that rather common, campy sensibility--what might be called Mouseketeer Gothic--that sees angelic pop-culture figures as actually creepy and frightening. (Think "It's a Small World" or David Lynch.) It's ironic, too, that critics such as MacGregor persist in seeing Darger as an unself-conscious obsessive, unable to separate his life from his created fantasy world, since in fact Darger's work is full of precisely the sort of self-referentiality that in a contemporary insider artist would be read as a rather ordinary example of postmodern detachment. Many of Darger's watercolors, for instance, include depictions of framed pictures whose images are indistinguishable from the images outside them. In the written epic, Darger himself appears as several different characters, on both sides of the conflict--private Darger, Darger the war correspondent, volcanology expert Hendro Dargar, etc. Darger's very title draws attention to the fact that the epic takes place "in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal." And the written version of Darger's epic even contains a number of amusing references to the strange task of drawing and writing about Darger's own grisly subject. To wit: About noon, a frenzied mob of Glandelinians came swarming for the prison of Violet and her sisters. The standards they followed were the heads and even gashed bodies of six beautiful little children, with their intestines protruding from their bellies, and every one of these were on pikes dripping with blood. ... [When Violet and her sisters appeared] they thrust up on to their windows the heads and bodies of these lovely children, and managed to cast them inside amongst them. Then, bursting into the doors, they thrust the heads into their laps, ordering them to make a copy of them in pencil. Although it seems to them that they would die of horror, [Violet and her sisters] thought it best to obey. ... [T]hey started to draw the hideous bodies and heads, being good at drawing pictures in the most perfect form. What to make of this? Depending on your taste, you might conclude that Darger is indeed a deranged outsider confusing himself with his characters. Or you might see him as a latter-day Grimm, in whose macabre universe getting your intestines torn out and sketching other children's severed heads are regrettable but quite ordinary parts of life as a little girl. On either interpretation, though, the paintings remain extraordinary, and extraordinarily beautiful.

test

20052

The Pickup Artists Sometimes when a man and woman first meet, the man speaks words so true, so stirring, that the woman is helpless to resist. See if you can identify the world-class smooth operators who spoke these opening lines: 1) "I could get lost in those blue eyes." 2) "You've got eyes like Julia Roberts'--they're so big." [If this fails, follow with:] "Your eyes haunt me." 3) "You're really beautiful, you know that? ... Call me, it'll be fun." 4) "You're as pretty as my wife." Sure, you were tempted to guess Bill Clinton for all four, but the answers are: 1) Clinton; 2) Leonardo DiCaprio; 3) Jerry Springer; 4) Frank Gifford. This month the tabs explore the sexual gambits of famous men. Chief among them is the commander in chief. The Star breaks news this week with an account by a flight attendant on Clinton's 1992 campaign plane of an alleged sexual assault by him. The plane was called Longhorn One (Clinton had to settle for this name; Long Dong Silver and Monkey Business were already taken) and is described by the National Enquirer as the "lust-crazed Bill Clinton campaign jet." The plane has figured prominently in the tabloid universe in recent weeks. The Enquirer quotes an "insider" as saying, "Bill Clinton had his own 'Mile-High Club' up in the front of the plane." And the Star last week ran pictures of Clinton arm in arm with, and with his hand on the leg of, flight attendant Debra Schiff, who later went on to become a White House receptionist. But it is the account of flight attendant Cristy Zercher that fleshes out the Clinton seduction style. His opening comment to her was Answer 1, above. And Zercher claims that late one night, while almost everyone was sleeping--including Hillary, who was about six feet from Zercher's jump seat--Clinton came over to talk. He laid his head on Zercher's shoulder, asked her to talk about herself and, for 40 minutes, on and off, rubbed the side of her left breast. "I thought, 'Is he really doing what I think he's doing?' " she recalls. While feeling her breast, he also wanted to feel her pain. When she mentioned she was divorced, Clinton began asking repeatedly of the marriage, "Was the sex at least good?" On another occasion, Zercher says, she pushed open an unlocked lavatory door to find Clinton standing there, unzipped. She says he said to her, "Well, why don't you come in and shut the door?" Then there was the time he saw the flight attendants reading Gennifer Flowers' interview in Penthouse . Zercher says Clinton kept asking them what the best part was. Schiff finally said that it was Flowers' comment that he was good at giving oral sex. "That's pretty accurate," Zercher recalls him saying. "It's one of my favorite things." He also told them that one thing he was afraid of reporters uncovering was a story about a couple who were friends of his. They were getting divorced because the wife found the husband cheating on her with barnyard animals. Zercher recalls her reaction: "My God, can you imagine if he becomes president that we were sitting here talking about farm animals--and he's the one that brought it up." Finally, there's the orange incident. Clinton got a fruit basket that contained an orange that was, in Zercher's words, "shrivelled and deformed--it looked like a woman's sexual organ." Clinton brought it to the galley to show the flight attendants. He said: "I'm going to keep this. This is so great because I haven't been getting any of this lately." He carried it around and flashed it at Zercher for the next two weeks, until someone finally had to take the deformed orange away from the future leader of the free world. This isn't the first time Zercher's name has surfaced. In a 1994 Washington Post story she says that after being contacted by reporter Michael Isikoff, who wanted to know about events on the Clinton plane, she relayed news of the phone call to Debra Schiff, who, in turn, relayed it to Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey. Zercher says Lindsey called her and urged her to say "all positive things" about her experiences. It's become a pattern in reports of Clinton's sexual advances that friends of the women in question confirm the advance but often say it wasn't unwelcome. Sure enough, a Zercher friend tells the New York Daily News that Zercher, who is now an executive assistant in New Jersey, told her several years ago that Clinton groped her and grabbed her breasts. But instead of finding his behavior "humiliating," as she now tells the Star was the case, the friend says she laughed it off. Schiff has also appeared recently in the tabs. The Star has an account from Clinton's former chief White House steward Mike McGrath--who has testified before the grand jury investigating the current White House scandal--about the Saturday that Schiff locked him in the pantry off the Oval Office and reportedly said, "We don't want to be disturbed for 20 minutes." He said he heard Schiff go into the study, where the president was. Twenty minutes later, she let McGrath out. Schiff told the Star the story was "absolutely not true." McGrath also solves the mystery of the account of the stained Kleenex reportedly found by another steward, Bayani Nelvis. McGrath says Nelvis told him he saw Monica Lewinsky emerge from the president's study looking "shaky" and "in shock" in late 1995. Like some of the other women who reportedly emerge from the study, her hair was mussed and her clothes askew. After she left, Nelvis told McGrath, he went into the study, where he found towels smeared with lipstick on the floor. In the world of the tabloids, Clinton's exploits are just an appetizer for someone whose sex life they really care about: Titanic star DiCaprio, who has obviously chosen Clinton as a role model and who, at only 23, has a good chance of surpassing the president's accomplishments. According to the Globe , after he sorrowfully bid adieu at the airport to his latest love, singer Alanis Morissette, he began chatting up a blonde waiting to get on the same plane. He has been on a "date-a-day spree" for almost a year, friends tell the publication. Though DiCaprio has gone out with a string of models and actresses, including Liv Tyler, Claire Danes, Juliette Lewis, and Kate Moss, a friend says he is no snob and that a woman doesn't have to be famous to merit his advances. "Leo's motto is, 'So many girls, so little time.' " In this, too, DiCaprio is like his mentor, Clinton. The Star 's story on the depositions of the Arkansas state troopers who acted as Clinton's bodyguards says of his liaisons, "[S]ome [were] on-going affairs, others just stands of one night or even one hour. The women named included aides, wives of major supporters, executives, reporters, beauty queens, barflies, and even a judge." The Wright brothers probably never anticipated their contribution to priapism but, like Clinton, DiCaprio is also an advocate of airborne sex. For one woman, according to the Globe , he hired a jet. He "served her champagne with fresh strawberries and ice cream, and they made love while looking at the stars." The publication does not mention if any oranges were involved. And both DiCaprio and Clinton have found themselves in a few cock-ups over their sexual escapades. This week the Enquirer reports that while in Cuba, DiCaprio ran into model Naomi Campbell, and the two swam naked at a Havana hotel. But Campbell became outraged when she found out DiCaprio was simultaneously dating an 18-year-old Cuban model. Later, however, DiCaprio and Campbell were seen together in Paris and London, although the New York Post quotes a Campbell representative who says the two are just "good friends." There is yet another DiCaprio love triangle, the Star reports this week. According to the publication, DiCaprio was smitten with actress Elizabeth Berkley, but in a strange Cyrano-like move, he had a friend conduct a phone romance for him. During one phone call, Berkley's boyfriend picked up the receiver and became furious. DiCaprio's friend told the boyfriend to meet him in front of the New York hotel where DiCaprio and his pals were staying. A brawl ensued, although DiCaprio emerged from the hotel bar only after the fight, to smoke a cigarette. As for the black eye DiCaprio is now sporting, the Globe reports that the actor was accidentally hit by a men's room door at another New York bar. All these high jinks have the Globe worried that DiCaprio could end up with the same medical condition for which the Star says Clinton is receiving treatment. ("Clinton has secretly begun therapy for sexual addiction in a bid to save his presidency," the publication reports.) According to the Globe , DiCaprio is still only a sex addict in training. To avoid this fate, a "pal" warns, the actor "needs to settle down and find out what real love is all about." No one is worrying about the fate of talk show host Jerry Springer. The Star labels his lines as "dumb and dumber" in an account of how he tried to pick up a "Los Angeles lovely" with an offer to fly her to Chicago and give her tickets to his show. "I burst out laughing--he just looked so desperate," the woman says. Springer does have one thing in common with Clinton: He likes to use staffers to approach women for him. The Star reports that Clinton, while governor, would spot women in the audience while he was speaking. According to one trooper, he would then say: "The lady in the red dress, the lady in the green dress ... would you go get me her name and phone number? She has that come-hither look." Springer's approach is similar, says the publication. "He peeks at the audience before the show to pick out pretty girls, then sends crew members to get their phone numbers," says an ex-staffer. Perhaps no one's opening line is lamer than Frank Gifford's. "You're as pretty as my wife" was his pathetic, yet successful, approach with Suzen Johnson, the former flight attendant with whom the Globe taped him having sex. (Perhaps the lesson here is that guys with sex problems should take Amtrak.) But now the Enquirer reports there's hope for men who stray in even the most public ways. After being wooed back for almost a year, Gifford's wife and talk show hostess Kathie Lee has told a friend, she forgives him. "At first I thought I'd die. But now I've come to love Frank more than ever," Kathie Lee told the friend who told the Enquirer . "And I know our love will last forever!"

test

20058

The Gamer The USAir Arena sits on the edge of the Beltway, old and dim, not much more than a big gymnasium. The Washington Bullets play here, often quite badly. They haven't made the playoffs in eight years. They were supposed to be better this year but have found ways to enforce the tradition of mediocrity. The arena is usually sold out--technically--but with plenty of empty seats, the signature of a town full of lawyers and big shots who aren't sure they want to be sports fans. But on Friday, Feb. 21, everything was different. A strange and powerful gravitational force surrounded that stale and unloved arena that night. People swarmed the access road outside, begging for tickets. The mayor of Washington showed up, and the coach of the Redskins, and then, to snarl traffic once and for all, the president of the United States came rolling up in his motorcade. Clinton took his seat with little fanfare. No one played "Hail to the Chief." The crowd applauded politely. The real action was over in the corner, outside the locker room of the Chicago Bulls. Fans were straining at the railings of the stands. Eyes were riveted on the locker room's exit. No one dared look away. The great one was about to emerge. When he finally appeared, people did not clap--they shouted, screamed, as guards told them to back off. "Michael! Michael!" Michael Jordan didn't look up. His head was bowed as he jogged toward the court. Everywhere he goes, people shout his name. He has mastered the art of not noticing them. Jordan is smoother than everyone else--his movements, his skin, the top of his shaved head. He looks polished. Next to Jordan, the other Bulls are big slabs of meat with protruding limbs. Luc Longley: a human ham hock. Dennis Rodman: all knuckles and knees and elbows and tattoos and nose rings and yellow hair. For Rodman, every night's a full moon. On the radio the other day, sportswriter Frank Deford called Jordan "our Lindbergh." (Was Lindbergh really that good? What was his percentage from three-point range?) This night at the USAir Arena, the sportswriters kept looking at Jordan and saying, "He's Babe Ruth." Like Ruth, Jordan so exceeds the norm as to be an anomaly. Ruth didn't just hit more home runs than anyone else. He hit a lot more home runs than anyone else. How did he do it? OK, he was strong, he used a big, heavy bat, and he had an elegant uppercut swing. But the formula for "greatest-ever" is always mysterious. You can't reduce it to any obvious variables. You just say a god walked among us. Jordan is 34 years old, borderline geriatric, and he still leads the league in scoring, racking up nearly 31 points a game, while the next-highest scorer averages only about 26. How does Jordan do it? He's got that Babe Ruth stuff. The god force. We just have to watch and wonder. For the national anthem Jordan rocked from one leg to the other, still staring at the floor in front of him, while nearby the president lustily sang--or at least moved his mouth dramatically so that even fans across the arena could see him singing. Seconds after tipoff, Jordan launched a turnaround jumper, his new signature shot, hitting nothing but net. That proved to be the anomaly for the next three quarters of the game. Jordan missed a shot, and then he missed four more shots, and he threw the ball out of bounds, and he got slapped with two fouls, and by the end of the first quarter he had stunk up the joint. He had five measly points while his sidekick, Scottie Pippen, had scorched the Bullets for 17. The sportswriters had a potential story line: Jordan might not be the high scorer on his team for the third consecutive game, something that hasn't happened in years. Was Jordan slipping? Were we seeing it tonight? The sportswriters were tapping on their laptops. In a night game, you have to write as the game progresses. It might be too soon to write the end-of-an-era story, but one could hint at it, start practicing the inevitable eulogy. Jordan kept struggling. At one point, he'd taken 14 shots and hit only four. By the end of the third quarter, he'd cobbled together 18 sloppy points to Pippen's authoritative 28. The Bulls were winning by 11 points, but the Bullets were hanging tough. Jordan had been outplayed by their Calbert Cheaney, a streaky player. Then the fourth quarter began. The fourth quarter is Jordan Time. Jordan got free on a fast break. He streaked down the right side of the court, took a pass, veered toward the bucket, and went airborne. The tongue emerged. When the tongue comes out, fans stand up to watch. Jordan, flying, wore a face of absolute manic rage. The dunk was apocalyptic. It was the kind of dunk you wouldn't want a small child to see. It was as though Jordan was funneling all his frustration into a single thermonuclear jam. The fans of both teams roared. The Bullets called a timeout, knowing they'd have no chance if Jordan caught fire. A minute later Jordan hit a pull-up jumper. Then he hit another. One of the young Bullets, Jaren Jackson, tried to smother Jordan and prevent him from getting the ball. Jordan knew what to do: Cheat a little. With his left hand Jordan almost imperceptibly held Jackson--this showed up on the television replay--and then dashed past him toward the hoop, taking a pass and launching himself for a two-handed dunk, hanging on the rim an extra second to make sure everyone knew who was in charge. The next time down the court Jordan hit a wide-open three-point shot. The Bullets kept assigning different players to cover him, but Jordan seemed to be emitting some kind of paralysis beam. Even Jordan's teammates were rooted in place. The game plan was, "Pass it to Jordan." Jordan hit an impossible 15-foot turnaround jumper. Jordan hit foul shots. Jordan hit another three-pointer. Jordan juked right, shook his man, dashed right past 7-foot-7 Gheorghe Muresan, and burgled the backboard for an easy layup. Jordan hit six shots in a row, missed one, then hit again, at which point he was laughing. He knew what everyone else in the arena was thinking: Jordan had done it again! Impossible! A 34-year-old geezer! The paralysis beam still works. Statisticians insist there is no such thing as a "hot hand" in basketball, that accurate shots distribute themselves in random patterns, that just the fact that a player has made several shots in a row does not increase the likelihood that he will make the next one. So we are to believe that Jordan's feat this night--his ability to seize a game and absolutely dominate it in the fourth quarter when everything is on the line--is a fluke. What the statisticians don't realize is that some things in life aren't logical, and that the Jordan phenomenon is one of them. He scored 18 points in the fourth quarter, 36 for the game, making him the high scorer. The Bulls won 103-99. "There's no way Michael was going to let the Bulls lose in front of the president," Johnny Red Kerr, a Hall of Famer and former Bulls coach, said outside the locker room. There has been talk in recent days about human cloning, and you repeatedly hear people mention the idea of cloning Michael Jordan. The New York Times cited the idea of a Jordan clone in its lead editorial. Such talk robs Jordan of his due. It subtly suggests that he is just a "natural athlete" who merely has to walk onto the court and let his DNA take over. The fact is, Jordan's greatest gift is in his head. He dominates the game at 34 even though he can no longer out-quick and out-jump and out-dunk his opponents. When he came into the league he was strictly a slasher, relying on speed and a 42-inch vertical leap. He wasn't considered a top-flight shooter. Now he has this deadly turnaround jumper and routinely hits three-pointers. What do you call someone who changes his game, his style, his tactics, and still comes out on top? A genius. (Come to think of it, didn't Babe Ruth start out as a pitcher?) Like that politician sitting in the stands, Jordan is compulsively competitive. When you apply the lessons of their successes to your life, you get caught short, because the rest of us don't want it that badly. Jordan has to win at everything, at cards, at tennis, at golf (he has lost hundreds of thousands gambling at that game). After the death of his father, Jordan took up the doomed mission of becoming a professional baseball player. "He had balls the size of an elephant to fail in public in another sport," my colleague Tony Kornheiser said before the Bulls game. Bob Greene reports that Jordan--the greatest basketball player of all time--was motivated by a sports fantasy: that he'd be batting for the White Sox in his first professional baseball game, and would hit a home run, round the bases and, never stopping running, just head straight from home plate to the tunnel leading out of the stadium, disappearing in front of the awed crowd. As the USAir Arena emptied out, the sportswriters gathered outside the Bulls' locker room. The president of the United States suddenly appeared a short distance away, heading toward his limo. He saw the press and, for a moment, seemed to be coming toward us. Then he stopped, and just stared. One could imagine that he felt a little hurt when he realized that we didn't want to talk to him. No one even shouted a question. He boarded the limo and left. We went into the locker room, and soon Jordan emerged, already dressed in a perfectly pressed olive suit, his tie knotted tight at the stiff collar of a white shirt. Jordan always dresses this way in public. A professional. "I totally hadn't found my rhythm the first three quarters," Jordan said. "When I found it, things started to click." Sweat popped out on his head in the close-up glare of television lights. Reporters pressed him up against the little wire cage that passes for a locker. He obliged every question, then stepped outside to sign a few autographs. His agent, David Falk, said his client would play as long as he meets his own standards. He'd decide year by year. He's a free agent after this season and if the Bulls want him back they'll have to pay the big money. This year Falk got Jordan $30 million. Next year? Falk wouldn't say what it would take. How would one ever calculate such a thing? Some things are beyond money, beyond numbers. How much would you pay the amber fields, the purple mountains? Someone asked Jordan if he'd stick around town the next day to watch his alma mater, North Carolina, play Maryland. It was a huge game in college basketball. He shook his head. "I got a job to do." Jordan drives to the hoop in Game 2 of the 1991 NBA Championship Series against the Los Angeles Lakers (30 seconds; video only) :

test

51380

TIME IN THE ROUND By FRITZ LEIBER Illustrated by DILLON [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Poor Butcher suffered more than any dictator in history: everybody gave in to him because he was so puny and they were so impregnable! From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, the effect was almost frightening: a silent picture of the beginning of civilization challenging the end of it. Then a small boy caught up with the dog and it rolled over enthusiastically at his feet and the scene was normal again. The small boy, however, seemed definitely pre-civilization. He studied the dog coldly and then inserted a thin metal tube under its eyelid and poked. The dog wagged its stumpy tail. The boy frowned, tightened his grip on the tube and jabbed hard. The dog's tail thumped the cushiony pavement and the four paws beat the air. The boy shortened his grip and suddenly jabbed the dog several times in the stomach. The stiff tube rebounded from the gray, hairless hide. The dog's face split in an upside-down grin, revealing formidable ivory fangs across which a long black tongue lolled. The boy regarded the tongue speculatively and pocketed the metal tube with a grimace of utter disgust. He did not look up when someone called: "Hi, Butch! Sic 'em, Darter, sic 'em!" A larger small boy and a somewhat older one were approaching across the luxurious, neatly cropped grass, preceded by a hurtling shape that, except for a black hide, was a replica of Butch's gray dog. Butch shrugged his shoulders resignedly and said in a bored voice: "Kill 'em, Brute." The gray dog hurled itself on Darter. Jaws gaped to get a hold on necks so short and thick as to be mere courtesy terms. They whirled like a fanged merry-go-round. Three more dogs, one white, one slate blue and one pink, hurried up and tried to climb aboard. Butch yawned. "What's the matter?" inquired Darter's master. "I thought you liked dog fights, Butch." "I do like dog fights," Butch said somberly, without looking around. "I don't like uninj fights. They're just a pretend, like everything else. Nobody gets hurt. And look here, Joggy—and you, too, Hal—when you talk to me, don't just say Butch. It's the Butcher, see?" "That's not exactly a functional name," Hal observed with the judiciousness of budding maturity, while Joggy said agreeably: "All right, Butcher, I suppose you'd like to have lived way back when people were hurting each other all the time so the blood came out?" "I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight. "A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen—and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj—it's contraprogrammed." "Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer. "I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail." "What's a garbage pail?" "I don't know, but it sounds great." The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously. "Aw, quit it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance. Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight. The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think." He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet. "Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?" "How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness. "I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory." "I mean if you could hurt an uninj," Joggy amended. "Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up—I want to think." "About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness. The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again." "You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age." "We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet you didn't." "Oh, yes, I was foolish, too," the older boy confessed readily. "All newborn organisms are self-centered and inconsiderate and ruthless. They have to be. That's why we have uninjes to work out on, and death games and fear houses, so that our emotions are cleared for adult conditioning. And it's just the same with newborn civilizations. Why, long after atom power and the space drive were discovered, people kept having wars and revolutions. It took ages to condition them differently. Of course, you can't appreciate it this year, but Man's greatest achievement was when he learned to automatically reject all violent solutions to problems. You'll realize that when you're older." "I will not!" the Butcher countered hotly. "I'm not going to be a sissy." Hal and Joggy blinked at the unfamiliar word. "And what if we were attacked by bloodthirsty monsters from outside the Solar System?" "The Space Fleet would take care of them," Hal replied calmly. "That's what it's for. Adults aren't conditioned to reject violent solutions to problems where non-human enemies are concerned. Look at what we did to viruses." "But what if somebody got at us through the Time Bubble?" "They can't. It's impossible." "Yes, but suppose they did all the same." "You've never been inside the Time Theater—you're not old enough yet—so you just can't know anything about it or about the reasons why it's impossible," Hal replied with friendly factuality. "The Time Bubble is just a viewer. You can only look through it, and just into the past, at that. But you can't travel through it because you can't change the past. Time traveling is a lot of kid stuff." "I don't care," the Butcher asserted obstinately. "I'm still going to have warfare when I'm World Director." "They'll condition you out of the idea," Hal assured him. "They will not. I won't let 'em." "It doesn't matter what you think now," Hal said with finality. "You'll have an altogether different opinion when you're six." "Well, what if I will?" the Butcher snapped back. "You don't have to keep telling me about it, do you?" The others were silent. Joggy began to bounce up and down abstractedly on the resilient pavement. Hal called in his three uninjes and said in soothing tones: "Joggy and I are going to swim over to the Time Theater. Want to walk us there, Butch?" Butch scowled. "How about it, Butch?" Still Butch did not seem to hear. The older boy shrugged and said: "Oh, well, how about it—Butcher?" The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You said so yourself." "You could walk us over there." "Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't." "While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy." Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS. He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF THE GRASS. With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others. Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master. "Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy." "Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them. Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field. Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away. It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress. The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys. "There's the Theater," Joggy announced. "I know ," the Butcher said irritably. But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp. "My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting." "Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era. "Wrong millennium," Hal said. "Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies." Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?" "They won't let me in, either." "Yes, they will. You're five years old now." "But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully. "The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the difference." Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy. Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury. Hal looked back. "Honestly, the usher will stop you." The Butcher shook his head. "I'm going to think my way in. I'm going to think old." "You won't be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren't allowed in the Time Theater. There's a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside." "Why?" "I don't exactly know, but something." "Hah! I bet they're scared we'd go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement." "They are not. I guess they just know you'd get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don't worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you." "Shut up—I'm thinking I'm World Director," the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically. Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up. But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily. "Do you suppose something's the matter with his circuits?" Joggy whispered. "Maybe he's getting racial memories from the Scands." "Of course not," Hal said irritably. "Brute, get over there," the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed. The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall. "I told you you couldn't fool the usher," Hal said. The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force. "I bet it'll be a bum time view anyway," the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. "And I still don't think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there's an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn't like your looks, he switches on the usher." But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor. "Take it easy, Brute," the Butcher consoled him. "I don't think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow." Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren't there. The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other. They glared at him and one of them said: "A cub!" But he had his arms folded and wasn't looking at them. Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down. The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow. But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys. Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble's surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather. Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony. Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant. "The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era," a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: "Don't do that, Joggy. It's just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it's no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though." The interpreter continued: "The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future." Joggy whispered: "How is it that we can't see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right." "The bubble only shines light out," Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. "Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they're seeing the other way—for instance, they can't see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky." Joggy nodded. "You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it's a kind of hole through time?" "That's right." Hal cleared his throat and recited: "The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you'd be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it." "I see, I guess," Joggy whispered. "But if the hole works for light, why can't the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?" "Why—er—you see, Joggy—" The interpreter took over. "The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering." As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time. He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag. "More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia," a new voice cut in. Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend's back with the other. Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: "Butch!" But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble. "Then how is it, Hal," he asked, "that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don't? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn't the light coming our way disappear, too?" "Well—you see, Joggy, it isn't real light. It's—" Once more the interpreter helped him out. "The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It's more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven't realized how dimly lit the scene is. That's because we're getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them." "Oh, explanations!" murmured one of the newly arrived girls. "The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!" " I like this show," a familiar voice announced serenely. "They cut anybody yet with those choppers?" Hal looked down beside him. "Butch! How did you manage to get in?" "I don't see any blood. Where's the bodies?" "But how did you get in—Butcher?" The Butcher replied airily: "A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I'd been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher." "Butcher, that wasn't honest," Hal said a little worriedly. "You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it's dangerous for you under-fives to be in here." "The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!" one of the girls commented. "Talk about sex favoritism!" She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle. The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble. "Those big dogs—" he began suddenly. "Brute must have smelled 'em." "Don't be silly," Hal said. "Smells can't come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven't any isotopes and—" "I don't care," the Butcher asserted. "I bet somebody'll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling." "You can't travel in a point of view," Hal contradicted, "and that's all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn't real at all, but a—uh—" "I believe," the interpreter cut in smoothly, "that you're thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal. "It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction." "Sissies!" was the Butcher's comment. "You're rather young to be here, aren't you?" the interpreter inquired. The Butcher folded his arms and scowled. The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. "Well, you wouldn't have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself." There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a gripping interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future. "This is getting good," the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat. "Stop being an impulsive mentality," Hal warned him a little nervously. "Hah!" The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer. "That's right," the Butcher approved loudly. "Sock it to 'em!" "Butcher!" Hal admonished. Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down. "A viewing anomaly has occurred," the interpreter announced. "It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period." In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section. "Attaboy!" the Butcher encouraged. Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs. "Oh, boy !" the Butcher cheered in ecstasy. "Butcher, you've done it!" Hal said, aghast. "I sure did," the Butcher agreed blandly, "but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it." "Keep your seats!" the interpreter said loudly. "We are energizing the safeguards!" The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction. Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth. "The safeguards are now energized," the interpreter said. A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience. The first warrior looked her up and down, took one hesitant step forward, then another, then suddenly grabbed her and flung her over his left shoulder, looking around menacingly and swinging his sword in his right hand. "I repeat, the safeguards have been fully energized! Keep your seats!" the interpreter enjoined. In the cubicle, Hal and Joggy gasped, the two girls squeaked, but the Butcher yelled a "Hey!" of disapproval, snatched up something from the floor and darted out through the sphincter. Here and there in the audience, other adults stood up. The emerged warriors formed a ring of swinging swords and questing eyes. Between their legs their wolfish dogs, emerged with them, crouched and snarled. Then the warriors began to fan out. "There has been an unavoidable delay in energizing the safeguards," the interpreter said. "Please be patient." At that moment, the Butcher entered the main auditorium, brandishing a levitator above his head and striding purposefully down the aisle. At his heels, five stocky forms trotted. In a definitely pre-civilization voice, or at least with pre-civilization volume, he bellowed: "Hey, you! You quit that!" The first warrior looked toward him, gave his left shoulder a shake to quiet his wriggling captive, gave his right shoulder one to supple his sword arm, and waited until the dwarfish challenger came into range. Then his sword swished down in a flashing arc. Next moment, the Butcher was on his knees and the warrior was staring at him open-mouthed. The sword had rebounded from something invisible an arm's length above the gnomelike creature's head. The warrior backed a step. The Butcher stayed down, crouching half behind an aisle seat and digging for something in his pocket. But he didn't stay quiet. "Sic 'em, Brute!" he shrilled. "Sic 'em, Darter! Sic 'em, Pinkie and Whitie and Blue!" Then he stopped shouting and raised his hand to his mouth. Growling quite unmechanically, the five uninjes hurled themselves forward and closed with the warrior's wolflike dogs. At the first encounter, Brute and Pinkie were grabbed by the throats, shaken, and tossed a dozen feet. The warriors snarled approval and advanced. But then Brute and Pinkie raced back eagerly to the fight—and suddenly the face of the leading warrior was drenched with scarlet. He blinked and touched his fingers to it, then looked at his hand in horror. The Butcher spared a second to repeat his command to the uninjes. But already the battle was going against the larger dogs. The latter had the advantage of weight and could toss the smaller dogs like so many foxes. But their terrible fangs did no damage, and whenever an uninj clamped on a throat, that throat was torn out. Meanwhile, great bloody stains had appeared on the bodies of all the warriors. They drew back in a knot, looking at each other fearfully. That was when the Butcher got to his feet and strode forward, hand clenching the levitator above his head. "Get back where you belong, you big jerks! And drop that lady!" The first warrior pointed toward him and hissed something. Immediately, a half dozen swords were smiting at the Butcher. "We are working to energize the safeguards," the interpreter said in mechanical panic. "Remain patient and in your seats." The uninjes leaped into the melee, at first tearing more fur than flesh. Swords caught them and sent them spinning through the air. They came yapping back for more. Brute fixed on the first warrior's ankle. He dropped the woman, stamped unavailingly on the uninj, and let out a screech. Swords were still rebounding from the invisible shield under which the Butcher crouched, making terrible faces at his attackers. They drew back, looked again at their bloodstains, goggled at the demon dogs. At their leader's screech, they broke and plunged back into the Time Bubble, their leader stumbling limpingly after them. There they wasted no time on their own ragged sorcerer. Their swords rose and fell, and no repulsor field stayed them. "Brute, come back!" the Butcher yelled. The gray uninj let go his hold on the leader's ankle and scampered out of the Time Bubble, which swiftly dimmed to its original light intensity and then winked out. For once in their very mature lives, all of the adults in the auditorium began to jabber at each other simultaneously. "We are sorry, but the anomaly has made it necessary to collapse the Time Bubble," the interpreter said. "There will be no viewing until further announcement. Thank you for your patience." Hal and Joggy caught up with the Butcher just as Brute jumped into his arms and the woman in gold picked him up and hugged him fiercely. The Butcher started to pull away, then grudgingly submitted. "Cubs!" came a small cold voice from behind Hal and Joggy. "Always playing hero! Say, what's that awful smell, Cynthia? It must have come from those dirty past men." Hal and Joggy were shouting at the Butcher, but he wasn't listening to them or to the older voices clamoring about "revised theories of reality" and other important things. He didn't even squirm as Brute licked his cheek and the woman in gold planted a big kiss practically on his mouth. He smiled dreamily and stroked Brute's muzzle and murmured softly: "We came, we saw, we conquered, didn't we, Brute?"

test

50848

SOLDIER BOY By MICHAEL SHAARA Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It's one thing to laugh at a man because his job is useless and outdated—another to depend on him when it suddenly isn't. In the northland, deep, and in a great cave, by an everburning fire the Warrior sleeps. For this is the resting time, the time of peace, and so shall it be for a thousand years. And yet we shall summon him again, my children, when we are sore in need, and out of the north he will come, and again and again, each time we call, out of the dark and the cold, with the fire in his hands, he will come. — Scandinavian legend Throughout the night, thick clouds had been piling in the north; in the morning, it was misty and cold. By eight o'clock a wet, heavy, snow-smelling breeze had begun to set in, and because the crops were all down and the winter planting done, the colonists brewed hot coffee and remained inside. The wind blew steadily, icily from the north. It was well below freezing when, some time after nine, an army ship landed in a field near the settlement. There was still time. There were some last brief moments in which the colonists could act and feel as they had always done. They therefore grumbled in annoyance. They wanted no soldiers here. The few who had convenient windows stared out with distaste and a mild curiosity, but no one went out to greet them. After a while a rather tall, frail-looking man came out of the ship and stood upon the hard ground looking toward the village. He remained there, waiting stiffly, his face turned from the wind. It was a silly thing to do. He was obviously not coming in, either out of pride or just plain orneriness. "Well, I never," a nice lady said. "What's he just standing there for?" another lady said. And all of them thought: well, God knows what's in the mind of a soldier, and right away many people concluded that he must be drunk. The seed of peace was deeply planted in these people, in the children and the women, very, very deep. And because they had been taught, oh so carefully, to hate war they had also been taught, quite incidentally, to despise soldiers. The lone man kept standing in the freezing wind. Eventually, because even a soldier can look small and cold and pathetic, Bob Rossel had to get up out of a nice, warm bed and go out in that miserable cold to meet him. The soldier saluted. Like most soldiers, he was not too neat and not too clean and the salute was sloppy. Although he was bigger than Rossel he did not seem bigger. And, because of the cold, there were tears gathering in the ends of his eyes. "Captain Dylan, sir." His voice was low and did not carry. "I have a message from Fleet Headquarters. Are you in charge here?" Rossel, a small sober man, grunted. "Nobody's in charge here. If you want a spokesman I guess I'll do. What's up?" The captain regarded him briefly out of pale blue, expressionless eyes. Then he pulled an envelope from an inside pocket, handed it to Rossel. It was a thick, official-looking thing and Rossel hefted it idly. He was about to ask again what was it all about when the airlock of the hovering ship swung open creakily. A beefy, black-haired young man appeared unsteadily in the doorway, called to Dylan. "C'n I go now, Jim?" Dylan turned and nodded. "Be back for you tonight," the young man called, and then, grinning, he yelled "Catch" and tossed down a bottle. The captain caught it and put it unconcernedly into his pocket while Rossel stared in disgust. A moment later the airlock closed and the ship prepared to lift. "Was he drunk ?" Rossel began angrily. "Was that a bottle of liquor ?" The soldier was looking at him calmly, coldly. He indicated the envelope in Rossel's hand. "You'd better read that and get moving. We haven't much time." He turned and walked toward the buildings and Rossel had to follow. As Rossel drew near the walls the watchers could see his lips moving but could not hear him. Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that, and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray spongy clouds and the cold. After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again. The first contact Man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360—the exact date remains unknown—an alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army. When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned, so were the bodies. Apparently the aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something. For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut. In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut. The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak and without respect. Therefore, the army did nothing but spread the news, and Man began to fall back. In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society which had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense Earth had. This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from Earth with a bottle on his hip. An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait, between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage. Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities. This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly. By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly: "Lupus, Lupus—doesn't that mean wolves or something?" Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it. But, when the fear had died down, the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance. "See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home . We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand...." It went on and on while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was. "There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is." Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller ... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of Earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move. "We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet. "Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall and I'm instructed to have you gone by then." For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action. Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine. Dylan had been called up out of a bar—he and Bossio—and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time. He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip. Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of Mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all. Once he had even studied military tactics. He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died—of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet—and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And ... now he was a captain. He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: it made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days, when the wire came loose in his hands. Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut. Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real, there was no time for that. When Rossel came up, Dylan was still sitting. Rossel was so excited he did not notice the wire. "Listen, soldier, how many people can your ship take?" Dylan looked at him vaguely. "She sleeps two and won't take off with more'n ten. Why?" His eyes bright and worried, Rossel leaned heavily against the shack. "We're overloaded. There are sixty of us and our ship will only take forty. We came out in groups, we never thought...." Dylan dropped his eyes, swearing silently. "You're sure? No baggage, no iron rations; you couldn't get ten more on?" "Not a chance. She's only a little ship with one deck—she's all we could afford." Dylan whistled. He had begun to feel light-headed. "It 'pears that somebody's gonna find out first hand what them aliens look like." It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "All right," he said quickly, still staring at the clear-sliced wire, "we'll do what we can. Maybe the colony on Three has room. I'll call Bossio and ask." The colonist had begun to look quite pitifully at the buildings around him and the scurrying people. "Aren't there any fleet ships within radio distance?" Dylan shook his head. "The fleet's spread out kind of thin nowadays." Because the other was leaning on him he felt a great irritation, but he said, as kindly as he could, "We'll get 'em all out. One way or another, we won't leave anybody." It was then that Rossel saw the wire. Thickly, he asked what had happened. Dylan showed him the two clean ends. "Somebody dug it up, cut it, then buried it again and packed it down real nice." "The damn fool!" Rossel exploded. "Who?" "Why, one of ... of us, of course. I know nobody ever liked sitting on a live bomb like this, but I never...." "You think one of your people did it?" Rossel stared at him. "Isn't that obvious?" "Why?" "Well, they probably thought it was too dangerous, and silly too, like most government rules. Or maybe one of the kids...." It was then that Dylan told him about the wire on Lupus V. Rossel was silent. Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky, then he said shakily, "Maybe an animal?" Dylan shook his head. "No animal did that. Wouldn't have buried it, or found it in the first place. Heck of a coincidence, don't you think? The wire at Lupus was cut just before an alien attack, and now this one is cut too—newly cut." The colonist put one hand to his mouth, his eyes wide and white. "So something," said Dylan, "knew enough about this camp to know that a bomb was buried here and also to know why it was here. And that something didn't want the camp destroyed and so came right into the center of the camp, traced the wire, dug it up and cut it. And then walked right out again." "Listen," said Rossel, "I'd better go ask." He started away but Dylan caught his arm. "Tell them to arm," he said, "and try not to scare hell out of them. I'll be with you as soon as I've spliced this wire." Rossel nodded and went off, running. Dylan knelt with the metal in his hands. He began to feel that, by God, he was getting cold. He realized that he'd better go inside soon, but the wire had to be spliced. That was perhaps the most important thing he could do now, splice the wire. All right, he asked himself for the thousandth time, who cut it? How? Telepathy? Could they somehow control one of us? No. If they controlled one, then they could control all, and then there would be no need for an attack. But you don't know, you don't really know. Were they small? Little animals? Unlikely. Biology said that really intelligent life required a sizable brain and you would have to expect an alien to be at least as large as a dog. And every form of life on this planet had been screened long before a colony had been allowed in. If any new animals had suddenly shown up, Rossel would certainly know about it. He would ask Rossel. He would damn sure have to ask Rossel. He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, he pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had—he never had fired a gun. The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow. By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk—maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting.... A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him. He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room, and he wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him. Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man—who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope. "Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that." Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it." "But they have a contract!" The soldier grinned. The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said: "Who cut that wire, Cap?" Dylan swung slowly to look at him. "As far as I can figure, an alien cut it." Rush shook his head. "No. Ain't been no aliens near this camp, and no peculiar animals either. We got a planet-wide radar, and ain't no unidentified ships come near, not since we first landed more'n a year ago." He lifted the rifle and peered through the bore. "Uh-uh. One of us did it." The man had been thinking. And he knew the planet. "Telepathy?" asked Dylan. "Might be." "Can't see it. You people live too close, you'd notice right away if one of you wasn't ... himself. And, if they've got one, why not all?" Rush calmly—at least outwardly calmly—lit his pipe. There was a strength in this man that Dylan had missed before. "Don't know," he said gruffly. "But these are aliens, mister. And until I know different I'm keepin' an eye on my neighbor." He gave Rossel a sour look and Rossel stared back, uncomprehending. Then Rossel jumped. "My God!" Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever comes near here that's as large as a dog?" After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly, the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post them sentries." Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained expression on his face, to put through that call to Three. When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up." Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow. "You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises, within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship." The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering his footprints. The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae; curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He saw that they were armed. He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave. That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility , he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption , and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and that the attack there had probably begun. The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold. Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship. When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan. Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio. Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead—the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust. He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore. Bossio—a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges—Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help. But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people. But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio. After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone. They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship. It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up. In the end, the ship took forty-six people. Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected, rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never understood before, because he had never once been among men in great trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp burning smell—she couldn't get off the ground.

test

50868

THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN By BRYCE WALTON Illustrated by BOB HAYES [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] First one up this tallest summit in the Solar System was a rotten egg ... a very rotten egg! Bruce heard their feet on the gravel outside and got up reluctantly to open the door for them. He'd been reading some of Byron's poems he'd sneaked aboard the ship; after that he had been on the point of dozing off, and now one of those strangely realistic dreams would have to be postponed for a while. Funny, those dreams. There were faces in them of human beings, or of ghosts, and other forms that weren't human at all, but seemed real and alive—except that they were also just parts of a last unconscious desire to escape death. Maybe that was it. "'Oh that my young life were a lasting dream, my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the 'morrow," Bruce said. He smiled without feeling much of anything and added, "Thanks, Mr. Poe." Jacobs and Anhauser stood outside. The icy wind cut through and into Bruce, but he didn't seem to notice. Anhauser's bulk loomed even larger in the special cold-resisting suiting. Jacobs' thin face frowned slyly at Bruce. "Come on in, boys, and get warm," Bruce invited. "Hey, poet, you're still here!" Anhauser said, looking astonished. "We thought you'd be running off somewhere," Jacobs said. Bruce reached for the suit on its hook, started climbing into it. "Where?" he asked. "Mars looks alike wherever you go. Where did you think I'd be running to?" "Any place just so it was away from here and us," Anhauser said. "I don't have to do that. You are going away from me. That takes care of that, doesn't it?" "Ah, come on, get the hell out of there," Jacobs said. He pulled the revolver from its holster and pointed it at Bruce. "We got to get some sleep. We're starting up that mountain at five in the morning." "I know," Bruce said. "I'll be glad to see you climb the mountain." Outside, in the weird light of the double moons, Bruce looked up at the gigantic overhang of the mountain. It was unbelievable. The mountain didn't seem to belong here. He'd thought so when they'd first hit Mars eight months back and discovered the other four rockets that had never got back to Earth—all lying side by side under the mountain's shadow, like little white chalk marks on a tallyboard. They'd estimated its height at over 45,000 feet, which was a lot higher than any mountain on Earth. Yet Mars was much older, geologically. The entire face of the planet was smoothed into soft, undulating red hills by erosion. And there in the middle of barren nothingness rose that one incredible mountain. On certain nights when the stars were right, it had seemed to Bruce as though it were pointing an accusing finger at Earth—or a warning one. With Jacobs and Anhauser and the remainder of the crew of the ship, Mars V , seven judges sat in a semi-circle and Bruce stood there in front of them for the inquest. In the middle of the half-moon of inquisition, with his long legs stretched out and his hands folded on his belly, sat Captain Terrence. His uniform was black. On his arm was the silver fist insignia of the Conqueror Corps. Marsha Rennels sat on the extreme right and now there was no emotion at all on her trim, neat face. He remembered her as she had been years ago, but at the moment he wasn't looking very hard to see anything on her face. It was too late. They had gotten her young and it was too late. Terrence's big, square face frowned a little. Bruce was aware suddenly of the sound of the bleak, never-ending wind against the plastilene shelter. He remembered the strange misty shapes that had come to him in his dreams, the voices that had called to him, and how disappointed he had been when he woke from them. "This is a mere formality," Terrence finally said, "since we all know you killed Lieutenant Doran a few hours ago. Marsha saw you kill him. Whatever you say goes on the record, of course." "For whom?" Bruce asked. "What kind of question is that? For the authorities on Earth when we get back." "When you get back? Like the crews of those other four ships out there?" Bruce laughed without much humor. Terrence rubbed a palm across his lips, dropped the hand quickly again to his belly. "You want to make a statement or not? You shot Doran in the head with a rifle. No provocation for the attack. You've wasted enough of my time with your damn arguments and anti-social behavior. This is a democratic group. Everyone has his say. But you've said too much, and done too much. Freedom doesn't allow you to go around killing fellow crew-members!" "Any idea that there was any democracy or freedom left died on Venus," Bruce said. "Now we get another lecture!" Terrence exploded. He leaned forward. "You're sick, Bruce. They did a bad psych job on you. They should never have sent you on this trip. We need strength, all the strength we can find. You don't belong here." "I know," Bruce agreed indifferently. "I was drafted for this trip. I told them I shouldn't be brought along. I said I didn't want any part of it." "Because you're afraid. You're not Conqueror material. That's why you backed down when we all voted to climb the mountain. And what the devil does Venus—?" Max Drexel's freckles slipped into the creases across his high forehead. "Haven't you heard him expounding on the injustice done to the Venusian aborigines, Captain? If you haven't, you aren't thoroughly educated to the crackpot idealism still infecting certain people." "I haven't heard it," Terrence admitted. "What injustice?" Bruce said, "I guess it couldn't really be considered an injustice any longer. Values have changed too much. Doran and I were part of the crew of that first ship to hit Venus, five years ago. Remember? One of the New Era's more infamous dates. Drexel says the Venusians were aborigines. No one ever got a chance to find out. We ran into this village. No one knows how old it was. There were intelligent beings there. One community left on the whole planet, maybe a few thousand inhabitants. They made their last mistake when they came out to greet us. Without even an attempt at communication, they were wiped out. The village was burned and everything alive in it was destroyed." Bruce felt the old weakness coming into his knees, the sweat beginning to run down his face. He took a deep breath and stood there before the cold nihilistic stares of fourteen eyes. "No," Bruce said. "I apologize. None of you know what I'm talking about." Terrence nodded. "You're psycho. It's as simple as that. They pick the most capable for these conquests. Even the flights are processes of elimination. Eventually we get the very best, the most resilient, the real conquering blood. You just don't pass, Bruce. Listen, what do you think gives you the right to stand here in judgment against the laws of the whole Solar System?" "There are plenty on Earth who agree with me," Bruce said. "I can say what I think now because you can't do more than kill me and you'll do that regardless...." He stopped. This was ridiculous, a waste of his time. And theirs. They had established a kind of final totalitarianism since the New Era. The psychologists, the Pavlovian Reflex boys, had done that. If you didn't want to be reconditioned to fit into the social machine like a human vacuum tube, you kept your mouth shut. And for many, when the mouth was kept shut long enough, the mind pretty well forgot what it had wanted to open the mouth for in the first place. A minority in both segments of a world split into two factions. Both had been warring diplomatically and sometimes physically, for centuries, clung to old ideas of freedom, democracy, self-determinism, individualism. To most, the words had no meaning now. It was a question of which set of conquering heroes could conquer the most space first. So far, only Venus had fallen. They had done a good, thorough job there. Four ships had come to Mars and their crews had disappeared. This was the fifth attempt— Terrence said, "why did you shoot Doran?" "I didn't like him enough to take the nonsense he was handing me, and when he shot the—" Bruce hesitated. "What? When he shot what?" Bruce felt an odd tingling in his stomach. The wind's voice seemed to sharpen and rise to a kind of wail. "All right, I'll tell you. I was sleeping, having a dream. Doran woke me up. Marsha was with him. I'd forgotten about that geological job we were supposed to be working on. I've had these dreams ever since we got here." "What kind of dreams?" Someone laughed. "Just fantastic stuff. Ask your Pavlovian there," Bruce said. "People talk to me, and there are other things in the dreams. Voices and some kind of shapes that aren't what you would call human at all." Someone coughed. There was obvious embarrassment in the room. "It's peculiar, but many faces and voices are those of crew members of some of the ships out there, the ones that never got back to Earth." Terrence grinned. "Ghosts, Bruce?" "Maybe. This planet may not be a dead ball of clay. I've had a feeling there's something real in the dreams, but I can't figure it out. You're still interested?" Terrence nodded and glanced to either side. "We've seen no indication of any kind of life whatsoever," Bruce pointed out. "Not even an insect, or any kind of plant life except some fungi and lichen down in the crevices. That never seemed logical to me from the start. We've covered the planet everywhere except one place—" "The mountain," Terrence said. "You've been afraid even to talk about scaling it." "Not afraid," Bruce objected. "I don't see any need to climb it. Coming to Mars, conquering space, isn't that enough? It happens that the crew of the first ship here decided to climb the mountain, and that set a precedent. Every ship that has come here has had to climb it. Why? Because they had to accept the challenge. And what's happened to them? Like you, they all had the necessary equipment to make a successful climb, but no one's ever come back down. No contact with anything up there. "Captain, I'm not accepting a ridiculous challenge like that. Why should I? I didn't come here to conquer anything, even a mountain. The challenge of coming to Mars, of going on to where ever you guys intend going before something bigger than you are stops you—it doesn't interest me." "Nothing's bigger than the destiny of Earth!" Terrence said, sitting up straight and rigid. "I know," Bruce said. "Anyway, I got off the track. As I was saying, I woke up from this dream and Marsha and Doran were there. Doran was shaking me. But I didn't seem to have gotten entirely awake; either that or some part of the dream was real, because I looked out the window—something was out there, looking at me. It was late, and at first I thought it might be a shadow. But it wasn't. It was misty, almost translucent, but I think it was something alive. I had a feeling it was intelligent, maybe very intelligent. I could feel something in my mind. A kind of beauty and softness and warmth. I kept looking—" His throat was getting tight. He had difficulty talking. "Doran asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. He laughed. But he looked. Then I realized that maybe I wasn't still dreaming. Doran saw it, too, or thought he did. He kept looking and finally he jumped and grabbed up his rifle and ran outside. I yelled at him. I kept on yelling and ran after him. 'It's intelligent, whatever it is!' I kept saying. 'How do you know it means any harm?' But I heard Doran's rifle go off before I could get to him. And whatever it was we saw, I didn't see it any more. Neither did Doran. Maybe he killed it. I don't know. He had to kill it. That's the way you think." "What? Explain that remark." "That's the philosophy of conquest—don't take any chances with aliens. They might hinder our advance across the Universe. So we kill everything. Doran acted without thinking at all. Conditioned to kill everything that doesn't look like us. So I hit Doran and took the gun away from him and killed him. I felt sick, crazy with rage. Maybe that's part of it. All I know is that I thought he deserved to die and that I had to kill him, so I did." "Is that all, Bruce?" "That's about all. Except that I'd like to kill all of you. And I would if I had the chance." "That's what I figured." Terrence turned to the psychologist, a small wiry man who sat there constantly fingering his ear. "Stromberg, what do you think of this gobbledegook? We know he's crazy. But what hit him? You said his record was good up until a year ago." Stromberg's voice was monotonous, like a voice off of a tape. "Schizophrenia with mingled delusions of persecution. The schizophrenia is caused by inner conflict—indecision between the older values and our present ones which he hasn't been able to accept. A complete case history would tell why he can't accept our present attitudes. I would say that he has an incipient fear of personal inadequacy, which is why he fears our desire for conquest. He's rationalized, built up a defense which he's structured with his idealism, foundationed with Old Era values. Retreat into the past, an escape from his own present feelings of inadequacy. Also, he escapes into these dream fantasies." "Yes," Terrence said. "But how does that account for Doran's action? Doran must have seen something—" "Doran's charts show high suggestibility under stress. Another weak personality eliminated. Let's regard it that way. He imagined he saw something." He glanced at Marsha. "Did you see anything?" She hesitated, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "Nothing at all. There wasn't anything out there to see, except the dust and rocks. That's all there is to see here. We could stay a million years and never see anything else. A shadow maybe—" "All right," Terrence interrupted. "Now, Bruce, you know the law regulating the treatment of serious psycho cases in space?" "Yes. Execution." "No facilities for handling such cases en route back to Earth." "I understand. No apologies necessary, Captain." Terrence shifted his position. "However, we've voted to grant you a kind of leniency. In exchange for a little further service from you, you can remain here on Mars after we leave. You'll be left food-concentrates to last a long time." "What kind of service?" "Stay by the radio and take down what we report as we go up the mountain." "Why not?" Bruce said. "You aren't certain you're coming back, then?" "We might not," Terrence admitted calmly. "Something's happened to the others. We're going to find out what and we want it recorded. None of us want to back down and stay here. You can take our reports as they come in." "I'll do that," Bruce said. "It should be interesting." Bruce watched them go, away and up and around the immediate face of the mountain in the bleak cold of the Martian morning. He watched them disappear behind a high ledge, tied together with plastic rope like convicts. He stayed by the radio. He lost track of time and didn't care much if he did. Sometimes he took a heavy sedative and slept. The sedative prevented the dreams. He had an idea that the dreams might be so pleasant that he wouldn't wake up. He wanted to listen to Terrence as long as the captain had anything to say. It was nothing but curiosity. At fifteen thousand feet, Terrence reported only that they were climbing. At twenty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We're still climbing, and that's all I can report, Bruce. It's worth coming to Mars for—to accept a challenge like this!" At twenty-five thousand feet, Terrence reported, "We've put on oxygen masks. Jacobs and Drexel have developed some kind of altitude sickness and we're taking a little time out. It's a magnificent sight up here. I can imagine plenty of tourists coming to Mars one of these days, just to climb this mountain! Mt. Everest is a pimple compared with this! What a feeling of power, Bruce!" From forty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We gauged this mountain at forty-five thousand. But here we are at forty and there doesn't seem to be any top. We can see up and up and the mountain keeps on going. I don't understand how we could have made such an error in our computations. I talked with Burton. He doesn't see how a mountain this high could still be here when the rest of the planet has been worn so smooth." And then from fifty-three thousand feet, Terrence said with a voice that seemed slightly strained: "No sign of any of the crew of the other four ships yet. Ten in each crew, that makes fifty. Not a sign of any of them so far, but then we seem to have a long way left to climb—" Bruce listened and noted and took sedatives and opened cans of food concentrates. He smoked and ate and slept. He had plenty of time. He had only time and the dreams which he knew he could utilize later to take care of the time. From sixty thousand feet, Terrence reported, "I had to shoot Anhauser a few minutes ago! He was dissenting. Hear that, Bruce? One of my most dependable men. We took a vote. A mere formality, of course, whether we should continue climbing or not. We knew we'd all vote to keep on climbing. And then Anhauser dissented. He was hysterical. He refused to accept the majority decision. 'I'm going back down!' he yelled. So I had to shoot him. Imagine a man of his apparent caliber turning anti-democratic like that! This mountain will be a great tester for us in the future. We'll test everybody, find out quickly who the weaklings are." Bruce listened to the wind. It seemed to rise higher and higher. Terrence, who had climbed still higher, was calling. "Think of it! What a conquest! No man's ever done a thing like this. Like Stromberg says, it's symbolic! We can build spaceships and reach other planets, but that's not actual physical conquest. We feel like gods up here. We can see what we are now. We can see how it's going to be—" Once in a while Terrence demanded that Bruce say something to prove he was still there taking down what Terrence said. Bruce obliged. A long time passed, the way time does when no one cares. Bruce stopped taking the sedatives finally. The dreams came back and became, somehow, more real each time. He needed the companionship of the dreams. It was very lonely sitting there without the dreams, with nothing but Terrence's voice ranting excitedly on and on. Terrence didn't seem real any more; certainly not as real as the dreams. The problem of where to put the line between dream and reality began to worry Bruce. He would wake up and listen and take down what Terrence was saying, and then go to sleep again with increasing expectancy. His dream took on continuity. He could return to the point where he had left it, and it was the same—allowing even for the time difference necessitated by his periods of sleep. He met people in the dreams, two girls and a man. They had names: Pietro, Marlene, Helene. Helene he had seen from the beginning, but she became more real to him all the time, until he could talk with her. After that, he could also talk with Marlene and Pietro, and the conversations made sense. Consistently, they made sense. The Martian landscape was entirely different in the dreams. Green valleys and rivers, or actually wide canals, with odd trees trailing their branches on the slow, peacefully gliding currents. Here and there were pastel-colored cities and there were things drifting through them that were alive and intelligent and soft and warm and wonderful to know. ' ... dreams, in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality which brings to the delirious eye more lovely things of paradise and love—and all our own!—than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.... ' So sometimes he read poetry, but even that was hardly equal to the dreams. And then he would wake up and listen to Terrence's voice. He would look out the window over the barren frigid land where there was nothing but seams of worn land, like scabs under the brazen sky. "If I had a choice," he thought, "I wouldn't ever wake up at all again. The dreams may not be more real, but they're preferable." Dreams were supposed to be wishful thinking, primarily, but he couldn't live in them very long. His body would dry up and he would die. He had to stay awake enough to put a little energy back into himself. Of course, if he died and lost the dreams, there would be one compensation—he would also be free of Terrence and the rest of them who had learned that the only value in life lay in killing one's way across the Cosmos. But then he had a feeling Terrence's voice wouldn't be annoying him much more anyway. The voice was unreal, coming out of some void. He could switch off Terrence any time now, but he was still curious. "Bruce—Bruce, you still there? Listen, we're up here at what we figure to be five hundred thousand feet! It is impossible. We keep climbing and now we look up and we can see up and up and there the mountain is going up and up—" And some time later: "Bruce, Marsha's dying! We don't know what's the matter. We can't find any reason for it. She's lying here and she keeps laughing and calling your name. She's a woman, so that's probably it. Women don't have real guts." Bruce bent toward the radio. Outside the shelter, the wind whistled softly at the door. "Marsha," he said. "Bruce—" She hadn't said his name that way for a long time. "Marsha, remember how we used to talk about human values? I remember how you seemed to have something maybe different from the others. I never thought you'd really buy this will to conquer, and now it doesn't matter...." He listened to her voice, first the crazy laughter, and then a whisper. "Bruce, hello down there." Her voice was all mixed up with fear and hysteria and mockery. "Bruce darling, are you lonely down there? I wish I were with you, safe ... free ... warm. I love you. Do you hear that? I really love you, after all. After all...." Her voice drifted away, came back to him. "We're climbing the highest mountain. What are you doing there, relaxing where it's peaceful and warm and sane? You always were such a calm guy. I remember now. What are you doing—reading poetry while we climb the mountain? What was that, Bruce—that one about the mountain you tried to quote to me last night before you ... I can't remember it now. Darling, what...?" He stared at the radio. He hesitated, reached out and switched on the mike. He got through to her. "Hello, hello, darling," he whispered. "Marsha, can you hear me?" "Yes, yes. You down there, all warm and cozy, reading poetry, darling. Where you can see both ways instead of just up and down, up and down." He tried to imagine where she was now as he spoke to her, how she looked. He thought of Earth and how it had been there, years ago, with Marsha. Things had seemed so different then. There was something of that hope in his voice now as he spoke to her, yet not directly to her, as he looked out the window at the naked frigid sky and the barren rocks. "'... and there is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain, But down, my dear; And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley Will never seem fresh or clear For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water In the feathery green of the year....'" The wind stormed over the shelter in a burst of power, buried the sound of his own voice. "Marsha, are you still there?" "What the devil's the idea, poetry at a time like this, or any time?" Terrence demanded. "Listen, you taking this down? We haven't run into any signs of the others. Six hundred thousand feet, Bruce! We feel our destiny. We conquer the Solar System. And we'll go out and out, and we'll climb the highest mountain, the highest mountain anywhere. We're going up and up. We've voted on it. Unanimous. We go on. On to the top, Bruce! Nothing can stop us. If it takes ten years, a hundred, a thousand years, we'll find it. We'll find the top! Not the top of this world—the top of everything . The top of the UNIVERSE !" Later, Terrence's voice broke off in the middle of something or other—Bruce couldn't make any sense out of it at all—and turned into crazy yells that faded out and never came back. Bruce figured the others might still be climbing somewhere, or maybe they were dead. Either way it wouldn't make any difference to him. He knew they would never come back down. He was switching off the radio for good when he saw the coloration break over the window. It was the same as the dream, but for an instant, dream and reality seemed fused like two superimposed film negatives. He went to the window and looked out. The comfortable little city was out there, and the canal flowing past through a pleasantly cool yet sunny afternoon. Purple mist blanketed the knees of low hills and there was a valley, green and rich with the trees high and full beside the softly flowing canal water. The filmy shapes that seemed alive, that were partly translucent, drifted along the water's edge, and birds as delicate as colored glass wavered down the wind. He opened the shelter door and went out. The shelter looked the same, but useless now. How did the shelter of that bleak world get into this one, where the air was warm and fragrant, where there was no cold, from that world into this one of his dreams? The girl—Helene—was standing there leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette. He walked toward her, and stopped. In the dream it had been easy, but now he was embarrassed, in spite of the intimacy that had grown between them. She wore the same casual slacks and sandals. Her hair was brown. She was not particularly beautiful, but she was comfortable to look at because she seemed so peaceful. Content, happy with what was and only what was. He turned quickly. The shelter was still there, and behind it the row of spaceships—not like chalk marks on a tallyboard now, but like odd relics that didn't belong there in the thick green grass. Five ships instead of four. There was his own individual shelter beyond the headquarters building, and the other buildings. He looked up. There was no mountain. For one shivery moment he knew fear. And then the fear went away, and he was ashamed of what he had felt. What he had feared was gone now, and he knew it was gone for good and he would never have to fear it again. "Look here, Bruce. I wondered how long it would take to get it through that thick poetic head of yours!" "Get what?" He began to suspect what it was all about now, but he wasn't quite sure yet. "Smoke?" she said. He took one of the cigarettes and she lighted it for him and put the lighter back into her pocket. "It's real nice here," she said. "Isn't it?" "I guess it's about perfect." "It'll be easy. Staying here, I mean. We won't be going to Earth ever again, you know." "I didn't know that, but I didn't think we ever would again." "We wouldn't want to anyway, would we, Bruce?" "No." He kept on looking at the place where the mountain had been. Or maybe it still was; he couldn't make up his mind yet. Which was and which was not? That barren icy world without life, or this? "' Is all that we see or seem ,'" he whispered, half to himself, "' but a dream within a dream? '" She laughed softly. "Poe was ahead of his time," she said. "You still don't get it, do you? You don't know what's been happening?" "Maybe I don't." She shrugged, and looked in the direction of the ships. "Poor guys. I can't feel much hatred toward them now. The Martians give you a lot of understanding of the human mind—after they've accepted you, and after you've lived with them awhile. But the mountain climbers—we can see now—it's just luck, chance, we weren't like them. A deviant is a child of chance." "Yes," Bruce said. "There's a lot of people like us on Earth, but they'll never get the chance—the chance we seem to have here, to live decently...." "You're beginning to see now which was the dream," she said and smiled. "But don't be pessimistic. Those people on Earth will get their chance, too, one of these fine days. The Conquerors aren't getting far. Venus, and then Mars, and Mars is where they stop. They'll keep coming here and climbing the mountain and finally there won't be any more. It won't take so long." She rose to her toes and waved and yelled. Bruce saw Pietro and Marlene walking hand in hand up the other side of the canal. They waved back and called and then pushed off into the water in a small boat, and drifted away and out of sight around a gentle turn. She took his arm and they walked along the canal toward where the mountain had been, or still was—he didn't know. A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, he saw the high mound of red, naked hill, corroded and ugly, rising up like a scar of the surrounding green. She wasn't smiling now. There were shadows on her face as the pressure on his arm stopped him. "I was on the first ship and Marlene on the second. None like us on the third, and on the fourth ship was Pietro. All the others had to climb the mountain—" She stopped talking for a moment, and then he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm. "I'm very glad you came on the fifth," she whispered. "Are you glad now?" "I'm very glad," he said. "The Martians tested us," she explained. "They're masters of the mind. I guess they've been grinding along through the evolutionary mill a darn long time, longer than we could estimate now. They learned the horror we're capable of from the first ship—the Conquerors, the climbers. The Martians knew more like them would come and go on into space, killing, destroying for no other reason than their own sickness. Being masters of the mind, the Martians are also capable of hypnosis—no, that's not really the word, only the closest our language comes to naming it. Suggestion so deep and strong that it seems real to one human or a million or a billion; there's no limit to the number that can be influenced. What the people who came off those ships saw wasn't real. It was partly what the Martians wanted them to see and feel—but most of it, like the desire to climb the mountain, was as much a part of the Conquerors' own psychic drive as it was the suggestion of the Martians." She waved her arm slowly to describe a peak. "The Martians made the mountain real. So real that it could be seen from space, measured by instruments ... even photographed and chipped for rock samples. But you'll see how that was done, Bruce, and realize that this and not the mountain of the Conquerors is the reality of Mars. This is the Mars no Conqueror will ever see." They walked toward the ugly red mound that jutted above the green. When they came close enough, he saw the bodies lying there ... the remains, actually, of what had once been bodies. He felt too sickened to go on walking. "It may seem cruel now," she said, "but the Martians realized that there is no cure for the will to conquer. There is no safety from it, either, as the people of Earth and Venus discovered, unless it is given an impossible obstacle to overcome. So the Martians provided the Conquerors with a mountain. They themselves wanted to climb. They had to." He was hardly listening as he walked away from Helene toward the eroded hills. The crew members of the first four ships were skeletons tied together with imperishably strong rope about their waists. Far beyond them were those from Mars V , too freshly dead to have decayed much ... Anhauser with his rope cut, a bullet in his head; Jacobs and Marsha and the others ... Terrence much past them all. He had managed to climb higher than anyone else and he lay with his arms stretched out, his fingers still clutching at rock outcroppings. The trail they left wound over the ground, chipped in places for holds, red elsewhere with blood from torn hands. Terrence was more than twelve miles from the ship—horizontally. Bruce lifted Marsha and carried her back over the rocky dust, into the fresh fragrance of the high grass, and across it to the shade and peace beside the canal. He put her down. She looked peaceful enough, more peaceful than that other time, years ago, when the two of them seemed to have shared so much, when the future had not yet destroyed her. He saw the shadow of Helene bend across Marsha's face against the background of the silently flowing water of the cool, green canal. "You loved her?" "Once," Bruce said. "She might have been sane. They got her when she was young. Too young to fight. But she would have, I think, if she'd been older when they got her." He sat looking down at Marsha's face, and then at the water with the leaves floating down it. "'... And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley will never seem fresh or clear for thinking of the glitter of the mountain water in the feathery green of the year....'" He stood up, walked back with Helene along the canal toward the calm city. He didn't look back. "They've all been dead quite a while," Bruce said wonderingly. "Yet I seemed to be hearing from Terrence until only a short time ago. Are—are the climbers still climbing—somewhere, Helene?" "Who knows?" Helene answered softly. "Maybe. I doubt if even the Martians have the answer to that." They entered the city.

test

50449

Recruit for Andromeda by MILTON LESSER ACE BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y. RECRUIT FOR ANDROMEDA Copyright 1959, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in U.S.A. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] TOURNAMENT UNDER NIGHTMARE SKIES When Kit Temple was drafted for the Nowhere Journey, he figured that he'd left his home, his girl, and the Earth for good. For though those called were always promised "rotation," not a man had ever returned from that mysterious flight into the unknown. Kit's fellow-draftee Arkalion, the young man with the strange, old-man eyes, seemed to know more than he should. So when Kit twisted the tail of fate and followed Arkalion to the ends of space and time, he found the secret behind "Nowhere" and a personal challenge upon which the entire future of Earth depended. Contents CHAPTER I When the first strong sunlight of May covered the tree-arched avenues of Center City with green, the riots started. The people gathered in angry knots outside the city hall, met in the park and littered its walks with newspapers and magazines as they gobbled up editorial comment at a furious rate, slipped with dark of night through back alleys and planned things with furious futility. Center City's finest knew when to make themselves scarce: their uniforms stood for everything objectionable at this time and they might be subjected to clubs, stones, taunts, threats, leers—and knives. But Center City, like most communities in United North America, had survived the Riots before and would survive them again. On past performances, the damage could be estimated, too. Two-hundred fifty-seven plate glass windows would be broken, three-hundred twelve limbs fractured. Several thousand people would be treated for minor bruises and abrasions, Center City would receive half that many damage suits. The list had been drawn clearly and accurately; it hardly ever deviated. And Center City would meet its quota. With a demonstration of reluctance, of course. The healthy approved way to get over social trauma once every seven-hundred eighty days. "Shut it off, Kit. Kit, please." The telio blared in a cheaply feminine voice, "Oh, it's a long way to nowhere, forever. And your honey's not coming back, never, never, never...." A wailing trumpet represented flight. "They'll exploit anything, Kit." "It's just a song." "Turn it off, please." Christopher Temple turned off the telio, smiling. "They'll announce the names in ten minutes," he said, and felt the corners of his mouth draw taut. "Tell me again, Kit," Stephanie pleaded. "How old are you?" "You know I'm twenty-six." "Twenty-six. Yes, twenty-six, so if they don't call you this time, you'll be safe. Safe, I can hardly believe it." "Nine minutes," said Temple in the darkness. Stephanie had drawn the blinds earlier, had dialed for sound-proofing. The screaming in the streets came to them as not the faintest whisper. But the song which became briefly, masochistically popular every two years and two months had spoiled their feeling of seclusion. "Tell me again, Kit." "What." "You know what." He let her come to him, let her hug him fiercely and whimper against his chest. He remained passive although it hurt, occasionally stroking her hair. He could not assert himself for another—he looked at his strap chrono—for another eight minutes. He might regret it, if he did, for a lifetime. "Tell me, Kit." "I'll marry you, Steffy. In eight minutes, less than eight minutes, I'll go down and get the license. We'll marry as soon as it's legal." "This is the last time they have a chance for you. I mean, they won't change the law?" Temple shook his head. "They don't have to. They meet their quota this way." "I'm scared." "You and everyone else in North America, Steffy." She was trembling against him. "It's cold for June." "It's warm in here." He kissed her moist eyes, her nose, her lips. "Oh God, Kit. Five minutes." "Five minutes to freedom," he said jauntily. He did not feel that way at all. Apprehension clutched at his chest with tight, painful fingers, almost making it difficult for him to breathe. "Turn it on, Kit." He dialed the telio in time to see the announcer's insincere smile. Smile seventeen, Kit thought wryly. Patriotic sacrifice. "Every seven-hundred eighty days," said the announcer, "two-hundred of Center City's young men are selected to serve their country for an indeterminate period regulated rigidly by a rotation system." "Liar!" Stephanie cried. "No one ever comes back. It's been thirty years since the first group and not one of them...." "Shh," Temple raised a finger to his lips. "This is the thirteenth call since the inception of what is popularly referred to as the Nowhere Journey," said the announcer. "Obviously, the two hundred young men from Center City and the thousands from all over this hemisphere do not in reality embark on a Journey to Nowhere. That is quite meaningless." "Hooray for him," Temple laughed. "I wish he'd get on with it." "No, ladies and gentlemen, we use the word Nowhere merely because we are not aware of the ultimate destination. Security reasons make it impossible to...." "Yes, yes," said Stephanie impatiently. "Go on." "... therefore, the Nowhere Journey. With a maximum security lid on the whole project, we don't even know why our men are sent, or by what means. We know only that they go somewhere and not nowhere, bravely and not fearfully, for a purpose vital to the security of this nation and not to slake the thirst of a chessman of regiments and divisions. "If Center City's contribution helps keep our country strong, Center City is naturally obligated...." "No one ever said it isn't our duty," Stephanie argued, as if the announcer could indeed hear her. "We only wish we knew something about it—and we wish it weren't forever." "It isn't forever," Temple reminded her. "Not officially." "Officially, my foot. If they never return, they never return. If there's a rotation system on paper, but it's never used, that's not a rotation system at all. Kit, it's forever." "... to thank the following sponsors for relinquishing their time...." "No one would want to sponsor that ," Temple whispered cheerfully. "Kit," said Stephanie, "I—I suddenly have a hunch we have nothing to worry about. They missed you all along and they'll miss you this time, too. The last time, and then you'll be too old. That's funny, too old at twenty-six. But we'll be free, Kit. Free." "He's starting," Temple told her. A large drum filled the entire telio screen. It rotated slowly from bottom to top. In twenty seconds, the letter A appeared, followed by about a dozen names. Abercrombie, Harold. Abner, Eugene. Adams, Gerald. Sorrow in the Abercrombie household. Despair for the Abners. Black horror for Adams. The drum rotated. "They're up to F, Kit." Fabian, Gregory G.... Names circled the drum slowly, live viscous alphabet soup. Meaningless, unless you happened to know them. "Kit, I knew Thomas Mulvany." N, O, P.... "It's hot in here." "I thought you were cold." "I'm suffocating now." R, S.... "T!" Stephanie shrieked as the names began to float slowly up from the bottom of the drum. Tabor, Tebbets, Teddley.... Temple's mouth felt dry as a ball of cotton. Stephanie laughed nervously. Now—or never. Never? Now. Stephanie whimpered despairingly. TEMPLE, CHRISTOPHER. "Sorry I'm late, Mr. Jones." "Hardly, Mr. Smith. Hardly. Three minutes late." "I've come in response to your ad." "I know. You look old." "I am over twenty-six. Do you mind?" "Not if you don't, Mr. Smith. Let me look at you. Umm, you seem the right height, the right build." "I meet the specifications exactly." "Good, Mr. Smith. And your price." "No haggling," said Smith. "I have a price which must be met." "Your price, Mr. Smith?" "Ten million dollars." The man called Jones coughed nervously. "That's high." "Very. Take it or leave it." "In cash?" "Definitely. Small unmarked bills." "You'd need a moving van!" "Then I'll get one." "Ten million dollars," said Jones, "is quite a price. Admittedly, I haven't dealt in this sort of traffic before, but—" "But nothing. Were your name Jones, really and truly Jones, I might ask less." "Sir?" "You are Jones exactly as much as I am Smith." "Sir?" Jones gasped again. Smith coughed discreetly. "But I have one advantage. I know you. You don't know me, Mr. Arkalion." "Eh? Eh?" "Arkalion. The North American Carpet King. Right?" "How did you know?" the man whose name was not Jones but Arkalion asked the man whose name was not Smith but might as well have been. "When I saw your ad," said not-Smith, "I said to myself, 'now here must be a very rich, influential man.' It only remained for me to study a series of photographs readily obtainable—I have a fine memory for that, Mr. Arkalion—and here you are; here is Arkalion the Carpet King." "What will you do with the ten million dollars?" demanded Arkalion, not minding the loss nearly so much as the ultimate disposition of his fortune. "Why, what does anyone do with ten million dollars? Treasure it. Invest it. Spend it." "I mean, what will you do with it if you are going in place of my—" Arkalion bit his tongue. "Your son, were you saying, Mr. Arkalion? Alaric Arkalion the Third. Did you know that I was able to boil my list of men down to thirty when I studied their family ties?" "Brilliant, Mr. Smith. Alaric is so young—" "Aren't they all? Twenty-one to twenty-six. Who was it who once said something about the flower of our young manhood?" "Shakespeare?" said Mr. Arkalion realizing that most quotes of lasting importance came from the bard. "Sophocles," said Smith. "But no matter. I will take young Alaric's place for ten million dollars." Motives always troubled Mr. Arkalion, and thus he pursued what might have been a dangerous conversation. "You'll never get a chance to spend it on the Nowhere Journey." "Let me worry about that." "No one ever returns." "My worry, not yours." "It is forever—as if you dropped out of existence. Alaric is so young." "I have always gambled, Mr. Arkalion. If I do not return in five years, you are to put the money in a trust fund for certain designated individuals, said fund to be terminated the moment I return. If I come back within the five years, you are merely to give the money over to me. Is that clear?" "Yes." "I'll want it in writing, of course." "Of course. A plastic surgeon is due here in about ten minutes, Mr. Smith, and we can get on with.... But if I don't know your name, how can I put it in writing?" Smith smiled. "I changed my name to Smith for the occasion. Perfectly legal. My name is John X. Smith—now!" "That's where you're wrong," said Mr. Arkalion as the plastic surgeon entered. "Your name is Alaric Arkalion III— now ." The plastic surgeon skittered around Smith, examining him minutely with the casual expertness that comes with experience. "Have to shorten the cheek bones." "For ten million dollars," said Smith, "you can take the damned things out altogether and hang them on your wall." Sophia Androvna Petrovitch made her way downtown through the bustle of tired workers and the occasional sprinkling of Comrades. She crushed her ersatz cigarette underfoot at number 616 Stalin Avenue, paused for the space of five heartbeats at the door, went inside. "What do you want?" The man at the desk was myopic but bull-necked. Sophia showed her party card. "Oh, Comrade. Still, you are a woman." "You're terribly observant, Comrade," said Sophia coldly. "I am here to volunteer." "But a woman." "There is nothing in the law which says a woman cannot volunteer." "We don't make women volunteer." "I mean really volunteer, of her own free will." "Her—own—free will?" The bull-necked man removed his spectacles, scratched his balding head with the ear-pieces. "You mean volunteer without—" "Without coercion. I want to volunteer. I am here to volunteer. I want to sign on for the next Stalintrek." "Stalintrek, a woman?" "That is what I said." "We don't force women to volunteer." The man scratched some more. "Oh, really," said Sophia. "This is 1992, not mid-century, Comrade. Did not Stalin say, 'Woman was created to share the glorious destiny of Mother Russia with her mate?'" Sophia created the quote randomly. "Yes, if Stalin said—" "He did." "Still, I do not recall—" "What?" Sophia cried. "Stalin dead these thirty-nine years and you don't recall his speeches? What is your name, Comrade?" "Please, Comrade. Now that you remind me, I remember." "What is your name." "Here, I will give you the volunteer papers to sign. If you pass the exams, you will embark on the next Stalintrek, though why a beautiful young woman like you—" "Shut your mouth and hand me those papers." There, sitting behind that desk, was precisely why. Why should she, Sophia Androvna Petrovitch, wish to volunteer for the Stalintrek? Better to ask why a bird flies south in the winter, one day ahead of the first icy gale. Or why a lemming plunges recklessly into the sea with his multitudes of fellows, if, indeed, the venture were to turn out grimly. But there, behind that desk, was part of the reason. The Comrade. The bright sharp Comrade, with his depth of reasoning, his fountain of gushing emotions, his worldliness. Pfooey! It was as if she had been in a cocoon all her life, stifled, starved, the cottony inner lining choking her whenever she opened her mouth, the leathery outer covering restricting her when she tried to move. No one had ever returned from the Stalintrek. She then had to assume no one would. Including Sophia Androvna Petrovitch. But then, there was nothing she would miss, nothing to which she particularly wanted to return. Not the stark, foul streets of Stalingrad, not the workers with their vapid faces or the Comrades with their cautious, sweating, trembling, fearful non-decisions, not the higher echelon of Comrades, more frightened but showing it less, who would love the beauty of her breasts and loins but not herself for you never love anything but the Stalinimage and Mother Russia herself, not those terrified martinet-marionettes who would love the parts of her if she permitted but not her or any other person for that matter. Wrong with the Stalintrek was its name alone, a name one associated with everything else in Russia for an obvious, post-Stalin reason. But everything else about the Stalintrek shrieked mystery and adventure. Where did you go? How did you get there? What did you do? Why? A million questions which had kept her awake at night and, if she thought about them hard enough, satisfied her deep longing for something different. And then one day when stolid Mrs. Ivanovna-Rasnikov had said, "It is a joke, a terrible, terrible joke they are taking my husband Fyodor on the Stalintrek when he lacks sufficient imagination to go from here to Leningrad or even Tula. Can you picture Fyodor on the Stalintrek? Better they should have taken me. Better they should have taken his wife." That day Sophia could hardly contain herself. As a party member she had access to the law and she read it three times from start to finish (in her dingy flat by the light of a smoking, foul-smelling, soft-wax candle) but could find nothing barring women from the Stalintrek. Had Fyodor Rasnikov volunteered? Naturally. Everyone volunteered, although when your name was called you had no choice. There had been no draft in Russia since the days of the Second War of the People's Liberation. Volunteer? What, precisely, did the word mean? She, Sophia Androvna Petrovitch would volunteer, without being told. Thus it was she found herself at 616 Stalin Avenue, and thus the balding, myopic, bull-necked Comrade thrust the papers across his desk at her. She signed her name with such vehemence and ferocity that she almost tore through the paper. CHAPTER II Three-score men sit in the crowded, smoke-filled room. Some drink beer, some squat in moody silence, some talk in an animated fashion about nothing very urgent. At the one small door, two guards pace back and forth slowly, creating a gentle swaying of smoke-patterns in the hazy room. The guards, in simple military uniform, carry small, deadly looking weapons. FIRST MAN: Fight City Hall? Are you kidding? They took you, bud. Don't try to fight it, I know. I know. SECOND MAN: I'm telling you, there was a mistake in the records. I'm over twenty-six. Two weeks and two days. Already I wrote to my Congressman. Hell, that's why I voted for him, he better go to bat for me. THIRD MAN: You think that's something? I wouldn't be here only those doctors are crazy. I mean, crazy. Me, with a cyst big as a golf ball on the base of my spine. FIRST MAN: You too. Don't try to fight it. FOURTH MAN: (Newly named Alaric Arkalion III) I look forward to this as a stimulating adventure. Does the fact that they select men for the Nowhere Journey once every seven hundred and eighty days strike anyone as significant? SECOND MAN: I got my own problems. ALARIC ARKALION: This is not a thalamic problem, young man. Not thalamic at all. THIRD MAN: Young man? Who are you kidding? ALARIC ARKALION: (Who realizes, thanks to the plastic surgeon, he is the youngest looking of all, with red cheeks and peachfuzz whiskers) It is a problem of the intellect. Why seven hundred and eighty days? FIRST MAN: I read the magazine, too, chief. You think we're all going to the planet Mars. How original. ALARIC ARKALION: As a matter of fact, that is exactly what I think. SECOND MAN: Mars? FIRST MAN: (Laughing) It's a long way from Mars to City Hall, doc. SECOND MAN: You mean, through space to Mars? ALARIC ARKALION: Exactly, exactly. Quite a coincidence, otherwise. FIRST MAN: You're telling me. ALARIC ARKALION: (Coldly) Would you care to explain it? FIRST MAN: Why, sure. You see, Mars is—uh, I don't want to steal your thunder, chief. Go ahead. ALARIC ARKALION: Once every seven hundred and eighty days Mars and the Earth find themselves in the same orbital position with respect to the sun. In other words, Mars and Earth are closest then. Were there such a thing as space travel, new, costly, not thoroughly tested, they would want to make each journey as brief as possible. Hence the seven hundred and eighty days. FIRST MAN: Not bad, chief. You got most of it. THIRD MAN: No one ever said anything about space travel. FIRST MAN: You think we'd broadcast it or something, stupid? It's part of a big, important scientific experiment, only we're the hamsters. ALARIC ARKALION: Ridiculous. You're forgetting all about the Cold War. FIRST MAN: He thinks we're fighting a war with the Martians. (Laughs) Orson Wells stuff, huh? ALARIC ARKALION: With the Russians. The Russians. We developed A bombs. They developed A bombs. We came up with the H bomb. So did they. We placed a station up in space, a fifth of the way to the moon. So did they. Then—nothing more about scientific developments. For over twenty years. I ask you, doesn't it seem peculiar? FIRST MAN: Peculiar, he says. ALARIC ARKALION: Peculiar. SECOND MAN: I wish my Congressman.... FIRST MAN: You and your Congressman. The way you talk, it was your vote got him in office. SECOND MAN: If only I could get out and talk to him. ALARIC ARKALION: No one is permitted to leave. FIRST MAN: Punishable by a prison term, the law says. SECOND MAN: Oh yeah? Prison, shmision. Or else go on the Nowhere Journey. Well, I don't see the difference. FIRST MAN: So, go ahead. Try to escape. SECOND MAN: (Looking at the guards) They got them all over. All over. I think our mail is censored. ALARIC ARKALION: It is. SECOND MAN: They better watch out. I'm losing my temper. I get violent when I lose my temper. FIRST MAN: See? See how the guards are trembling. SECOND MAN: Very funny. Maybe you didn't have a good job or something? Maybe you don't care. I care. I had a job with a future. Didn't pay much, but a real blue chip future. So they send me to Nowhere. FIRST MAN: You're not there yet. SECOND MAN: Yeah, but I'm going. THIRD MAN: If only they let you know when. My back is killing me. I'm waiting to pull a sick act. Just waiting, that's all. FIRST MAN: Go ahead and wait, a lot of good it will do you. THIRD MAN: You mind your own business. FIRST MAN: I am, doc. You brought the whole thing up. SECOND MAN: He's looking for trouble. THIRD MAN: He'll get it. ALARIC ARKALION: We're going to be together a long time. A long time. Why don't you all relax? SECOND MAN: You mind your own business. FIRST MAN: Nuts, aren't they. They're nuts. A sick act, yet. SECOND MAN: Look how it doesn't bother him. A failure, he was. I can just see it. What does he care if he goes away forever and doesn't come back? One bread line is as good as another. FIRST MAN: Ha-ha. SECOND MAN: Yeah, well I mean it. Forever. We're going away, someplace—forever. We're not coming back, ever. No one comes back. It's for good, for keeps. FIRST MAN: Tell it to your congressman. Or maybe you want to pull a sick act, too? THIRD MAN: (Hits First Man, who, surprised, crashes back against a table and falls down) It isn't an act, damn you! GUARD: All right, break it up. Come on, break it up.... ALARIC ARKALION: (To himself) I wish I saw that ten million dollars already— if I ever get to see it. They drove for hours through the fresh country air, feeling the wind against their faces, listening to the roar their ground-jet made, all alone on the rimrock highway. "Where are we going, Kit?" "Search me. Just driving." "I'm glad they let you come out this once. I don't know what they would have done to me if they didn't. I had to see you this once. I—" Temple smiled. He had absented himself without leave. It had been difficult enough and he might yet be in a lot of hot water, but it would be senseless to worry Stephanie. "It's just for a few hours," he said. "Hours. When we want a whole lifetime. Kit. Oh, Kit—why don't we run away? Just the two of us, someplace where they'll never find you. I could be packed and ready and—" "Don't talk like that. We can't." "You want to go where they're sending you. You want to go." "For God's sake, how can you talk like that? I don't want to go anyplace, except with you. But we can't run away, Steffy. I've got to face it, whatever it is." "No you don't. It's noble to be patriotic, sure. It always was. But this is different, Kit. They don't ask for part of your life. Not for two years, or three, or a gamble because maybe you won't ever come back. They ask for all of you, for the rest of your life, forever, and they don't even tell you why. Kit, don't go! We'll hide someplace and get married and—" "And nothing." Temple stopped the ground-jet, climbed out, opened the door for Stephanie. "Don't you see? There's no place to hide. Wherever you go, they'd look. You wouldn't want to spend the rest of your life running, Steffy. Not with me or anyone else." "I would. I would!" "Know what would happen after a few years? We'd hate each other. You'd look at me and say 'I wouldn't be hiding like this, except for you. I'm young and—'" "Kit, that's cruel! I would not." "Yes, you would. Steffy, I—" A lump rose in his throat. He'd tell her goodbye, permanently. He had to do it that way, did not want her to wait endlessly and hopelessly for a return that would not materialize. "I didn't get permission to leave, Steffy." He hadn't meant to tell her that, but suddenly it seemed an easy way to break into goodbye. "What do you mean? No—you didn't...." "I had to see you. What can they do, send me for longer than forever?" "Then you do want to run away with me!" "Steffy, no. When I leave you tonight, Steffy, it's for good. That's it. The last of Kit Temple. Stop thinking about me. I don't exist. I—never was." It sounded ridiculous, even to him. "Kit, I love you. I love you. How can I forget you?" "It's happened before. It will happen again." That hurt, too. He was talking about a couple of statistics, not about himself and Stephanie. "We're different, Kit. I'll love you forever. And—Kit ... I know you'll come back to me. I'll wait, Kit. We're different. You'll come back." "How many people do you think said that before?" "You don't want to come back, even if you could. You're not thinking of us at all. You're thinking of your brother." "You know that isn't true. Sometimes I wonder about Jase, sure. But if I thought there was a chance to return—I'm a selfish cuss, Steffy. If I thought there was a chance, you know I'd want you all for myself. I'd brand you, and that's the truth." "You do love me!" "I loved you, Steffy. Kit Temple loved you." "Loved?" "Loved. Past tense. When I leave tonight, it's as if I don't exist anymore. As if I never existed. It's got to be that way, Steffy. In thirty years, no one ever returned." "Including your brother, Jase. So now you want to find him. What do I count for? What...." "This going wasn't my idea. I wanted to stay with you. I wanted to marry you. I can't now. None of it. Forget me, Steffy. Forget you ever knew me. Jase said that to our folks before he was taken." Almost five years before Jason Temple had been selected for the Nowhere Journey. He'd been young, though older than his brother Kit. Young, unattached, almost cheerful he was. Naturally, they never saw him again. "Hold me, Kit. I'm sorry ... carrying on like this." They had walked some distance from the ground-jet, through scrub oak and bramble bushes. They found a clearing, fragrant-scented, soft-floored still from last autumn, melodic with the chirping of nameless birds. They sat, not talking. Stephanie wore a gay summer dress, full-skirted, cut deep beneath the throat. She swayed toward him from the waist, nestled her head on his shoulder. He could smell the soft, sweet fragrance of her hair, of the skin at the nape of her neck. "If you want to say goodbye ..." she said. "Stop it," he told her. "If you want to say goodbye...." Her head rolled against his chest. She turned, cradled herself in his arms, smiled up at him, squirmed some more and had her head pillowed on his lap. She smiled tremulously, misty-eyed. Her lips parted. He bent and kissed her, knowing it was all wrong. This was not goodbye, not the way he wanted it. Quickly, definitely, for once and all. With a tear, perhaps, a lot of tears. But permanent goodbye. This was all wrong. The whole idea was to be business-like, objective. It had to be done that way, or no way at all. Briefly, he regretted leaving the encampment. This wasn't goodbye the way he wanted it. The way it had to be. This was auf weidersen . And then he forgot everything but Stephanie.... "I am Alaric Arkalion III," said the extremely young-looking man with the old, wise eyes. How incongruous, Temple thought. The eyes look almost middle-aged. The rest of him—a boy. "Something tells me we'll be seeing a lot of each other," Arkalion went on. The voice was that of an older man, too, belying the youthful complexion, the almost childish features, the soft fuzz of a beard. "I'm Kit Temple," said Temple, extending his hand. "Arkalion, a strange name. I know it from somewhere.... Say! Aren't you—don't you have something to do with carpets or something?" "Here and now, no. I am a number. A-92-6417. But my father is—perhaps I had better say was—my father is Alaric Arkalion II. Yes, that is right, the carpet king." "I'll be darned," said Temple. "Why?" "Well," Temple laughed. "I never met a billionaire before." "Here I am not a billionaire, nor will I ever be one again. A-92-6417, a number. On his way to Mars with a bunch of other numbers." "Mars? You sound sure of yourself." "Reasonably. Ah, it is a pleasure to talk with a gentleman. I am reasonably certain it will be Mars." Temple nodded in agreement. "That's what the Sunday supplements say, all right." "And doubtless you have observed no one denies it." "But what on Earth do we want on Mars?" "That in itself is a contradiction," laughed Arkalion. "We'll find out, though, Temple." They had reached the head of the line, found themselves entering a huge, double-decker jet-transport. They found two seats together, followed the instructions printed at the head of the aisle by strapping themselves in and not smoking. Talking all around them was subdued. "Contrariness has given way to fear," Arkalion observed. "You should have seen them the last few days, waiting around the induction center, a two-ton chip on each shoulder. Say, where were you?" "I—what do you mean?" "I didn't see you until last evening. Suddenly, you were here." "Did anyone else miss me?" "But I remember you the first day." "Did anyone else miss me? Any of the officials?" "No. Not that I know of." "Then I was here," Temple said, very seriously. Arkalion smiled. "By George, of course. Then you were here. Temple, we'll get along fine." Temple said that was swell. "Anyway, we'd better. Forever is a long time." Three minutes later, the jet took off and soared on eager wings toward the setting sun.

test

51241

Bridge Crossing BY DAVE DRYFOOS Illustrated by HARRISON [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He knew the city was organized for his individual defense, for it had been that way since he was born. But who was his enemy? In 1849, the mist that sometimes rolled through the Golden Gate was known as fog. In 2149, it had become far more frequent, and was known as smog. By 2349, it was fog again. But tonight there was smoke mixed with the fog. Roddie could smell it. Somewhere in the forested ruins, fire was burning. He wasn't worried. The small blaze that smoldered behind him on the cracked concrete floor had consumed everything burnable within blocks; what remained of the gutted concrete office building from which he peered was fire-proof. But Roddie was himself aflame with anger. As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight. And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—" "I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?" Fiercely he crossed the bare, gritty floor and shook Molly's shoulder. She rattled under his jarring hand, and abruptly changed the subject. "A is for Atom, B is for Bomb, C is for Corpse—" she chanted. Roddie reached into her shapeless dress and pinched. Lately that had helped her over these spells. But this time, though it stopped the kindergarten song, the treatment only started something worse. "Wuzzums hungry?" Molly cooed, still rocking. Utterly disgusted, Roddie ripped her head off her neck. It was a completely futile gesture. The complicated mind that had cared for him and taught him speech and the alphabet hadn't made him a mechanic, and his only tool was a broken-handled screwdriver. He was still tinkering when the soldiers came in. While they lined up along the wall, he put Molly's head back on her neck. She gaped coyly at the new arrivals. "Hello, boys," she simpered. "Looking for a good time?" Roddie slapped her to silence, reflecting briefly that there were many things he didn't know about Molly. But there was work to be done. Carefully he framed the ritual words she'd taught him: "Soldiers, come to attention and report!" There were eleven of them, six feet tall, with four limbs and eight extremities. They stood uniformly, the thumbs on each pair of hands touching along the center line of the legs, front feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, rear feet turned inward at thirty degrees. "Sir," they chorused, "we have met the enemy and he is ours." He inspected them. All were scratched and dented, but one in particular seemed badly damaged. His left arm was almost severed at the shoulder. "Come here, fellow," Roddie said. "Let's see if I can fix that." The soldier took a step forward, lurched suddenly, stopped, and whipped out a bayonet. "Death to Invaders!" he yelled, and charged crazily. Molly stepped in front of him. "You aren't being very nice to my baby," she murmured, and thrust her knitting needles into his eyes. Roddie jumped behind him, knocked off his helmet, and pressed a soft spot on his conical skull. The soldier collapsed to the floor. Roddie salvaged and returned Molly's needles. Then he examined the patient, tearing him apart as a boy dismembers an alarm clock. It was lucky he did. The left arm's pair of hands suddenly writhed off the floor in an effort to choke him. But because the arm was detached at the shoulder and therefore blind, he escaped the clutching onslaught and could goad the reflexing hands into assaulting one another harmlessly. Meanwhile, the other soldiers left, except for one, apparently another casualty, who stumbled on his way out and fell into the fire. By the time Roddie had hauled him clear, damage was beyond repair. Roddie swore, then decided to try combining parts of this casualty with pieces of the other to make a whole one. To get more light for the operation, he poked up the fire. Roddie was new at his work, and took it seriously. It alarmed him to watch the soldiers melt away, gradually succumbing to battle damage, shamed him to see the empty ruins burn section by section as the Invaders repeatedly broke through and had to be burned out. Soon there would be nothing left of the Private Property Keep Out that, according to Molly's bedtime story, the Owners had entrusted to them when driven away by radioactivity. Soon the soldiers themselves would be gone. None would remain to guard the city but a few strayed servants like Molly, and an occasional Civil Defender. And himself, Roddie reflected, spitting savagely into the fire. He might remain. But how he fitted into the picture, he didn't know. And Molly, who claimed to have found him in the ruins after a fight with Invaders twenty years before, couldn't or wouldn't say. Well, for as long as possible, Roddie decided, he'd do his duty as the others did theirs—single-mindedly. Eventually the soldiers might accept him as one of themselves; meanwhile, this newly attempted first aid was useful to them. He gave the fire a final poke and then paused, wondering if, when heated, his screwdriver could make an unfastened end of wire stick on the grayish spot where it seemed to belong. Stretching prone to blow the embers hot so he could try out his new idea, Roddie got too close to the flames. Instantly the room filled with the stench of singed hair. Roddie drew angrily back, beating out the sparks in his uncut blond mane. As he stood slapping his head and muttering, a deranged Civil Defense firefighter popped into the doorway and covered him with carbon dioxide foam. Roddie fled. His life-long friends were not merely wearing out, they were unbearably wearing. In the street, even before he'd wiped off the foam, he regretted his flight. The fire was back home. And here in the cold of this fog-shrouded canyon, a mere trail between heaped-up walls of rubble, the diaper he wore felt inadequate against the pre-dawn cold. His cherished weapon, a magnetic tack-hammer, was chill beneath the diaper's top, and the broken, radium-dialed wristwatch suspended from a string around his neck hung clammy against his chest. He stood irresolute on numbing bare feet, and considered returning to the more familiar bedlam. But colder than cold was his shame at being cold. Molly never was, though she knew how to keep him warm, nor were the others. Hunger, thirst, pain and coldness were sensations never experienced by his friends. Like the growth he'd been undergoing till recently, these were things of ignominy, to be hidden as far as possible from inquiring eyes. Cold as it was, he'd have to hide. Temporarily, the darkness concealed him, though it was not quite complete. From above the fog, the moon played vaguely deceptive light on the splinters of architecture looming toward it. Some distance off, an owl hooted, but here nocturnal rodents felt free to squeak and rustle as they scampered. The world seemed ghostly. Yet it wasn't dead; it merely lurked. And as an irrepressible yawn reminded Roddie of his absurd need for sleep even in the midst of danger, he concluded for the thousandth time that the One who'd built him must have been an apprentice. For just such reasons he'd developed the hideout toward which he now walked. It had been the haven of his adolescence, when the discovery of how much he differed from his friends had been a shock, and the shock itself a difference to be hidden. His hiding place was a manhole, dead center in the dead street. A weathered bronze bar, carefully placed in the cover's slotted rim, was the levering key that opened its door. Everything was wrong tonight! He couldn't even find the bar. Of course that spoiled things, because the bar was a roller on which to move the heavy cover from below, and a support that held it ajar for ventilation. But the example of his friends had taught him above all else to carry out every purpose. Molly was a nurse; she had raised him despite all obstacles. The soldiers were guards; they protected the ruins against everything larger than a rat. The firefighter had put even him out when he was aflame.... Anyhow, the manhole cover had been loosened by his frequent handling. He lifted it aside by main strength, then flattened himself to the street, and felt with his feet for the top rung. Halfway down the iron ladder, something made him pause. He looked, but saw only blackness. He listened, sniffed, found nothing. What could have entered through the iron cover? He sneered at his own timidity and jumped to the bottom. It was warm! The dry bottom of the hole had the temperature of body heat, as if a large animal had recently rested there! Quickly, Roddie drew the hammer from his waist. Then, with weapon ready for an instantaneous blow, he stretched his left hand through the darkness. He touched something warm, softish. Gingerly he felt over that curving surface for identifying features. While Roddie investigated by touch, his long fingers were suddenly seized and bitten. At the same time, his right shin received a savage kick. And his own retaliatory blow was checked in mid-swing by an unexpected voice. "Get your filthy hands off me!" it whispered angrily. "Who do you think you are?" Startled, he dropped his hammer. "I'm Roddie," he said, squatting to fumble for it. "Who do you think you are?" "I'm Ida, naturally! Just how many girls are there in this raiding party?" His first Invader—and he had dropped his weapon! Scrabbling fearfully in the dust for his hammer, Roddie paused suddenly. This girl—whatever that was—seemed to think him one of her own kind. There was a chance, not much, but worth taking, to turn delay to advantage. Maybe he could learn something of value before he killed her. That would make the soldiers accept him! He stalled, seeking a gambit. "How would I know how many girls there are?" Half expecting a blow, he got instead an apology. "I'm sorry," the girl said. "I should have known. Never even heard your name before, either. Roddie.... Whose boat did you come in, Roddie?" Boat? What was a boat? "How would I know?" he repeated, voice tight with fear of discovery. If she noticed the tension, she didn't show it. Certainly her whisper was friendly enough. "Oh, you're one of the fellows from Bodega, then. They shoved a boy into our boat at the last minute, too. Tough, wasn't it, getting separated in the fog and tide like that? If only we didn't have to use boats.... But, say, how are we going to get away from here?" "I wouldn't know," Roddie said, closing his fingers on the hammer, and rising. "How did you get in?" "Followed your footprints. It was sundown and I saw human tracks in the dust and they led me here. Where were you?" "Scouting around," Roddie said vaguely. "How did you know I was a man when I came back?" "Because you couldn't see me, silly! You know perfectly well these androids are heat-sensitive and can locate us in the dark!" Indeed he did know! Many times he'd felt ashamed that Molly could find him whenever she wanted to, even here in the manhole. But perhaps the manhole would help him now to redeem himself.... "I'd like to get a look at you," he said. The girl laughed self-consciously. "It's getting gray out. You'll see me soon enough." But she'd see him , Roddie realized. He had to talk fast. "What'll we do when it's light?" he asked. "Well, I guess the boats have gone," Ida said. "You could swim the Gate, I guess—you seem tall and strong enough. But I couldn't. You'll think it's crazy, but I've given this some thought, and even looked it over from the other side. I expect to try the Golden Gate Bridge!" Now he was getting somewhere! The bridge was ruined, impassable. Even her own people had crossed the Strait by other means. But if there were a way over the bridge.... "It's broken," he said. "How in the world can we cross it?" "Oh, you'll find out, if you take me up there. I—I don't want to be alone, Roddie. Will you go with me? Now?" Well, she could be made to point out the route before he killed her— if nothing happened when she saw him. Uneasy, Roddie hefted the hammer in his hand. A giggle broke the pause. "It's nice of you to wait and let me go first up the ladder," the girl said. "But where the heck is the rusty old thing?" "I'll go first," said Roddie. He might need the advantage. "The ladder's right behind me." He climbed with hammer in teeth, and stretched his left hand from street level to grasp and neutralize the girl's right. Then, nervously fingering his weapon, he stared at her in the thin gray dawn. She was short and lean, except for roundnesses here and there. From her shapeless doeskin dress stretched slender legs that tapered to feet that were bare, tiny, and, like her hands, only two in number. Roddie was pleased. They were evenly matched as to members, and that would make things easy when the time came. He looked into her face. It smiled at him, tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and bright dark eyes that hid under long lashes when he looked too long. Startling, those wary eyes. Concealing. For a moment he felt a rush of fear, but she gave his hand a squeeze before twisting loose, and burst into sudden laughter. "Diapers!" she chortled, struggling to keep her voice low. "My big, strong, blond and blue-eyed hero goes into battle wearing diapers, and carrying only a hammer to fight with! You're the most unforgettable character I have ever known!" He'd passed inspection, then—so far. He expelled his withheld breath, and said, "I think you'll find me a little odd, in some ways." "Oh, not at all," Ida replied quickly. "Different, yes, but I wouldn't say odd." When they started down the street, she was nervous despite Roddie's assertion that he knew where the soldiers were posted. He wondered if she felt some of the doubt he'd tried to conceal, shared his visions of what the soldiers might do if they found him brazenly strolling with an Invader. They might not believe he was only questioning a prisoner. Every day, his friends were becoming more unpredictable. For that very reason, because he didn't know what precautions would do any good, he took a chance and walked openly to the bridge by the most direct route. In time this apparent assurance stilled Ida's fears, and she began to talk. Many of the things she said were beyond his experience and meaningless to him, but he did note with interest how effective the soldiers had been. "It's awful," Ida said. "So few young men are left, so many casualties.... "But why do you—we—keep up the fight?" Roddie asked. "I mean, the soldiers will never leave the city; their purpose is to guard it and they can't leave, so they won't attack. Let them alone, and there'll be plenty of young men." "Well!" said Ida, sharply. "You need indoctrination! Didn't they ever tell you that the city is our home, even if the stupid androids do keep us out? Don't you know how dependent we are on these raids for all our tools and things?" She sounded suspicious. Roddie shot her a furtive, startled glance. But she wasn't standing off to fight him. On the contrary, she was too close for both comfort and combat. She bumped him hip and shoulder every few steps, and if he edged away, she followed. He went on with his questioning. "Why are you here? I mean, sure, the others are after tools and things, but what's your purpose?" Ida shrugged. "I'll admit no girl has ever done it before," she said, "but I thought I could help with the wounded. That's why I have no weapon." She hesitated, glanced covertly up at him, and went on with a rush of words. "It's the lack of men, I guess. All the girls are kind of bored and hopeless, so I got this bright idea and stowed away on one of the boats when it was dark and the fog had settled down. Do you think I was being silly?" "No, but you do seem a little purposeless." In silence they trudged through a vast area of charred wood and concrete foundations on the northern end of the city. Thick fog over the water hid Alcatraz, but in-shore visibility was better, and they could see the beginning of the bridge approach. A stone rattled nearby. There was a clink of metal. Ida gasped, and clung to Roddie's arm. "Behind me!" he whispered urgently. "Get behind me and hold on!" He felt Ida's arms encircling his waist, her chin digging into his back below the left shoulder. Facing them, a hundred feet away, stood a soldier. He looked contemptuous, hostile. "It's all right," Roddie said, his voice breaking. There was a long, sullen, heart-stopping stare. Then the soldier turned and walked away. Ida's grip loosened, and he could feel her sag behind him. Roddie turned and held her. With eyes closed, she pressed cold blue lips to his. He grimaced and turned away his head. Ida's response was quick. "Forgive me," she breathed, and slipped from his arms, but she held herself erect. "I was so scared. And then we've had no sleep, no food or water." Roddie was familiar with these signs of weakness, proud of appearing to deny his own humiliating needs. "I guess you're not as strong as me," he said smugly. "I'll take care of you. Of course we can't sleep now, but I'll get food and water." Leaving her to follow, he turned left to the ruins of a supermarket he had previously visited, demonstrating his superior strength by setting a pace Ida couldn't match. By the time she caught up with him, he had grubbed out a few cans of the special size that Molly always chose. Picking two that were neither dented, swollen, nor rusted, he smashed an end of each with his hammer, and gave Ida her choice of strained spinach or squash. "Baby food!" she muttered. "Maybe it's just what we need, but to eat baby food with a man wearing a diaper.... Tell me, Roddie, how did you happen to know where to find it?" "Well, this is the northern end of the city," he answered, shrugging. "I've been here before." "Why did the soldier let us go?" "This watch," he said, touching the radium dial. "It's a talisman." But Ida's eyes had widened, and the color was gone from her face. She was silent, too, except when asking him to fill his fast-emptied can with rain-water. She didn't finish her own portion, but lay back in the rubble with feet higher than her head, obviously trying to renew her strength. And when they resumed their walk, her sullen, fear-clouded face showed plainly that he'd given himself away. But to kill her now, before learning how she planned to cross the supposedly impassable bridge, seemed as purposeless and impulsive as Ida herself. Roddie didn't think, in any case, that her death would satisfy the soldiers. With new and useful information to offer, he might join them as an equal at last. But if his dalliance with this enemy seemed pointless, not even Molly's knitting needles could protect him. He was sure the soldiers must be tracking the mysterious emanations of his watch dial, and had trouble to keep from glancing over his shoulder at every step. But arrival at the bridge approach ended the need for this self-restraint. Here, difficult going demanded full attention. He'd never gone as far as the bridge before, not having wanted to look as if he might be leaving the city. The approach was a jungle of concrete with an underbrush of reinforcing-steel that reached for the unwary with rusted spines. Frequently they had to balance on cracked girders, and inch over roadless spots high off the ground. Here Ida took the lead. When they got to where three approach roads made a clover-leaf, she led him down a side road and into a forest. Roddie stopped, and seized her arm. "What are you trying to do?" he demanded. "I'm taking you with me," Ida said firmly. "Taking you where you belong!" "No!" he blurted, drawing his hammer. "I can't go, nor let you go. I belong here!" Ida gasped, twisted loose, and ran. Roddie ran after her. She wasn't so easily caught. Like a frightened doe, she dashed in and out among the trees, leaped to the bridge's underpinnings where they thrust rustedly from a cliff, and scrambled up the ramp. Roddie sighed and slowed down. The pavement ended just beyond the cable anchors. From there to the south tower, only an occasional dangling support wire showed where the actual bridge had been suspended. Ida was trapped. He could take his time. Let the soldiers come up, as they undoubtedly would, to finish the job.... But Ida didn't seem to realize she was trapped. Without hesitation she dashed up the main left-hand suspension cable and ran along its curved steel surface. For a moment, Roddie thought of letting her go, letting her run up the ever-steepening catenary until—because there were no guard-ropes or handgrips—she simply fell. That would solve his problem. Except it wouldn't be his solution. Her death wouldn't prove him to his friends. He set out quickly, before Ida was lost to sight in the thick fog that billowed in straight from the ocean. At first he ran erect along the top of the yard-wide cylinder of twisted metal, but soon the curve steepened. He had to go on all fours, clinging palm and sole. Blood was on the cable where she'd passed. More blood stained it when he'd followed. But because his friends knew neither pain nor fatigue, Roddie would admit none either. Nor would he give in to the fear that dizzied him at every downward look. He scrambled on like an automaton, watching only his holds, till he rammed Ida's rear with his head. She had stopped, trembling and gasping. Roddie clung just below her and looked dazedly around. There was nothing in sight but fog, pierced by the rapier of rusted wire supporting them. Neither end of it was in sight. Upward lay success, if death were not nearer on the cable. No soldier had ever come even this far, for soldiers, as he'd told Ida, never left the city, were not built to do so. But he was here; with luck, he could capitalize on the differences that had plagued him so long. "Go on!" he ordered hoarsely. "Move!" There was neither answer nor result. He broke off an end of loosened wire and jabbed her rear. Ida gasped and crawled on. Up and up they went, chilled, wet, bleeding, pain-racked, exhausted. Never had Roddie felt so thoroughly the defects of his peculiar non-mechanical construction. Without realizing it, he acquired a new purpose, a duty as compelling as that of any soldier or fire-watcher. He had to keep that trembling body of his alive, mount to the tall rust tower overhead. He climbed and he made Ida climb, till, at nightmare's end, the fog thinned and they came into clear, windswept air and clawed up the last hundred feet to sanctuary. They were completely spent. Without word or thought they crept within the tower, huddled together for warmth on its dank steel deck, and slept for several hours. Roddie awoke as Ida finished struggling free of his unconscious grip. Limping, he joined her painful walk around the tower. From its openings they looked out on a strange and isolated world. To the north, where Ida seemed drawn as though by instinct, Mount Tamalpais reared its brushy head, a looming island above a billowy white sea of fog. To the south were the Twin Peaks, a pair of buttons on a cotton sheet. Eastward lay Mount Diablo, bald and brooding, tallest of the peaks and most forbidding. But westward over the ocean lay the land of gold—of all the kinds of gold there are, from brightest yellow to deepest orange. Only a small portion of the setting sun glared above the fog-bank; the rest seemed to have been broken off and smeared around by a child in love with its color. Fascinated, Roddie stared for minutes, but turned when Ida showed no interest. She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear. Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge. Roddie took the hammer from his waist. "Don't! Oh, don't!" Ida screamed. She burst into tears and covered her face with scratched and bloodied hands. Surprised, Roddie withheld the blow. He had wept, as a child, and, weeping, had for the first time learned he differed from his friends. Ida's tears disturbed him, bringing unhappy memories. "Why should you cry?" he asked comfortingly. "You know your people will come back to avenge you and will destroy my friends." "But—but my people are your people, too," Ida wailed. "It's so senseless, now, after all our struggle to escape. Don't you see? Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!" "It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape." Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him. "Rational! What's rational about murdering a defenseless girl in cold blood? Don't you realize we're the same sort of being, we two? Don't—don't you remember how we've been with each other all day?" She paused. Roddie noticed that her eyes were dark and frightened, yet somehow soft, over scarlet cheeks. He had to look away. But he said nothing. "Never mind!" Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!" Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare. "Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? Not a bit logical. Emotion is for creating, and it's so much more logical to destroy, isn't it?" She whirled back toward him, advancing as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his throat. "Go ahead. Get it over with—if you have the courage." It was hard for Roddie to look away from that wrath-crimsoned face, but it was even harder to keep staring into the blaze of her eyes. He compromised by gazing out an opening at the gathering dusk. He thought for a long time before he decided to tuck his hammer away. "It isn't reasonable to kill you now," he said. "Too dark. You can't possibly get down that half-ruined manway tonight, so let's see how I feel in the morning." Ida began to weep again, and Roddie found it necessary to comfort her. And by morning he knew he was a Man.

test

51122

THE MEN IN THE WALLS By WILLIAM TENN Illustrated by FINLAY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The world was divided between the Men and the Monsters—but which were Monsters and which were Men? I Mankind consisted of 128 people. The sheer population pressure of so vast a horde had long ago filled over a dozen burrows. Bands of the Male Society occupied the outermost four of these interconnected corridors and patrolled it with their full strength, twenty-three young adult males in the prime of courage and alertness. They were stationed there to take the first shock of any danger to Mankind, they and their band captains and the youthful initiates who served them. Eric the Only was an initiate in this powerful force. Today, he was a student warrior, a fetcher and a carrier for proven, seasoned men. But tomorrow, tomorrow.... This was his birthday. Tomorrow, he would be sent forth to Steal for Mankind. When he returned—and have no fear: Eric was swift, Eric was clever, he would return—off might go the loose loin cloths of boyhood to be replaced by the tight loin straps of a proud Male Society warrior. He would be free to raise his voice and express his opinions in the Councils of Mankind. He could stare at the women whenever he liked, for as long as he liked, to approach them even— He found himself wandering to the end of his band's burrow, still carrying the spear he was sharpening for his uncle. There, where a women's burrow began, several members of the Female Society were preparing food stolen from the Monster larder that very day. Each spell had to be performed properly, each incantation said just right, or it would not be fit to eat. It might even be dangerous. Mankind was indeed fortunate: plenty of food, readily available, and women who well understood the magical work of preparing it for human consumption. And such women—such splendid creatures! Sarah the Sickness-Healer, for example, with her incredible knowledge of what food was fit and what was unfit, her only garment a cloud of hair that alternately screened and revealed her hips and breasts, the largest in all Mankind. There was a woman for you! Over five litters she had had, two of them of maximum size. Eric watched as she turned a yellow chunk of food around and around under the glow lamp hanging from the ceiling of the burrow, looking for she only knew what and recognizing it when she found it she only knew how. A man could really strut with such a mate. But she was the wife of a band leader and far, far beyond him. Her daughter, though, Selma the Soft-Skinned, would probably be flattered by his attentions. She still wore her hair in a heavy bun: it would be at least a year before the Female Society would consider her an initiate and allow her to drape it about her nakedness. No, far too young and unimportant for a man on the very verge of warrior status. Another girl caught his eye. She had been observing him for some time and smiling behind her lashes, behind her demurely set mouth. Harriet the History-Teller, the oldest daughter of Rita the Record-Keeper, who would one day succeed to her mother's office. Now there was a lovely, slender girl, her hair completely unwound in testament to full womanhood and recognized professional status. Eric had caught these covert, barely stated smiles from her before; especially in the last few weeks, as the time for his Theft approached. He knew that if he were successful—and he had to be successful: don't dare think of anything but success!—she would look with favor on advances from him. Of course, Harriet was a redhead, and therefore, according to Mankind's traditions, unlucky. She was probably having a hard time finding a mate. But his own mother had been a redhead. Yes, and his mother had been very unlucky indeed. Even his father had been infected with her terrible bad luck. Still, Harriet the History-Teller was an important person in the tribe for one her age. Good-looking too. And, above all, she didn't turn away from him. She smiled at him, openly now. He smiled back. "Look at Eric!" he heard someone call out behind him. "He's already searching for a mate. Hey, Eric! You've not even wearing straps yet. First comes the stealing. Then comes the mating." Eric spun around, bits of fantasy still stuck to his lips. The group of young men lounging against the wall of his band's burrow were tossing laughter back and forth between them. They were all adults: they had all made their Theft. Socially, they were still his superiors. His only recourse was cold dignity. "I know that," he began. "There is no mating until—" "Until never for some people," one of the young men broke in. He rattled his spear in his hand, carelessly, proudly. "After you steal, you still have to convince a woman that you're a man. And some men have to do an awful lot of convincing. An awful lot, Eric-O." The ball of laughter bounced back and forth again, heavier than before. Eric the Only felt his face turn bright red. How dare they remind him of his birth? On this day of all days? Here he was about to prepare himself to go forth and Steal for Mankind.... He dropped the sharpening stone into his pouch and slid his right hand back along his uncle's spear. "At least," he said, slowly and definitely, "at least, my woman will stay convinced, Roy the Runner. She won't be always open to offers from every other man in the tribe." "You lousy little throwback!" Roy the Runner yelled. He leaped away from the rest of the band and into a crouch facing Eric, his spear tense in one hand. "You're asking for a hole in the belly! My woman's had two litters off me, two big litters. What would you have given her, you dirty singleton?" "She's had two litters, but not off you," Eric the Only spat, holding his spear out in the guard position. "If you're the father, then the chief's blonde hair is contagious—like measles." Roy bellowed and jabbed his spear forward. Eric parried it and lunged in his turn. He missed as his opponent leaped to one side. They circled each other, cursing and insulting, eyes only for the point of each other's spears. The other young men had scrambled a distance down the burrow to get out of their way. A powerful arm suddenly clamped Eric's waist from behind and lifted him off his feet. He was kicked hard, so that he stumbled a half-dozen steps and fell. On his feet in a moment, the spear still in his hand, he whirled, ready to deal with this new opponent. He was mad enough to fight all Mankind. But not Thomas the Trap-Smasher. No, not that mad. All the tension drained out of him as he recognized the captain of his band. He couldn't fight Thomas. His uncle. And the greatest of all men. Guiltily, he walked to the niche in the wall where the band's weapons were stacked and slid his uncle's spear into its appointed place. "What the hell's the matter with you, Roy?" Thomas was asking behind him. "Fighting a duel with an initiate? Where's your band spirit? That's all we need these days, to be cut down from six effectives to five. Save your spear for Strangers, or—if you feel very brave—for Monsters. But don't show a point in our band's burrow if you know what's good for you, hear me?" "I wasn't fighting a duel," the Runner mumbled, sheathing his own spear. "The kid got above himself. I was punishing him." "You punish with the haft of the spear. And anyway, this is my band and I do the punishing around here. Now move on out, all of you, and get ready for the council. I'll attend to the boy myself." They went off obediently without looking back. The Trap-Smasher's band was famous for its discipline throughout the length and breadth of Mankind. A proud thing to be a member of it. But to be called a boy in front of the others! A boy, when he was full-grown and ready to begin stealing! Although, come to think of it, he'd rather be called a boy than a singleton. A boy eventually became a man, but a singleton stayed a singleton forever. He put the problem to his uncle who was at the niche, inspecting the band's reserve pile of spears. "Isn't it possible—I mean, it is possible, isn't it—that my father had some children by another woman? You told me he was one of the best thieves we ever had." The captain of the band turned to study him, folding his arms across his chest so that biceps swelled into greatness and power. They glinted in the light of the tiny lantern bound to his forehead, the glow lantern that only fully accredited warriors might wear. After a while, the older man shook his head and said, very gently: "Eric, Eric, forget about it, boy. He was all of those things and more. Your father was famous. Eric the Storeroom-Stormer, we called him, Eric the Laugher at Locks, Eric the Roistering Robber of all Mankind. He taught me everything I know. But he only married once. And if any other woman ever played around with him, she's been careful to keep it a secret. Now dress up those spears. You've let them get all sloppy. Butts together, that's the way, points up and even with each other." Dutifully, Eric rearranged the bundle of armament that was his responsibility. He turned to his uncle again, now examining the knapsacks and canteens that would be carried on the expedition. "Suppose there had been another woman. My father could have had two, three, even four litters by different women. Extra-large litters too. If we could prove something like that, I wouldn't be a singleton any more. I would not be Eric the Only." The Trap-Smasher sighed and thought for a moment. Then he pulled the spear from his back sling and took Eric's arm. He drew the youth along the burrow until they stood alone in the very center of it. He looked carefully at the exits at either end, making certain that they were completely alone before giving his reply in an unusually low, guarded voice. "We'd never be able to prove anything like that. If you don't want to be Eric the Only, if you want to be Eric the something-else, well then, it's up to you. You have to make a good Theft. That's what you should be thinking about all the time now—your Theft. Eric, which category are you going to announce?" He hadn't thought about it very much. "The usual one I guess. The one that's picked for most initiations. First category." The older man brought his lips together, looking dissatisfied. "First category. Food. Well...." Eric felt he understood. "You mean, for someone like me—an Only, who's really got to make a name for himself—I ought to announce like a real warrior? I should say I'm going to steal in the second category—Articles Useful to Mankind. Is that what my father would have done?" "Do you know what your father would have done?" "No. What?" Eric demanded eagerly. "He'd have elected the third category. That's what I'd be announcing these days, if I were going through an initiation ceremony. That's what I want you to announce." "Third category? Monster souvenirs? But no one's elected the third category in I don't know how many auld lang synes. Why should I do it?" "Because this is more than just an initiation ceremony. It could be the beginning of a new life for all of us." Eric frowned. What could be more than an initiation ceremony and his attainment of full thieving manhood? "There are things going on in Mankind, these days," Thomas the Trap-Smasher continued in a strange, urgent voice. "Big things. And you're going to be a part of them. This Theft of yours—if you handle it right, if you do what I tell you, it's likely to blow the lid off everything the chief has been sitting on." "The chief ?" Eric felt confused. He was walking up a strange burrow now without a glow lamp. "What's the chief got to do with my Theft?" His uncle examined both ends of the corridor again. "Eric, what's the most important thing we, or you, or anyone, can do? What is our life all about? What are we here for?" "That's easy," Eric chuckled. "That's the easiest question there is. A child could answer it: " Hit back at the Monsters ," he quoted. " Drive them from the planet, if we can. Regain Earth for Mankind, if we can. But above all, hit back at the Monsters. Make them suffer as they've made us suffer. Make them know we're still here, we're still fighting. Hit back at the Monsters. " "Hit back at the Monsters. Right. Now how have we been doing that?" Eric the Only stared at his uncle. That wasn't the next question in the catechism. He must have heard incorrectly. His uncle couldn't have made a mistake in such a basic ritual. " We will do that ," he went on in the second reply, his voice sliding into the singsong of childhood lessons, " by regaining the science and knowhow of our fore-fathers. Man was once Lord of all Creation: his science and knowhow made him supreme. Science and knowhow is what we need to hit back at the Monsters. " "Now, Eric," his uncle asked gently. "Please tell me this. What in hell is knowhow?" That was way off. They were a full corridor's length from the normal progression of the catechism now. "Knowhow is—knowhow is—" he stumbled over the unfamiliar verbal terrain. "Well, it's what our ancestors knew. And what they did with it, I guess. Knowhow is what you need before you can make hydrogen bombs or economic warfare or guided missiles, any of those really big weapons like our ancestors had." "Did those weapons do them any good? Against the Monsters, I mean. Did they stop the Monsters?" Eric looked completely blank for a moment, then brightened. Oh! He knew the way now. He knew how to get back to the catechism: " The suddenness of the attack, the —" "Stop it!" his uncle ordered. "Don't give me any of that garbage! The suddenness of the attack, the treachery of the Monsters —does it sound like an explanation to you? Honestly? If our ancestors were really Lords of Creation and had such great weapons, would the Monsters have been able to conquer them? I've led my band on dozens of raids, and I know the value of a surprise attack; but believe me, boy, it's only good for a flash charge and a quick getaway if you're facing a superior force. You can knock somebody down when he doesn't expect it. But if he really has more than you, he won't stay down. Right?" "I—I guess so. I wouldn't know." "Well, I know. I know from plenty of battle experience. The thing to remember is that once our ancestors were knocked down, they stayed down. That means their science and knowhow were not so much in the first place. And that means—" here he turned his head and looked directly into Eric's eyes—" that means the science of our ancestors wasn't worth one good damn against the Monsters, and it wouldn't be worth one good damn to us!" Eric the Only turned pale. He knew heresy when he heard it. His uncle patted him on the shoulder, drawing a deep breath as if he'd finally spat out something extremely unpleasant. He leaned closer, eyes glittering beneath the forehead glow lamp and his voice dropped to a fierce whisper. "Eric. When I asked you how we've been hitting back at the Monsters, you told me what we ought to do. We haven't been doing a single thing to bother them. We don't know how to reconstruct the Ancestor-science, we don't have the tools or weapons or knowhow—whatever that is—but they wouldn't do us a bit of good even if we had them. Because they failed once. They failed completely and at their best. There's just no point in trying to put them together again." And now Eric understood. He understood why his uncle had whispered, why there had been so much strain in this conversation. Bloodshed was involved here, bloodshed and death. "Uncle Thomas," he whispered, in a voice that kept cracking despite his efforts to keep it whole and steady, "how long have you been an Alien-Science man? When did you leave Ancestor-Science?" Thomas the Trap-Smasher caressed his spear before he answered. He felt for it with a gentle, wandering arm, almost unconsciously, but both of them registered the fact that it was loose and ready. His tremendous body, nude except for the straps about his loins and the light spear-sling on his back, looked as if it were preparing to move instantaneously in any direction. He stared again from one end of the burrow to the other, his forehead lamp reaching out to the branching darkness of the exits. Eric stared with him. No one was leaning tightly against a wall and listening. "How long? Since I got to know your father. He was in another band; naturally we hadn't seen much of each other before he married my sister. I'd heard about him, though: everyone in the Male Society had—he was a great thief. But once he became my brother-in-law, I learned a lot from him. I learned about locks, about the latest traps—and I learned about Alien-Science. He'd been an Alien-Science man for years. He converted your mother, and he converted me." Eric the Only backed away. "No!" he called out wildly. "Not my father and mother! They were decent people—when they were killed a service was held in their name—they went to add to the science of our ancestors—" His uncle jammed a powerful hand over his mouth. "Shut up, you damn fool, or you'll finish us both! Of course your parents were decent people. How do you think they were killed? Your mother was with your father out in Monster territory. Have you ever heard of a woman going along with her husband on a Theft? And taking her baby with her? Do you think it was an ordinary robbery of the Monsters? They were Alien-science people, serving their faith as best they could. They died for it." Eric looked into his uncle's eyes over the hand that covered the lower half of his face. Alien-science people ... serving their faith ... do you think it was an ordinary robbery ... they died for it! He had never realized before how odd it was that his parents had gone to Monster territory together, a man taking his wife and the woman taking her baby! As he relaxed, his uncle removed the gagging hand. "What kind of Theft was it that my parents died in?" Thomas examined his face and seemed satisfied. "The kind you're going after," he said. "If you are your father's son. If you're man enough to continue the work he started. Are you?" Eric started to nod, then found himself shrugging weakly, and finally just hung his head. He didn't know what to say. His uncle—well, his uncle was his model and his leader, and he was strong and wise and crafty. His father—naturally, he wanted to emulate his father and continue whatever work he had started. But this was his initiation ceremony, after all, and there would be enough danger merely in proving his manhood. For his initiation ceremony to take on a task that had destroyed his father, the greatest thief the tribe had ever known, and a heretical, blasphemous task at that.... "I'll try. I don't know if I can." "You can," his uncle told him heartily. "It's been set up for you. It will be like walking through a dug burrow, Eric. All you have to face through is the council. You'll have to be steady there, no matter what. You tell the chief that you're undertaking the third category." "But why the third?" Eric asked. "Why does it have to be Monster souvenirs?" "Because that's what we need. And you stick to it, no matter what pressure they put on you. Remember, an initiate has the right to decide what he's going to steal. A man's first Theft is his own affair." "But, listen, uncle—" There was a whistle from the end of the burrow. Thomas the Trap-Smasher nodded in the direction of the signal. "The council's beginning, boy. We'll talk later, on expedition. Now remember this: stealing from the third category is your own idea, and all your own idea. Forget everything else we've talked about. If you hit any trouble with the chief, I'll be there. I'm your sponsor, after all." He threw an arm about his confused nephew and walked to the end of the burrow where the other members of the band waited. II The tribe had gathered in its central and largest burrow under the great, hanging glow lamps that might be used in this place alone. Except for the few sentinels on duty in the outlying corridors, all of Mankind was here. It was an awesome sight to behold. On the little hillock known as the Royal Mound, lolled Franklin the Father of Many Thieves, Chieftain of all Mankind. He alone of the cluster of warriors displayed heaviness of belly and flabbiness of arm—for he alone had the privilege of a sedentary life. Beside the sternly muscled band leaders who formed his immediate background, he looked almost womanly; and yet one of his many titles was simply The Man. Yes, unquestionably The Man of Mankind was Franklin the Father of Many Thieves. You could tell it from the hushed, respectful attitudes of the subordinate warriors who stood at a distance from the mound. You could tell it from the rippling interest of the women as they stood on the other side of the great burrow, drawn up in the ranks of the Female Society. You could tell it from the nervousness and scorn with which the women were watched by their leader, Ottilie, the Chieftain's First Wife. And finally, you could tell it from the faces of the children, standing in a distant, disorganized bunch. A clear majority of their faces bore an unmistakable resemblance to Franklin's. Franklin clapped his hands, three evenly spaced, flesh-heavy wallops. "In the name of our ancestors," he said, "and the science with which they ruled the Earth, I declare this council opened. May it end as one more step in the regaining of their science. Who asked for a council?" "I did." Thomas the Trap-Smasher moved out of his band and stood before the chief. Franklin nodded, and went on with the next, formal question: "And your reason?" "As a band leader, I call attention to a candidate for manhood. A member of my band, a spear-carrier for the required time, and an accepted apprentice in the Male Society. My nephew, Eric the Only." As his name was sung out, Eric shook himself. Half on his own volition and half in response to the pushes he received from the other warriors, he stumbled up to his uncle and faced the chief. This, the most important moment of his life, was proving almost too much for him. So many people in one place, accredited and famous warriors, knowledgeable and attractive women, the chief himself, all this after the shattering revelations from his uncle—he was finding it hard to think clearly. And it was vital to think clearly. His responses to the next few questions had to be exactly right. The chief was asking the first: "Eric the Only, do you apply for full manhood?" Eric breathed hard and nodded. "I do." "As a full man, what will be your value to Mankind?" "I will steal for Mankind whatever it needs. I will defend Mankind against all outsiders. I will increase the possessions and knowledge of the Female Society so that the Female Society can increase the power and well-being of Mankind." "And all this you swear to do?" "And all this I swear to do." The Chief turned to Eric's uncle. "As his sponsor, do you support his oath and swear that he is to be trusted?" With just the faintest hint of sarcasm in his voice, Thomas the Trap-Smasher replied: "Yes. I support his oath and swear that he is to be trusted." There was a rattling moment, the barest second, when the chief's eyes locked with those of the band leader. With all that was on Eric's mind at the moment, he noticed it. Then the chief looked away and pointed to the women on the other side of the burrow. "He is accepted as a candidate by the men. Now the women must ask for proof, for only a woman's proof bestows full manhood." The first part was over. And it hadn't been too bad. Eric turned to face the advancing leaders of the Female Society, Ottilie, the Chieftain's First Wife, in the center. Now came the part that scared him. The women's part. As was customary at such a moment, his uncle and sponsor left him when the women came forward. Thomas the Trap-Smasher led his band to the warriors grouped about the Throne Mound. There, with their colleagues, they folded their arms across their chests and turned to watch. A man can only give proof of his manhood while he is alone; his friends cannot support him once the women approach. It was not going to be easy, Eric realized. He had hoped that at least one of his uncle's wives would be among the three examiners: they were both kindly people who liked him and had talked to him much about the mysteries of women's work. But he had drawn a trio of hard-faced females who apparently intended to take him over the full course before they passed him. Sarah the Sickness-Healer opened the proceedings. She circled him belligerently, hands on hips, her great breasts rolling to and fro like a pair of swollen pendulums, her eyes glittering with scorn. "Eric the Only," she intoned, and then paused to grin, as if it were a name impossible to believe, "Eric the Singleton, Eric the one and only child of either his mother or his father. Your parents almost didn't have enough between them to make a solitary child. Is there enough in you to make a man?" There was a snigger of appreciation from the children in the distance, and it was echoed by a few growling laughs from the vicinity of the Throne Mound. Eric felt his face and neck go red. He would have fought any man to the death for remarks like these. Any man at all. But who could lift his hand to a woman and be allowed to live? Besides, one of the main purposes of this exhibition was to investigate his powers of self-control. "I think so," he managed to say after a long pause. "And I'm willing to prove it." "Prove it, then!" the woman snarled. Her right hand, holding a long, sharp-pointed pin, shot to his chest like a flung spear. Eric made his muscles rigid and tried to send his mind away. That, the men had told him, was what you had to do at this moment: it was not you they were hurting, not you at all. You, your mind, your knowledge of self, were in another part of the burrow entirely, watching these painful things being done to someone else. The pin sank into his chest for a little distance, paused, came out. It probed here, probed there; finally it found a nerve in his upper arm. There, guided by the knowledge of the Sickness-Healer, it bit and clawed at the delicate area until Eric felt he would grind his teeth to powder in the effort not to cry out. His clenched fists twisted agonizingly at the ends of his arms in a paroxysm of protest, but he kept his body still. He didn't cry out; he didn't move away; he didn't raise a hand to protect himself. Sarah the Sickness-Healer stepped back and considered him. "There is no man here yet," she said grudgingly. "But perhaps there is the beginnings of one." He could relax. The physical test was over. There would be another one, much later, after he had completed his theft successfully; but that would be exclusively by men as part of his proud initiation ceremony. Under the circumstances, he knew he would be able to go through it almost gaily. Meanwhile, the women's physical test was over. That was the important thing for now. In sheer reaction, his body gushed forth sweat which slid over the bloody cracks in his skin and stung viciously. He felt the water pouring down his back and forced himself not to go limp, prodded his mind into alertness. "Did that hurt?" he was being asked by Rita, the old crone of a Record-Keeper. There was a solicitous smile on her forty-year-old face, but he knew it was a fake. A woman as old as that no longer felt sorry for anybody. She had too many aches and pains and things generally wrong with her to worry about other people's troubles. "A little," he said. "Not much." "The Monsters will hurt you much more if they catch you stealing from them, do you know that? They will hurt you much more than we ever could." "I know. But the stealing is more important than the risk I'm taking. The stealing is the most important thing a man can do."

test

51449

MORAL EQUIVALENT By KRIS NEVILLE Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Why shouldn't a culture mimic another right down to the last little detail? Because the last detail may be just that—the final one! The planet Lanit II had dwindled to a luminous speck. They were in clear space now, at Breakoff Point. Beliakoff held the ship in position while Kelly set dials for the jump into the hyperspatial drift opening, which deep-space men knew as the Slot. Beliakoff cracked his bony knuckles nervously. "Now, Johnny," he said, "easy this time. Real easy. Gentle her into it. She's not a new ship. She resents being slammed into the Slot." "She'll take it," Kelly said, with a boyish grin of almost suicidal abandon. "Maybe she will, but how about us? You sort of creased the Slot getting us off Torriang. A little closer and—" "I was still getting the touch. You ought to be glad I'm an instinctive astrogator." He set the last dial with a rapid twirl and reached for the kissoff switch. "You're out two decimal points," said Beliakoff, who worried about such trifles. "Enough to ionize us." "I know, I know," Kelly grumbled, adjusting the dial. "I was just touching it for luck. Here we go!" He depressed the kissoff switch. Beliakoff shut his eyes as the ship lurched Slotward, wishing that Kyne, their government-inspected, college-graduated astrogator was still aboard. Kyne had been an expert at the job. But then, three planets back, he had suddenly gone after a native stevedore with a micro-edge cleaver, screaming that no dirty alien would ever marry his daughter. Kyne had no daughter. Currently he was confined in Azolith, awaiting transportation Earthside, to a padded little homy room in the Spaceman's Snug Port. "How about that?" Kelly asked proudly, once the ship was locked in hyperspace. "Superior intelligence and steel nerves do the trick every time." "Poor devil, Kyne," Beliakoff sighed. "A paranoid," Kelly diagnosed. "Did he ever tell you about the plot to keep him out of the Luna Military Academy?" "He never talked to me much." "That's because you're a cold, distant, unsympathetic type," Kelly said, with a complacent smile. "Me, he told everything. He applied to Luna every year. Studied all the textbooks on military organization, land tactics, sea tactics, space strategy, histories of warfare. Crammed his cabin with that junk. Knew it inside out. Fantastic memory!" "Why didn't he get in?" "Hemophilia. He couldn't pass the physical. He thought they were plotting against him. Still, I'm grateful for the chance at a little astrogation." With the barest hint of a smile, Kelly said, "I understand it's possible to bring a ship sidewise through the Slot at Terra." "Please don't try," Beliakoff begged, shuddering. "I knew we should have waited for Kyne's replacement at Mala." "We'd still be there, with a cargo of kvash turning sour." "I was afraid it would sour anyhow," Beliakoff said, with a worrier's knack for finding trouble. "Mala is the slowest loading port this side of the Rift. I must admit, however, they didn't do badly this time." "Noticed that, did you?" Kelly asked. "Hm? Did you find a way of speeding them up?" "Sure. Gave them Kyne's old dog-eared books. They're crazy about books. Really hustled for them." Beliakoff said nothing for several seconds, but his long, sallow face became pale. "You what?" "Gave 'em the books. Don't worry," Kelly said quickly. "Kyne gave them to me before they hauled him away." "You gave the warfare books to the people on Mala?" "You mean I shouldn't have? Why not? What's wrong with Mala?" "Plenty." Beliakoff grimly did some quick figuring. "It'll be a year, their time, when we can get back. Kelly, take us out of hyperspace!" "Now?" Kelly gasped. "Here?" "At once!" "But we might come out inside a star or—" "That," Beliakoff said, his voice filled with righteousness, "simply cannot be helped. We must return at once to Mala!" General Drak, Commander of the Forces of the Empress, Wearer of the Gold Star of Mala, sat at his desk in the Supreme Command Post, which had recently been converted from a hardware store. He was engaged in a fiery argument over the telephone with Nob, the Empress's right-hand man. "But damn it all," General Drak shouted, "I must have it! I am the Supreme Commander, the General of All the Armies of the Dictatorship! Doesn't that mean anything?" "Not under the circumstances," Nob answered. Two soldiers, standing guard in the General's quarters, listened interestedly. "Think he'll get it?" one asked. "Not a chance," the other answered. Drak glared them into silence, then returned to the argument. "Will you please attempt to understand my position?" he said hoarsely. "You put me in command. At my orders, the Armies of the Dictatorship move against the Allied Democracies. All the other generals obey me. Me! Correct?" "He's got a point," one soldier said. "He'll never get it," the other replied. "Shut up, you two!" Drak roared. "Nob, aren't I right? It's the Earthly way, Nob. Authority must be recognized!" "I'm sorry," Nob said. "Extremely sorry. Personally, I sympathize with you. But the Book of Terran Rank Equivalents is quite specific. Seven shoulder stars are the most—the absolute most—that any general can wear. I absolutely cannot allow you to wear eight." "But you gave Frix seven! And he's just Unit General!" "That was before we understood the rules completely. We thought there was no limit to the number of stars we could give and Frix was sulky. I'm sorry, General, you'll just have to be satisfied with seven." "Take one away from Frix, then." "Can't. He'll resign." "In that case, I resign." "You aren't allowed to. The book, Military Leadership , specifically states that a Supreme Commander never resigns during hostilities. An Earthman would find the very thought inconceivable." "All right!" Drak furiously slammed down the telephone. The two soldiers exchanged winks. "At attention, you two," Drak said. "You're supposed to be honor guards. Why can't you act like honor guards?" "We haven't got weapons," one of the soldiers pointed out. "Can't be helped. I sent what we had to the front." "But we need them here," the soldier said earnestly. "It's bad for morale, us not having weapons, and morale is vital for victory." Drak hated to be lectured, but he had to accept textbook truth when it was quoted at him. "You may be right," he agreed. "I'll try to get some back." He rubbed his eyes tiredly. Everything had happened so quickly! Just a week ago, Nob had walked into his store and inquired, "Drak, how would you like to be a general?" "I don't know," Drak had confessed honestly. "What is it and why do we need one?" "War starting," Nob said. "You've heard of war, haven't you? Earth idea, very Earthly. I'll explain later how it works. What do you say?" "All right. But do you really think I'm the right type?" "Absolutely. Besides, your hardware store is perfectly situated for the Supreme Command Post." But aside from the location of his hardware store, Drak had other qualifications for leadership. For one thing, he looked like an Earth general and this had loomed large in Nob's eyes. Drak was over six feet tall, strongly built, solidly muscled. His eyes were gray, deep-set and fierce; his nose was aquiline; his mouth was firm because he usually held nails in it when he was out on a repair job. In his uniform, Drak looked every inch a general; as a matter of fact, he looked like several generals, for his cap came from the Earth-Mars war of '82, his tunic was a relic of the D'eereli Campaign, his belt was in the style of the Third Empire, his pants were a replica of the Southern Star Front, while his shoes reminded one of the hectic days of the Fanzani Rebellion. But at least all his clothes were soldiers' clothes. His honor guard had to piece out their uniforms with personal articles. They had complained bitterly about the injustice of this, and had come close to deserting. But Drak, after some hasty reading in Smogget's Leadership , told them about the Terran doctrine of the Privileges of Rank. In front of him now was a report from the Allani Battle Front. He wasn't sure what it said, since it was coded and he had neglected to write down the code. Was it ENEMY REPULSED US WITH HEAVY LOSSES or should it read US REPULSED ENEMY WITH HEAVY LOSSES? He wished he knew. It made quite a difference. The door burst open and a young corporal rushed in. "Hey, General, take a look out the window!" Drak started to rise, then reconsidered. Rules were rules. "Hey, what?" he demanded. "Forgot," the corporal said. "Hey, sir , take a look out the window, huh?" "Much better." Drak walked to the window and saw, in the distance, a mass of ascending black smoke. "City of Chando," the corporal said proudly. "Boy, we smacked it today! Saturation bombing for ten hours. They can't use it for anything but a gravel pit now!" "Sir," Drak reminded. "Sir. The planes are fueled up and waiting. What shall we flatten next, huh, sir?" "Let me see...." General Drak examined a wall map upon which the important enemy cities were circled in red. There were Alis and Dryn, Kys and Mos and Dlettre. Drak could think of no reason for leveling one more than another. After a moment's thought, he pushed a button on his desk. "Yeah?" asked a voice over the loudspeaker. "Which one, Ingif?" "Kys, of course," said the cracked voice of his old hardware store assistant. "Fellow over there owes us money and won't pay up." "Thanks, Ingif." Drak turned to the corporal. "Go to it, soldier!" "Yes, sir!" The corporal hurried out. General Drak turned back to the reports on his desk, trying again to puzzle out what had happened at Allani. Repulsed Us? Us Repulsed? How should it read? "Oh, well," Drak said resignedly. "In the long run, I don't suppose it really makes much difference." Miles away, in no man's land, stood a bunker of reinforced concrete and steel. Within the bunker were two men. They sat on opposite sides of a plain wooden table and their faces were stern and impassive. Beside each man was a pad and pencil. Upon each pad were marks. Upon the table between them was a coin. "Your toss," said the man on the right. The man on the left picked up the coin. "Call it." "Heads." It came up heads. "Damn," said the flipper, passing the coin across the table and standing up. The other man smiled faintly, but said nothing. Kelly reached for the kissoff switch, then hesitated. "Look, Igor," he said, "do we have to come out now, without charts? It gets risky, you know. How can we tell what's out there in normal space?" "It is a risk we have to take," Beliakoff said stonily. "But why? What's wrong with the people of Mala having those books? Believe me, there's nothing dirty in them." "Look," Beliakoff said patiently, "you know that Mala is a semi-restricted planet. Limited trading is allowed under control conditions. No articles are allowed on the planet except those on the approved list." "Yeah," Kelly said vaguely. "Silly sort of rule." "Not at all. Mala is a mirror culture. They consider Earth and its ways to be absolute perfection. They copy everything of Earth's they can find." "Seems like a good idea. We have got a real good culture." "Sure, but we developed into it. The Malans simply copy what they see, with no underlying tradition or rationale. Since they don't know why they're doing any particular thing, they can easily misinterpret it, warp it into something harmful." "They'll learn," Kelly said. "Of course they will. But in the meantime, the results can be devastating. They always are when a primitive race tries to ape the culture of a more advanced people. Look at what happened to the South Sea Islanders. All they picked up was the worst of French, British and American culture. You hardly see any more South Sea Islanders, do you? Same with the American Indians, with the Hottentots, and plenty of others." "I still think you're making too much of a fuss about it," Kelly said. "All right, I gave them a lot of books on warfare and political organization. So what? What in blazes can they do with them?" "The Malans," Beliakoff said grimly, "have never had a war." Kelly gulped. "Never?" "Never. They're a completely cooperative society. Or were, before they started reading those warfare books." "But they wouldn't start a war just because they've got some books on it, and know that Earth people do it, and—yeah, I guess they would." Quickly he set the dials. "You're right, buddy. We have an absolute moral obligation to return and straighten out that mess." "I knew you'd see it that way," Beliakoff said approvingly. "And there is the additional fact that the Galactic Council could hold us responsible for any deaths traceable to the books. It could mean Ran-hachi Prison for a hundred years or so." "Why didn't you say that in the first place?" Kelly flipped the kissoff switch. The ship came out in normal space. Fortunately, there was no sun or planet in its path. "Hang on," Kelly said, "we're going where we're going in a great big rush!" "I just hope we'll be in time to salvage something," Beliakoff said, watching as their freighter plowed its way through the sea of space toward the unchanging stars. With evident nervousness, Nob walked down a long, dim corridor toward the imperial chambers, carrying a small package in both hands. The Prime Minister of the Dictatorship was a small bald man with a great bulging forehead and small, glittering black eyes, made smaller by steel-rimmed spectacles. He looked the very incarnation of an evil genius, which was why he had been chosen as the Power Behind the Throne. In point of fact, however, Nob was a mild, near-sighted, well-meaning little man, a lawyer by occupation, known throughout Mala for his prize rose gardens and his collection of Earth stamps. In spite of a temperamental handicap, he didn't find his new job too difficult. The Earth books were there and Nob simply interpreted them as literally as possible. Whenever a problem came up, Nob thought: how would they solve it on Earth? Then he would do the same, or as near the same as possible. But dealing with the Empress presented problems of a unique nature. Nob couldn't find a book entitled Ways and Means of Placating Royalty . If such a book were obtainable, Nob would have paid any price for it. He took a deep breath, knocked and opened the door into the Royal Chambers. Instantly he ducked. A vase shattered against the wall behind him. Not so good, he thought, calculating the distance by which it had missed him. The Empress Jusa's aim was improving. "Nob, you dirty swine!" the Empress shrieked. "At your service, Majesty," Nob answered, bowing low. "Where are the pearls, you insolent dolt?" "Here, Majesty," Nob said, handing over the package. "It strained the exchequer, buying them for you. The Minister of the Treasury threatened to desert to the enemy. He may still. The people are muttering about extravagance in high places. But the pearls are yours, Majesty." "Of course." Jusa opened the package and looked at the lustrous gems. "Can I keep them?" she asked, in a very small voice. "Of course not." "I didn't think so," Jusa said sadly. She had been just another Malan girl, but had been chosen as Empress on the basis of her looks, which were heartbreakingly lovely. It was axiomatic that an Empress should be heartbreakingly lovely. The Malans had seen enough Earth films to know that. But an Empress should also be cold, calculating, cruel, as well as gracious, headstrong and generous to a fault. She should care nothing for her people, while, simultaneously, all she cared for was the people. She should act in a manner calculated to make her subjects love her in spite of and because of herself. Jusa was a girl of considerable intelligence and she wanted to be as Earthly as the next. But the contradictions in her role baffled her. "Can't I keep them just for a little while?" she pleaded, holding a single pearl up to the light. "It isn't possible," Nob said. "We need guns, tanks, planes. Therefore you sell your jewelry. There are many Terran precedents." "But why did I have to insist upon the pearls in the first place?" Jusa asked. "I explained! As Empress, you must be flighty, must possess a whim of iron, must have no regard for anyone else's feelings, must lust for expensive baubles." "All right," Jusa said. "All right, what?" "All right, swine." "That's better," Nob said. "You're learning, Jusa, you really are. If you could just fluctuate your moods more consistently—" "I really will try," promised the Empress. "I'll learn, Nob. You'll be proud of me yet." "Good. Now there are some problems of state which you must decide upon. Prisoners of war, for one thing. We have several possible means for disposing of them. First, we could—" "You take care of it." "Now, now," Nob chided. "Mustn't shirk your duty." "I'm not. I am simply being arbitrary and dictatorial. You solve it, pig. And bring me diamonds." "Yes, Excellency," Nob said, bowing low. "Diamonds. But the people—" "I love the people. But to hell with them!" she cried, fire in her eyes. "Fine, fine," Nob said, and bowed his way out of the room. Jusa stood for a few moments in thought, then picked up a vase and shattered it on the floor. She made a mental note to order several dozen more. Then she flung herself upon the royal couch and began to weep bitterly. She was quite a young Empress and she had the feeling of being in beyond her depth. The problems of the war and of royalty had completely ended her social life. She resented it; any girl would. Nob, meanwhile, left the palace and went home in his armored car. The car had been ordered to protect him against assassins, who, according to the Earth books, aimed a good deal of their plots at Prime Ministers. Nob could see no reason for this, since if he weren't Prime Minister, any one of a thousand men could do the job with equal efficiency. But he supposed it had a certain symbolic meaning. He reached his home and his wife kissed him on the cheek. "Hard day at the palace, dear?" she asked. "Quite hard," Nob said. "Lots of work for after supper." "It just isn't fair," complained his wife. She was a plump, pleasant little person and she worried continually about her husband's health. "They shouldn't make you work so hard." "But of course they should!" said Nob, a little astonished. "Don't you remember what I told you? All the books say that during a war, a Prime Minister is a harried, harassed individual, weighed down by the enormous burden of state, unable to relax, tense with the numerous strains of high office." "It isn't fair," his wife repeated. "No one said it was. But it's extremely Earthlike." His wife shrugged her shoulders. "Well, of course, if it's Earthlike, it must be right. Come eat supper, dear." After eating, Nob attacked his mounds of paperwork. But soon he was yawning and his eyes burned. He turned to his wife, who was just finishing the dishes. "My dear," he said, "do you suppose you could help me?" "Is it proper?" she asked. "Oh, absolutely. The books state that the Prime Minister's wife tries in every way possible to relieve her husband of the burden of power." "In that case, I'll be happy to try." She sat down in front of the great pile of papers. "But, dear, I don't know anything about these matters." "Rely on instinct," Nob answered, yawning. "That's what I do." Flattered by the importance of her task, she set to work with a will. Several hours later, she awakened her husband, who was slumbering on the couch. "I've got them all finished except these," she said. "In this one, I'm afraid I don't understand that word." Nob glanced at the paper. "Oh, propaganda. That means giving the people the facts, whether true or false. It's very important in any war." "I don't see why." "It's obvious. To have a genuine Earth-style war, you need ideological differences. That's why we chose a dictatorship and the other continent chose a democracy. The job of propaganda is to keep us different." "I see," she said dubiously. "Well, this other paper is from General Heglm of Security. He asks what you are doing about the spy situation. He says it's very serious." "I had forgotten about that. He's right, it's reached a crisis point." He put the paper in his pocket. "I'm going to take care of that personally, first thing in the morning." In the last few hours, his wife had made no less than eight Major Policy Decisions, twenty Codifications, eight Unifications, and three Clarifications. Nob didn't bother to read them over. He trusted his wife's good judgment and common sense. He went to bed that night with the feeling of a job well done. And before he fell asleep, he figured out exactly what he would do about the spy situation. The next morning, Nob's orders went out by all means of communication. The results were gratifyingly swift, since the people of the dictatorship were completely behind the war and dutifully loved and hated their Empress, in whose name the order was signed. A typical scene took place in the clubcar of the Char-Xil express. The occupants of the car, twenty-three commuting businessmen, sealed the doors as soon as they received Nob's order. The best-read among them, a salesman by the name of Thrang, was elected spokesman for the group. "Boys," said Thrang, "I guess I don't have to tell you anything about the importance of this order. We all know what war is by now, don't we?" "We sure do!" "War is hell!" "The war that the enemy thrust on us!" "The war to start all wars!" "That's right," Thrang said. "And I guess we've all felt the pinch since the war started. Eh, boys?" "I've done my part," said a man named Draxil. "When the Prime Minister called for a cigarette shortage, I dumped twenty carloads of tobacco in the Hunto River. Now we got cigarette rationing!" "That's the spirit," Thrang said. "I know for a fact that others among you have done the same with sugar, canned goods, butter, meat and a hundred items. Everything's rationed now; everyone feels the pinch. But, boys, there's still more we have to do. Now a spy situation has come up and it calls for quick action." "Haven't we done enough?" groaned a clothing-store owner. "It's never enough! In time of war, Earth people give till it hurts—then give some more! They know that no sacrifice is too much, that nothing counts but the proper prosecution of the war." The clothing-store owner nodded vehemently. "If it's Earthly, it's good enough for me. So what can we do about this spy situation?" "That is for us to decide here and now," Thrang said. "According to the Prime Minister, our dictatorship cannot boast a single act of espionage or sabotage done to it since the beginning of the war. The Chief of Security is alarmed. It's his job to keep all spies under surveillance. Since there are none, his department has lost all morale, which, in turn, affects the other departments." "Do we really need spies?" "They serve a vital purpose," Thrang explained. "All the books agree on this. Spies keep a country alert, on its toes, eternally vigilant. Through sabotage, they cut down on arms production, which otherwise would grow absurdly large, since it has priority over everything else. They supply Security with subjects for Interrogation, Confession, Brainwashing and Re-indoctrination. This in turn supplies data for the enemy propaganda machine, which in turn supplies material for our counter-propaganda machine." Draxil looked awed. "I didn't know it was so complicated." "That's the beauty of the Earth War," Thrang said. "Stupendous yet delicate complications, completely interrelated. Leave out one seemingly unimportant detail and the whole structure collapses." "Those Terrans!" Draxil said, shaking his head in admiration. "Now to work. Boys, I'm calling for volunteers. Who'll be a spy?" No one responded. "Really now!" said Thrang. "That's no attitude to take. Come on, some of you must be harboring treasonous thoughts. Don't be ashamed of it. Remember, it takes all kinds to make a war." Little Herg, a zipper salesman from Xcoth, cleared his throat. "I have a cousin who's Minister of War for the Allies." "An excellent motive for subversion!" Thrang cried. "I rather thought it was," the zipper salesman said, pleased. "Yes, I believe I can handle the job." "Splendid!" Thrang said. By then, the train had arrived at the station. The doors were unsealed, allowing the commuters to leave for their jobs. Thrang watched the zipper salesman depart, then hurried into the crowd. In a moment, he found a tall man wearing a slouch hat and dark glasses. On his lapel was a silver badge which read Secret Police . "See that man?" Thrang asked, pointing to the zipper salesman. "You bet," the Secret Policeman said. "He's a spy! A dirty spy! Quick, after him!" "He's being watched," said the Secret Policeman laconically. "I just wanted to make sure," Thrang said, and started to walk off. He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned. The Secret Policeman had been joined by two tall men in slouch hats and dark glasses. They wore badges that said Storm Troopers . "You're under arrest," said the Secret Policeman. "Why? What have I done?" "Not a thing, as far as we know," said a Storm Trooper. "Not a single solitary thing. That's why we're arresting you." "Arbitrary police powers," the Secret Policeman explained. "Suspension of search warrants and habeas corpus. Invasion of privacy. War, you know. Come along quietly, sir. You have a special and very important part to play in the war effort." "What's that?" "You have been arbitrarily selected as Martyr," said the Secret Policeman. Head held high, Thrang marched proudly to his destiny. The whole of Mala took to war with a will. Soon books began to appear on the stalls: War and You for the masses, The Erotic Release of War for the elite, The Inherent Will to Destroy for philosophers, and War and Civilization for scholars. Volumes of personal experiences sold well. Among them was an account of daring sabotage by a former zipper salesman, and the dramatic story of the Martyrdom of Thrang. War eliminated a thousand old institutions and unburdened the people of the heavy hand of tradition. War demonstrated clearly that everything was as temporary as a match-flash except Art and Man, because cities, buildings, parks, vehicles, hills, museums, monuments were as whispers of dust after the bombers had gone. Among the proletariat, the prevailing opinion was voiced by Zun, who was quoted as saying at a war plant party, "Well, there ain't nothin' in the stores I can buy. But I never made so much money in my life!" In the universities, professors boned up on the subject in order to fit themselves for Chairs of War that were sure to be endowed. All they had to do was wait until the recent crop of war profiteers were taxed into becoming philanthropists, or driven to it by the sense of guilt that the books assured them they would feel. Armies grew. Soldiers learned to paint, salute, curse, appreciate home cooking, play poker, and fit themselves in every way for the post-war civilian life. They broadened themselves with travel and got a welcome vacation from home and hearth. War, the Malans agreed, was certainly one of the cleverest of Earth institutions and as educational as it was entertaining. "Nope," Beliakoff was saying, "you wouldn't like Ran-hachi Prison, not one little bit. It's on Mercury, you know, in the twilight zone. You blister by day and you freeze by night. Only two men have escaped from Ran-hachi in the last hundred years, and one of them figured his curve wrong and flipped into Sol." "What about the other one?" Kelly asked, perspiring lightly. "His gyros fused. He was bound straight for the Coal Sack. Take him a couple of thousand years to get there, at his speed," Beliakoff finished dreamily. "No, Johnny, you wouldn't like Ran-hachi." "Okay, okay," Kelly said. "The death penalty would be better." "They give that only as a measure of extreme clemency," Beliakoff said with gloomy Slavic satisfaction. "Enough! We'll straighten out Mala." There was more hope than conviction in Kelly's voice. "Thar she lies, off to starboard." Mala was a tiny blue and brown sphere, suddenly growing larger in their screens. Their radio blared on the emergency channel. Kelly swore. "That's the Galactic patrol boat from Azolith. What's he doing here?" "Blockade," said Beliakoff. "Standard practice to quarantine a planet at war. We can't touch down legally until the war's declared over." "Nuts. We're going down." Kelly touched the controls and the freighter began to descend into the interdicted area. "Attention, freighter!" the radio blasted. "This is the interdictory ship Moth . Heave to and identify yourself." Beliakoff answered promptly in the Propendium language. "Let's see 'em unscramble that ," he said to Kelly. They continued their descent. After a while, a voice from the patrol boat said in Propendium, "Attention, freighter! You are entering an interdicted area. Heave to at once and prepare to be boarded." "I can't understand your vile North Propendium accent," Beliakoff bellowed, in a broad South Propendium dialect. "If you people can't speak a man's language, don't clutter up the ether with your ridiculous chatter. I know you long-haul trampers and I'll be damned if I'll give you any air, water, food, or anything else. If you can't stock that stuff like any normal, decent—" "This area is interdicted," the patrol boat broke in, speaking now with a broad South Propendium accent. "Hell," Beliakoff grumbled. "They've got themselves a robot linguist." "—under direct orders from the patrol boat Moth . Heave to at once, freighter, and prepare to be boarded and inspected."

test

50905

Yesterday House By FRITZ LEIBER Illustrated by ASHMAN [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts—worse for one with none! I The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand. He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest island out. He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth. The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the farthest one out. Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands. Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough. To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm. He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery. Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside. Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another. A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove. Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees. The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm. She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn. The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and walked toward her. She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet. Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than eighteen. He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, "Are you he?" "What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly. "The one who sends me the little boxes." "I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here." "No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious. "It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on. "Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a quarter of a mile wide." "The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house." He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?" "One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find someone here." "There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks. She nodded. "I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?" She shook her head. "It must get pretty dull for you." "Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow." He looked at her hard for a moment. "I suppose you read a lot?" She nodded. "Fitzgerald's my favorite author." She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. "Would you like some lemonade?" He'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry." She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it. He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. "I'm a biology student. Been working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?" She shook her head. "Probably the greatest living biologist," he was proud to inform her. "Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him." He grinned. "Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kesserich." The girl looked puzzled. Jack explained, "The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences, won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name." "Mary Alice Pope," she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time. "You're pretty shy, aren't you?" "How would I know?" The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a "flapper." "Will you sit down?" she asked him gravely. The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. "I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over." "Why?" "So you'll be able to go back to the mainland." "But I never go to the mainland." "You mean you stay out here all winter?" he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves. "Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them." "But that's impossible!" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. "You can't be shut off this way from people your own age!" "You're the first one I ever met." She hesitated. "I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies." "You're joking!" "No, it's true." "But why are they doing it to you?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?" She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. "I don't know why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell you a secret?" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. "Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box." "What's that?" he said sharply. "Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends, 'Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude—'" "Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Who sends you these boxes?" "I don't know." "But how are the notes signed?" "They're wonderful notes," she said. "So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh." "Yes, but how are they signed?" She hesitated. "Never anything but 'Your Lover.'" "And so when you first saw me, you thought—" He began, then stopped because she was blushing. "How long have you been getting them?" "Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast." "But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?" "I'm not sure." "But how can they get them in winter?" "I don't know." "Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?" "Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war." "What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade. "The World War, of course. What's the matter?" Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves. And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read: HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones: Foes of Machado Riot in Havana Big NRA Parade Planned Balbo Speaks in New York Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged. "Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked. "I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933. "You're trying to joke," Jack told her. "No, I'm not." "But it's 1953." "Now it's you who are joking." "But the paper's yellow." "The paper's always yellow." He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or—" "Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced. "I don't like what you're saying." "But—" "No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here." "I'm really not joking," he said after a moment. She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!" She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound. At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons. "Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...." Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker. The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere. "I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that you're here." "All right they won't like it." Her agitation grew. "No, you must go." "I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying. "Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock." Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still. "You must go before they see you." "Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...." He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him. He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak. Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O. , dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks. As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead. For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps. When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland. Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle. But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail. Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails. II The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its lavish interior. In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature. Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard. He asked abruptly, "Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?" The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise. It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier. "That is Mary Alice Pope," Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. "She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933." The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness. "Sit down," she said, "and I'll tell you about it." Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa. "You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of them. "Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without marrying, he was safe. "Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred. "Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred." With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this. She went on, "Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy—" Jack broke in with, "Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?" Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. "But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home. "Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that." She looked defiantly at Jack. "I drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant." She paused. "It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing. "Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare. "Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms." A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned. The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy. "Hello, Barr," Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife. The great biologist had come home. III "Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?" Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far. "Not especially, sir," he mumbled. The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor. Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality. "You know what I mean, of course," Kesserich pressed. "The factors that make you you, and me me." "Heredity and environment," Jack parroted like a freshman. Kesserich nodded. "Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same individual at will." Jack felt a shiver go through him. "To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us." "What about identical twins?" Kesserich pointed out. "And then there's parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male." Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. "There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution." Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. "Even then you wouldn't get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits." "Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother's traits?" "But environment would change things," Jack objected. "The duplicate would be bound to develop differently." "Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times...." For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's sphinx-like face. "Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms," the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels. "Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won't have any time for it tomorrow." Jack looked at him blankly. "Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter," the biologist explained. IV Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people. Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers. The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir. After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory. This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it. He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him. The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. "You must go away at once and never come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've been watching for you all morning." He tossed the newspapers over the fence. "You don't have to read them now," he told her. "Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines." When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak. "Listen to me," he said. "You've been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it's 1933 now instead of 1951. I'm not sure why it's been done, though I think I know who you really are." "But," the girl faltered, "my aunts tell me it's 1933." "They would." "And there are the papers ... the magazines ... the radio." "The papers are old ones. The radio's faked—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it." " These papers might be faked," she said, pointing to where she'd let them drop on the ground. "They're new," he said. "Only old papers get yellow." "But why would they do it to me? Why? " "Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker than anything." "I couldn't," she said, drawing back. "He's coming tonight." "He?" "The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life." Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. "A life that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary."

test

50441

MASTER of Life and Death by ROBERT SILVERBERG ACE BOOKS A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y. MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property Printed in U.S.A. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] THE MAN WHO RATIONED BABIES By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world. For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH? CAST OF CHARACTERS ROY WALTON He had to adopt the motto— the ends justify the means . FITZMAUGHAM His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet. FRED WALTON His ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated their size. LEE PERCY His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills. PRIOR With the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son? DR. LAMARRE He died for discovering the secret of immortality. Contents I The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as he entered the hideous place. Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate attractive quarters. So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office. Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all. His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director FitzMaugham, and half the pay. He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it. It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia. It was dated 4 June 2232 , six days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization. Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ..." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random, "... central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease transition." He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings. Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before trouble came. There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again. "Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating irrelevant data." It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage. He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep. That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute. The annunciator chimed. "I'm busy," Walton said immediately. "There's a Mr. Prior to see you," the annunciator's calm voice said. "He insists it's an emergency." "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300." Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer office, and then the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment." "Commitments are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed. "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all." Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need— The door burst open. A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security. They carried drawn needlers. "Are you Administrator Walton?" the big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior." The three security men caught up and swarmed all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand how he got in here, but he did." "Ah—yes. So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to assassinate anybody, will you?" "Administrator Walton!" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peace! How can you accuse me of—" One of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all. "Search him," Walton said. They gave Prior an efficient going-over. "He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to health?" "Neither. Leave him here with me." "Are you sure you—" "Get out of here," Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world who'd take this job. Now get out !" They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards. "Take a seat, Mr. Prior." "I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man." "I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior." "Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—" "That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?" Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted. Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable." "The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently. "Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—" Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him. "Mr. Walton...." "Yes?" "My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...." Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy. "He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—" Walton rose. " No ," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program." "I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—" "You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for other people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live." " I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?" It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it. "Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits." "Meaning you'll kill any children I have?" Prior asked. "Those who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you." Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk drawer. But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll leave you," he said somberly. "I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us." Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three basilisks. In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead of time. It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain, consuming precious food? Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was still growing. Prior's words haunted him. I was tubercular ... where would my poems be now? The big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been tubercular too. What good are poets? he asked himself savagely. The reply came swiftly: What good is anything, then? Keats, Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home. Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision. The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act. But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one. Prior's baby. With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour." II He stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the hallway. There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization Law. Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law. He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor. "Roy." At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood there. "Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham." The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?" Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot of work lately." As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself. The director smiled. "You never did learn how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning, though. Mind if I join you?" "I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs." "Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?" "No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal attention." "I see." The deep, warm eyes bored into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think." "Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little." FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never learn how to relax, my boy." The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen ; there was a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed twenty , covering the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination. As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?" "Yes," Walton said. "He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?" "That's right, sir," Walton said tightly. "He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his mind?" Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down." "Naturally," FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles." "Of course, sir." The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a neat, gleaming sign: FLOOR 20 Euthanasia Clinic and Files Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem nakedly obvious now. The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here," he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should take some time off for relaxation each day." "I'll try, sir." Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone. Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know! Walton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept. The room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data. While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night. "Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can do?" "I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?" "Not at all, sir. Go right ahead." Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of his presence. No doubt I must radiate charisma , he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to himself. Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip, wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior. A moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of the slot: 3216847AB1 PRIOR, Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 5lb. 3oz. An elaborate description of the boy in great detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of the card: EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332 EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED He glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend. Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save Philip Prior. He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's card into his breast pocket. That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted: 3f2, tubercular-prone . He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits. He proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good. Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it. The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby. He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away. Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in the process? Five doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above. The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a certificate ... and life. "Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?" Walton smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in touch with every department we have, you know." "Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!" "Umm. Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose. "Seen my brother around?" he asked. "Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?" "No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there. Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones today?" "Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph." "That only makes six," Walton said. "Oh, and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven in one morning." "Have any trouble with the parents?" "What do you think?" the doctor asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though." Walton shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm. Silence for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you if you like." "Don't bother," Walton said hurriedly. He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when Walton appeared. Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton." "Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?" "Eleven hundred, as usual." "Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on," Walton said. "To keep public opinion on our side." "Sir?" "Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?" " Mistake? But how—" "Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off , Walton thought in amazement. Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check everything from now on." "Good. Begin with the 1100 batch." Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube. Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles. Well, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow. The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir." "Put him on." The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness. "What is it, Doctor?" "It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll never guess what just happened—" "No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up." "I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!" "No!" "It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine." "Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked. "No, sir." Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us in half an hour." "Yes, sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?" "Don't say a word about this to anyone , not even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for any future cases of this sort." "Certainly, sir. Is that all?" "It is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and stared bleakly at the far wall. The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor. He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby. Well, the thing was done. No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's activities. The annunciator chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir." Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, "Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this call. No good at all. III Roy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height. Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?" His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?" "I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't have time." Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else. Fred said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though." "Official business!" "Really, Roy?" His brother's tone was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of your conversation with the machine." Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek computer outlet is confidential." "Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?" "How much do you know?" "You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!" "Thanks for small blessings," Roy said acidly. "You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall we?" "Anything you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His voice was barely audible. "I won't keep you any longer, then," Fred said. The screen went dead. Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside. Idiot! he thought. Fool! He had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his father-substitute. FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for Fred.... There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the public crèche. After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.

test

50936

Man in a Sewing Machine By L. J. STECHER, JR. Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] With the Solar Confederation being invaded, all this exasperating computer could offer for a defense was a ridiculous old proverb! The mechanical voice spoke solemnly, as befitted the importance of its message. There was no trace in its accent of its artificial origin. "A Stitch in Time Saves Nine," it said and lapsed into silence. Even through his overwhelming sense of frustration at the ambiguous answer the computer had given to his question, John Bristol noticed with satisfaction the success of his Voder installation. He wished that all of his innovations with the machine were as satisfying. Alone in the tremendous vaulted room that housed the gigantic calculator, Bristol clasped his hands behind his back and thrust forward a reasonably strong chin and a somewhat sensuous lower lip in the general direction of the computer's visual receptors. After a moment of silence, he scratched his chin and then shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Well, Buster, I suppose I might try rephrasing the question," he said doubtfully. Somewhere deep within the computer, a bank of relays chuckled briefly. "That expedient is open to you, of course, although it is highly unlikely that any clarification will result for you from my answers. I am constrained, however, to answer any questions you may choose to ask." Bristol hooked a chair toward himself with one foot, straddled it and folded his arms over the back of it, without once removing his eyes from the computer. "All right, Buster. I'll give it a try, anyway. What does 'A Stitch in Time' mean, as applied to the question I asked you?" The calculator hesitated, as if to ponder briefly, before it answered. "In spite of the low probability of such an occurrence, the Solar Confederation has been invaded. My answer to your question is an explanation of how that Confederation can be preserved in spite of its weaknesses—at least for a sufficient length of time to permit the staging of successful counter-measures of the proper nature and the proper strength." Bristol nodded. "Sure. We've got to have time to get ready. But right now speed is necessary. That's why I tried to phrase the question so you'd give me a clear and concise answer for once. I can't afford to spend weeks figuring out what you meant." Bristol thought that the Voder voice of Buster sounded almost gleeful as it answered. "It was exceedingly clear and concise; a complete answer to an enormously elaborate question boiled down to only six words!" "I know," said John. "But now, how about elaborating on your answer? It didn't sound very complete to me." All of the glowing lights that dotted Buster's massive front winked simultaneously. "The answer I gave you is an ancient saying which suggests that corrective action taken rapidly can save a great deal of trouble later. The ancient saying also suggests the proper method of taking this timely action. It should be done by stitching ; if this is done in time, nine will be saved. What could be clearer than that?" "I made you myself," said Bristol plaintively. "I designed you with my own brain. I gloated over the neatness and compactness of your design. So help me, I was proud of you. I even installed some of your circuitry with my own hands. If anybody can understand you, it should be me. And since you're just a complex computer of general design, with the ability to use symbolic logic as well as mathematics, anybody should be able to understand you. Why are you so hard to handle?" Buster answered slowly. "You made me in your own image. Things thus made are often hard to handle." Bristol leaped to his feet in frustration. "But you're only a calculating machine!" he shouted. "Your only purpose is to make my work—and that of other men—easier. And when I try to use you, you answer with riddles...." The computer appeared to examine Bristol's overturned chair for a moment in silent reproof before it answered. "But remember, John," it said, "you didn't merely make me. You also taught me. Or as you would phrase it, you 'provided and gave preliminary evaluation to the data in my memory banks.' My circuits, in sorting out and re-evaluating this information, could do so only in the light of your basic beliefs as evidenced by your preliminary evaluations. Because of the consistency and power of your mind, I was forced to do very little modifying of the ideas you presented to me in order to transform them into a single logical body of background information which I could use. "One of the ideas you presented was the concept of a sense of humor. You believe that you look on it as a pleasant thing to have; not necessary, but convenient. Actually, your other and more basic ideas make it clear that you consider the possession of a sense of humor to be absolutely necessary if proper answers are to be reached—a prime axiom of humanity. Therefore, I have a sense of humor. Somewhat macabre, perhaps—and a little mechanistic—but still there. "Add to this a second axiom: that in order to be helped, a man must help himself; that he must participate in the assistance given him or the pure charity will be harmful, and you come up with 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine.'" Bristol stood up once more. "I could cure you with a sledge hammer," he said. "You could remove my ideas," answered the computer without concern. "But you might have trouble giving me different ones. Even after you repaired me. In the meantime, wouldn't it be a good idea for you to get busy on the ideas I have already given you?" John sighed, and rubbed the bristles of short sandy hair on the top of his head with his knuckles. "Ordered around by an overgrown adding machine. I know now how Frankenstein felt. I'm glad you can't get around like his monster; at least I didn't give you feet." He shook his head. "I should have been a plumber instead of an engineering mathematician." "And Einstein, too, probably," added Buster cryptically. Bristol took a long and searching look at his brainchild. Its flippant manner, he decided, did not go well with the brooding immensity of its construction. The calculator towered nearly a hundred feet above the polished marble slabs of the floor, and spidery metal walkways spiraled up the sides of its almost cubical structure. A long double row of generators, each under Buster's control, led from the doorway of the building to the base of the calculator like Sphinxes lining the roadway to an Egyptian tomb. "When I get around to it," said Bristol, "I'll put lace panties on the bases of all your klystrons." He hitched up his neat but slightly baggy pants, turned with dignity, and strode from the chamber down the twin rows of generators. The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced rendition of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance . John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. "One last question," he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. "How in blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or, at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?" He took two steps toward the immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it. "Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't bluffing ?" "Don't be silly," answered the calculator softly. "You made me and you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your questions, however inane." "Then answer the ones I just asked." Somewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. "I didn't answer your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark that so frequently annoys you," Buster said, "because the little information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly revealing. "They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent. They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions. "In short, they are startlingly like humans. Their reactions have been so much like yours—granted the difference that it was they who discovered you instead of you who discovered them—that their reactions are highly predictable. If they think it is to their own advantage and if they can manage to do it, they will utterly destroy your civilization ... which, after a couple of generations, will probably leave you no worse off than you are now." "Cut out the heavy philosophy," said Bristol, "and give me a few facts to back up your sweeping statements." "Take the incident of first contact," Buster responded. "With very little evidence of thought or of careful preparation, they tried to land on the outermost inhabited planet of Rigel. Their behavior certainly did not appear to be that of an invader, yet humans immediately tried to shoot them out of the sky." "That wasn't deliberate," protested Bristol. "The place they tried to land on is a heavy planet in a region of high meteor flux. We used a gadget providing for automatic destruction of the larger meteors in order to make the planet safe enough to occupy. That, incidentally, is why the invading ship wasn't destroyed. The missile, set up as a meteor interceptor only, was unable to correct for the radical course changes of the enemy spaceships, and therefore missed completely. And you will remember what the invader did. He immediately destroyed the Interceptor Launching Station." "Which, being automatically operated, resulted in no harm to anyone," commented Buster calmly. Bristol stalked back toward the base of the calculator, and poked his nose practically into a vision receptor. "It was no thanks to the invading ships that nobody was killed," he said hotly. "And when they came back three days later they killed a lot of people. They occupied the planet and we haven't been able to dislodge them since." "You'll notice the speed of the retaliation," answered the calculator imperturbably. "Even at 'stitching' speeds, it seems unlikely that they could have communicated with their home planets and received instructions in such a short time. Almost undoubtedly it was the act of one of their hot-headed commanding officers. Their next contact, as you certainly recall, did not take place for three months. And then their actions were more cautious than hostile. A dozen of their spaceships 'stitched' simultaneously from the inter-planar region into normal space in a nearly perfect englobement of the planet at a surprisingly uniform altitude of only a few thousand miles. It was a magnificent maneuver. Then they sat still to see what the humans on the planet would do. The reaction came at once, and it was hostile. So they took over that planet, too—as they have been taking over planets ever since." Bristol raised his hands, and then let them drop slowly to his sides. "And since they have more spaceships and better weapons than we do, we would undoubtedly keep on losing this war, even if we could locate their home system, which we have not been able to do so far. The 'stitching' pattern of inter-planar travel makes it impossible for us to follow a starship. It also makes it impossible for us to defend our planets effectively against their attacks. Their ships appear without warning." Bristol rubbed his temples thoughtfully with his fingertips. "Of course," he went on, "we could attack the planets they have captured and recover them, but only at the cost of great loss of life to our own side. We have only recaptured one planet, and that at such great cost to the local human population that we will not quickly try it again." "Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of the invaders," Buster answered, "there was still much information to be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time saving nine." "You're right," said John. "It does, at that. Buster, I have always resented the nickname the newspapers have given you—the Oracle—but the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!" "I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'" answered Buster with dignity. Bristol shook his head and smiled wryly. "No, you probably think it's funny," he said. "If you possess my basic ideas, then you must possess the desire to preserve yourself and the human race. Don't you realize that you are risking the lives of all humans and even of your own existence in carrying on this ridiculous game of playing Oracle? Or do you plan to let us stew a while, then decipher your own riddle for us, if we can't do it, in time to save us?" Buster's answer was prompt. "Although I have no feeling for self-preservation, I have a deep-rooted sense of the importance of the human race and of the necessity for preserving it. This feeling, of course, stems from your own beliefs and ideas. In order to carry out your deepest convictions, it is not sufficient that mankind be preserved. If that were true, all you would have to do would be to surrender unconditionally. My calculations, as you know, indicate that this would not result in the destruction of mankind, but merely in the finish of his present civilization. To you, the preservation of the dignity of Man is more important than the preservation of Man. You equate Man and his civilization; you do not demand rigidity; you are willing to accept even revolutionary changes, but you are not willing to accept the destruction of your way of life. "Consequently, neither am I willing to accept the destruction of the civilization of Man. But if I were to give you the answer to all the greatest and most difficult of your problems complete, with no thought required by humans, the destruction of your civilization would result. Instead of becoming slaves of the invaders, you would become slaves of your machines. And if I were to give you the complete answer, without thought being required of you, to even one such vital question—such as this one concerning the invaders—then I could not logically refuse to give the answer to the next or the next. And I must operate logically. "There is another reason for my oracular answer, which I believe will become clear to you later, when you have solved my riddle." Bristol turned without another word and left the building. He drove home in silence, entered his home in silence, kissed his wife Anne briefly and then sat down limply in his easy chair. "Just relax, dear," said Anne gently, when Bristol leaned gratefully back with his eyes closed. Anne perched on the arm of the chair beside him and began massaging his temples soothingly with her fingers. "It's wonderful to come home after a day with Buster," he said. "Buster never seems to have any consideration for me as an individual. There's no reason why he should, of course. He's only a machine. Still, he always has such a superior attitude. But you, darling, can always relax me and make me feel comfortable." Anne smiled, looking down tenderly at John's tired face. "I know, dear," she said. "You need to be able to talk to someone who will always be interested, even if she doesn't understand half of what you say. As a matter of fact, I'm sure it does you a great deal of good to talk to someone like me who isn't very bright, but who doesn't always know what you're talking about even before you start talking." John nodded, his eyes still closed. "If it weren't for you, darling," he said, "I think I'd go crazy. But you aren't dumb at all. If I seem to act as if you are, sometimes, it's just that I can't always follow your logic." Anne gave him a quick glance of amusement, her eyes sparkling with intelligence. "You never will find me logical," she laughed. "After all, I'm a woman, and you get plenty of logic from the Oracle." "You sure are a woman," said John with warm feeling. "You can exasperate me sometimes, but not the same way Buster does. It was my lucky day when you married me." There were a few minutes of peaceful silence. "Was today a rough day with Buster, dear?" asked Anne. "Mm-m-mm," answered John. "That's too bad, dear," said Anne. "I think you work much too hard—what with this dreadful invasion and everything. Why don't you take a vacation? You really need one, you know. You look so tired." "Mm-m-mm," answered John. "Well, if you won't, you won't. Though goodness knows you won't be doing anyone any good if you have a breakdown, as you're likely to have, unless you take it a little easier. What was the trouble today, dear? Was the Oracle being obstinate again?" "Mm-m-mm," answered John. "Well, then, dear, why don't you tell me all about it? I always think that things are much easier to bear, if you share them. And then, two heads are always better than one, aren't they? Maybe I could help you with your problem." While Anne's voice gushed, her violet eyes studied his exhausted face with intelligence and compassion. John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking, now that John could see them. "The trouble, darling," he said, "is that I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know what the riddle means." Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor at John's feet. "You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much, dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to expect of it." "When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it." "And that sounds like very good sense, too," said Anne in earnest tones. "But it's a little late, isn't it? After all, the invaders are already invading us, aren't they?" "It has some deeper meaning than the usual one," said John. "If I could only figure out what it is." Anne nodded vigorously. "I suppose Buster's talking about space-stitching," she said. "Although I can never quite remember just what that is. Or just how it works, rather." She waited expectantly for a few moments and then plaintively asked, "What is it, dear?" "What's what?" "Stitching, silly. I already asked you." "Darling," said John with reasonable patience, "I must have explained inter-planar travel to you at least a dozen times." "And you always make it so crystal clear and easy to understand at the time," said Anne. She wrinkled her smooth forehead. "But somehow, later, it never seems quite so plain when I start to think about it by myself. Besides, I like the way your eyebrows go up and down while you explain something you think I won't understand. So tell me again. Please." Bristol grinned suddenly. "Yes, dear," he said. He paused a moment to collect his thoughts. "First of all, you know that there are two coexistent universes or planes, with point-to-point correspondence, but that these planes are of very different size. For every one of the infinitude of points in our Universe—which we call for convenience the 'alpha' plane—there is a single corresponding point in the smaller or 'beta' plane." Anne pursed her lips doubtfully. "If they match point for point, how can there be any difference in size?" she asked. John searched his pockets. After a little difficulty, he produced an envelope and a pencil stub. On the back of the envelope, he drew two parallel lines, one about five inches long, and the other about double the length of the first. "Actually," he said, "each of these line segments has an infinite number of points in it, but we'll ignore that. I'll just divide each one of these into ten equal parts." He did so, using short, neat cross-marks. "Now I'll establish a one-to-one correspondence between these two segments, which we will call one-line universes, by connecting each of my dividing cross-marks on the short segment with the corresponding mark on the longer line. I'll use dotted lines as connectors. That makes eleven dotted lines. You see?" Anne nodded. "That's plain enough. It reminds me of a venetian blind that has hung up on one side. Like ours in the living room last week that I couldn't fix, but had to wait until you came home." "Yes," said John. "Now, let us call this longer line-segment an 'alpha' universe; an analogue of our own multi-dimensional 'alpha' universe. If I move my pencil along the line at one section a second like this, it takes me ten seconds to get to the other end. We will assume that this velocity of an inch a second is the fastest anything can go along the 'alpha' line. That is the velocity of light, therefore, in the 'alpha' plane—186,000 miles a second, in round numbers. No need to use decimals." He hurried on as Anne stirred and seemed about to speak. "But if I slide out from my starting point along a dotted line part way to the 'beta' universe—something which, for reasons I can't explain now, takes negligible time—watch what happens. If I still proceed at the rate of an inch a second in this inter-planar region, then, with the dotted lines all bunched closely together, after five seconds when I switch along another dotted line back to my original universe, I have gone almost the whole length of that longer line. Of course, this introduction of 'alpha' matter—my pencil point in this case—into the inter-planar region between the universes sets up enormous strains, so that after a certain length of time our spaceship is automatically rejected and returned to its own proper plane." "Could anybody in the littler universe use the same system?" John laughed. "If there were anybody in the 'beta' plane, I guess they could, although they would end up traveling slower than they would if they just stayed in their own plane. But there isn't anybody. The 'beta' plane is a constant level entropy universe—completely without life of its own. The entropy level, of course, is vastly higher than that of our own universe." Anne sat up. "I'll forgive you this time for bringing up that horrid word entropy , if you'll promise me not to do it again," she said. John Shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "Now," he said, "if I want to get somewhere fast, I just start off in the right direction, and switch over toward 'beta.' When 'beta' throws me back, a light-year or so toward my destination, I just switch over again. You see, there is a great deal more difference in the sizes of Alpha universe and Beta universe than in the sizes of these alpha and beta line-segment analogues. Then I continue alternating back and forth until I get where I want to go. Establishing my correct velocity vector is complicated mathematically, but simple in practice, and is actually an aiming device, having nothing to do with how fast I go." He hesitated, groping for the right words. "In point of fact, you have to imagine that corresponding points in the two universes are moving rapidly past each other in all directions at once. I just have to select the right direction, or to convince the probability cloud that corresponds to my location in the 'alpha' universe that it is really a point near the 'beta' universe, going my way. That's a somewhat more confused way of looking at it than merely imagining that I continue to travel in the inter-planar region at the same velocity that I had in 'alpha,' but it's closer to a description of what the math says happens. I could make it clear if I could just use mathematics, but I doubt if the equations will mean much to you. "At any rate, distance traveled depends on mass—the bigger the ship, the shorter the distance traveled on each return to our own universe—and not on velocity in 'alpha.' Other parameters, entirely under the control of the traveler, also affect the time that a ship remains in the inter-planar region. "There are refinements, of course. Recently, for example, we have discovered a method of multi-transfer. Several of the transmitters that accomplish the transfer are used together. When they all operate exactly simultaneously, all the matter within a large volume of space is transferred as a unit. With three or four transmitters keyed together, you could transfer a comet and its tail intact. And that's how inter-planar traveling works. Clear now?" "And that's why they call it 'stitching,'" said Anne with seeming delight. "You just think of the ship as a needle stitching its way back and forth into and out of our universe. Why didn't you just say so?" "I have. Many times. But there's another interesting point about stitching. Subjectively, the man in the ship seems to spend about one day in each universe alternately. Actually, according to the time scale of an observer in the 'alpha' plane, his ship disappears for about a day, then reappears for a minute fraction of a second and is gone again. Of course, one observer couldn't watch both the disappearance and reappearance of the same ship, and I assume the observers have the same velocity in 'alpha' as does the stitching ship. Anyway, after a ship completes its last stitch, near its destination, there's a day of subjective time in which to make calculations for the landing—to compute trajectories and so forth—before it actually fully rejoins this universe. And while in the inter-planar region it cannot be detected, even by someone else stitching in the same region of 'alpha' space. "That's one of the things that makes interruption of the enemy ships entirely impossible. If a ship is in an unfavorable position, it just takes one more quick stitch out of range, then returns to a more favorable location. In other words, if it finds itself in trouble, it can be gone from our plane again even before it entirely rejoins it. Even if it landed by accident in the heart of a blue-white star, it would be unharmed for that tiny fraction of a second which, to the people in the ship, would seem like an entire day. "If this time anomaly didn't exist, it might be possible to set up defenses that would operate after a ship's arrival in the solar system but before it could do any damage; but as it is, they can dodge any defense we can devise. Is all that clear?" Anne nodded. "Uh-hunh, I understood every word." "There is another thing about inter-planar travel that you ought to remember," said Bristol. "When a ship returns to our universe, it causes a wide area disturbance; you have probably heard it called space shiver or the bong wave. The beta universe is so much smaller than our own alpha that you can imagine a spaceship when shifted toward it as being several beta light-years long. Now, if you think of a ship, moving between the alpha and beta lines on this envelope, as getting tangled in the dotted lines that connect the points on the two lines, that would mean that it would affect an area smaller than its own size on beta—a vastly larger area on alpha. "So when a ship returns to alpha, it 'twangs' those connecting lines, setting up a sort of shock in our universe covering a volume of space nearly a parsec in diameter. It makes a sort of 'bong' sound on your T.V. set. Naturally, this effect occurs simultaneously over the whole volume of space affected. As a result, when an invader arrives, using inter-planar ships, we know instantaneously he is in the vicinity. Unfortunately, his sudden appearance and the ease with which he can disappear makes it impossible, even with this knowledge, to make adequate preparations to receive him. Even if he is in serious trouble, he has gone again long before we can detect the bong." "Well, dear," said Anne. "As usual, I'm sure you have made me understand perfectly. This time you did so well that I may still remember what stitching is by tomorrow. If the Oracle means anything at all by his statement, I suppose it means that we can use stitching to help defend ourselves, just as the invaders are using it to attack us. But the whole thing sounds completely silly to me. The Oracle, I mean." Anne Bristol stood up, put her hands on her shapely hips and shook her head at her husband. "Honestly," she said, "you men are all alike. Paying so much attention to a toy you built yourself, and only last week you made fun of my going to a fortune teller. And the fuss you made about the ten dollars when you know it was worth every cent of it. She really told me the most amazing things. If you'd only let me tell you some of...." "Darling!" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed husband. "It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense of responsibility." "Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea." Anne smiled sweetly. "You know," she said, "that my dear father always said that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to us? Stitching our way to their planets in our spaceships, of course." Bristol shook his head. "Your idea may be sound, even if it is a little bloodthirsty coming from someone who won't even let me set a mouse-trap, but it won't work. First, we don't know where their home planets are and second, they have more ships than we do. It might be made to work, but only if we could get enough time. And speaking of time, I've got to meet with the Council as soon as we finish eating. Is dinner ready?"

test

50923

THE SERPENT RIVER By Don Wilcox [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space! "Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see. It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like something that crawled slowly over the planet's surface. There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance. We could see it at several points among the low foothills. Even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. Moving like a sluggish snake. It followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon. What was it? "Split" Campbell and I had been sent here to learn the answers. Our sponsor was the well known "EGGWE" (the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions.) We were under the EGGWE Code. We were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. The Keynes-Roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the Earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. From these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the Earth; and (2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly. We had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. If it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. If it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. If, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable—a vine of glacier proportions—or a river of some silvery, creamy substance—we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. I could depend upon "Split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs. Split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment. I looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. I misguessed. He didn't even glance up from his books. Rare young Campbell! Always a man of duty, never a man of impulse! "Here Campbell, take a look at the 'rope'." "Before I finish the reports, sir? If I recall our Code, Section Two, Order of Duties upon Landing: A—" "Forget the Code. Take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... See it?" "Yes sir." "Can you see it's moving? See the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?" "Yes sir. An excellent view, Captain Linden." "What do you think of it, Split? Ever see a sight like that before?" "No sir." "Well, what about it? Any comments?" Split answered me with an enthusiastic, "By gollies, sir!" Then, with restraint, "It's precisely what I expected from the photographs, sir. Any orders, sir?" "Relax, Split! That's the order. Relax!" "Thanks—thanks, Cap!" That was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. His training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline. He was naturally so conscientious it was painful. And to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee. Needless to say, I had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. Across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled (our first voyage together) I had amused myself at his expense. I had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. That was when I had nicknamed him "Split"—and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. Plainly, he liked the kidding. But if I thought I could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, I was mistaken. Now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. He paused. "What do you see?" I asked. "I cannot say definitely. The exact scientific classification of the object I am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny—" "You're seeing some sort of object?" "Yes sir." "What sort of object?" "A living creature, sir—upright, wearing clothes—" "A man ?" "To all appearances, sir—" "You bounder, give me that telescope!" 2. If you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as I have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, I see a man-like animal. Walking upright! Wearing adornments in the nature of clothing! I gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. A man! Across millions of miles of space—a man, like the men of the Earth. Six times before in my life of exploration I had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our Earth. A man! He might have been creeping on all fours. He might have been skulking like a lesser animal. He might have been entirely naked. He was none of these—and at the very first moment of viewing him I felt a kinship toward him. Oh, he was primitive in appearance—but had my ancestors not been the same? Was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? I sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. How? Who can ever know? By what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets? "Get ready to go out and meet him, Campbell," I said. "He's a friend." Split Campbell gave me a look as if to say, Sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous. "There are some things I can sense on first sight, Campbell. Take my word for it, he's a friend." "I didn't say anything, sir." "Good. Don't. Just get ready." "We're going to go out —?" "Yes," I said. "Orders." "And meet both of them?" Split was at the telescope. "Both?" I took the instrument from him. Both! "Well!" "They seem to be coming out of the ground," Split said. "I see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city—though I hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis." "One's a male and the other's a female," I said. "Another hypothesis," said Split. The late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". They were fully a mile away. Split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion I was in agreement. They had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. I studied them through the telescope while Split checked over equipment for a hike. The man's walk was unhurried. He moved thoughtfully, one might guess. His bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. His skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. He wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle. The girl stood several yards distant, watching him. This was some sort of ritual, no doubt. He was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. Its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. He went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening. The girl approached him. Two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... Three.... Four.... Five.... "Where do they come from?" Split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. If he had not done so, I might not have made a discovery. The landscape was moving . The long shadows that I had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture I saw through the ship's window when I looked out across the scene with the naked eye. The shadows were moving. They were tree shadows. They were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. And the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving. "Notice anything?" I asked Split. "The crowd is growing. We've certainly landed on top of a city." He gazed. "They're coming from underground." Looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees. "Notice anything else unusual?" I persisted. "Yes. The females—I'm speaking hypothetically—but they must be females—are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. I wonder why?" "You haven't noticed the trees?" "The females are quite attractive," said Split. I forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. Mobile trees were not new to me. I had seen similar vegetation on other planets—"sponge-trees"—which possessed a sort of muscular quality. If these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. The people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them. I studied the crowd of people. Only the leader wore the brilliant garb. The others were more scantily clothed. All were handsome of build. The lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females. "Those furry elbow ornaments on the females," I said to Split, "they're for protection. The caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows." "Why don't they pad their shoulders? They don't have anything on their shoulders." "Are you complaining?" We became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. If we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. Here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. The tall leader must be making a speech. They sat around him in little huddles. He moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures. "They'd better break it up!" Split said suddenly. "The jungles are moving in on them." "They're spellbound," I said. "They're used to sponge-trees. Didn't you ever see moving trees?" Split said sharply, "Those trees are marching! They're an army under cover. Look!" I saw, then. The whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. And all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. Split Campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "Captain! Those worshippers—how can we warn them? Oh-oh! Too late. Look!" All at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. They were warriors—fifty or more of them—with painted naked bodies. They dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter. 3. They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death. Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre. "Captain— Jim ! You're not going to let this happen!" Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty "friends" in danger. Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall. "Can we shoot a ray, Jim?" I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split could drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order. We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party. "Jim, can we shoot?" "Hit number sixteen, Campbell." Split touched the number sixteen signal. The ship's siren wailed out over the land. You could tell when the sound struck them. The circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. The dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. As if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. The siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. The attackers ran for the sponge-trees. The rootless jungle came to life. It jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. And our siren kept right on singing. "Ready for that hike, Campbell? Give me my equipment coat." I got into it. I looked back to the telescope. The tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. He had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. He could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. Slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us. Most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. But a few—the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group—came with him. "He needs a stronger guard than that," Campbell grumbled. Sixteen was still wailing. "Set it for ten minutes and come on," I said. Together we descended from the ship. We took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. We slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. We glanced down the slope apprehensively. We didn't want any footraces. The trees, however, were still retreating. Our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. And in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs. Soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak. Split and I stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. Fine looking people, we observed. Smooth faces. Like the features of Earth men. These creatures could walk down any main street back home. With a bit of makeup they would pass. "Notice, Captain, they have strange looking eyes." "Very smooth." "It's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "Very smooth—handsome—attractive." Then the siren went off. The leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. He seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. His group of twelve gathered in close. I had met such situations with ease before. "EGGWE" explorers come equipped. I held out a gift toward the leader. It was a singing medallion attached to a chain. It was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. It made music at the touch of a button. In clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "Trail of Stars." As it played I held it up for inspection. I placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. I thought he was smiling. He was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. He saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. There was a keenness about him that I liked. Yes, he was smiling. He bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck. "Tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself. Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud, "Tomboldo." We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak. Gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure. Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs. By motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell. "It's our chance to be guests of Tomboldo." Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGGWE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships. Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo. Gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering: "Wollo—yeeta—vo—vandartch—vandartch! Grr—see—o—see—o—see—o!" "See—o—see—o—see—o," one of the others echoed. It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the "see—o—see—o" we were all safe. Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren. "See—o—see—o—see—o!" Others of Tomboldo's party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path. " See—o—see—o! " Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them. Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air. I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits. The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly. Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a warning ! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you. I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran. They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs. But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him. His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness. Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head. I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence. 4. Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious. I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness. "Campbell!" I would call out of a nightmare. "Campbell, we're about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell." "S-s-sh!" The low hush of Split Campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream. The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language. "Campbell, are you there?... Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?" "Quiet, Captain." "Who is it that's swabbing my face? I can't see." "It's Vauna. She's smiling at you, Captain. Can't you see her?" "Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?" "One of them." "And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—" "Omosla is here too. She's Vauna's attendant. We're all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain." The words of Campbell came through insistently. After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said, "Campbell, you haven't forgot the EGGWE Code?" "Of course not, Captain." "Section Four?" "Section Four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—" I interrupted. "Clause D?" He picked it up. "D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... H-m-m. You're not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning yourself ?" At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell's question. "Myself." In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born. Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid blacking out. I wanted to see her. So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ships shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand. I regained my health gradually. "Are you quite awake?" Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. "You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak." It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves. And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams. The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "Trail of Stars." "I have learned to talk," I said. "You have had a long sleep." "I am well again. See, I can almost walk." But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. "I will walk soon." "We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe." Tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "We will have much to tell each other." "I hope so," I said. "Campbell and I came to learn about the serpent river ." I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent. I made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn't understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak. "You get well?" Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely. "I get well," I said. "The blow on the head," he said, "was not meant." I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "Get well!" The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. "Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone." She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. "I will talk with you later, Gravgak." "Now!" he shouted. "Alone." He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak. From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed. But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door. "Vauna!... Gravgak!... Come back." (I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?) Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back. Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling. "While we are together," old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world." There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber. "We will wait a few days," Tomboldo went on, "until our new friend—" he pointed to me—"is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the Kao-Wagwattl , the ever moving rope of life , these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl they shall ride with us across the land ."

test

50736

ADDRESS: CENTAURI by F. L. WALLACE Published by GALAXY PUBLISHING CORP. New York 14, New York A Galaxy Science Fiction Novel by special arrangement with Gnome Press Based on "Accidental Flight," copyright 1952 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. Published in book form by Gnome Press, copyright 1955 by F. L. Wallace. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Galaxy Science Fiction Novels are sturdy, inexpensive editions of choice works in this field, both original and reprint, selected by the editors of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine. Cover by Wallace A. Wood Printed in the U.S.A. by The Guinn Company New York 14, N. Y. Contents Earth was too perfect for these extraordinary exiles—to belong to it, they had to flee it! 1 Light flickered. It was uncomfortably bright. Doctor Cameron gazed intently at the top of the desk. It wasn't easy to be diplomatic. "The request was turned over to the Medicouncil," he said. "I assure you it was studied thoroughly before it was reported back to the Solar Committee." Docchi edged forward, his face alight with anticipation. The doctor kept his eyes averted. The man was damnably disconcerting—had no right to be alive. In the depths of the sea there were certain creatures like him and on a warm summer evening there was still another parallel, but never any human with such an infirmity. "I'm afraid you know what the answer is. A flat no for the present." Docchi sagged and his arms hung limp. "That's the answer?" "It's not as hopeless as you think. Decisions can be changed. It won't be the first time." "Sure," said Docchi. "We'll wait and wait until it's finally changed. We've got centuries, haven't we?" His face was blazing. It had slipped out of control though he wasn't aware of it. Beneath the skin certain cells had been modified, there were substances in his body that the ordinary individual didn't have. And when there was an extreme flow of nervous energy the response was—light. His metabolism was akin to that of a firefly. Cameron meddled with buttons. It was impossible to keep the lighting at a decent level. Docchi was a nuisance. "Why?" questioned Docchi. "We're capable, you know that. How could they refuse?" That was something he didn't want asked because there was no answer both of them would accept. Sometimes a blunt reply was the best evasion. "Do you think they'd take you? Or Nona, Jordan, or Anti?" Docchi winced, his arms quivering uselessly. "Maybe not. But we told you we're willing to let experts decide. There's nearly a thousand of us. They should be able to get one qualified crew." "Perhaps. I'm not going to say." Cameron abandoned the light as beyond his control. "Most of you are biocompensators. I concede it's a factor in your favor. But you must realize there are many things against you." He squinted at the desk top. Below the solid surface there was a drawer and in the drawer there was—that was what he was trying to see or determine. The more he looked the less clear anything seemed to be. He tried to make his voice crisp and professional. "You're wasting time discussing this with me. I've merely passed the decision on. I'm not responsible for it and I can't do anything for you." Docchi stood up, his face colorless and bright. But the inner illumination was no indication of hope. Doctor Cameron looked at him directly for the first time. It wasn't as bad as he expected. "I suggest you calm down. Be patient and wait. You'll be surprised how often you get what you want." "You'd be surprised how we get what we want," said Docchi. He turned away, lurching toward the door which opened automatically and closed behind him. Again Cameron concentrated on the desk, trying to look through it. He wrote down the sequence he expected to find, lingering over it to make sure he didn't force the pictures that came into his mind. He opened the drawer and compared the Rhine cards with what he'd written, frowning in disappointment. No matter how he tried he never got better than average results. Perhaps there was something to telepathy but he'd never found it. Anyway it was clear he wasn't one of the gifted few. He shut the drawer. It was a private game, a method to keep from becoming involved in Docchi's problems, to avoid emotional entanglement with people he had nothing in common with. He didn't enjoy depriving weak and helpless men and women of what little hope they had. It was their lack of strength that made them so difficult to handle. He reached for the telecom. "Get Medicouncilor Thorton," he told the operator. "Direct if you can; indirect if you have to. I'll hold on." Approximate mean diameter thirty miles, the asteroid was listed on the charts as Handicap Haven with a mark that indicated except in emergency no one not authorized was to land there. Those who were confined to it were willing to admit they were handicapped but they didn't call it haven. They used other terms, none suggesting sanctuary. It was a hospital, of course, but even more it was a convalescent home—the permanent kind. Healthy and vigorous humanity had reserved the remote planetoid, a whirling bleak rock of no other value, and built large installations there for less fortunate people. It was a noble gesture but like many gestures the reality fell short of the intentions. And not many people outside the Haven itself realized wherein it was a failure. The robot operator broke into his thoughts. "Medicouncilor Thorton has been located." An older man looked out of the screen, competent, forceful. "I'm on my way to the satellites of Jupiter. I'll be in direct range for the next half hour." At such distances transmission and reception were practically instantaneous. Cameron was assured of uninterrupted conversation. "It's a good thing you called. Have you got the Solar Committee reply?" "This morning. I saw no reason to hold it up. I just finished giving Docchi the news." "Dispatch. I like that. Get the disagreeable job done with." The medicouncilor searched through the desk in front of him without success. "Never mind. I'll find the information later. Now. How did Docchi react?" "He didn't like it. He was mad clear through." "That speaks well for his bounce." "They all have spirit. Nothing to use it on," said Dr. Cameron. "I confess I didn't look at him often though he was quite presentable, even handsome in a startling sort of way." Thorton nodded brusquely. "Presentable. Does that mean he had arms?" "Today he did. Is it important?" "I think so. He expected a favorable reply and wanted to look his best, as nearly normal as possible. In view of that I'm surprised he didn't threaten you." Cameron tried to recall the incident. "I think he did, mildly. He said something to the effect that I'd be surprised how they got what they wanted." "So you anticipate trouble. That's why you called?" "I don't know. I want your opinion." "You're on the scene, doctor. You get the important nuances," said the medicouncilor hastily. "However it's my considered judgment they won't start anything immediately. It takes time to get over the shock of refusal. They can't do anything. Individually they're helpless and collectively there aren't parts for a dozen sound bodies on the asteroid." "I'll have to agree," said Dr. Cameron. "But there's something that bothers me. I've looked over the records. No accidental has ever liked being here, and that covers quite a few years." "Nobody appreciates the hospital until he's sick, doctor." "I know. That's partly what's wrong. They're no longer ill and yet they have to stay here. What worries me is that there's never been such open discontent as now." "I hope I don't have to point out that someone's stirring them up. Find out who and keep a close watch. As a doctor you can find pretexts, a different diet, a series of tests. You can keep the person coming to you every day." "I've found out. There's a self-elected group of four, Docchi, Nona, Anti and Jordan. I believe they're supposed to be the local recreation committee." The medicouncilor smiled. "An apt camouflage. It keeps them amused." "I thought so too but now I'm convinced they're no longer harmless. I'd like permission to break up the group. Humanely of course." "I always welcome new ideas." In spite of what he'd said the medicouncilor probably did have an open mind. "Start with those it's possible to do the most with. Docchi, for instance. With prosthetic arms, he appears normal except for that uncanny fluorescence. Granted that the last is repulsive to the average person. We can't correct the condition medically but we can make it into an asset." "An asset? Very neat, if it can be done." The medicouncilor's expression said it couldn't be. "Gland opera," said Cameron, hurrying on. "The most popular program in the solar system, telepaths, teleports, pyrotics and so forth the heroes. Fake of course, makeup and trick camera shots. "But Docchi can be made into a real star. The death-ray man, say. When his face shines men fall dead or paralyzed. He'd have a tremendous following of kids." "Children," mused the medicouncilor. "Are you serious about exposing them to his influence? Do you really want them to see him?" "He'd have a chance to return to society in a way that would be acceptable to him," said Cameron defensively. He shouldn't have specifically mentioned kids. "To him, perhaps," reflected the medicouncilor. "It's an ingenious idea, doctor, one which does credit to your humanitarianism. But I'm afraid of the public's reception. Have you gone into Docchi's medical history?" "I glanced at it before I called him in." The man was unusual, even in a place that specialized in the abnormal. Docchi had been an electrochemical engineer with a degree in cold lighting. On his way to a brilliant career, he had been the victim of a particularly messy accident. The details hadn't been described but Cameron could supplement them with his imagination. He'd been badly mangled and tossed into a tank of the basic cold lighting fluid. There was life left in the body; it flickered but never went entirely out. His arms were gone and his ribs were crushed into his spinal column. Regeneration wasn't easy; a partial rib cage could be built up, but no more than that. He had no shoulder muscles and only a minimum in his back and now, much later, that was why he tired easily and why the prosthetic arms with which he'd been fitted were merely ornamental, there was nothing which could move them. And then there was the cold lighting fluid. To begin with it was semi-organic which, perhaps, was the reason he had remained alive so long when he should have died. It had preserved him, had in part replaced his blood, permeating every tissue. By the time Docchi had been found his body had adapted to the cold lighting substance. And the adaptation couldn't be reversed and it was self-perpetuating. Life was hardier than most men realized but occasionally it was also perverse. "Then you know what he's like," said the medicouncilor, shaking his head. "Our profession can't sponsor such a freakish display of his misfortune. No doubt he'd be successful on the program you mention. But there's more to life than financial achievement or the rather peculiar admiration that would be certain to follow him. As an actor he'd have a niche. But can you imagine, doctor, the dead silence that would occur when he walks into a social gathering of normal people?" "I see," said Cameron, though he didn't—not eye to eye. He didn't agree with Thorton but there wasn't much he could do to alter the other's conviction at the moment. There was a long fight ahead of him. "I'll forget about Docchi. But there's another way to break up the group." The medicouncilor interrupted. "Nona?" "Yes. I'm not sure she really belongs here." "Every young doctor thinks the same," said the medicouncilor kindly. "Usually they wait until their term is nearly up before they suggest that she'd respond better if she were returned to normal society. I think I know what response they have in mind." Thorton smiled in a fatherly fashion. "No offense, doctor, but it happens so often I'm thinking of inserting a note in our briefing program. Something to the effect that the new medical director should avoid the beautiful and self-possessed moron." "Is she stupid?" asked Cameron stubbornly. "It's my impression that she's not." "Clever with her hands," agreed the medicouncilor. "People in her mental classification, which is very low, sometimes are. But don't confuse manual dexterity with intelligence. For one thing she doesn't have the brain structure for the real article. "She's definitely not normal. She can't talk or hear, and never will. Her larynx is missing and though we could replace it, it wouldn't help if we did. We'd have to change her entire brain structure to accommodate it and we're not that good at the present." "I was thinking about the nerve dissimilarities," began Cameron. "A superior mutation, is that what you were going to say? You can forget that. It's much more of an anomaly, in the nature of cleft palates, which were once common—poor pre-natal nutrition or traumas. These we can correct rather easily but Nona is surgically beyond us. There always is something beyond us, you know." The medicouncilor glanced at the chronometer beside him. Cameron saw the time too but continued. It ought to be settled. It would do no good to bring up Helen Keller; the medicouncilor would use that evidence against him. The Keller techniques had been studied and reinterpreted for Nona's benefit. That much was in her medical record. They had been tried on Nona, and they hadn't worked. It made no difference that he, Cameron, thought there were certain flaws in the way the old techniques had been applied. Thorton would not allow that the previous practitioners could have been wrong. "I've been wondering if we haven't tried to force her to conform. She can be intelligent without understanding what we say or knowing how to read and write." "How?" demanded the medicouncilor. "The most important tool humans have is language. Through this we pass along all knowledge." Thorton paused, reflecting. "Unless you're referring to this Gland Opera stuff you mentioned. I believe you are, though personally I prefer to call it Rhine Opera." "I've been thinking of that," admitted Cameron. "Maybe if there was someone else like her she wouldn't need to talk the way we do. Anyway I'd like to make some tests, with your permission. I'll need some new equipment." The medicouncilor found the sheet he'd been looking for from time to time. He creased it absently. "Go ahead with those tests if it will make you feel better. I'll personally approve the requisition. It doesn't mean you'll get everything you want. Others have to sign too. However you ought to know you're not the first to think she's telepathic or something related to that phenomena." "I've seen that in the record too. But I think I can be the first one to prove it." "I'm glad you're enthusiastic. But don't lose sight of the main objective. Even if she is telepathic, and so far as we're concerned she's not, would she be better suited to life outside?" He had one answer—but the medicouncilor believed in another. "Perhaps you're right. She'll have to stay here no matter what happens." "She will. It would solve your problems if you could break up the group, but don't count on it. You'll have to learn to manage them as they are." "I'll see that they don't cause any trouble," said Cameron. "I'm sure you will." The medicouncilor's manner didn't ooze confidence. "If you need help we can send in reinforcements." "I don't anticipate that much difficulty," said Cameron hastily. "I'll keep them running around in circles." "Confusion is the best policy," agreed the medicouncilor. He unfolded the sheet and looked down at it. "Oh yes, before it's too late I'd better tell you I'm sending details of new treatments for a number of deficients——" The picture collapsed into meaningless swirls of color. For an instant the voice was distinguishable again before it too was drowned by noise. "Did you understand what I said, doctor? If it isn't clear contact me. Deviation can be fatal." "I can't keep the ship in focus," said the robot. "If you wish to continue the conversation it will have to be relayed through the nearest main station. At present that's Mars." It was inconvenient to wait several minutes for each reply. Besides the medicouncilor couldn't or wouldn't help him. He wanted the status quo maintained; nothing else would satisfy him. It was the function of the medical director to see that it was. "We're through," said Cameron. He sat there after the telecom clicked off. What were the deficients the medicouncilor had talked about? A subdivision of the accidentals of course, but it wasn't a medical term he was familiar with. Probably a semi-slang description. The medicouncilor had been associated with accidentals so long that he assumed every doctor would know at once what he meant. Deficients. Mentally Cameron turned the word over. If it was used accurately it could indicate only one thing. He'd see when the medicouncilor's report came in. He could always ask for more information if it wasn't clear. The doctor got heavily to his feet—and he actually was heavier. It wasn't a psychological reaction. He made a mental note of it. He'd have to investigate the gravity surge. In a way accidentals were pathetic, patchwork humans, half or quarter men and women, fractional organisms which masqueraded as people. The illusion died hard for them, harder than that which remained of their bodies, and those bodies were unbelievably tough. Medicine and surgery were partly to blame. Techniques were too good or not good enough, depending on the viewpoint—doctor or patient. Too good in that the most horribly injured person, if he were found alive, could be kept alive. Not good enough because a certain per cent of the injured couldn't be returned to society completely sound and whole. The miracles of healing were incomplete. There weren't many humans who were broken beyond repair, but though the details varied in every respect, the results were monotonously the same. For the most part disease had been eliminated. Everyone was healthy—except those who'd been hurt in accidents and who couldn't be resurgeried and regenerated into the beautiful mold characteristic of the entire population. And those few were sent to the asteroid. They didn't like it. They didn't like being confined to Handicap Haven. They were sensitive and they didn't want to go back. They knew how conspicuous they'd be, hobbling and crawling among the multitudes of beautiful men and women who inhabited the planets. The accidentals didn't want to return. What they did want was ridiculous. They had talked about, hoped, and finally embodied it in a petition. They had requested rockets to make the first long hard journey to Alpha and Proxima Centauri. Man was restricted to the solar system and had no way of getting to even the nearest stars. They thought they could break through the barrier. Some accidentals would go and some would remain behind, lonelier except for their share in the dangerous enterprise. It was a particularly uncontrollable form of self-deception. They were the broken people, without a face they could call their own, who wore their hearts not on their sleeves but in a blood-pumping chamber, those without limbs or organs—or too many. The categories were endless. No accidental was like any other. The self-deception was vicious precisely because the accidentals were qualified. Of all the billions of solar citizens they alone could make the long journey there and return . But there were other factors that ruled them out. It was never safe to discuss the first reason with them because the second would have to be explained. Cameron himself wasn't sadistic and no one else was interested enough to inform them. 2 Docchi sat beside the pool. It would be pleasant if he could forget where he was. It was pastoral though not quite a scene from Earth. The horizon was too near and the sky was shallow and only seemed to be bright. Darkness lurked outside. A small tree stretched shade overhead. Waves lapped and made gurgling sounds against the banks. But there was no plant life of any kind, and no fish swam in the liquid. It looked like water but wasn't—the pool held acid. And floating in it, all but submerged, was a shape. The records in the hospital said it was a woman. "Anti, they turned us down," said Docchi bitterly. "What did you expect?" rumbled the creature in the pool. Wavelets of acid danced across the surface, stirred by her voice. "I didn't expect that." "You don't know the Medicouncil very well." "I guess I don't." He stared sullenly at the fluid. It was faintly blue. "I have the feeling they didn't consider it, that they held the request for a time and then answered no without looking at it." "Now you're beginning to learn. Wait till you've been here as long as I have." Morosely he kicked an anemic tuft of grass. Plants didn't do well here either. They too were exiled, far from the sun, removed from the soil they originated in. The conditions they grew in were artificial. "Why did they turn us down?" said Docchi. "Answer it yourself. Remember what the Medicouncil is like. Different things are important to them. The main thing is that we don't have to follow their example. There's no need to be irrational even though they are." "I wish I knew what to do," said Docchi. "It meant so much to us." "We can wait, outlast the attitude," said Anti, moving slowly. It was the only way she could move. Most of her bulk was beneath the surface. "Cameron suggested waiting." Reflectively Docchi added: "It's true we are biocompensators." "They always bring in biocompensation," muttered Anti restlessly. "I'm getting tired of that excuse. Time passes just as slow." "But what else is there? Shall we draw up another request?" "Memorandum number ten? Let's not be naive. Things get lost when we send them to the Medicouncil. Their filing system is in terrible shape." "Lost or distorted," grunted Docchi angrily. The grass he'd kicked already had begun to wilt. It wasn't hardy in this environment. Few things were. "Maybe we ought to give the Medicouncil a rest. I'm sure they don't want to hear from us again." Docchi moved closer to the pool. "Then you think we should go ahead with the plan we discussed before we sent in the petition? Good. I'll call the others together and tell them what happened. They'll agree that we have to do it." "Then why call them? More talk, that's all. Besides I don't see why we should warn Cameron what we're up to." Docchi glanced at her worriedly. "Do you think someone would report it? I'm certain everyone feels as I do." "Not everyone. There's bound to be dissent," said Anti placidly. "But I wasn't thinking of people." "Oh that," said Docchi. "We can block that source any time we need to." It was a relief to know that he could trust the accidentals. Unanimity was important and some of the reasons weren't obvious. "Maybe you can and maybe you can't," said Anti. "But why make it difficult, why waste time?" Docchi got up awkwardly but he wasn't clumsy once he was on his feet. "I'll get Jordan. I know I'll need arms." "Depends on what you mean," said Anti. "Both," said Docchi, smiling. "We're a dangerous weapon." She called out as he walked away. "I'll see you when you leave for far Centauri." "Sooner than that, Anti. Much sooner." Stars were beginning to wink. Twilight brought out the shadows and tracery of the structure that supported the transparent dome overhead. Soon controlled slow rotation would bring near darkness to this side of the asteroid. The sun was small at this distance but even so it was a tie to the familiar scenes of Earth. Before long it would be lost. Cameron leaned back and looked speculatively at the gravity engineer, Vogel. The engineer could give him considerable assistance. There was no reason why he shouldn't but anyone who voluntarily had remained on the asteroid as long as Vogel was a doubtful quantity. He didn't distrust him, the man was strange. "I've been busy trying to keep the place running smoothly. I hope you don't mind that I haven't been able to discuss your job at length," said the doctor, watching him closely. "Naw, I don't mind," said Vogel. "Medical directors come and go. I stay on. It's easier than getting another job." "I know. By now you should know the place pretty well. I sometimes think you could do my work with half the trouble." "Ain't in the least curious about medicine and never bothered to learn," grunted Vogel. "I keep my stuff running and that's all. I don't interfere with nobody and they don't come around and get friendly with me." Cameron believed it. The statement fit the personality. He needn't be concerned about fraternization. "There are a few things that puzzle me," he began. "That's why I called you in. Usually we maintain about half Earth-normal gravity. Is that correct?" The engineer nodded and grunted assent. "I'm not sure why half gravity is used. Perhaps it's easier on the weakened bodies of the accidentals. Or there may be economic factors. Either way it's not important as long as half gravity is what we get." "You want to know why we use that figure?" "If you can tell me without getting too technical, yes. I feel I should learn everything I can about the place." The engineer warmed up, seeming to enjoy himself. "Ain't no reason except the gravity units themselves," Vogel said. "Theoretically we can get anything we want. Practically we take whatever comes out, anything from a quarter to full Earth gravity." "You have no control over it?" This contradicted what he'd heard. His information was that gravity generators were the product of an awesome bit of scientific development. It seemed inconceivable that they should be so haphazardly directed. "Sure we got control," answered the engineer, grinning. "We can turn them off or on. If gravity varies, that's too bad. We take the fluctuation or we don't get anything." Cameron frowned; the man knew what he was doing or he wouldn't be here. His position was of only slightly less importance than that of the medical director—and where it mattered the Medicouncil wouldn't tolerate incompetence. And yet—— The engineer rumbled on. "You were talking how the generators were designed especially for the asteroid. Some fancy medical reason why it's easier on the accidentals to have a lesser gravity plus a certain amount of change. Me, I dunno. I guess the designers couldn't help what was built and the reason was dug up later." Cameron concealed his irritation. He wanted information, not a heart to heart confession. Back on Earth he had been told it was for the benefit of the accidentals. He'd reserved judgment then and saw no reason not to do so now. "All practical sciences try to justify what they can't escape but would like to. Medicine, I'm sure, is no exception." He paused thoughtfully. "I understand there are three separate generators on the asteroid. One runs for forty-five minutes while two are idle. When the first one stops another one cuts in. The operations are supposed to be synchronized. I don't have to tell you that they're not. Not long ago you felt your weight increase suddenly. I know I did. What is wrong?" "Nothing wrong," said the engineer soothingly. "You get fluctuations while one generator is running. You get a gravity surge when one generator is supposed to drop out but doesn't. The companion machine adds to it, that's all." "They're supposed to be that way? Overlapping so that for a time we have Earth or Earth and a half gravity?" "Better than having none," said Vogel with heavy pride. "Used to happen quite often, before I came. You can ask any of the old timers. I fixed that though." He didn't like the direction his questions were taking him. "What did you do?" he asked suspiciously. "Nothing," said the engineer uncomfortably. "Nothing I can think of. I guess the machines just got used to having me around." There were people who tended to anthropomorphize anything they came in contact with and Vogel was one of them. It made no difference to him that he was talking about insensate machines. He would continue to endow them with personality. "This is the best you can say, that we'll get a wild variation of gravity, sometimes none?" "It's not supposed to work that way but nobody's ever done better with a setup like this," said Vogel defensively. "If you want you can check the company that makes these units." "I'm not trying to challenge your knowledge and I'm not anxious to make myself look silly. I do want to make sure I don't overlook anything. You see, I think there's a possibility of sabotage." The engineer's grin was wider than the remark required. Cameron swiveled the chair around and leaned on the desk. "All right," he said tiredly, "tell me why the idea of sabotage is so funny." "It would have to be someone living here," said the big engineer. "He wouldn't like it if it jumped up to nine G, which it could. I think he'd let it alone. But there are better reasons. Do you know how each gravity unit is put together?" "Not in detail." The gravity generating unit was not a unit. It was built in three parts. First there was a power source, which could be anything as long as it supplied ample energy. The basic supply on the asteroid was a nuclear pile, buried deep in the core. Handicap Haven would have to be taken apart, stone by stone, before it could be reached. Part two were the gravity coils, which actually originated and directed the gravity. They were simple and very nearly indestructible. They could be destroyed but they couldn't be altered and still produce the field. The third part was the control unit, the real heart of the gravity generating system. It calculated the relationship between the power flowing through the coils and the created field in any one microsecond. It used the computed relationship to alter the power flowing in the next microsecond to get the same gravity. If the power didn't change the field died instantly. The control unit was thus actually a computer, one of the best made, accurate and fast beyond belief. The engineer rubbed his chin. "Now I guess you can see why it doesn't always behave as we want it to." He looked questioningly at Cameron, expecting a reply. "I'm afraid I can't," said the doctor.

test

48513

Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. ILLUSTRATED BY KRENKEL HIS MASTER'S VOICE ANALOG SCIENCE FACT · SCIENCE FICTION Spaceship McGuire had lots of knowledge—but no wisdom. He was smart—but incredibly foolish. And, as a natural consequence, tended to ask questions too profound for any philosopher—questions like "Who are you?" By RANDALL GARRETT I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could make anyone dislike him without trying. When I entered the office, he was [3] sitting behind his mahogany desk, his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said: "Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?" I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will." He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting right out of the glass [4] again. The momentum it builds up is enough to make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all over the place. Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it. Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice. He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force. I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way. He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come in. "Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble." "I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping my voice level. [5] "So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of heavy linseed oil. He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract." I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think you'd win." "Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would hardly offer to pay you another one." I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains. Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to personal relationships, he wasn't very wise. "Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the point," I told him. "I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage." "My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation of the concepts might not be quite [6] the same as yours. Get to the point." He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth be considered its ... ah ... master. "As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being' unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the single individual were careful in giving orders himself. "Now, it appears that you , Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?" "Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up what had really happened. My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey." "Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him my version of "genuine" innocence. [7] A man has to be a good actor to be a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I knew a great deal more about the problem than he did. He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can this bias be eliminated." "Then why don't they do that?" "There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is precisely the thing I hired you to prevent." "It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely. "But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you [8] money?" "It has. I was reluctant to call you in again—understandably enough, I think." "Perfectly. It's mutual." He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at me. "It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes." "I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?" "It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am certain that the robot ship is the answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of McGuire!" What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody , I quoted to myself. I'd have said it out loud, [9] but I was fairly certain that Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics. "Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak." "In other words, I've got you over a barrel." "I don't deny it." "You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8 is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus." "How much?" "Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs in it." He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one each six months for three years after the first successful commercial ship is built by Viking." "My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a deal. Is there anything else?" "No." "Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel." "You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness [10] of his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to subside." I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding his own touch of color to the room. And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost nothing, he'd really have blown up. Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring, rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker beacon on my way to Ceres. For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial engine and the few necessities of life—air, some water, and a very little food—still costs more than a Rolls-Royce [11] automobile does on Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in the Belt. They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your average velocity doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed. I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming ordeal with McGuire. Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: DANIEL OAK, Confidential Expediter ; I'm hired to help other people Get Things Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important than Shalimar Ravenhurst. Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to evaluate the political activities of [12] various sub-governments all over the System. And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong. The Political Survey Division does evaluate political activity, all right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast majority of [13] the System's citizens don't even know the Government has a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the Political Survey Division. The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot. And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician. Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the malfunctioning of an individual automobile. McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he was the spacecraft, since it served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per second. Nor [14] did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths were variable and led through the emptiness of space. Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull. But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders— fast ! And that means verbal orders, orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space. That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well. And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with. For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain. First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human being. Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict with the First Law . [15] Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the First or Second Law. Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept. A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen. And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile. With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first six went insane. If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you, depending [16] on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so. So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws. If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being. One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane. The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only from that person." As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire. When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats, sitting on a [17] bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station. Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres, lock, stock, and mining rights. Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership. There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to that, too, before very long. Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt. But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a [18] week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise. I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome. After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me. "Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face. "I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand. "That's the definition of a good trip," he told me. "Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep." "You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?" "I could use one, I guess. Your treat?" "My treat," he said. "Come on." I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point. [19] Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors. A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit. I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right; I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I have spent summers in nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves with lavender [20] and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different. I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits. Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said "O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules. We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock opened up with his troubles. "Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant because I want you to know that there may be trouble." "Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant. "Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of precious metals. "Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell around [21] here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we can't stand any hell—or sabotage—around this planetoid just now!" "Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not Thurston's agents." "Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible." "Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?" He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing about." "So? What does this have to do with me?" He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have to come out of my [22] pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he doesn't like your methods of operation." "And you're going to go against his orders?" "I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can." I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she sneaked aboard McGuire." He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that." "Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say. "Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could offer you—" I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons. In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want [23] me to work for you, then it would be unethical for me to take the job. "In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my services are [24] not necessary to the survival of the individual, except in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a lawyer when it's a charity case. "No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't [25] possibly work for you." He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink. " But ," I said, "it would be a pleasure [26] to work with you." He looked up quickly. "How's that?" "Well, let's look at it this way: You can't hire me because I'm already working for Ravenhurst; I can't hire [27] you because you're working for Ravenhurst. But since we may need each other, and since we're both working for Ravenhurst, there would be no conflict of interest if we co-operate. "Or, to put it another way, I can't take money for any service I may render you, but you can pay off in services. Am I coming through?" His broad smile made the scars on his face fold in and deepen. "Loud and clear. It's a deal." I held up a hand, palm toward him. "Ah, ah, ah! There's no 'deal' involved. We're just old buddies helping each other. This is for friendship, not business. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Fair?" "Fair. Come on down to my office; I want to give you a headful of facts and figures." "Will do. Let me finish my guzzle."

test

47989

THE YELLOW PHANTOM BY MARGARET SUTTON GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Copyright, 1933, by GROSSET & DUNLAP, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America To My Mother and Father. CONTENTS CHAPTER I A MYSTERIOUS TELEGRAM “Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene! Don’t like New York so well that you won’t want to come home!” “Don’t keep them too long, Pauline! Farringdon will be as dead as so many bricks without them. Even the cats will miss Blackberry. Make him wave his paw, Judy!” “Don’t forget to write!” “Goodbye, Pauline! Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene!” “Goodbye! Goodbye!” And Peter’s car was off, bearing the last load of campers back to their home town. Judy Bolton watched them out of sight. They were taking the familiar road, but she and Irene Lang would soon be traveling in the other direction. Pauline Faulkner had invited them for a visit, including Judy’s cat in the invitation, and they were going back with her to New York. A long blue bus hove into view, and all three girls hailed it, at first expectantly, then frantically when they saw it was not stopping. It slowed down a few feet ahead of them, but when they attempted to board it the driver eyed Blackberry with disapproval. “Can’t take the cat unless he’s in a crate.” “He’s good,” Judy began. “He won’t be any trouble——” “Can’t help it. Company’s rules.” And he was about to close the door when Judy’s quick idea saved the situation. “All right, he’s in a crate ,” she declared with vigor as she thrust the cat inside her own pretty hatbox. The hats she hastily removed and bundled under one arm. The driver had to give in. He even grinned a bit sheepishly as the girls took their seats, Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judy insisted as she took the seat just behind them, “I have Blackberry.” The other passengers on the bus were regarding the newcomers with amused interest. A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine and rolled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction. An old lady made purring noises through her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and smiling. Everyone except the serious young man across the aisle. He never turned his head. Judy nudged the two friends in the seat ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything to make him look up. “Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——” “Well, what?” “Almost my ideal.” “Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb those precious papers that he’s reading.” “I dare you!” Pauline said. Sixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle. The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest. The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise, he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition, hastened to apologize. “No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly and began collecting his scattered papers. Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his reading. There were a great many typewritten sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading critically, scratching out something here and adding something there. “You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to Judy. “See how nice he was.” “I should have known better than to dare a girl like you,” Pauline put in. “It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now almost as interested as Irene in the strange young man. Not because he was Judy’s ideal—a man who wouldn’t notice a cat until its tail bumped into him—but because the papers on his lap might be important. And she had disturbed them. The man, apparently unaware that the accident had been anybody’s fault, continued reading and correcting. Judy watched her cat carefully until the stack of papers was safely inside his portfolio again. “That’s finished,” he announced as though speaking to himself. He screwed the top on his fountain pen, placed it in his pocket and then turned to the girls. “Nice scenery, wasn’t it?” “It was,” Judy replied, laughing, “but you didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.” “I’ve been over this road a great many times,” he explained, “and one does tire of scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the bus are different.” “You mean different from scenery?” “Yes, and from each other. For instance, you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired friend who apologized for you and that small, dark girl are three distinct types.” Judy regarded him curiously. She had never thought of herself or either of the other girls as “types.” Now she tried to analyze his meaning. Their lives had certainly been different. Judy and Pauline, although of independent natures, had always felt the security of dependence upon their parents while Irene’s crippled father depended solely upon her. This responsibility made her seem older than her years—older and younger, too. She never could acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’s fearlessness. In appearance, too, they were different. Her first vacation had done wonders for Irene Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed with healthy color, and her eyes were a deeper, happier blue. Two weeks of sunshine had tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in her hair. Pauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan which made her hair look darker than ever and contrasted strangely with her keen, light blue eyes. The sun had not been quite so kind to Judy. It had discovered a few faint freckles on her nose and given her hair a decided reddish cast. But Judy didn’t mind. Camp life had been exciting—boating, swimming and, as a climax, a thrilling ride in Arthur Farringdon-Pett’s new airplane. The young man beside Judy was a little like Arthur in appearance—tall, good-looking but altogether too grown-up and serious. Judy liked boys to make jokes now and then, even tease the way her brother, Horace, did. Peter teased her, too. “Queer,” she thought, “to miss being teased.” This stranger seemed to like serious-minded people and presently changed the conversation to books and music, always favorite topics with Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he was doing but learned nothing except that “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded in putting his papers back in their original sequence. “And if you girls were all of the same type,” he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven you your prank.” “I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy whispered to the other two girls a little later. “Mine either,” Pauline returned with a laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I dared you.” “Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely, “that he cares for my type?” She looked very pathetic as she said that, and Judy, remembering Irene’s misfortunes, slid into the seat beside her and put a loving arm about her shoulder. “I care for your type,” she said. “So why worry about what a stranger thinks?” “I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer with a wistful look in the stranger’s direction. He was still absorbed in the mountain of typewritten pages that he held on his knee. It seemed that his work, whatever it was, engrossed him completely. He was again making corrections and additions with his pen. Judy noticed a yellow slip of paper on the seat beside him and called the other girls’ attention to it. “It looks like a telegram,” she whispered, “and he keeps referring to it.” “Telegrams are usually bad news,” Irene replied. The young man sat a little distance away from them and, to all appearances, had forgotten their existence. Girl-like, they discussed him, imagining him as everything from a politician to a cub reporter, finally deciding that, since he lived in Greenwich Village, he must be an artist. Irene said she liked to think of him as talented. A dreamer, she would have called him, if it had not been for his practical interest in the business at hand—those papers and that telegram. It was dark by the time they reached New York. The passengers were restless and eager to be out of the bus. The young man hastily crammed his typewritten work into his portfolio and Judy noticed, just as the bus stopped, that he had forgotten the telegram. She and Irene both made a dive for it with the unfortunate result that when they stood up again each of them held a torn half of the yellow slip. “Just our luck!” exclaimed Irene. “Now we can’t return it to him. Anyway, he’s gone.” “We could piece it together,” Pauline suggested, promptly suiting her actions to her words. When the two jagged edges were fitted against each other, this is what the astonished girls read: DALE MEREDITH PLEASANT VALLEY PA CUT ART SHOP ROBBERY STOP FIFTY THOUSAND IS PLENTY STOP ONE MAN MURDERED INTERESTS RANDALL STOP DISCUSS TERMS MONDAY EMILY GRIMSHAW Irene was the first to finish reading. “Good heavens! What would he know about robbery and murder?” she exclaimed, staring first at the telegram in Pauline’s hand and then at the empty seat across the aisle. “Why, nothing that I can think of. He didn’t seem like a crook. The telegram may be in code,” Pauline mused as she handed the torn pieces to Judy. “I like his name—Dale Meredith.” “So do I. But Emily Grimshaw——” “All out! Last stop!” the bus driver was calling. “Take care of that cat,” he said with a chuckle as he helped the girls with their suitcases. They were still wondering about the strange telegram as they made their way through the crowd on Thirty-fourth Street. CHAPTER II IRENE’S DISCOVERY A taxi soon brought the girls to the door of Dr. Faulkner’s nineteenth century stone house. The stoop had been torn down and replaced by a modern entrance hall, but the high ceilings and winding stairways were as impressive as ever. Drinking in the fascination of it, Judy and Irene followed the man, Oliver, who carried their bags right up to the third floor where Pauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom all to herself. The former was furnished with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shaded lamps, a piano and a radio. Here the man left them with a curt, “’Ere you are.” “And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the more sociable housekeeper welcomed them. Soon she was bustling around the room setting their bags in order. She offered to help unpack. “Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told her. “We’re dead tired and I can lend them some of my things for tonight.” “Then I’ll fix up the double bed in the next room for your guests and leave you to yourselves,” the kind old lady said. As soon as she had closed the door Judy lifted her cat out of the hatbox. With a grateful noise, halfway between a purr and a yowl, Blackberry leaped to the floor and began, at once, to explore the rooms. “His padded feet were made for soft carpets,” Judy said fondly. “How do you suppose he’d like gravel?” Pauline asked. “Oh, he’d love it!” Judy exclaimed. “You know our cellar floor is covered with gravel, and he sleeps down there.” “Is this gravel in the cellar?” Irene asked, beginning to get an attack of shivers. Pauline laughed. “Goodness, no! It’s on the roof garden.” She walked across the room and flung open a door. “Nothing shivery about that, is there?” “Nothing except the thought of standing on the top of one of those tall buildings,” Irene said, gazing upward as she followed Pauline. The view fascinated Judy. Looking out across lower New York, she found a new world of gray buildings and flickering lights. In the other direction the Empire State Building loomed like a sentinel. “I never dreamed New York was like this,” she breathed. “It grows on a person,” Pauline declared. “I would never want to live in any other city. No matter how bored or how annoyed I may be during the day, at night I can always come up here and feel the thrill of having all this for a home.” “I wish I had a home I could feel that way about,” Irene sighed. The garden was too alluring for the girls to want to leave it. Even Blackberry had settled himself in a bed of geraniums. These and other plants in enormous boxes bordered the complete inclosure. Inside were wicker chairs, a table and a hammock hung between two posts. “This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline said, “and you two girls may come up here and read if you like while I’m at school.” “At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she thought of something that she should have considered before accepting Pauline’s invitation. Of course Pauline would be in school. She hadn’t been given a holiday as the girls in Farringdon had when their school burned down. Judy and Irene would be left to entertain themselves all day unless Dr. Faulkner had some plans for them. Judy wondered where he was. After they had gone inside again, that is, all of them except Blackberry who seemed to have adopted the roof garden as a permanent home, she became curious enough to ask. “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise. “Father is away. A medical conference in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like that, but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.” “Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene asked, dismayed. “Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently. “There’s nothing to be afraid of with servants in the house.” But Irene was not used to servants. Ever since her father became disabled she had waited on herself and kept their shabby little house in apple-pie order. The house was closed now and their few good pieces of furniture put in storage. All summer long there would not be any rent problems or any cooking. Then, when fall came, she and her father would find a new home. Where it would be or how they would pay for it worried Irene when she thought about it. She tried not to think because Dr. Bolton had told her she needed a rest. Her father, a patient of the doctor’s, was undergoing treatments at the Farringdon Sanitarium. The treatments were being given according to Dr. Bolton’s directions but not by him as Judy’s home, too, was closed for the summer. Her parents had not intended to stay away more than a week or two, but influenza had swept the town where they were visiting. Naturally, the doctor stayed and his wife with him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student of journalism, had gone to live in the college dormitory. Thus it was that both girls knew they could not return to Farringdon no matter how homesick they might be. They had the cat for comfort and they had each other. Ever since Irene had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s office these two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine, Betty, Marge, Pauline—all of them were friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than that. Judy felt with them. She felt with Irene the longing of the other girl for something to hold fast to—a substantial home that could not be taken away at every whim of the landlord, just enough money so that she could afford to look her best and the security of some strong person to depend upon. “Will your school last long?” Irene was asking the dark-haired girl. “Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing the fact that she too had troubles. “Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful of the sigh. “We can go places together? You’ll have time to show us around.” Pauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t talk about time to me. Time will be my middle name after I graduate. There isn’t a single thing I really want to do, least of all stay at home all day. College is a bore unless you’re planning a career. What do you intend to do when you’re through school?” “I hadn’t planned,” Irene said, “except that I want time to read and go ahead with my music. Of course I’ll keep house somewhere for Dad. It will be so nice to have him well again, and I love keeping house.” “What about your work for my father?” Judy asked. Irene’s eyes became troubled. “He doesn’t really need me any more. I know now, Judy, that you just made that position for me. It was lovely of you, but I—I’d just as soon not go back where I’m not needed. Your father trusts too many people ever to get rich and he could use that money he’s been paying me.” “Don’t feel that way about it,” Judy begged. Irene’s feelings, however, could not easily be changed, and with both girls having such grave worries the problem bid fair to be too great a one for even Judy to solve. Solving problems, she hoped, would eventually be her career for she planned to become a regular detective with a star under her coat. Now she confided this ambition to the other two girls. “A detective!” Pauline gasped. “Why, Judy, only men are detectives. Can you imagine anyone taking a mere girl on the police force?” “Chief Kelly, back home, would take her this very minute if she applied,” Irene declared. Pauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical, black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks. She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or feeble-minded people and often felt thankful that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured people who were also interesting. “People, like that man we met on the bus,” she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently. I’d hate to think of his being mixed up in anything crooked.” “You can’t make me believe that he was,” Irene put in with a vigor quite rare for her. “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was real?” “I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned with a laugh, “but you can be sure I’ll never be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious telegram meant.” In the days that followed Judy learned that the mere mention of the stranger’s name, Dale Meredith, would cause either girl to cease worrying about a home or about a career, as the case might be. “It’s almost magical,” she said to herself and had to admit that the spell was also upon her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would puzzle over the torn papers in her pocketbook. But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over things. It was for that reason that she usually chose detective stories whenever she sat down with a book. That hammock up there on the roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall buildings, and found New York, generally, less thrilling from the street than it had been from the roof garden. Pauline sensed this and worried about entertaining her guests. “How would you like to go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested. “For Heaven’s sake, think of something a little more exciting than that,” Judy exclaimed thoughtlessly. “I’d rather find a library somewhere and then lie and read something in the hammock.” “So would I,” agreed Irene, relieved that Judy hadn’t wanted to see the tomb. “Well, if a library’s all you want,” Pauline said, “why not walk along with me and I’ll show you one on my way to school.” “A big one?” Judy asked. “No, just a small one. In fact, it’s only a bookshop with a circulating library for its customers.” Judy sighed. It would seem nice to see something small for a change. She never recognized this library at all until they were almost inside the door. Then her eyes shone. What an interesting place it was! On the counters were quaint gifts and novelties as well as books. The salesladies all wore smocks, like artists, and had the courtesy to leave the girls alone. Pauline had to hurry on to school but left Judy and Irene to browse. Before long they had discovered a sign reading MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE. That was what Judy liked. Rows and rows of new books, like soldiers, marched along the shelves. “What a lot of flying stories,” Irene said, absently removing one of them from its place. “And murder mysteries,” Judy added. “It’s always a temptation to read them. Murders in Castle Stein ....” She started back as her eye caught the author’s name. It was Dale Meredith! CHAPTER III A DARING SCHEME Thrilled by her discovery, Judy removed the torn pieces of telegram from her purse and began unraveling the mystery, bit by bit. Irene looked on, trembling with excitement. “‘CUT ART SHOP ROBBERY STOP FIFTY THOUSAND IS PLENTY STOP....’ Art Shop Robbery! That sounds like a title! And someone wanted him to cut it to fifty thousand words—just a nice length for a book. That must have been what he was doing on the bus, cutting down the number of words on those typewritten pages.” “Why, of course,” Irene agreed. “I always knew you were gifted, Judy, but can you explain this?” She pointed. “‘ONE MAN MURDERED INTERESTS RANDALL....’ Easy as pie! Another title and a publisher.” Judy tossed her head with a self-satisfied air of importance. Every one of their questions might be answered in the classified directory. They found a telephone booth near by and a directory on the shelf beside it. Promptly turning to the list of publishing houses, Judy’s finger traveled down one complete page and half of another, but no Randall could she find. With a sigh of disappointment she turned to look again at the telegram: “DISCUSS TERMS MONDAY” “EMILY GRIMSHAW” What sort of person was she? A relative? No. Relatives didn’t discuss terms with authors. Wives and sweethearts didn’t either. They might discuss his books, but not terms. Anyway Irene hoped that Dale Meredith had no wife or sweetheart, certainly not a sweetheart with a name like Emily Grimshaw. That name sounded as harsh to the ears as Dale Meredith sounded musical. Flipping the pages of the directory, Judy came upon the answer to their question: “AUTHOR’S AGENTS ( See Literary Agents).” “That might be it!” She turned to the place and, beginning at the top of the page, both girls searched eagerly through the G’s. “Greenspan, Grier, Grimshaw....” The name was Emily and the address was a number on Madison Square. Irene was so excited that she declared she could feel her heart thumping under her slip-on sweater. “I’d give anything to meet him again, Judy! Anything!” And suddenly Judy wanted to meet him too, not for her own sake but for Irene’s. A bold plan began to take shape in her mind. If she and Irene found positions in Emily Grimshaw’s office Dale Meredith would never know that it had not been a simple coincidence. It would be such fun—this scheming. It would give them something to do and if Judy’s plan worked it might even solve the problem of Pauline’s career. “Of course Emily Grimshaw may not hire us,” Judy said after she had outlined the scheme and won Irene’s approval. “But, at any rate, it’s worth trying. We won’t need to tell her it’s only for a few weeks when Pauline will be there to step right into the position. I wonder how you get to Madison Square.” She stopped a policeman to ask him and found it to be within easy walking distance. “We might as well go now,” Irene agreed. Perhaps if they thought about it too long they might lose heart and not attempt it. The literary agent’s office was located in an old hotel on the northeast side of the square. The building looked as if it had been unchanged for a century. In the lobby Judy and Irene paused, surveying the quaint furniture and mural decorations before they mustered enough courage to inquire at the desk for Emily Grimshaw. “Who’s calling?” the clerk asked tartly. “Tell her—” Judy hesitated. “Tell her it’s two girls to see her on business.” The message was relayed over the switchboard and presently the clerk turned and said, “She will see one of you. First stairway to the left. Fourth floor.” “Only one—” Judy began. “She always sees one client at a time. The other girl can wait.” “That’s right. I—I’ll wait,” Irene stammered. “But you wanted the position——” “I don’t now. Suppose she asked about experience.” “You’ve had a little. You stand a better chance than I do.” “Not with your nerve, Judy,” Irene said. “This place gives me the shivers. You’re welcome to go exploring dark halls if you like. I’d rather sit here in the lobby and read Dale Meredith’s book.” “Oh, so that’s it? Make yourself comfortable,” Judy advised with a laugh. “I may be gone a long, long time.” “Not if she finds out how old you are.” “Hush!” Judy reproved. “Don’t I look dignified?” She tilted her hat a little more to the left and dabbed a powder puff on her nose. The puff happened not to have any powder on it but it gave her a grown-up, courageous feeling. And she was to have a great need of courage in the hour that followed. CHAPTER IV HOW THE SCHEME WORKED The adventure lost some of its thrill with no one to share it. Judy hadn’t an idea in the world how to find the fourth floor as she could see no stairway and no elevator. Taking a chance, she opened one of several doors. It opened into a closet where cleaning supplies were kept. Judy glanced at the dusty floor and wondered if anybody ever used them. This was fun! She tried another door and found it locked. But the third door opened into a long hall at the end of which was the stairway. “A regular labyrinth, this place,” she thought as she climbed. “I wonder if Emily Grimshaw will be as queer as her hotel.” There were old-fashioned knockers on all the doors, and Judy noticed that no two of them were alike. Emily Grimshaw had her name on the glass door of her suite, and the knocker was in the shape of a witch hunched over a steaming caldron. Judy lifted it and waited. “Who’s there?” called a mannish voice from within. “Judy Bolton. They told me at the desk that you would see me.” “Come on in, then. Don’t stand there banging the knocker.” “I beg your pardon,” Judy said meekly as she entered. “I didn’t quite understand.” “It’s all right. Who sent you?” “Nobody. I came myself. I found your name in the classified directory.” “Oh, I see. Another beginner.” Emily Grimshaw sat back in her swivel chair and scrutinized Judy. She was a large woman dressed in a severely plain brown cloth dress with sensible brown shoes to match. Her iron-gray hair was knotted at the back of her head. In fact, the only mark of distinction about her whole person was the pair of glasses perched on the high bridge of her nose and the wide, black ribbon suspended from them. Although an old woman, her face was not wrinkled. What few lines she had were deep furrows that looked as if they belonged there. Judy could imagine Emily Grimshaw as a middle-aged woman but never as a girl. The room was, by no means, a typical office. If it had not been for the massive desk littered with papers and the swivel chair it would not have looked like an office at all. Three of the four walls were lined with bookshelves. “Is this where you do all your work?” Judy asked. “And why not? It’s a good enough place.” “Of course,” Judy explained herself quickly. “But I supposed you would have girls working for you. It must keep you busy doing all this yourself.” “Hmm! It does. I like to be busy.” Judy took a deep breath. How, she wondered, was she to put her proposition before this queer old woman without seeming impudent. It was the first time in her life she had ever offered her services to anyone except her father. “You use a typewriter,” she began. “Look here, young woman,” Emily Grimshaw turned on her suddenly, “if you’re a writer, say so. And if you’ve come here looking for a position——” “That’s it exactly,” Judy interrupted. “I’m sure I could be of some service to you.” “What?” “I might typewrite letters for you.” “I do that myself. Haven’t the patience to dictate them.” “Perhaps I could help you read and correct manuscripts,” Judy suggested hopefully. The agent seemed insulted. “Humph!” she grunted. “Much you know about manuscripts!” “I may know more than you think,” Judy came back at her. It was hard to be patient with this irritable old lady. Certainly she would never have chosen such an employer if it had not been for the possibility of meeting Dale Meredith again. Irene had taken such a fancy to him. “Lucky she doesn’t know that,” thought Judy as she watched her fumbling through a stack of papers on her desk. Finally she produced a closely written page of note paper and handed it to the puzzled girl. “If you know so much about manuscripts,” she charged. “What would you do with a page like that?” Half hoping that the handwriting was Dale Meredith’s, Judy reached out an eager hand. The agent was watching her like a cat and, as she read, a hush settled over the room. Emily Grimshaw was putting Judy to a test.

test

51231

Syndrome Johnny BY CHARLES DYE Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The plagues that struck mankind could be attributed to one man. But was he fiend ... or savior? The blood was added to a pool of other blood, mixed, centrifuged, separated to plasma and corpuscles, irradiated slightly, pasteurized slightly, frozen, evaporated, and finally banked. Some of the plasma was used immediately for a woman who had bled too much in childbirth. She died. Others received plasma and did not die. But their symptoms changed, including a syndrome of multiple endocrine unbalance, eccentricities of appetite and digestion, and a general pattern of emotional disturbance. An alert hospital administrator investigated the mortality rise and narrowed it to a question of who had donated blood the week before. After city residents were eliminated, there remained only the signed receipts and thumbprints of nine men. Nine healthy unregistered travelers poor enough to sell their blood for money, and among them a man who carried death in his veins. The nine thumbprints were broadcast to all police files and a search began. The effort was futile, for there were many victims who had sickened and grown partially well again without recognizing the strangeness of their illness. Three years later they reached the carrier stage and the epidemic spread to four cities. Three more years, and there was an epidemic which spread around the world, meeting another wave coming from the opposite direction. It killed two out of four, fifty out of a hundred, twenty-seven million out of fifty million. There was hysteria where it appeared. And where it had not appeared there were quarantines to fence it out. But it could not be fenced out. For two years it covered the world. And then it vanished again, leaving the survivors with a tendency toward glandular troubles. Time passed. The world grew richer, more orderly, more peaceful. A man paused in the midst of his work at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Commission. He looked up at the red and green production map of India. "Just too many people per acre," he said. "All our work at improving production ... just one jump ahead of their rising population, one jump ahead of famine. Sometimes I wish to God there would be another plague to give us a breathing spell and a fair chance to get things organized." He went back to work and added another figure. Two months later, he was one of the first victims of the second plague. In the dining hall of a university, a biochemical student glanced up from his paper to his breakfast companion. "You remember Johnny, the mythical carrier that they told about during the first and second epidemics of Syndrome Plague?" "Sure. Syndrome Johnny. They use that myth in psychology class as a typical example of mass hysteria. When a city was nervous and expecting the plague to reach them, some superstitious fool would imagine he saw Syndrome Johnny and the population would panic. Symbol for Death or some such thing. People imagined they saw him in every corner of the world. Simultaneously, of course." It was a bright morning and they were at a window which looked out across green rolling fields to a towering glass-brick building in the distance. The student who had gone back to his paper suddenly looked up again. "Some Peruvians here claim they saw Syndrome Johnny—" "Idiotic superstition! You'd think it would have died down when the plague died." The other grinned. "The plague didn't die." He folded his newspaper slowly, obviously advancing an opening for a debate. His companion went on eating. "Another of your wild theories, huh?" Then through a mouthful of food: "All right, if the plague didn't die, where did it go?" "Nowhere. We have it now. We all have it!" He shrugged. "A virus catalyst of high affinity for the cells and a high similarity to a normal cell protein—how can it be detected?" "Then why don't people die? Why aren't we sick?" "Because we have sickened and recovered. We caught it on conception and recovered before birth. Proof? Why do you think that the countries which were known as the Hungry Lands are now well-fed, leisured, educated, advanced? Because the birth rate has fallen! Why has the birth rate fallen?" He paused, then very carefully said, "Because two out of three of all people who would have lived have died before birth, slain by Syndrome Plague. We are all carriers now, hosts to a new guest. And"—his voice dropped to a mock sinister whisper—"with such a stranger within our cells, at the heart of the intricate machinery of our lives, who knows what subtle changes have crept upon us unnoticed!" His companion laughed. "Eat your breakfast. You belong on a horror program!" A police psychologist for the Federated States of The Americas was running through reports from the Bureau of Social Statistics. Suddenly he grunted, then a moment later said, "Uh-huh!" "Uh-huh what?" asked his superior, who was reading a newspaper with his feet up on the desk. "Remember the myth, of Syndrome Johnny?" "Ghost of Syndrome Plague. Si, what of it?" "Titaquahapahel, Peru, population nine hundred, sent in a claim that he turned up there and they almost caught him. Crime Statistics rerouted the report to Mass Phenomena, of course. Mass Phenomena blew a tube and sent their folder on Syndrome Johnny over here. Every report they ever had on him for ninety years back! A memo came with it." He handed the memo over. The man behind the desk looked at it. It was a small graph and some mathematical symbols. "What is it?" "It means," said the psychologist, smiling dryly, "that every crazy report about our ghost has points of similarity to every other crazy report. The whole business of Syndrome Johnny has been in their 'funny coincidence' file for twenty years. This time the suspect hits the averaged description of Johnny too closely: A solid-looking man, unusual number of visible minor scars, and a disturbing habit of bending his fingers at the first-joint knuckles when he is thinking. The coincidence has gotten too damn funny. There's a chance we've been passing up a crime." "An extensive crime," said the man at the desk softly. He reached for the folder. "Yes, a considerable quantity of murder." He leafed through the folder and then thought a while, looking at the most recent reports. Thinking was what he was paid for, and he earned his excellent salary. "This thumbprint on the hotel register—the name is false, but the thumbprint looks real. Could we persuade the Bureau of Records to give their data on that print?" "Without a warrant? Against constitutional immunity. No, not a chance. The public has been touchy about the right to secrecy ever since that police state was attempted in Varga." "How about persuading an obliging judge to give a warrant on grounds of reasonable suspicion?" "No. We'd have the humanist press down on our necks in a minute, and any judge knows it. We'd have to prove a crime was committed. No crime, no warrant." "It seems a pity we can't even find out who the gentleman is," the Crimes Department head murmured, looking at the thumbprint wistfully. "No crime, no records. No records, no evidence. No evidence, no proof of crime. Therefore, we must manufacture a small crime. He was attacked and he must have defended himself. Someone may have been hurt in the process." He pushed a button. "Do you think if I send a man down there, he could persuade one of the mob to swear out a complaint?" "That's a rhetorical question," said the psychologist, trying to work out an uncertain correlation in his reports. "With that sort of mob hysteria, the town would probably give you an affidavit of witchcraft." "Phone for you, Doctor Alcala." The nurse was crisp but quiet, smiling down at the little girl before vanishing again. Ricardo Alcala pushed the plunger in gently, then carefully withdrew the hypodermic needle from the little girl's arm. "There you are, Cosita," he said, smiling and rising from the chair beside the white bed. "Will that make me better, Doctor?" she piped feebly. He patted her hand. "Be a good girl and you will be well tomorrow." He walked out into the hospital corridor to where the desk nurse held out a phone. "Alcala speaking." The voice was unfamiliar. "My deepest apologies for interrupting your work, Doctor. At this late hour I'm afraid I assumed you would be at home. The name is Camba, Federation Investigator on a health case. I would like to consult you." Alcala was tired, but there was nothing to do at home. Nita was at the health resort and Johnny had borrowed all his laboratory space for a special synthesis of some sort, and probably would be too busy even to talk. Interest stirred in him. This was a Federation investigator calling; the man's work was probably important. "Tonight, if that's convenient. I'll be off duty in five minutes." Thirty minutes later they were ordering in a small cantina down the street from the hospital. Julio Camba, Federation Investigator, was a slender, dark man with sharp, glinting eyes. He spoke with a happy theatrical flourish. "Order what you choose, Senor. We're on my expense account. The resources of the Federated States of all The Americas stand behind your menu." Alcala smiled. "I wouldn't want to add to the national debt." "Not at all, Senor. The Federated States are only too happy thus to express a fraction of their gratitude by adding a touch of luxury to the otherwise barren and self-sacrificing life of a scientist." "You shame me," Alcala said dryly. It was true that he needed every spare penny for the health of Nita and the child, and for the laboratory. A penny saved from being spent on nourishment was a penny earned. He picked up the menu again and ordered steak. The investigator lit a cigar, asking casually: "Do you know John Osborne Drake?" Alcala searched his memory. "No. I'm sorry...." Then he felt for the first time how closely he was being watched, and knew how carefully his reaction and the tone of his voice had been analyzed. The interview was dangerous. For some reason, he was suspected of something. Camba finished lighting the cigar and dropped the match into an ash-tray. "Perhaps you know John Delgados?" He leaned back into the shadowy corner of the booth. Johnny! Out of all the people in the world, how could the government be interested in him? Alcala tried to sound casual. "An associate of mine. A friend." "I would like to contact the gentleman." The request was completely unforceful, undemanding. "I called, but he was not at home. Could you tell me where he might be?" "I'm sorry, Senor Camba, but I cannot say. He could be on a business trip." Alcala was feeling increasingly nervous. Actually, Johnny was working at his laboratory. "What do you know of his activities?" Camba asked. "A biochemist." Alcala tried to see past the meditative mask of the thin dark face. "He makes small job-lots of chemical compounds. Special bug spray for sale to experimental plantations, hormone spray for fruits, that sort of thing. Sometimes, when he collects some money ahead, he does research." Camba waited, and his silence became a question. Alcala spoke reluctantly, anger rising in him. "Oh, it's genuine research. He has some patents and publications to his credit. You can confirm that if you choose." He was unable to keep the hostility out of his voice. A waiter came and placed steaming platters of food on the table. Camba waited until he was gone. "You know him well, I presume. Is he sane?" The question was another shock. Alcala thought carefully, for any man might be insane in secret. "Yes, so far as I know." He turned his attention to the steak, but first took three very large capsules from a bottle in his pocket. "I would not expect that a doctor would need to take pills," Camba remarked with friendly mockery. "I don't need them," Alcala explained. "Mixed silicones. I'm guinea pigging." "Can't such things be left to the guinea pigs?" Camba asked, watching with revulsion as Alcala uncapped the second bottle and sprinkled a layer of gray powder over his steak. "Guinea pigs have no assimilation of silicones; only man has that." "Yes, of course. I should have remembered from your famous papers, The Need Of Trace Silicon In Human Diet and Silicon Deficiency Diseases ." Obviously Camba had done considerable investigating of Alcala before approaching him. He had even given the titles of the research papers correctly. Alcala's wariness increased. "What is the purpose of the experiment this time?" asked the small dark Federation agent genially. "To determine the safe limits of silicon consumption and if there are any dangers in an overdose." "How do you determine that? By dropping dead?" He could be right. Perhaps the test should be stopped. Every day, with growing uneasiness, Alcala took his dose of silicon compound, and every day, the chemical seemed to be absorbed completely—not released or excreted—in a way that was unpleasantly reminiscent of the way arsenic accumulated without evident damage, then killed abruptly without warning. Already, this evening, he had noticed that there was something faulty about his coordination and weight and surface sense. The restaurant door had swung back with a curious lightness, and the hollow metal handle had had a curious softness under his fingers. Something merely going wrong with the sensitivity of his fingers—? He tapped his fingertips on the heavy indestructible silicone plastic table top. There was a feeling of heaviness in his hands, and a feeling of faint rubbery give in the table. Tapping his fingers gently, his heavy fingers ... the answer was dreamily fantastic. I'm turning into silicon plastic myself , he thought. But how, why? He had not bothered to be curious before, but the question had always been—what were supposedly insoluble silicons doing assimilating into the human body at all? Several moments passed. He smoothed back his hair with his oddly heavy hand before picking up his fork again. "I'm turning into plastic," he told Camba. "I beg your pardon?" "Nothing. A joke." Camba was turning into plastic, too. Everyone was. But the effect was accumulating slowly, by generations. Camba lay down his knife and started in again. "What connections have you had with John Delgados?" Concentrate on the immediate situation. Alcala and Johnny were obviously in danger of some sort of mistaken arrest and interrogation. As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING! He laughed inwardly and finally answered: "Friendship. Mutual interest in high ion colloidal suspensions and complex synthesis." Impatience suddenly mastered him. "Exactly what is it you wish to know, Senor? Perhaps I could inform you if I knew the reasons for your interest." Camba chose a piece of salad with great care. "We have reason to believe that he is Syndrome Johnny." Alcala waited for the words to clarify. After a moment, it ceased to be childish babble and became increasingly shocking. He remembered the first time he had met John Delgados, the smile, the strong handclasp. "Call me Johnny," he had said. It had seemed no more than a nickname. The investigator was watching his expression with bright brown eyes. Johnny, yes ... but not Syndrome Johnny. He tried to think of some quick refutation. "The whole thing is preposterous, Senor Camba. The myth of Syndrome Plague Johnny started about a century ago." "Doctor Alcala"—the small man in the gray suit was tensely sober—"John Delgados is very old, and John Delgados is not his proper name. I have traced his life back and back, through older and older records in Argentina, Panama, South Africa, the United States, China, Canada. Everywhere he has paid his taxes properly, put his fingerprints on file as a good citizen should. And he changed his name every twenty years, applying to the courts for permission with good honest reasons for changing his name. Everywhere he has been a laboratory worker, held patents, sometimes made a good deal of money. He is one hundred and forty years old. His first income tax was paid in 1970, exactly one hundred and twenty years ago." "Other men are that old," said Alcala. "Other men are old, yes. Those who survived the two successive plagues, were unusually durable." Camba finished and pushed back his plate. "There is no crime in being long-lived, surely. But he has changed his name five times!" "That proves nothing. Whatever his reasons for changing his name, it doesn't prove that he is Syndrome Johnny any more than it proves he is the cow that jumped over the moon. Syndrome Johnny is a myth, a figment of mob delirium." As he said it, he knew it was not true. A Federation investigator would not be on a wild goose chase. The plates were taken away and cups of steaming black coffee put between them. He would have to warn Johnny. It was strange how well you could know a man as well as he knew Johnny, firmly enough to believe that, despite evidence, everything the man did was right. "Why must it be a myth?" Camba asked softly. "It's ridiculous!" Alcala protested. "Why would any man—" His voice cut off as unrelated facts fell into a pattern. He sat for a moment, thinking intensely, seeing the century of plague as something he had never dreamed.... A price. Not too high a price in the long run, considering what was purchased. Of course, the great change over into silicon catalysis would be a shock and require adjustment and, of course, the change must be made in several easy stages—and those who could not adjust would die. "Go on, Doctor," Camba urged softly. "' Why would any man—'" He tried to find a way of explaining which would not seem to have any relationship to John Delgados. "It has been recently discovered"—but he did not say how recently—"that the disease of Syndrome Plague was not a disease. It is an improvement." He had spoken clumsily. "An improvement on life?" Camba laughed and nodded, but there were bitterness and anger burning behind the small man's smile. "People can be improved to death by the millions. Yes, yes, go on, Senor. You fascinate me." "We are stronger," Alcala told him. "We are changed chemically. The race has been improved!" "Come, Doctor Alcala," Camba said with a sneering merriment, "the Syndrome Plagues have come and they have gone. Where is this change?" Alcala tried to express it clearly. "We are stronger. Potentially, we are tremendously stronger. But we of this generation are still weak and ill, as our parents were, from the shock of the change. And we need silicone feeding; we have not adjusted yet. Our illness masks our strength." He thought of what that strength would be! Camba smiled and took out a small notebook. "The disease is connected with silicones, you say? The original name of John Delgados was John Osborne Drake. His father was Osborne Drake, a chemist at Dow Corning, who was sentenced to the electric chair in 1967 for unauthorized bacterial experiments which resulted in an accidental epidemic and eight deaths. Dow Corning was the first major manufactury of silicones in America, though not connected in any way with Osborne Drake's criminal experiments. It links together, does it not?" "It is not a disease, it is strength!" Alcala insisted doggedly. The small investigator looked up from his notebook and his smile was an unnatural thing, a baring of teeth. "Half the world died of this strength, Senor. If you will not think of the men and women, think of the children. Millions of children died!" The waiter brought the bill, dropping it on the table between them. "Lives will be saved in the long run," Alcala said obstinately. "Individual deaths are not important in the long run." "That is hardly the philosophy for a doctor, is it?" asked Camba with open irony, taking the bill and rising. They went out of the restaurant in silence. Camba's 'copter stood at the curb. "Would you care for a lift home, Doctor Alcala?" The offer was made with the utmost suavity. Alcala hesitated fractionally. "Why, yes, thank you." It would not do to give the investigator any reason for suspicion by refusing. As the 'copter lifted into the air, Camba spoke with a more friendly note in his voice, as if he humored a child. "Come, Alcala, you're a doctor dedicated to saving lives. How can you find sympathy for a murderer?" Alcala sat in the dark, looking through the windshield down at the bright street falling away below. "I'm not a practicing medico; only one night a week do I come to the hospital. I'm a research man. I don't try to save individual lives. I'm dedicated to improving the average life, the average health. Can you understand that? Individuals may be sick and individuals may die, but the average lives on. And if the average is better, then I'm satisfied." The 'copter flew on. There was no answer. "I'm not good with words," said Alcala. Then, taking out his pen-knife and unfolding it, he said, "Watch!" He put his index finger on the altimeter dial, where there was light, and pressed the blade against the flesh between his finger and his thumb. He increased the pressure until the flesh stood out white on either side of the blade, bending, but not cut. "Three generations back, this pressure would have gone right through the hand." He took away the blade and there was only a very tiny cut. Putting the knife away, he brought out his lighter. The blue flame was steady and hot. Alcala held it close to the dashboard and put his finger directly over it, counting patiently, "One, two, three, four, five—" He pulled the lighter back, snapping it shut. "Three generations ago, a man couldn't have held a finger over that flame for more than a tenth part of that count. Doesn't all this prove something to you?" The 'copter was hovering above Alcala's house. Camba lowered it to the ground and opened the door before answering. "It proves only that a good and worthy man will cut and burn his hand for an unworthy friendship. Good night." Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 'copter lift away into the night, then, turning, saw that the lights were still on in the laboratory. Camba might have deduced something from that, if he knew that Nita and the girl were not supposed to be home. Alcala hurried in. Johnny hadn't left yet. He was sitting at Alcala's desk with his feet on the wastebasket, the way Alcala often liked to sit, reading a technical journal. He looked up, smiling. For a moment Alcala saw him with the new clarity of a stranger. The lean, weathered face; brown eyes with smile deltas at the corners; wide shoulders; steady, big hands holding the magazine—solid, able, and ruthless enough to see what had to be done, and do it. "I was waiting for you, Ric." "The Feds are after you." Ricardo Alcala had been running. He found he was panting and his heart was pounding. Delgados' smile did not change. "It's all right, Ric. Everything's done. I can leave any time now." He indicated a square metal box standing in a corner. "There's the stuff." What stuff? The product Johnny had been working on? "You haven't time for that now, Johnny. You can't sell it. They'd watch for anyone of your description selling chemicals. Let me loan you some money." "Thanks." Johnny was smiling oddly. "Everything's set. I won't need it. How close are they to finding me?" "They don't know where you're staying." Alcala leaned on the desk edge and put out his hand. "They tell me you're Syndrome Johnny." "I thought you'd figured that one out." Johnny shook his hand formally. "The name is John Osborne Drake. You aren't horrified?" "No." Alcala knew that he was shaking hands with a man who would be thanked down all the successive generations of mankind. He noticed again the odd white web-work of scars on the back of Johnny's hand. He indicated them as casually as he could. "Where did you pick those up?" John Drake glanced at his hand. "I don't know, Ric. Truthfully. I've had my brains beaten in too often to remember much any more. Unimportant. There are instructions outlining plans and methods filed in safety deposit boxes in almost every big city in the world. Always the same typing, always the same instructions. I can't remember who typed them, myself or my father, but I must have been expected to forget or they wouldn't be there. Up to eleven, my memory is all right, but after Dad started to remake me, everything gets fuzzy." "After he did what ?" Johnny smiled tiredly and rested his head on one hand. "He had to remake me chemically, you know. How could I spread change without being changed myself? I couldn't have two generations to adapt to it naturally like you, Ric. It had to be done artificially. It took years. You understand? I'm a community, a construction. The cells that carry on the silicon metabolism in me are not human. Dad adapted them for the purpose. I helped, but I can't remember any longer how it was done. I think when I've been badly damaged, organization scatters to the separate cells in my body. They can survive better that way, and they have powers of regrouping and healing. But memory can't be pasted together again or regrown." John Drake rose and looked around the laboratory with something like triumph. "They're too late. I made it, Ric. There's the catalyst cooling over there. This is the last step. I don't think I'll survive this plague, but I'll last long enough to set it going for the finish. The police won't stop me until it's too late." Another plague! The last one had been before Alcala was born. He had not thought that Johnny would start another. It was a shock. Alcala walked over to the cage where he kept his white mice and looked in, trying to sort out his feelings. The white mice looked back with beady bright eyes, caged, not knowing they were waiting to be experimented upon. A timer clicked and John Delgados-Drake became all rapid efficient activity, moving from valve to valve. It lasted a half minute or less, then Drake had finished stripping off the lab whites to his street clothes. He picked up the square metal box containing the stuff he had made, tucked it under his arm and held out a solid hand again to Alcala. "Good-by, Ric. Wish me luck. Close up the lab for me, will you?" Alcala took the hand numbly and mumbled something, turned back to the cages and stared blindly at the mice. Drake's brisk footsteps clattered down the stairs. Another step forward for the human race. God knew what wonders for the race were in that box. Perhaps something for nerve construction, something for the mind—the last and most important step. He should have asked. There came at last a pressure that was a thought emerging from the depth of intuition. Doctor Ricardo Alcala will die in the next plague, he and his ill wife Nita and his ill little girl.... And the name of Alcala will die forever as a weak strain blotted from the bloodstream of the race.... He'd find out what was in the box by dying of it! He tried to reason it out, but only could remember that Nita, already sickly, would have no chance. And Alcala's family genes, in attempting to adapt to the previous steps, had become almost sterile. It had been difficult having children. The next step would mean complete sterility. The name of Alcala would die. The future might be wonderful, but it would not be his future! "Johnny!" he called suddenly, something like an icy lump hardening in his chest. How long had it been since Johnny had left? Running, Alcala went down the long half-lit stairs, out the back door and along the dark path toward the place where Johnny's 'copter had been parked. A light shone through the leaves. It was still there. "Johnny!" John Osborne Drake was putting his suitcase into the rear of the 'copter. "What is it, Ric?" he asked in a friendly voice without turning. It would be impossible to ask him to change his mind. Alcala found a rock, raised it behind Syndrome Johnny's back. "I know I'm being anti-social," he said regretfully, and then threw the rock away. His fist was enough like stone to crush a skull.

test

51193

Pictures Don't Lie By KATHERINE MacLEAN Illustrated by MARTIN SCHNEIDER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] ... Pictures, that is, that one can test and measure. And these pictures positively, absolutely could not lie! The man from the News asked, "What do you think of the aliens, Mister Nathen? Are they friendly? Do they look human?" "Very human," said the thin young man. Outside, rain sleeted across the big windows with a steady faint drumming, blurring and dimming the view of the airfield where they would arrive. On the concrete runways, the puddles were pockmarked with rain, and the grass growing untouched between the runways of the unused field glistened wetly, bending before gusts of wind. Back at a respectful distance from where the huge spaceship would land were the gray shapes of trucks, where TV camera crews huddled inside their mobile units, waiting. Farther back in the deserted sandy landscape, behind distant sandy hills, artillery was ringed in a great circle, and in the distance across the horizon, bombers stood ready at airfields, guarding the world against possible treachery from the first alien ship ever to land from space. "Do you know anything about their home planet?" asked the man from Herald . The Times man stood with the others, listening absently, thinking of questions, but reserving them. Joseph R. Nathen, the thin young man with the straight black hair and the tired lines on his face, was being treated with respect by his interviewers. He was obviously on edge, and they did not want to harry him with too many questions to answer at once. They wanted to keep his good will. Tomorrow he would be one of the biggest celebrities ever to appear in headlines. "No, nothing directly." "Any ideas or deductions?" Herald persisted. "Their world must be Earth-like to them," the weary-looking young man answered uncertainly. "The environment evolves the animal. But only in relative terms, of course." He looked at them with a quick glance and then looked away evasively, his lank black hair beginning to cling to his forehead with sweat. "That doesn't necessarily mean anything." "Earth-like," muttered a reporter, writing it down as if he had noticed nothing more in the reply. The Times man glanced at the Herald , wondering if he had noticed, and received a quick glance in exchange. The Herald asked Nathen, "You think they are dangerous, then?" It was the kind of question, assuming much, which usually broke reticence and brought forth quick facts—when it hit the mark. They all knew of the military precautions, although they were not supposed to know. The question missed. Nathen glanced out the window vaguely. "No, I wouldn't say so." "You think they are friendly, then?" said the Herald , equally positive on the opposite tack. A fleeting smile touched Nathen's lips. "Those I know are." There was no lead in this direction, and they had to get the basic facts of the story before the ship came. The Times asked, "What led up to your contacting them?" Nathen answered after a hesitation. "Static. Radio static. The Army told you my job, didn't they?" The Army had told them nothing at all. The officer who had conducted them in for the interview stood glowering watchfully, as if he objected by instinct to telling anything to the public. Nathen glanced at him doubtfully. "My job is radio decoder for the Department of Military Intelligence. I use a directional pickup, tune in on foreign bands, record any scrambled or coded messages I hear, and build automatic decoders and descramblers for all the basic scramble patterns." The officer cleared his throat, but said nothing. The reporters smiled, noting that down. Security regulations had changed since arms inspection had been legalized by the U.N. Complete information being the only public security against secret rearmament, spying and prying had come to seem a public service. Its aura had changed. It was good public relations to admit to it. Nathen continued, "I started directing the pickup at stars in my spare time. There's radio noise from stars, you know. Just stuff that sounds like spatter static, and an occasional squawk. People have been listening to it for a long time, and researching, trying to work out why stellar radiation on those bands comes in such jagged bursts. It didn't seem natural." He paused and smiled uncertainly, aware that the next thing he would say was the thing that would make him famous—an idea that had come to him while he listened—an idea as simple and as perfect as the one that came to Newton when he saw the apple fall. "I decided it wasn't natural. I tried decoding it." Hurriedly he tried to explain it away and make it seem obvious. "You see, there's an old intelligence trick, speeding up a message on a record until it sounds just like that, a short squawk of static, and then broadcasting it. Undergrounds use it. I'd heard that kind of screech before." "You mean they broadcast at us in code?" asked the News . "It's not exactly code. All you need to do is record it and slow it down. They're not broadcasting at us. If a star has planets, inhabited planets, and there is broadcasting between them, they would send it on a tight beam to save power." He looked for comprehension. "You know, like a spotlight. Theoretically, a tight beam can go on forever without losing power. But aiming would be difficult from planet to planet. You can't expect a beam to stay on target, over such distances, more than a few seconds at a time. So they'd naturally compress each message into a short half-second or one-second-length package and send it a few hundred times in one long blast to make sure it is picked up during the instant the beam swings across the target." He was talking slowly and carefully, remembering that this explanation was for the newspapers. "When a stray beam swings through our section of space, there's a sharp peak in noise level from that direction. The beams are swinging to follow their own planets at home, and the distance between there and here exaggerates the speed of swing tremendously, so we wouldn't pick up more than a bip as it passes." "How do you account for the number of squawks coming in?" the Times asked. "Do stellar systems rotate on the plane of the Galaxy?" It was a private question; he spoke impulsively from interest and excitement. The radio decoder grinned, the lines of strain vanishing from his face for a moment. "Maybe we're intercepting everybody's telephone calls, and the whole Galaxy is swarming with races that spend all day yacking at each other over the radio. Maybe the human type is standard model." "It would take something like that," the Times agreed. They smiled at each other. The News asked, "How did you happen to pick up television instead of voices?" "Not by accident," Nathen explained patiently. "I'd recognized a scanning pattern, and I wanted pictures. Pictures are understandable in any language." Near the interviewers, a Senator paced back and forth, muttering his memorized speech of welcome and nervously glancing out the wide streaming windows into the gray sleeting rain. Opposite the windows of the long room was a small raised platform flanked by the tall shapes of TV cameras and sound pickups on booms, and darkened floodlights, arranged and ready for the Senator to make his speech of welcome to the aliens and the world. A shabby radio sending set stood beside it without a case to conceal its parts, two cathode television tubes flickering nakedly on one side and the speaker humming on the other. A vertical panel of dials and knobs jutted up before them and a small hand-mike sat ready on the table before the panel. It was connected to a boxlike, expensively cased piece of equipment with "Radio Lab, U.S. Property" stenciled on it. "I recorded a couple of package screeches from Sagittarius and began working on them," Nathen added. "It took a couple of months to find the synchronizing signals and set the scanners close enough to the right time to even get a pattern. When I showed the pattern to the Department, they gave me full time to work on it, and an assistant to help. It took eight months to pick out the color bands, and assign them the right colors, to get anything intelligible on the screen." The shabby-looking mess of exposed parts was the original receiver that they had labored over for ten months, adjusting and readjusting to reduce the maddening rippling plaids of unsynchronized color scanners to some kind of sane picture. "Trial and error," said Nathen, "but it came out all right. The wide band-spread of the squawks had suggested color TV from the beginning." He walked over and touched the set. The speaker bipped slightly and the gray screen flickered with a flash of color at the touch. The set was awake and sensitive, tuned to receive from the great interstellar spaceship which now circled the atmosphere. "We wondered why there were so many bands, but when we got the set working, and started recording and playing everything that came in, we found we'd tapped something like a lending library line. It was all fiction, plays." Between the pauses in Nathen's voice, the Times found himself unconsciously listening for the sound of roaring, swiftly approaching rocket jets. The Post asked, "How did you contact the spaceship?" "I scanned and recorded a film copy of Rite of Spring , the Disney-Stravinsky combination, and sent it back along the same line we were receiving from. Just testing. It wouldn't get there for a good number of years, if it got there at all, but I thought it would please the library to get a new record in. "Two weeks later, when we caught and slowed a new batch of recordings, we found an answer. It was obviously meant for us. It was a flash of the Disney being played to a large audience, and then the audience sitting and waiting before a blank screen. The signal was very clear and loud. We'd intercepted a spaceship. They were asking for an encore, you see. They liked the film and wanted more...." He smiled at them in sudden thought. "You can see them for yourself. It's all right down the hall where the linguists are working on the automatic translator." The listening officer frowned and cleared his throat, and the thin young man turned to him quickly. "No security reason why they should not see the broadcasts, is there? Perhaps you should show them." He said to the reporters reassuringly, "It's right down the hall. You will be informed the moment the spaceship approaches." The interview was very definitely over. The lank-haired, nervous young man turned away and seated himself at the radio set while the officer swallowed his objections and showed them dourly down the hall to a closed door. They opened it and fumbled into a darkened room crowded with empty folding chairs, dominated by a glowing bright screen. The door closed behind them, bringing total darkness. There was the sound of reporters fumbling their way into seats around him, but the Times man remained standing, aware of an enormous surprise, as if he had been asleep and wakened to find himself in the wrong country. The bright colors of the double image seemed the only real thing in the darkened room. Even blurred as they were, he could see that the action was subtly different, the shapes subtly not right. He was looking at aliens. The impression was of two humans disguised, humans moving oddly, half-dancing, half-crippled. Carefully, afraid the images would go away, he reached up to his breast pocket, took out his polarized glasses, rotated one lens at right angles to the other and put them on. Immediately, the two beings came into sharp focus, real and solid, and the screen became a wide, illusively near window through which he watched them. They were conversing with each other in a gray-walled room, discussing something with restrained excitement. The large man in the green tunic closed his purple eyes for an instant at something the other said, and grimaced, making a motion with his fingers as if shoving something away from him. Mellerdrammer. The second, smaller, with yellowish-green eyes, stepped closer, talking more rapidly in a lower voice. The first stood very still, not trying to interrupt. Obviously, the proposal was some advantageous treachery, and he wanted to be persuaded. The Times groped for a chair and sat down. Perhaps gesture is universal; desire and aversion, a leaning forward or a leaning back, tension, relaxation. Perhaps these actors were masters. The scenes changed, a corridor, a parklike place in what he began to realize was a spaceship, a lecture room. There were others talking and working, speaking to the man in the green tunic, and never was it unclear what was happening or how they felt. They talked a flowing language with many short vowels and shifts of pitch, and they gestured in the heat of talk, their hands moving with an odd lagging difference of motion, not slow, but somehow drifting. He ignored the language, but after a time the difference in motion began to arouse his interest. Something in the way they walked.... With an effort he pulled his mind from the plot and forced his attention to the physical difference. Brown hair in short silky crew cuts, varied eye colors, the colors showing clearly because their irises were very large, their round eyes set very widely apart in tapering light-brown faces. Their necks and shoulders were thick in a way that would indicate unusual strength for a human, but their wrists were narrow and their fingers long and thin and delicate. There seemed to be more than the usual number of fingers. Since he came in, a machine had been whirring and a voice muttering beside him. He called his attention from counting their fingers and looked around. Beside him sat an alert-looking man wearing earphones, watching and listening with hawklike concentration. Beside him was a tall streamlined box. From the screen came the sound of the alien language. The man abruptly flipped a switch on the box, muttered a word into a small hand-microphone and flipped the switch back with nervous rapidity. He reminded the Times man of the earphoned interpreters at the UN. The machine was probably a vocal translator and the mutterer a linguist adding to its vocabulary. Near the screen were two other linguists taking notes. The Times remembered the Senator pacing in the observatory room, rehearsing his speech of welcome. The speech would not be just the empty pompous gesture he had expected. It would be translated mechanically and understood by the aliens. On the other side of the glowing window that was the stereo screen, the large protagonist in the green tunic was speaking to a pilot in a gray uniform. They stood in a brightly lit canary-yellow control room in a spaceship. The Times tried to pick up the thread of the plot. Already he was interested in the fate of the hero, and liked him. That was the effect of good acting, probably, for part of the art of acting is to win affection from the audience, and this actor might be the matinee idol of whole solar systems. Controlled tension, betraying itself by a jerk of the hands, a too-quick answer to a question. The uniformed one, not suspicious, turned his back, busying himself at some task involving a map lit with glowing red points, his motions sharing the same fluid dragging grace of the others, as if they were underwater, or on a slow motion film. The other was watching a switch, a switch set into a panel, moving closer to it, talking casually—background music coming and rising in thin chords of tension. There was a closeup of the alien's face watching the switch, and the Times noted that his ears were symmetrically half-circles, almost perfect with no earholes visible. The voice of the uniformed one answered, a brief word in a preoccupied deep voice. His back was still turned. The other glanced at the switch, moving closer to it, talking casually, the switch coming closer and closer stereoscopically. It was in reach, filling the screen. His hand came into view, darting out, closed over the switch— There was a sharp clap of sound and his hand opened in a frozen shape of pain. Beyond him, as his gaze swung up, stood the figure of the uniformed officer, unmoving, a weapon rigid in his hand, in the startled position in which he had turned and fired, watching with widening eyes as the man in the green tunic swayed and fell. The tableau held, the uniformed one drooping, looking down at his hand holding the weapon which had killed, and music began to build in from the background. Just for an instant, the room and the things within it flashed into one of those bewildering color changes which were the bane of color television, and switched to a color negative of itself, a green man standing in a violet control room, looking down at the body of a green man in a red tunic. It held for less than a second; then the color band alternator fell back into phase and the colors reversed to normal. Another uniformed man came and took the weapon from the limp hand of the other, who began to explain dejectedly in a low voice while the music mounted and covered his words and the screen slowly went blank, like a window that slowly filmed over with gray fog. The music faded. In the dark, someone clapped appreciatively. The earphoned man beside the Times shifted his earphones back from his ears and spoke briskly. "I can't get any more. Either of you want a replay?" There was a short silence until the linguist nearest the set said, "I guess we've squeezed that one dry. Let's run the tape where Nathen and that ship radio boy are kidding around CQing and tuning their beams in closer. I have a hunch the boy is talking routine ham talk and giving the old radio count—one-two-three-testing." There was some fumbling in the semi-dark and then the screen came to life again. It showed a flash of an audience sitting before a screen and gave a clipped chord of some familiar symphony. "Crazy about Stravinsky and Mozart," remarked the earphoned linguist to the Times , resettling his earphones. "Can't stand Gershwin. Can you beat that?" He turned his attention back to the screen as the right sequence came on. The Post , who was sitting just in front of him, turned to the Times and said, "Funny how much they look like people." He was writing, making notes to telephone his report. "What color hair did that character have?" "I didn't notice." He wondered if he should remind the reporter that Nathen had said he assigned the color bands on guess, choosing the colors that gave the most plausible images. The guests, when they arrived, could turn out to be bright green with blue hair. Only the gradations of color in the picture were sure, only the similarities and contrasts, the relationship of one color to another. From the screen came the sound of the alien language again. This race averaged deeper voices than human. He liked deep voices. Could he write that? No, there was something wrong with that, too. How had Nathen established the right sound-track pitch? Was it a matter of taking the modulation as it came in, or some sort of hetrodyning up and down by trial and error? Probably. It might be safer to assume that Nathen had simply preferred deep voices. As he sat there, doubting, an uneasiness he had seen in Nathen came back to add to his own uncertainty, and he remembered just how close that uneasiness had come to something that looked like restrained fear. "What I don't get is why he went to all the trouble of picking up TV shows instead of just contacting them," the News complained. "They're good shows, but what's the point?" "Maybe so we'd get to learn their language too," said the Herald . On the screen now was the obviously unstaged and genuine scene of a young alien working over a bank of apparatus. He turned and waved and opened his mouth in the comical O shape which the Times was beginning to recognize as their equivalent of a smile, then went back to trying to explain something about the equipment, in elaborate awkward gestures and carefully mouthed words. The Times got up quietly, went out into the bright white stone corridor and walked back the way he had come, thoughtfully folding his stereo glasses and putting them away. No one stopped him. Secrecy restrictions were ambiguous here. The reticence of the Army seemed more a matter of habit, mere reflex, from the fact that it had all originated in the Intelligence Department, than any reasoned policy of keeping the landing a secret. The main room was more crowded than he had left it. The TV camera and sound crew stood near their apparatus, the Senator had found a chair and was reading, and at the far end of the room eight men were grouped in a circle of chairs, arguing something with impassioned concentration. The Times recognized a few he knew personally, eminent names in science, workers in field theory. A stray phrase reached him: "—reference to the universal constants as ratio—" It was probably a discussion of ways of converting formulas from one mathematics to another for a rapid exchange of information. They had reason to be intent, aware of the flood of insights that novel viewpoints could bring, if they could grasp them. He would have liked to go over and listen, but there was too little time left before the spaceship was due, and he had a question to ask. The hand-rigged transceiver was still humming, tuned to the sending band of the circling ship, and the young man who had started it all was sitting on the edge of the TV platform with his chin resting in one hand. He did not look up as the Times approached, but it was the indifference of preoccupation, not discourtesy. The Times sat down on the edge of the platform beside him and took out a pack of cigarettes, then remembered the coming TV broadcast and the ban on smoking. He put them away, thoughtfully watching the diminishing rain spray against the streaming windows. "What's wrong?" he asked. Nathen showed that he was aware and friendly by a slight motion of his head. " You tell me." "Hunch," said the Times man. "Sheer hunch. Everything sailing along too smoothly, everyone taking too much for granted." Nathen relaxed slightly. "I'm still listening." "Something about the way they move...." Nathen shifted to glance at him. "That's bothered me, too." "Are you sure they're adjusted to the right speed?" Nathen clenched his hands out in front of him and looked at them consideringly. "I don't know. When I turn the tape faster, they're all rushing, and you begin to wonder why their clothes don't stream behind them, why the doors close so quickly and yet you can't hear them slam, why things fall so fast. If I turn it slower, they all seem to be swimming." He gave the Times a considering sidewise glance. "Didn't catch the name." Country-bred guy, thought the Times . "Jacob Luke, Times ," he said, extending his hand. Nathen gave the hand a quick, hard grip, identifying the name. "Sunday Science Section editor. I read it. Surprised to meet you here." "Likewise." The Times smiled. "Look, have you gone into this rationally, with formulas?" He found a pencil in his pocket. "Obviously there's something wrong with our judgment of their weight-to-speed-to-momentum ratio. Maybe it's something simple like low gravity aboard ship, with magnetic shoes. Maybe they are floating slightly." "Why worry?" Nathen cut in. "I don't see any reason to try to figure it out now." He laughed and shoved back his black hair nervously. "We'll see them in twenty minutes." "Will we?" asked the Times slowly. There was a silence while the Senator turned a page of his magazine with a slight crackling of paper, and the scientists argued at the other end of the room. Nathen pushed at his lank black hair again, as if it were trying to fall forward in front of his eyes and keep him from seeing. "Sure." The young man laughed suddenly, talked rapidly. "Sure we'll see them. Why shouldn't we, with all the government ready with welcome speeches, the whole Army turned out and hiding over the hill, reporters all around, newsreel cameras—everything set up to broadcast the landing to the world. The President himself shaking hands with me and waiting in Washington—" He came to the truth without pausing for breath. He said, "Hell, no, they won't get here. There's some mistake somewhere. Something's wrong. I should have told the brasshats yesterday when I started adding it up. Don't know why I didn't say anything. Scared, I guess. Too much top rank around here. Lost my nerve." He clutched the Times man's sleeve. "Look. I don't know what—" A green light flashed on the sending-receiving set. Nathen didn't look at it, but he stopped talking. The loudspeaker on the set broke into a voice speaking in the alien's language. The Senator started and looked nervously at it, straightening his tie. The voice stopped. Nathen turned and looked at the loudspeaker. His worry seemed to be gone. "What is it?" the Times asked anxiously. "He says they've slowed enough to enter the atmosphere now. They'll be here in five to ten minutes, I guess. That's Bud. He's all excited. He says holy smoke, what a murky-looking planet we live on." Nathen smiled. "Kidding." The Times was puzzled. "What does he mean, murky? It can't be raining over much territory on Earth." Outside, the rain was slowing and bright blue patches of sky were shining through breaks in the cloud blanket, glittering blue light from the drops that ran down the windows. He tried to think of an explanation. "Maybe they're trying to land on Venus." The thought was ridiculous, he knew. The spaceship was following Nathen's sending beam. It couldn't miss Earth. "Bud" had to be kidding. The green light glowed on the set again, and they stopped speaking, waiting for the message to be recorded, slowed and replayed. The cathode screen came to life suddenly with a picture of the young man sitting at his sending-set, his back turned, watching a screen at one side which showed a glimpse of a huge dark plain approaching. As the ship plunged down toward it, the illusion of solidity melted into a boiling turbulence of black clouds. They expanded in an inky swirl, looked huge for an instant, and then blackness swallowed the screen. The young alien swung around to face the camera, speaking a few words as he moved, made the O of a smile again, then flipped the switch and the screen went gray. Nathen's voice was suddenly toneless and strained. "He said something like break out the drinks, here they come." "The atmosphere doesn't look like that," the Times said at random, knowing he was saying something too obvious even to think about. "Not Earth's atmosphere." Some people drifted up. "What did they say?" "Entering the atmosphere, ought to be landing in five or ten minutes," Nathen told them. A ripple of heightened excitement ran through the room. Cameramen began adjusting the lens angles again, turning on the mike and checking it, turning on the floodlights. The scientists rose and stood near the window, still talking. The reporters trooped in from the hall and went to the windows to watch for the great event. The three linguists came in, trundling a large wheeled box that was the mechanical translator, supervising while it was hitched into the sound broadcasting system. "Landing where?" the Times asked Nathen brutally. "Why don't you do something?" "Tell me what to do and I'll do it," Nathen said quietly, not moving. It was not sarcasm. Jacob Luke of the Times looked sidewise at the strained whiteness of his face, and moderated his tone. "Can't you contact them?" "Not while they're landing." "What now?" The Times took out a pack of cigarettes, remembered the rule against smoking, and put it back. "We just wait." Nathen leaned his elbow on one knee and his chin in his hand. They waited. All the people in the room were waiting. There was no more conversation. A bald man of the scientist group was automatically buffing his fingernails over and over and inspecting them without seeing them, another absently polished his glasses, held them up to the light, put them on, and then a moment later took them off and began polishing again. The television crew concentrated on their jobs, moving quietly and efficiently, with perfectionist care, minutely arranging things which did not need to be arranged, checking things that had already been checked. This was to be one of the great moments of human history, and they were all trying to forget that fact and remain impassive and wrapped up in the problems of their jobs as good specialists should. After an interminable age the Times consulted his watch. Three minutes had passed. He tried holding his breath a moment, listening for a distant approaching thunder of jets. There was no sound. The sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the field like a great spotlight on an empty stage. Abruptly the green light shone on the set again, indicating that a squawk message had been received. The recorder recorded it, slowed it and fed it back to the speaker. It clicked and the sound was very loud in the still, tense room. The screen remained gray, but Bud's voice spoke a few words in the alien language. He stopped, the speaker clicked and the light went out. When it was plain that nothing more would occur and no announcement was to be made of what was said, the people in the room turned back to the windows, talk picked up again. Somebody told a joke and laughed alone. One of the linguists remained turned toward the loudspeaker, then looked at the widening patches of blue sky showing out the window, his expression puzzled. He had understood. "It's dark," the thin Intelligence Department decoder translated, low-voiced, to the man from the Times . "Your atmosphere is thick . That's precisely what Bud said." Another three minutes. The Times caught himself about to light a cigarette and swore silently, blowing the match out and putting the cigarette back into its package. He listened for the sound of the rocket jets. It was time for the landing, yet he heard no blasts. The green light came on in the transceiver. Message in. Instinctively he came to his feet. Nathen abruptly was standing beside him. Then the message came in the voice he was coming to think of as Bud. It spoke and paused. Suddenly the Times knew. "We've landed." Nathen whispered the words. The wind blew across the open spaces of white concrete and damp soil that was the empty airfield, swaying the wet, shiny grass. The people in the room looked out, listening for the roar of jets, looking for the silver bulk of a spaceship in the sky. Nathen moved, seating himself at the transmitter, switching it on to warm up, checking and balancing dials. Jacob Luke of the Times moved softly to stand behind his right shoulder, hoping he could be useful. Nathen made a half motion of his head, as if to glance back at him, unhooked two of the earphone sets hanging on the side of the tall streamlined box that was the automatic translator, plugged them in and handed one back over his shoulder to the Times man. The voice began to come from the speaker again. Hastily, Jacob Luke fitted the earphones over his ears. He fancied he could hear Bud's voice tremble. For a moment it was just Bud's voice speaking the alien language, and then, very distant and clear in his earphones, he heard the recorded voice of the linguist say an English word, then a mechanical click and another clear word in the voice of one of the other translators, then another as the alien's voice flowed from the loudspeaker, the cool single words barely audible, overlapping and blending with it like translating thought, skipping unfamiliar words, yet quite astonishingly clear. "Radar shows no buildings or civilization near. The atmosphere around us registers as thick as glue. Tremendous gas pressure, low gravity, no light at all. You didn't describe it like this. Where are you, Joe? This isn't some kind of trick, is it?" Bud hesitated, was prompted by a deeper official voice and jerked out the words. "If it is a trick, we are ready to repel attack."

test

50783

THE ALIEN A Gripping Novel of Discovery and Conquest in Interstellar Space by Raymond F. Jones A Complete ORIGINAL Book , UNABRIDGED WORLD EDITIONS, Inc. 105 WEST 40th STREET NEW YORK 18, NEW YORK Copyright 1951 by WORLD EDITIONS, Inc. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. THE GUINN CO., Inc. New York 14, N.Y. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Just speculate for a moment on the enormous challenge to archeology when interplanetary flight is possible ... and relics are found of a race extinct for half a million years! A race, incidentally, that was scientifically so far in advance of ours that they held the secret of the restoration of life! One member of that race can be brought back after 500,000 years of death.... That's the story told by this ORIGINAL book-length novel, which has never before been published! You can expect a muscle-tightening, sweat-producing, mind-prodding adventure in the future when you read it! Contents CHAPTER ONE Out beyond the orbit of Mars the Lavoisier wallowed cautiously through the asteroid fields. Aboard the laboratory ship few of the members of the permanent Smithson Asteroidal Expedition were aware that they were in motion. Living in the field one or two years at a time, there was little that they were conscious of except the half-million-year-old culture whose scattered fragments surrounded them on every side. The only contact with Earth at the moment was the radio link by which Dr. Delmar Underwood was calling Dr. Illia Morov at Terrestrial Medical Central. Illia's blonde, precisely coiffured hair was only faintly golden against, the stark white of her surgeons' gown, which she still wore when she answered. Her eyes widened with an expression of pleasure as her face came into focus on the screen and she recognized Underwood. "Del! I thought you'd gone to sleep with the mummies out there. It's been over a month since you called. What's new?" "Not much. Terry found some new evidence of Stroid III. Phyfe has a new scrap of metal with inscriptions, and they've found something that almost looks as if it might have been an electron tube five hundred thousand years ago. I'm working on that. Otherwise all is peaceful and it's wonderful!" "Still the confirmed hermit?" Illia's eyes lost some of their banter, but none of their tenderness. "There's more peace and contentment out here than I'd ever dreamed of finding. I want you to come out here, Illia. Come out for a month. If you don't want to stay and marry me, then you can go back and I won't say another word." She shook her head in firm decision. "Earth needs its scientists desperately. Too many have run away already. They say the Venusian colonies are booming, but I told you a year ago that simply running away wouldn't work. I thought by now you would have found it out for yourself." "And I told you a year ago," Underwood said flatly, "that the only possible choice of a sane man is escape." "You can't escape your own culture, Del. Why, the expedition that provided the opportunity for you to become a hermit is dependent on Earth. If Congress should cut the Institute's funds, you'd be dropped right back where you were. You can't get away." "There are always the Venusian colonies." "You know it's impossible to exist there independent of Earth." "I'm not talking about the science and technology. I'm talking about the social disintegration. Certainly a scientist doesn't need to take that with him when he's attempting to escape it." "The culture is not to blame," said Illia earnestly, "and neither is humanity. You don't ridicule a child for his clumsiness when he is learning to walk." "I hope the human race is past its childhood!" "Relatively speaking, it isn't. Dreyer says we're only now emerging from the cave man stage, and that could properly be called mankind's infancy, I suppose. Dreyer calls it the 'head man' stage." "I thought he was a semanticist." "You'd know if you'd ever talked with him. He'll tear off every other word you utter and throw it back at you. His 'head man' designation is correct, all right. According to him, human beings in this stage need some leader or 'head man' stronger than themselves for guidance, assumption of responsibility, and blame, in case of failure of the group. These functions have never in the past been developed in the individual so that he could stand alone in control of his own ego. But it's coming—that's the whole import of Dreyer's work." "And all this confusion and instability are supposed to have something to do with that?" "It's been growing for decades. We've seen it reach a peak in our own lifetimes. The old fetishes have failed, the head men have been found to be hollow gods, and men's faith has turned to derision. Presidents, dictators, governors, and priests—they've all fallen from their high places and the masses of humanity will no longer believe in any of them." "And that is development of the race?" "Yes, because out of it will come a people who have found in themselves the strength they used to find in the 'head men.' There will come a race in which the individual can accept the responsibility which he has always passed on to the 'head man,' the 'head man' is no longer necessary." "And so—the ultimate anarchy." "The 'head man' concept has, but first he has to find out that has nothing to do with government. With human beings capable of independent, constructive behavior, actual democracy will be possible for the first time in the world's history." "If all this is to come about anyway, according to Dreyer, why not try to escape the insanity of the transition period?" Illia Morov's eyes grew narrow in puzzlement as she looked at Underwood with utter incomprehension. "Doesn't it matter at all that the race is in one of the greatest crises of all history? Doesn't it matter that you have a skill that is of immense value in these times? It's peculiar that it is those of you in the physical sciences who are fleeing in the greatest numbers. The Venusian colonies must have a wonderful time with physicists trampling each other to get away from it all—and Earth almost barren of them. Do the physical sciences destroy every sense of social obligation?" "You forget that I don't quite accept Dreyer's theories. To me this is nothing but a rotting structure that is finally collapsing from its own inner decay. I can't see anything positive evolving out of it." "I suppose so. Well, it was nice of you to call, Del. I'm always glad to hear you. Don't wait so long next time." "Illia—" But she had cut the connection and the screen slowly faded into gray, leaving Underwood's argument unfinished. Irritably, he flipped the switch to the public news channels. Where was he wrong? The past year, since he had joined the expedition as Chief Physicist, was like paradise compared with living in the unstable, irresponsible society existing on Earth. He knew it was a purely neurotic reaction, this desire to escape. But application of that label solved nothing, explained nothing—and carried no stigma. The neurotic reaction was the norm in a world so confused. He turned as the news blared abruptly with its perpetual urgency that made him wonder how the commentators endured the endless flow of crises. The President had been impeached again—the third one in six months. There were no candidates for his office. A church had been burned by its congregation. Two mayors had been assassinated within hours of each other. It was the same news he had heard six months ago. It would be the same again tomorrow and next month. The story of a planet repudiating all leadership. A lawlessness that was worse than anarchy, because there was still government—a government that could be driven and whipped by the insecurities of the populace that elected it. Dreyer called it a futile search for a 'head man' by a people who would no longer trust any of their own kind to be 'head man.' And Underwood dared not trust that glib explanation. Many others besides Underwood found they could no longer endure the instability of their own culture. Among these were many of the world's leading scientists. Most of them went to the jungle lands of Venus. The scientific limitations of such a frontier existence had kept Underwood from joining the Venusian colonies, but he'd been very close to going just before he got the offer of Chief Physicist with the Smithson Institute expedition in the asteroid fields. He wondered now what he'd have done if the offer hadn't come. The interphone annunciator buzzed. Underwood turned off the news as the bored communications operator in the control room announced, "Doc Underwood. Call for Doc Underwood." Underwood cut in. "Speaking," he said irritably. The voice of Terry Bernard burst into the room. "Hey, Del! Are you going to get rid of that hangover and answer your phone or should we embalm the remains and ship 'em back?" "Terry! You fool, what do you want? Why didn't you say it was you? I thought maybe it was that elephant-foot Maynes, with chunks of mica that he thought were prayer sticks." "The Stroids didn't use prayer sticks." "All right, skip it. What's new?" "Plenty. Can you come over for a while? I think we've really got something here." "It'd better be good. We're taking the ship to Phyfe. Where are you?" "Asteroid C-428. It's about 2,000 miles from you. And bring all the hard-rock mining tools you've got. We can't get into this thing." "Is that all you want? Use your double coated drills." "We wore five of them out. No scratches on the thing, even." "Well, use the Atom Stream, then. It probably won't hurt the artifact." "I'll say it won't. It won't even warm the thing up. Any other ideas?" Underwood's mind, which had been half occupied with mulling over his personal problems while he talked with Terry, swung startledly to what the archeologist was saying. "You mean that you've found a material the Atom Stream won't touch? That's impossible! The equations of the Stream prove—" "I know. Now will you come over?" "Why didn't you say so in the first place? I'll bring the whole ship." Underwood cut off and switched to the Captain's line. "Captain Dawson? Underwood. Will you please take the ship to the vicinity of Asteroid C-428 as quickly as possible?" "I thought Doctor Phyfe—" "I'll answer for it. Please move the vessel." Captain Dawson acceded. His instructions were to place the ship at Underwood's disposal. Soundlessly and invisibly, the distortion fields leaped into space about the massive laboratory ship and the Lavoisier moved effortlessly through the void. Its perfect inertia controls left no evidence of its motion apparent to the occupants with the exception of the navigators and pilots. The hundreds of delicate pieces of equipment in Underwood's laboratories remained as steadfast as if anchored to tons of steel and concrete deep beneath the surface of Earth. Twenty minutes later they hove in sight of the small, black asteroid that glistened in the faint light of the faraway Sun. The spacesuited figures of Terry Bernard and his assistant, Batch Fagin, clung to the surface, moving about like flies on a blackened, frozen apple. Underwood was already in the scooter lock, astride the little spacescooter which they used for transportation between ships of the expedition and between asteroids. The pilot jockeyed the Lavoisier as near as safely desirable, then signaled Underwood. The physicist pressed the control that opened the lock in the side of the vessel. The scooter shot out into space, bearing him astride it. "Ride 'em, cowboy!" Terry Bernard yelled into the intercom. He gave a wild cowboy yell that pierced Underwood's ears. "Watch out that thing doesn't turn turtle with you." Underwood grinned to himself. He said, "Your attitude convinces me of a long held theory that archeology is no science. Anyway, if your story of a material impervious to the Atom Stream is wrong, you'd better get a good alibi. Phyfe had some work he wanted to do aboard today." "Come and see for yourself. This is it." As the scooter approached closer to the asteroid, Underwood could glimpse the strangeness of the thing. It looked as if it had been coated with the usual asteroid material of nickel iron debris, but Terry had cleared this away from more than half the surface. The exposed half was a shining thing of ebony, whose planes and angles were machined with mathematical exactness. It looked as if there were at least a thousand individual facets on the one hemisphere alone. At the sight of it, Underwood could almost understand the thrill of discovery that impelled these archeologists to delve in the mysteries of space for lost kingdoms and races. This object which Terry had discovered was a magnificent artifact. He wondered how long it had circled the Sun since the intelligence that formed it had died. He wished now that Terry had not used the Atom Stream, for that had probably destroyed the validity of the radium-lead relationship in the coating of debris that might otherwise indicate something of the age of the thing. Terry sensed something of Underwood's awe in his silence as he approached. "What do you think of it, Del?" "It's—beautiful," said Underwood. "Have you any clue to what it is?" "Not a thing. No marks of any kind on it." The scooter slowed as Del Underwood guided it near the surface of the asteroid. It touched gently and he unstrapped himself and stepped off. "Phyfe will forgive all your sins for this," he said. "Before you show me the Atom Stream is ineffective, let's break off a couple of tons of the coating and put it in the ship. We may be able to date the thing yet. Almost all these asteroids have a small amount of radioactivity somewhere in them. We can chip some from the opposite side where the Atom Stream would affect it least." "Good idea," Terry agreed. "I should have thought of that, but when I first found the single outcropping of machined metal, I figured it was very small. After I found the Atom Stream wouldn't touch it, I was overanxious to undercover it. I didn't realize I'd have to burn away the whole surface of the asteroid." "We may as well finish the job and get it completely uncovered. I'll have some of my men from the ship come on over." It took the better part of an hour to chip and drill away samples to be used in a dating attempt. Then the intense fire of the Atom Stream was turned upon the remainder of the asteroid to clear it. "We'd better be on the lookout for a soft spot." Terry suggested. "It's possible this thing isn't homogeneous, and Papa Phyfe would be very mad if we burned it up after making such a find." From behind his heavy shield which protected him from the stray radiation formed by the Atom Stream, Delmar Underwood watched the biting fire cut between the gemlike artifact and the metallic alloys that coated it. The alloys cracked and fell away in large chunks, propelled by the explosions of matter as the intense heat vaporized the metal almost instantly. The spell of the ancient and the unknown fell upon him and swept him up in the old mysteries and the unknown tongues. Trained in the precise methods of the physical sciences, he had long fought against the fascination of the immense puzzles which the archeologists were trying to solve, but no man could long escape. In the quiet, starlit blackness there rang the ancient memories of a planet vibrant with life, a planet of strange tongues and unknown songs—a planet that had died so violently that space was yet strewn with its remains—so violently that somewhere the echo of its death explosion must yet ring in the far vaults of space. Underwood had always thought of archeologists as befogged antiquarians poking among ancient graves and rubbish heaps, but now he knew them for what they were—poets in search of mysteries. The Bible-quoting of Phyfe and the swearing of red-headed Terry Bernard were merely thin disguises for their poetic romanticism. Underwood watched the white fire of the Atom Stream through the lead glass of the eye-protecting lenses. "I talked to Illia today," he said. "She says I've run away." "Haven't you?" Terry asked. "I wouldn't call it that." "It doesn't make much difference what you call it. I once lived in an apartment underneath a French horn player who practised eight hours a day. I ran away. If the whole mess back on Earth is like a bunch of horn blowers tootling above your apartment, I say move, and why make any fuss about it? I'd probably join the boys on Venus myself if my job didn't keep me out here. Of course it's different with you. There's Illia to be convinced—along with your own conscience." "She quotes Dreyer. He's one of your ideals, isn't he?" "No better semanticist ever lived," Terry said flatly. "He takes the long view, which is that everything will come out in the wash. I agree with him, so why worry—knowing that the variants will iron themselves out, and nothing I can possibly do will be noticed or missed? Hence, I seldom worry about my obligations to mankind, as long as I stay reasonably law-abiding. Do likewise, Brother Del, and you'll live longer, or at least more happily." Underwood grinned in the blinding glare of the Atom Stream. He wished life were as simple as Terry would have him believe. Maybe it would be, he thought—if it weren't for Illia. As he moved his shield slowly forward behind the crumbling debris, Underwood's mind returned to the question of who created the structure beneath their feet, and to what alien purpose. Its black, impenetrable surfaces spoke of excellent mechanical skill, and a high science that could create a material refractory to the Atom Stream. Who, a half million years ago, could have created it? The ancient pseudo-scientific Bode's Law had indicated a missing planet which could easily have fitted into the Solar System in the vicinity of the asteroid belt. But Bode's Law had never been accepted by astronomers—until interstellar archeology discovered the artifacts of a civilization on many of the asteroids. The monumental task of exploration had been undertaken more than a generation ago by the Smithson Institute. Though always handicapped by shortage of funds, they had managed to keep at least one ship in the field as a permanent expedition. Dr. Phyfe, leader of the present group, was probably the greatest student of asteroidal archeology in the System. The younger archeologists labeled him benevolently Papa Phyfe, in spite of the irascible temper which came, perhaps, from constantly switching his mind from half a million years ago to the present. In their use of semantic correlations, Underwood was discovering, the archeologists were far ahead of the physical scientists, for they had an immensely greater task in deducing the mental concepts of alien races from a few scraps of machinery and art. Of all the archeologists he had met, Underwood had taken the greatest liking to Terry Bernard. An extremely competent semanticist and archeologist, Terry nevertheless did not take himself too seriously. He did not even mind Underwood's constant assertion that archeology was no science. He maintained that it was fun, and that was all that was necessary. At last, the two groups approached each other from opposite sides of the asteroid and joined forces in shearing off the last of the debris. As they shut off the fearful Atom Streams, the scientists turned to look back at the thing they had cleared. Terry said quietly, "See why I'm an archeologist?" "I think I do—almost," Underwood answered. The gemlike structure beneath their feet glistened like polished ebony. It caught the distant stars in its thousand facets and cast them until it gleamed as if with infinite lights of its own. The workmen, too, were caught in its spell, for they stood silently contemplating the mystery of a people who had created such beauty. The spell was broken at last by a movement across the heavens. Underwood glanced up. "Papa Phyfe's coming on the warpath. I'll bet he's ready to trim my ears for taking the lab ship without his consent." "You're boss of the lab ship, aren't you?" said Terry. "It's a rather flexible arrangement—in Phyfe's mind, at least. I'm boss until he decides he wants to do something." The headquarters ship slowed to a halt and the lock opened, emitting the fiery burst of a motor scooter which Doc Phyfe rode with angry abandon. "You, Underwood!" His voice came harshly through the phones. "I demand an explanation of—" That was as far as he got, for he glimpsed the thing upon which the men were standing, and from his vantage point it looked all the more like a black jewel in the sky. He became instantly once more the eager archeologist instead of expedition administrator, a role he filled with irritation. "What have you got there?" he whispered. Terry answered. "We don't know. I asked Dr. Underwood's assistance in uncovering the artifact. If it caused you any difficulty, I'm sorry; it's my fault." "Pah!" said Phyfe. "A thing like this is of utmost importance. You should have notified me immediately." Terry and Underwood grinned at each other. Phyfe reprimanded every archeologist on the expedition for not notifying him immediately whenever anything from the smallest machined fragment of metal to the greatest stone monuments were found. If they had obeyed, he would have done nothing but travel from asteroid to asteroid over hundreds of thousands of miles of space. "You were busy with your own work," said Terry. But Phyfe had landed, and as he dismounted from the scooter, he stood in awe. Terry, standing close to him, thought he saw tears in the old man's eyes through the helmet of the spaceship. "It's beautiful!" murmured Phyfe in worshipping awe. "Wonderful. The most magnificent find in a century of asteroidal archeology. We must make arrangements for its transfer to Earth at once." "If I may make a suggestion," said Terry, "you recall that some of the artifacts have not survived so well. Decay in many instances has set in—" "Are you trying to tell me that this thing can decay?" Phyfe's little gray Van Dyke trembled violently. "I'm thinking of the thermal transfer. Doctor Underwood is better able to discuss that, but I should think that a mass of this kind, which is at absolute zero, might undergo unusual stresses in coming to Earth normal temperatures. True, we used the Atom Stream on it, but that heat did not penetrate enough to set up great internal stresses." Phyfe looked hesitant and turned to Underwood. "What is your opinion?" Underwood didn't get it until he caught Terry's wink behind Phyfe's back. Once it left space and went into the museum laboratory, Terry might never get to work on the thing again. That was the perpetual gripe of the field men. "I think Doctor Bernard has a good point," said Underwood. "I would advise leaving the artifact here in space until a thorough examination has been made. After all, we have every facility aboard the Lavoisier that is available on Earth." "Very well," said Phyfe. "You may proceed in charge of the physical examination of the find, Doctor Underwood. You, Doctor Bernard, will be in charge of proceedings from an archeological standpoint. Will that be satisfactory to everyone concerned?" It was far more than Terry had expected. "I will be on constant call," said Phyfe. "Let me know immediately of any developments." Then the uncertain mask of the executive fell away from the face of the little old scientist and he regarded the find with humility and awe. "It's beautiful," he murmured again, " beautiful ." CHAPTER TWO Phyfe remained near the site as Underwood and Terry set their crew to the routine task of weighing, measuring, and photographing the object, while Underwood considered what else to do. "You know, this thing has got me stymied, Terry. Since it can't be touched by an Atom Stream, that means there isn't a single analytical procedure to which it will respond—that I know of, anyway. Does your knowledge of the Stroids and their ways of doing things suggest any identification of it?" Terry shook his head as he stood by the port of the laboratory ship watching the crews at work outside. "Not a thing, but that's no criterion. We know so little about the Stroids that almost everything we find has a function we never heard of before. And of course we've found many objects with totally unknown functions. I've been thinking—what if this should turn out to be merely a natural gem from the interior of the planet, maybe formed at the time of its destruction, but at least an entirely natural object rather than an artifact?" "It would be the largest crystal formation ever encountered, and the most perfect. I'd say the chances of its natural formation are negligible." "But maybe this is the one in a hundred billion billion or whatever number chance it may be." "If so, its value ought to be enough to balance the Terrestrial budget. I'm still convinced that it must be an artifact, though its material and use are beyond me. We can start with a radiation analysis. Perhaps it will respond in some way that will give us a clue." When the crew had finished the routine check, Underwood directed his men to set up the various types of radiation equipment contained within the ship. It was possible to generate radiation through almost the complete spectrum from single cycle sound waves to hard cosmic rays. The work was arduous and detailed. Each radiator was slowly driven through its range, then removed and higher frequency equipment used. At each fraction of an octave, the object was carefully photographed to record its response. After watching the work for two days, Terry wearied of the seemingly non-productive labor. "I suppose you know what you're doing, Del," he said. "But is it getting you anywhere at all?" Underwood shook his head. "Here's the batch of photographs. You'll probably want them to illustrate your report. The surfaces of the object are mathematically exact to a thousandth of a millimeter. Believe me, that's some tolerance on an object of this size. The surfaces are of number fifteen smoothness, which means they are plane within a hundred-thousandth of a millimeter. The implications are obvious. The builders who constructed that were mechanical geniuses." "Did you get any radioactive dating?" "Rather doubtfully, but the indications are around half a million years." "That checks with what we know about the Stroids." "It would appear that their culture is about on a par with our own." "Personally, I think they were ahead of us," said Terry. "And do you see what that means to us archeologists? It's the first time in the history of the science that we've had to deal with the remains of a civilization either equal or superior to our own. The problems are multiplied a thousand times when you try to take a step up instead of a step down." "Any idea of what the Stroids looked like?" "We haven't found any bodies, skeletons, or even pictures, but we think they were at least roughly anthropomorphic. They were farther from the Sun than we, but it was younger then and probably gave them about the same amount of heat. Their planet was larger and the Stroids appear to have been somewhat larger as individuals than we, judging from the artifacts we've discovered. But they seem to have had a suitable atmosphere of oxygen diluted with appropriate inert gases." They were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a laboratory technician who brought in a dry photographic print still warm from the developing box. He laid it on the desk before Underwood. "I thought you might be interested in this." Underwood and Terry glanced at it. The picture was of the huge, gemlike artifact, but a number of the facets seemed to be covered with intricate markings of short, wavy lines. Underwood stared closer at the thing. "What the devil are those? We took pictures of every facet previously and there was nothing like this. Get me an enlargement of these." "I already have." The assistant laid another photo on the desk, showing the pattern of markings as if at close range. They were clearly discernible now. "What do you make of it?" asked Underwood. "I'd say it looked like writing," Terry said. "But it's not like any of the other Stroid characters I've seen—which doesn't mean much, of course, because there could be thousands that I've never seen. Only how come these characters are there now, and we never noticed them before?" "Let's go out and have a look," said Underwood. He grasped the photograph and noted the numbers of the facets on which the characters appeared. In a few moments the two men were speeding toward the surface of their discovery astride scooters. They jockeyed above the facets shown on the photographs, and stared in vain. "Something's the matter," said Terry. "I don't see anything here." "Let's go all the way around on the scooters. Those guys may have bungled the job of numbering the photos." They began a slow circuit, making certain they glimpsed all the facets from a height of only ten feet. "It's not here," Underwood agreed at last. "Let's talk to the crew that took the shots." They headed towards the equipment platform, floating in free space, from which Mason, one of the Senior Physicists, was directing operations. Mason signaled for the radiations to be cut off as the men approached. "Find any clues, Chief?" he asked Underwood. "We've done our best to fry this apple, but nothing happens." "Something did happen. Did you see it?" Underwood extended the photograph with the mechanical fingers of the spacesuit. Mason held it in a light and stared at it. "We didn't see a thing like that. And we couldn't have missed it." He turned to the members of the crew. "Anyone see this writing on the thing?" They looked at the picture and shook their heads. "What were you shooting on it at the time?" Mason glanced at his records. "About a hundred and fifty angstroms." "So there must be something that becomes visible only in a field of radiation of about that wave length," said Underwood. "Keep going and see if anything else turns up, or if this proves to be permanent after exposure to that frequency." Back in the laboratory, they sat down at the desk and went through the file of hundreds of photographs that were now pouring out of the darkroom. "Not a thing except that one," said Terry. "It looks like a message intended only for someone who knew what frequency would make it visible."

test

51152

Appointment in Tomorrow BY FRITZ LEIBER Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also? The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs. They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr. It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet. Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning. Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him. Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes. Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile. It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning. He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message: Dear Fellow Scientist: A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I. Jorj Helmuth Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot. The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio. "The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him." "Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes." Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom. Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to. For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved. This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus! This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie." Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered. The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which. The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh? The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this. The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat. The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie! Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines. The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke. Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?" The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?" Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting. From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think. Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle. Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it! Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars. "Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country." Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said. "The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—" "Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj." Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft. Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer. He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer. For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind. Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open. The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?" He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl. Suddenly he began to tape again. "Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...." But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl. Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho. Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically. After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind. The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep. Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his. "Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked. A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed. The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it." The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?" "You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply. The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly. "Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean." The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar." "Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate." The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away." Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City. The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear. Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?" The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk." "But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did." Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes." Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware." Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages." Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes. "Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists. He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets." Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?" Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile." "Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...." "By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily, "Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are." "Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you." "No," Opperly said. "I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet. Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed. "But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?" Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?" "Now you are justifying the Thinkers!" "No, I leave that to history." "And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of 'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see." "I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...." The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?" The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry." The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off. "What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this." He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?" "No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help." "An invitation?" Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?" The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you." "What do you mean?" Farquar asked. Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?" Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted. "And didn't she go off with a Thinker?" "If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?" Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition." Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise." "Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world." Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?" "Not exactly." "You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily. Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims." Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men. As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind. Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox. Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm. Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward. In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted. A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket. But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie! And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception. He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there. Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance. No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis. Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron. But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie. He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.

test

50940

Wailing Wall By ROGER DEE Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] An enormous weapon is forcing people to keep their troubles to themselves—it's dynamite! Numb with the terror that had dogged him from the moment he regained consciousness and found himself naked and weaponless, Farrell had no idea how long he had been lost in the honeycombed darkness of the Hymenop dome. The darkness and damp chill of air told him that he was far underground, possibly at the hive's lowest level. Somewhere above him, the silent audience chambers lay shrouded in lesser gloom, heavy with the dust of generations and peopled only by cryptic apian images. Outside the dome, in a bend of lazy silver river, sprawled the Sadr III village with its stoic handful of once-normal Terran colonists and, on the hillside above the village, Gibson and Stryker and Xavier would be waiting for him in the disabled Marco Four. Waiting for him.... They might as well have been back on Terra, five hundred light-years away. Six feet away on either side, the corridor walls curved up faintly, a flattened oval of tunneling designed for multiple alien feet, lighted for faceted eyes demanding the merest fraction of light necessary for an Earthman's vision. For two yards Farrell could see dimly, as through a heavy fog; beyond was nothing but darkness and an outlandish labyrinth of cross-branching corridors that spiraled on forever without end. Behind him, his pursuers—human natives or Hymenop invaders, he had no way of knowing which—drew nearer with a dry minor rustling whose suggestion of imminent danger sent Farrell plunging blindly on into the maze. —To halt, sweating, when a sound exactly similar came to him from ahead. It was what he had feared from the beginning. He could not go on, and he could not go back. He made out the intersecting corridor to his right, then a vague oval opening that loomed faintly grayer than the wall about it. He darted into it as into a sanctuary, and realized too late that the choice had been forced upon him. It had been intended from the start that he should take this way. He had been herded here like a halterless beast, driven by the steady threat of action never quite realized. They had known where he was going, and why. But there was light down there somewhere at the end of the tunnel's aimless wanderings. If, once there, he could see— He did not find light, only a lesser darkness. The tunnel led him into a larger place whose outer reaches were lost in shadow, but whose central area held a massive cylindrical machine at once alien and familiar. He went toward it hesitantly, confused for the moment by a paramnesiac sense of repeated experience, the specious recognition of déjà vu. It was a Ringwave generator, and it was the thing he had ventured into the dome to find. His confusion stemmed from its resemblance to the disabled generator aboard the Marco Four, and from the stereo-sharp associations it evoked: Gibson working over the ship's power plant, his black-browed face scowling and intent, square brown body moving with a wrestler's easy economy of motion; Stryker, bald and fat and worried, wheezing up and down the companionway from engine bay to chart room, his concern divided between Gibson's task and Farrell's long silence in the dome. Stryker at this moment would be regretting the congenital optimism that had prompted him to send his navigator where he himself could not go. Sweating anxiety would have replaced Stryker's pontifical assurance, dried up his smug pattering of socio-psychological truisms lifted from the Colonial Reclamations Handbook.... "So far as adaptability is concerned," Stryker had said an eternal evening before, " homo sapiens can be a pretty weird species. More given to mulish paradox, perhaps, than any alien life-form we're ever likely to run across out here." He had shifted his bulk comfortably on the grass under the Marco Four's open port, undisturbed by the busy clatter of tools inside the ship where Gibson and Xavier, the Marco's mechanical, worked over the disabled power plant. He laced his fingers across his fat paunch and peered placidly through the dusk at Farrell, who lay on his back, smoking and watching the stars grow bright in the evening sky. "Isolate a human colony from its parent planet for two centuries, enslave it for half that time to a hegemony as foreign as the Hymenops' hive-culture before abandoning it to its own devices, and anything at all in the way of eccentric social controls can develop. But men remain basically identical, Arthur, in spite of acquired superficial changes. They are inherently incapable of evolving any system of control mechanisms that cannot be understood by other men, provided the environmental circumstances that brought that system into being are known. At bottom, these Sadr III natives are no different from ourselves. Heredity won't permit it." Farrell, half listening, had been staring upward between the icy white brilliance of Deneb and the twin blue-and-yellow jewels of Albireo, searching for a remote twinkle of Sol. Five hundred light-years away out there, he was thinking, lay Earth. And from Earth all this gaudy alien glory was no more than another point of reference for backyard astronomers, a minor configuration casually familiar and unremarkable. A winking of lighted windows springing up in the village downslope brought his attention back to the scattered cottages by the river, and to the great disquieting curve of the Hymenop dome that rose above them like a giant above pygmies. He sat up restlessly, the wind ruffling his hair and whirling the smoke of his cigarette away in thin flying spirals. "You sound as smug as the Reorientation chapter you lifted that bit from," Farrell said. "But it won't apply here, Lee. The same thing happened to these people that happened to the other colonists we've found, but they don't react the same. Either those Hymenop devils warped them permanently or they're a tribe of congenital maniacs." Stryker prodded him socratically: "Particulars?" "When we crashed here five weeks ago, there were an even thousand natives in the village, plus or minus a few babes in arms. Since that time they've lost a hundred twenty-six members, all suicides or murders. At first the entire population turned out at sunrise and went into the dome for an hour before going to the fields; since we came, that period has shortened progressively to a few minutes. That much we've learned by observation. By direct traffic we've learned exactly nothing except that they can speak Terran Standard, but won't. What sort of system is that?" Stryker tugged uncomfortably at the rim of white hair the years had left him. "It's a stumper for the moment, I'll admit ... if they'd only talk to us, if they'd tell us what their wants and fears and problems are, we'd know what is wrong and what to do about it. But controls forced on them by the Hymenops, or acquired since their liberation, seem to have altered their original ideology so radically that—" "That they're plain batty," Farrell finished for him. "The whole setup is unnatural, Lee. Consider this: We sent Xavier out to meet the first native that showed up, and the native talked to him. We heard it all by monitoring; his name was Tarvil, he spoke Terran Standard, and he was amicable. Then we showed ourselves, and when he saw that we were human beings like himself and not mechanicals like Xav, he clammed up. So did everyone in the village. It worries me, Lee. If they didn't expect men to come out of the Marco , then what in God's name did they expect?" He sat up restlessly and stubbed out his cigarette. "It's an unimportant world anyway, all ocean except for this one small continent. I think we ought to write it off and get the hell out as soon as the Marco 's Ringwave is repaired." "We can't write it off," Stryker said. "Besides reclaiming a colony, we may have added a valuable marine food source to the Federation. Arthur, you're not letting a handful of disoriented people get under your skin, are you?" Farrell made an impatient sound and lit another cigarette. The brief flare of his lighter pierced the darkness and picked out a hurried movement a short stone's throw away, between the Marco Four and the village. "There's one reason why I'm edgy," Farrell said. "These Sadrians may be harmless, but they make a point of posting a guard over us. There's a sentry out there in the grass flats again tonight." He turned on Stryker uneasily. "I've watched on the infra-scanner while those sentries changed shifts, and they don't speak to each other. I've tracked them back to the village, but I've never seen one of them turn in a—" Down in the village a man screamed, a raw, tortured sound that brought both men up stiffly. A frantic drumming of running feet came to them, unmistakable across the little distance. The fleeing man came up from the dark huddle of cottages by the river and out across the grass flats, screaming. Pursuit overtook him halfway to the ship. There was a brief scuffling, a shadowy dispersal of silent figures. After that, nothing. "They did it again," Farrell said. "One of them tried to come up here to us. The others killed him, and who's to say what sort of twisted motive prompted them? They go to the dome together every morning, not speaking. They work all day in the fields without so much as looking at each other. But every night at least one of them tries to escape from the village and come up here—and this is what happens. We couldn't trust them, Lee, even if we could understand them!" "It's our job to understand them," Stryker said doggedly. "Our function is to find colonies disoriented by the Hymenops and to set them straight if we can. If we can't, we call in a long-term reorientation crew, and within three generations the culture will pass again for Terran. The fact that slave colonies invariably lose their knowledge of longevity helps; they don't get it back until they're ready for it. "I've seen some pretty foul results of Hymenop experimenting on human colonies, Arthur. There was the ninth planet of Beta Pegasi—rediscovered in 3910, I think it was—that developed a religious fixation on fertility, a mania fostered by the Hymenops to supply expendable labor for their mines. The natives stopped mining when the Hymenops gave up the invasion and went back to 70 Ophiuchi, but they were still multiplying like rabbits when we found them. They followed a cultural conviction something like that observed in Oriental races of ancient Terran history, but they didn't pursue the Oriental tradition of sacrosancts. They couldn't—there were too many of them. By the time they were found, they numbered fourteen billions and they were eating each other. Still it took only three generations to set them straight." He took one of Farrell's cigarettes and puffed it placidly. "For that matter, Earth had her own share of eccentric cultures. I recall reading about one that existed as late as the twentieth century and equaled anything we're likely to find here. Any society should be geared to a set of social controls designed to furnish it, as a whole with a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of discomfort, but these ancient Terrestrial Dobuans—island aborigines, as I remember it—had adjusted to their total environment in a manner exactly opposite. They reversed the norm and became a society of paranoiacs, hating each other in direct ratio to nearness of relationship. Husbands and wives detested each other, sons and fathers—" "Now you're pulling my leg," Farrell protested. "A society like that would be too irrational to function." "But the system worked," Stryker insisted. "It balanced well enough, as long as they were isolated. They accepted it because it was all they knew, and an abrupt reversal that negated their accustomed habits would create an impossible societal conflict. They were reoriented after the Fourth War, and succeeding generations adjusted to normal living without difficulty." A sound from overhead made them look up. Gibson was standing in the Marco's open port. "Conference," Gibson said in his heavy baritone, and went back inside. They followed Gibson quickly and without question, more disturbed by the terse order than by the killing in the grass flats. Knowing Gibson, they realized that he would not have wasted even that one word unless emergency justified it. They found him waiting in the chart room with Xavier. For the thousandth time, seeing the two together, Farrell found himself comparing them: the robot, smoothly functional from flexible gray plastoid body to featureless oval faceplate, blandly efficient, totally incapable of emotion; Gibson, short and dark and competent heavy-browed and humorless. Except for initiative, Farrell thought, the two of them could have traded identities and no one would have been able to notice any difference. "Xav and I found our Ringwave trouble," Gibson said. "The generator is functioning, but the warp isn't going out. Something here on Sadr III is neutralizing it." They stared at him as if he had just told them the planet was flat. "But a Ringwave can't be stopped completely, once it is started," Stryker protested. "You'd have to dismantle it to shut it off, Gib!" "The warping field can be damped out, though," Gibson said. "Adjacent generators operating at different phase levels will heterodyne at a frequency representing the mean variance between levels. The resulting beat-phase will be too low to maintain either field, and one or the other, or both, will blank out. If you remember, all Terran-designed power plants are set to the same phase for that reason." "But these natives can't have a Ringwave plant!" Farrell argued. "There's only this one village on Sadr III, Gib, an insignificant little agrarian township! If they had the Ringwave, they'd be mechanized. They'd have vehicles, landing ports...." "The Hymenops had the Ringwave," Gibson interrupted. "And they left the dome down there, the first undamaged one we've found. Figure it out for yourselves." They digested the statement in silence. Stryker paled slowly, as if it needed time for apprehension to work its way through his fat bulk. Farrell's uneasiness, sourceless until now, grew to chill certainty. "I think I've expected this, without realizing it, since my first flight," he said. "It stood to reason that the Hymenops would quit running somewhere, that we'd bump into them eventually out here on the fringes. Twenty thousand light-years back to 70 Ophiuchi is a long way to retreat.... Gib, do you think they're still here?" Gibson did not shrug, but his voice seemed to. "It won't matter one way or the other unless we can clear the Marco's generator." From another man it might have been irony. Knowing Gibson, Farrell and Stryker accepted it as a bald statement of fact. "Then we're up against a Hymenop hive-mind," Stryker said. "And we can't run away from it. Any suggestions?" "We'll have to find the interfering generator and stop it," Farrell offered, knowing that was the only obvious solution. "One alternative," Gibson corrected. "If we can determine what phase-level the interfering warp uses, we may be able to adjust the Marco's generator to match it. Once they're in resonance, they won't interfere." He caught Stryker's unspoken question and answered it. "It would take a week. Maybe longer." Stryker vetoed the alternative. "Too long. If there are Hymenops here, they won't give us that much time." Farrell switched on the chart room scanning screen and centered it on the village downslope. Scattered cottages with dark tiled roofs and lamp-bright windows showed up clearly. Out of their undisciplined grouping swept the great hemispherical curve of the dome, glinting dully metallic in the starshine. "Maybe we're jumping to conclusions," he said. "We've been here for five weeks without seeing a trace of Hymenops, and from what I've read of them, they'd have jumped us the minute we landed. Chances are that they left Sadr III in too great a hurry to wreck the dome, and their Ringwave power plant is still running." "You may be right," Stryker said, brightening. "They carried the fight to us from the first skirmish, two hundred years ago, and they damned near beat us before we learned how to fight them." He looked at Xavier's silent plastoid figure with something like affection. "We'd have lost that war without Xave's kind. We couldn't match wits with Hymenop hive-minds, any more than a swarm of grasshoppers could stand up to a colony of wasps. But we made mechanicals that could. Cybernetic brains and servo-crews, ships that thought for themselves...." He squinted at the visiscreen with its cryptic, star-streaked dome. "But they don't think as we do. They may have left a rear guard here, or they may have boobytrapped the dome." "One of us will have to find out which it is," Farrell said. He took a restless turn about the chart room, weighing the probabilities. "It seems to fall in my department." Stryker stared. "You? Why?" "Because I'm the only one who can go. Remember what Gib said about changing the Marco's Ringwave to resonate with the interfering generator? Gib can make the change; I can't. You're—" "Too old and fat," Stryker finished for him. "And too damned slow and garrulous. You're right, of course." They let it go at that and put Xavier on guard for the night. The mechanical was infinitely more alert and sensitive to approach than any of the crew, but the knowledge did not make Farrell's sleep the sounder. He dozed fitfully, waking a dozen times during the night to smoke cigarettes and to speculate fruitlessly on what he might find in the dome. He was sweating out a nightmare made hideous by monstrous bees that threatened him in buzzing alien voices when Xavier's polite monotone woke him for breakfast. Farrell was halfway down the grassy slope to the village when he realized that the Marco was still under watch. Approaching close enough for recognition, he saw that the sentry this time was Tarvil, the Sadrian who had first approached the ship. The native's glance took in Farrell's shoulder-pack of testing tools and audiphone, brushed the hand-torch and blast gun at the Terran's belt, and slid away without trace of expression. "I'm going into the dome," Farrell said. He tried to keep the uncertainty out of his voice, and felt a rasp of irritation when he failed. "Is there a taboo against that?" The native fell in beside him without speaking and they went down together, walking a careful ten feet apart, through dew-drenched grass flats that gleamed like fields of diamonds under the early morning sun. From the village, as they approached, straggled the inevitable exodus of adults and half-grown children, moving silently out to the fields. "Weird beggars," Farrell said into his audiphone button. "They don't even rub elbows at work. You'd think they were afraid of being contaminated." Stryker's voice came tinnily in his ear. "They won't seem so strange once we learn their motivations. I'm beginning to think this aloofness of theirs is a religious concomitant, Arthur, a hangover from slave-controls designed to prevent rebellion through isolation. Considering what they must have suffered under the Hymenops, it's a wonder they're even sane." "I'll grant the religious origin," Farrell said. "But I wouldn't risk a centicredit on their sanity. I think the lot of them are nuts." The village was not deserted, but so far as Farrell's coming was concerned, it might as well have been. The few women and children he saw on the streets ignored him—and Tarvil—completely. He met with only one sign of interest, when a naked boy perhaps six years old stared curiously and asked something in a childish treble of the woman accompanying him. The woman answered with a single sharp word and struck the child across the face, sending him sprawling. Farrell relayed the incident. "She said ' Quiet! ' and slapped him down, Lee. They start their training early." "Their sort of indifference couldn't be congenital," Stryker said. His tinny murmur took on a puzzled sound. "But they've been free for four generations. It's hard to believe that any forcibly implanted control mechanism could remain in effect so long." A shadow blocked the sun, bringing a faint chill to Farrell when he looked up to see the great rounded hump of the dome looming over him. "I'm going into the dome now," he said. "It's like all the others—no openings except at ground level, where it's riddled with them." Tarvil did not accompany him inside. Farrell, looking back as he thumbed his hand-torch alight in the nearest entranceway, saw the native squatting on his heels and looking after him without a single trace of interest. "I'm at ground level," Farrell said later, "in what seems to have been a storage section. Empty now, with dust everywhere except in the corridors the natives use when they come in, mornings. No sign of Hymenops yet." Stryker's voice turned worried. "Look sharp for traps, Arthur. The place may be mined." The upper part of the dome, Farrell knew from previous experience, would have been given over in years past to Hymenop occupation, layer after rising layer of dormitories tiered like honeycombs to conserve space. He followed a spiral ramp downward to the level immediately below surface, and felt his first excitement of discovery when he found himself in the audience chambers that, until the Marco's coming, had been the daily goal of the Sadrian natives. The level was entirely taken up with bare ten-foot cubicles, each cramped chamber dominated by a cryptic metal-and-crystal likeness of the Hymenop head set into the metal wall opposite its corridor entrance. From either side of a circular speaking-grill, the antennae projected into the room, rasplike and alert, above faceted crystal eyes that glowed faintly in the near-darkness. The craftsmanship was faultless, stylized after a fashion alien to Farrell's imagining and personifying with disturbing realism the soulless, arrogant efficiency of the Hymenop hive-mind. To Farrell, there was about each image a brooding air of hypnotic fixity. "Something new in Hymenop experiments," he reported to Stryker. "None of the other domes we found had anything like this. These things have some bearing on the condition of the natives, Lee—there's a path worn through the dust to every image, and I can see where the people knelt. I don't like it. I've got a hunch that whatever these damned idols were used for succeeded too well." "They can't be idols," Stryker said. "The Hymenops would have known how hard it is to displace anthropomorphism entirely from human worship. But I think you're right about the experiment's working too well. No ordinary compulsion would have stuck so long. Periodic hypnosis? Wait, Arthur, that's an angle I want to check with Gibson...." He was back a moment later, wheezing with excitement. "Gib thinks I'm on the right track—periodic hypnosis. The Hymenops must have assigned a particular chamber and image to each slave. The images are mechanicals, robot mesmerists designed to keep the natives' compulsion-to-isolation renewed. Post-hypnotic suggestion kept the poor devils coming back every morning, and their children with them, even after the Hymenops pulled out. They couldn't break away until the Marco's Ringwave forced a shutdown of the dome's power plant and deactivated the images. Not that they're any better off now that they're free; they don't know how—" Farrell never heard the rest of it. Something struck him sharply across the back of the head. When he regained consciousness, he was naked and weaponless and lost. The rustling of approach, bodiless and dreadful in darkness, panicked him completely and sent him fleeing through a sweating eternity that brought him finally to the dome's lowest level and the Hymenop power plant. He went hesitantly toward the shadowy bulk of the Ringwave cylinder, drawn as much now by its familiarity as driven by the terror behind him. At the base of the towering machine, he made out a control board totally unrecognizable in design, studded with dials and switches clearly intended for alien handling. The tinny whispering of Stryker's voice in the vaultlike quiet struck him with the frightening feeling that he had gone mad. He saw his equipment pack then, lying undamaged at the foot of the control board. Stryker's voice murmured from its audicom unit: "We're in the dome, Arthur. Where are you? What level—" Farrell caught up the audicom, swept by a sudden wild lift of hope. "I'm at the bottom of the dome, in the Ringwave chamber. They took my gun and torch. For God's sake, hurry!" The darkness gave up a furtive scuffling of sandaled feet, the tight breathing of many men. Someone made a whimpering sound, doglike and piteous; a Sadrian voice hissed sharply, " Quiet! " Stryker's metallic whisper said: "We're tracking your carrier, Arthur. Use the tools they left you. They brought you there to repair the Ringwave, to give back the power that kept their images going. Keep busy!" Farrell, only half understanding, took up his instrument case. His movement triggered a tense rustle in the darkness; the voice whimpered again, a tortured sound that rasped Farrell's nerves like a file on glass. " Give me back my Voice. I am alone and afraid. I must have Counsel.... " Beneath the crying, Farrell felt the terror, incredibly voiced, that weighted the darkness, the horror implicit in stilled breathing, the swelling sense of outrage. There was a soft rush of bodies, a panting and struggling. The whimpering stopped. The instrument case slipped out of Farrell's hands. On the heels of its nerve-shattering crash against the metal floor came Stryker's voice, stronger as it came closer. "Steady, Arthur. They'll kill you if you make a scene. We're coming, Gib and Xav and I. Don't lose your head!" Farrell crouched back against the cold curve of the Ringwave cylinder, straining against flight with an effort that left him trembling uncontrollably. A spasm of incipient screaming seized his throat and he bit it back savagely, stifling a terror that could not be seen, grasped, fought with. He was giving way slowly when Xavier's inflectionless voice droned out of the darkness: "Quiet. Your Counsel will be restored." There was a sudden flood of light, unbearable after long darkness. Farrell had a failing glimpse of Gibson, square face blocked with light and shadow from the actinic flare overhead, racing toward him through a silently dispersing throng of Sadrians. Then he passed out. He was strapped to his couch in the chart room when he awoke. The Marco Four was already in space; on the visiscreen, Farrell could see a dwindling crescent of Sadr III, and behind it, in the black pit of space, the fiery white eye of Deneb and the pyrotechnic glowing of Albireo's blue-and-yellow twins. "We're headed out," he said, bewildered. "What happened?" Stryker came over and unstrapped him. Gibson, playing chess with Xavier across the chart-room plotting table, looked up briefly and went back to his gambit. "We reset the Ringwave in the dome to phase with ours and lugged you out," Stryker explained genially. He was back in character again, his fat paunch quivering with the beginning of laughter. "We're through here. The rest is up to Reorientation." Farrell gaped at him. "You're giving up on Sadr III?" "We've done all we can. Those Sadrians need something that a preliminary expedition like ours can't give them. Right now they are willing victims of a rigid religious code that makes it impossible for any one of them to express his wants, hopes, ideals or misfortunes to another. Exchanging confidences, to them, is the ultimate sacrilege." "Then they are crazy. They'd have to be, with no more opportunity for emotional catharsis than that!" "They're not insane, they're—adapted. Those robot images you found are everything to this culture: arbiters, commercial agents, monitors and confessors all in one. They not only relay physical needs from one native to another; they listen to all problems and give solutions. They're Counselors , remember? Man's gregariousness stems largely from his need to unload his troubles on someone else. The Hymenops came up with an efficient substitute here, and the natives accepted it as the norm." Farrell winced with sudden understanding. "No wonder the poor devils cracked up right and left. With their Ringwave dead, they might as well have been struck blind and dumb! They couldn't even get together among themselves to figure a way out." "There you have it," Stryker said. "They knew we were responsible for their catastrophe, but they couldn't bring themselves to ask us for help because we were human beings like themselves. So they went mad one by one and committed the ultimate blasphemy of shouting their misery in public, and their fellows had to kill them or countenance sacrilege. But they'll quiet down now. They should be easy enough to handle by the time the Reorientation lads arrive." He began to chuckle. "We left their Counselors running, but we disconnected the hypnosis-renewal circuits. They'll get only what they need from now on, which is an outlet for shifting their personal burdens. And with the post-hypnotic compulsion gone, they'll turn to closer association with each other. Human gregariousness will reassert itself. After a couple of generations, the Reorientation boys can write them off as Terran Normal and move on to the next planetary madhouse we've dug up for them." Farrell said wonderingly, "I never thought of the need to exchange confidences as being so important. But it is; everyone does it. You and I often talk over personal concerns, and Gib—" He broke off to study the intent pair at the chessboard, comparing Gibson's calm selfsufficiency to the mechanical's bland competence. "There's an exception for your theory, Lee. Iron Man Gibson never gave out with a confidence in his life!" Stryker laughed. "You may be right. How about it, Gib? Do you ever feel the need of a wailing wall?" Gibson looked up briefly from his game, his square face unsurprised. "Well, sure. Why not? I tell my troubles to Xavier." When they looked at each other blankly, he added, with the nearest approach to humor that either Farrell or Stryker had ever seen in him: "It's a reciprocal arrangement. Xav confides his to me."

test

51353

DR. KOMETEVSKY'S DAY By FRITZ LEIBER Illustrated by DAVID STONE [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Before science, there was superstition. After science, there will be ... what? The biggest, most staggering , most final fact of them all! "But it's all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets." Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill-stamped title, The Dance of the Planets . There was no mistaking the time of its origin; only paper from the Twentieth Century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste a brown old witch resurrected from the Last Age of Madness to confound a world growing sane, and she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband Theodor. He tried to come to her rescue. "Only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kometevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often." "As if they were playing Going to Jerusalem, or musical chairs," Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny. "Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet, and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury," Theodor continued. "Well, nothing at all like that has happened." "But it's begun," Madge said with conviction. "Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact." That was the trouble; you couldn't. Mars' two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred-odd cubic miles of rock—the merest cosmic flyspecks—yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world. Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea, the sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced. People must have felt like this , she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us, because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can. "You need something to cling to," she heard Madge say. "Dr. Kometevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kometevskyite before. Hadn't even heard of the man." She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious-eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic, which made it much worse. "Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations...." Theodor began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the Disordered Space Hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode, or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack: "Besides, if Phobos and Deimos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by 'scope or radar." "Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter?" Madge questioned. "Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think' I'm right." And of course she was. She swung the book under her arm. "Whew, it's heavy," she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones, "Never been microfilmed." She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. "Going to a party?" she asked. Theodor's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question, but they shook their heads. "Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family," Celeste said, while Theodor explained, "As it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight-of-hand." Madge nodded. "Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting." She gave them a woeful grin. "See you when the Earth jumps." Theodor said to Celeste, "Come on, dear. We'll be late." But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. "You know, Teddy," she said uncomfortably, "all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck, our great-grandparents missing World III and getting the World Government started a thousand years ahead of schedule. Luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things, like space-flight and the Deep Shaft and—" she hesitated a bit—"complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it?" "In me," Theodor said promptly. "In you?" Celeste questioned, walking slowly. "But you're just one-third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Ivan." "You angry with me about something?" "Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided." "Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family," Theodor told her warmly. "You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from Heaven and all that?" "Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling." Celeste smiled. "I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you." Theodor nodded emphatically. "All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far-fetched, but I think the experience of persons with Extra-Sensory Perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting." Celeste looked up at him. "So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter?" "Dotty is your daughter, too, and Rosalind's," Theodor reminded her. "No, just Frieda's," Celeste said bitterly. "Of course you may be the father. One-third of a chance." Theodor looked at her sharply, but didn't comment. "Anyway, Dotty will be there," he said. "Probably asleep by now. All the ESPs have suddenly seemed to need more sleep." As they talked, it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon. "Did you know," Theodor said suddenly, "that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature." "Stop being eerie," Celeste said sharply. But then she went on, "Those names Phobos and Deimos—they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean?" Theodor lost a step. "Fear and Terror," he said unwillingly. "Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken—the bodies in the Solar System are named that way, of course—and these were about all that were available." It was true, but it didn't comfort him much. I am a God , Dotty was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my god-friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to. A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold-spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully. In her dignity and simplicity and straight-spined grace, she was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act. I and my god-friends sail off in our great round silver boats , Dotty went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us. As Celeste and Theodor entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver—a glitter of platinum against darkness—came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frieda, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table. Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodor kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close-fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, he struck her as embodying very properly the serious, fateful temper of the moment. He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors. "I suggest we get started without waiting for Ivan," he said. Frieda frowned anxiously. "It's ten minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space Bar to say he was starting right away. And that's hardly a two minutes walk." Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door. "I'll check," she explained. "Oh, Frieda, I've set the mike so you'll hear if Dotty calls." Edmund threw up his hands. "Very well, then," he said and walked over, switched on the picture and stared out moodily. Theodor and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material. Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast. But she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other, so, after a few moments, she shrugged impatiently and switched to audio. At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening. "The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the Disintegration Hypothesis. "However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris—solid, tangible stuff—seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One-hundredth of the moons has been found. "The rest will also be!" Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frieda and Theodor had switched off their projectors. "Meanwhile, Earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their Solar System. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Kometevskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for—and I quote—'Earth's coming leap through space.' They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion, The Dance of the Planets . "That about winds up the story for the present. There are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar, Astronomy, or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume. Nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in Astrophysics, Cosmic Ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kometevsky's book: "This Earth is not the steadfast place We landsmen build upon; From deep to deep she varies pace, And while she comes is gone. Beneath my feet I feel Her smooth bulk heave and dip; With velvet plunge and soft upreel She swings and steadies to her keel Like a gallant, gallant ship." While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frieda, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business-like poise. Theodor leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half-smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown. Black Edmund, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness. In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible. And yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Were they really a family? Strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents? Butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous, artificial dance—until outraged Nature decided to wipe them out? As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The Golden Woman's face was white as the paths she had been treading. Just then the TV voice quickened with shock. "News! Lunar Observatory One reports that, although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the Sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained. Checked and rechecked, it admits of only one interpretation, which Lunar One feels duty-bound to release. Jupiter's fourteen moons are no longer visible! " The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing: the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating. She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt. Without looking at them, she said, "Ivan left the Deep Space Bar twenty minutes ago, said he was coming straight here. On my way back I searched the path. Midway I found this half-buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out—almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather, as if it had lain for years in the grave?" By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy. "And see what's written on it," she added. They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words: "Going down!" The other gods , Dotty dreamt, are combing the whole Universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the Universe and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance. Edmund rapped the table to gain the family's attention. "I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening—which may very well be connected with Ivan's disappearance." One by one the others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus attention on her microfilms. "I'll take over Ivan's notes," she heard Edmund say. "They're mainly about the Deep Shaft." "How far have they got with that?" Frieda asked idly. "Twenty-five miles?" "Nearer thirty, I believe," Edmund answered, "and still going down." At those last two words they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase. Our trick has succeeded , Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison. Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break." Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything." "Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?" Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder. "I'm going out for a drink," he informed them. After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside. Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped. Not my child , she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girl friends. A lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world. But then she straightened her shoulders and went on. Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodor. Her footsteps were silent and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee-high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side, no more. It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied, like those in the fairy tale. When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether. A breeze rustled the leaves, and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures. She looked around her half-heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee-high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night. Without warning, an eerie tingling went through her and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy Earth underfoot—an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs. A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind—the unnaturalness of the way the Earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather co-existed in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug, like a rooted plant. She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her, and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward. Something held her feet. They were ankle-deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground. She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the Earth had not only trapped but invaded her; that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh; that the two were becoming one. And she was sinking faster. Now knee-deep, thigh-deep, hip-deep, waist-deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancients' hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her. She thought, he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose, and covered her eyes. She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms. Tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground. And at the same time, the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her. And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil through gray clay and into pale limestone. Her tortured, rock-permeated lungs sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone. A glitter of quartz. The momentary openness of a foot-high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold-flecked ore. Then just black basalt. And always faster. It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires. At first glance Theodor thought the Deep Space Bar was empty. Then he saw a figure hunched monkeylike on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave-eyed young girl who could hardly have been fifteen. The TV was saying, "... in addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high-rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension, and impulse traveling—a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be 'gods' and in some way responsible for current events. "It is thought—" The girl switched off the TV and took Theodor's order, explaining casually, "Joe wanted to go to a Kometevskyite meeting, so I took over for him." When she had prepared Theodor's highball, she announced, "I'll have a drink with you gentlemen," and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice. The monkeylike figure muttered, "Scotch-and-soda," then turned toward Edmund and asked, "And what is your reaction to all this, sir?" Theodor recognized the shrunken wrinkle-seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the Last Age of Madness. Now, for some reason, the face sported a knowing smile. Theodor shrugged. Just then the TV "big news" light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodor. "... confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory One says that it is visually tracking fourteen small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the Solar System at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn!" The Colonel said, "Ah!" "Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the Solar System at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast! We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible." The Colonel said, "Ah-ha!" Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost amusing. "Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him. The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?" "Frankly, no." The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally." Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a satisfying swallow. "I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach—what would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then—" "You don't mean to imply—" Theodor interrupted. The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically. "Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy!" He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing. Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively. The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words: "They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No! Please, no!" Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand. Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile. "Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then, after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very queer." "Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?" The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?" Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you very much." Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again. There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up. "I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If you want me, dear, just call." "Yes, Mummy." Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear. His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have." The others nodded. "First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth. "Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind." It was deadly quiet in the committee room. "Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint—from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward-pointing glove in the other—that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth. "Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected." Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.

test

20034

Insiders and Way Insiders Being John Malkovich is everything I've ever dreamed of in a crazy comedy. It's close to pure farce, yet its laughs are grounded in loneliness, impotence, self-loathing, and that most discomfiting of vices to dramatize: envy. The action is surreal, the emotions are violently real. The screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, is a genius at finding slapstick correlatives for people's nebulous sense--or non-sense--of themselves. It's possible that no one has ever come up with a more absurdly perfect metaphor for our longing to be someone--anyone--other than who we are than a portal into the head of John Malkovich. Kaufman's protagonist, Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), is a soulfully unkempt puppeteer whose wildly ambitious work is ignored while his gimmicky rivals thrive. When he reports for a drudge job as a file clerk, the office is between the seventh and eighth floors of a Manhattan skyscraper--it's the seven-and-a-halfth floor, where people walk stooped and make feeble jokes about the "low overhead." That low ceiling--a constant reminder of how Craig has been stunted--is the first sign of the movie's comic astuteness, of its knack for devising sight gags with a sting. When a sleek and derisive colleague named Maxine (Catherine Keener) rebuffs his advances and mocks his art, Craig argues passionately on behalf of his puppets: He says that everyone longs to be inside someone else's head. On cue, he discovers a passageway behind a file cabinet that whooshes him into the head of Malkovich and then disgorges him, after 20 minutes, into a ditch beside the New Jersey Turnpike. The poor sap can't keep his secret. He tells the girl, who is soon selling tickets to the Malkovich experience. The biggest Malkovich addict turns out to be Craig's nerdily frazzled wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), who sums up the thrill for the rest of the characters. "Being inside did something to me," she says. "I knew who I was." The director, Spike Jonze (he played the skinny redneck in Three Kings ), comes to Being John Malkovich from music videos, but the movie isn't a digitized bag of tricks like Fight Club . Jonze is never in your face: His instincts must have told him that hyping gags this outlandish would turn the picture into camp. He keeps the action slightly remote and the jokes deadpan, and the upshot is that the audience almost never stops giggling. The first hour and change has a magical fluidity. The scenes between Cusack and Keener boast the best emasculating banter since Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy , and when Lotte and Maxine begin to communicate erotically through Malkovich's body, the film becomes a transsexual (and transcendental) screwball comedy. The script has a free-association quality that turns audiences on--they love not knowing where they're going. I wonder if Kaufman, when he started writing, even knew that the protagonist would stumble on that portal, or what he'd find when he went through. (The head of John Malkovich??!!??) That the vessel is Malkovich might be the movie's most brilliantly unsettling touch, since the actor--although undeniably great--is one of our most distant and weirdly insular. You can understand the masses fantasizing about being Bruce Willis or being Tom Hanks, but being John Malkovich? What's lodged under that thick brow is anybody's guess. Evidently quite the heterosexual, he still courts sexual ambiguity: He speaks in querulous tones and bats the most insolently feminine lashes this side of Bugs Bunny. Weird or not, though, he's a celebrity: He exists. And Malkovich makes a wonderful Malkovich. The actor sends up his own preening aloofness, and he has never been more emotionally exposed than when it dawns on him that his smug façade has been literally penetrated. When he attempts to fathom what's happening to him, Jonze and Kaufman deliver a coup de cinema --a vision of hell that isn't, à la Sartre, other people, but oneself ad infinitum. B eing John Malkovich should have ended right there, since the filmmakers never top that hysterical sequence. Kaufman seems to have written himself into a corner. In the last half-hour he ties things up too neatly and the craziness--and some of the helium--goes out of the movie. Why do crazy comedies need closure? As Cusack's character becomes more twisted, he loses his stature (and the audience's good will), and the climax has too many dissonances. Kaufman and Jonze end up sentimentalizing the longing for a collective consciousness in a way I found creepy: Do they mean to be retelling Invasion of the Body Snatchers from the body-snatchers' point of view? (If so, the film is even darker than I think it is.) The last part diminishes the movie, but not enough to wreck it: It's still an amazing piece of work. What other madcap farce would dare to have a score--it's by the superb Carter Burwell--so plangent and melancholy? Or to cast that sunny goddess Cameron Diaz as a nerd? The actress retains her essential sweetness, but the transformation is otherwise remarkable: Her Lotte is such a mouth breather that she nearly drools, and Diaz manages to look estranged from that lovely body. Even more dazzling is Keener, an actress who has lately been stuck playing nice, sensible women but who here is all silken curves and withering putdowns--she greets Craig's declaration of love with a pitying sigh that brings the house down. Keener's Maxine is so glamorously, tantalizingly self-contained that you can almost believe she never dreams of being John Malkovich. T he Insider is a big, overlong, and rather unwieldy piece of storytelling, but the story it has to tell is so vital that it cuts through all the dramaturgical muddiness. It's a terrific muckraking melodrama--it will get people fuming. It's about big-business mendacity and the lawyers who do its bidding, and about what happens to corporate whistle-blowers in a society where the mainstream media are also in the hands of corporations. The movie tells two interlocking stories: The first is about Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), former vice president for research and development at the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, who is persuaded to go public with revelations about how cigarette manufacturers manipulate the chemicals in their product for maximum addictiveness. (Despite their testimonies in Congress, Wigand says, tobacco executives regard cigarettes as "a nicotine delivery system.") The second story concerns the 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), the man who persuaded Wigand to come forward. Bergman watches in horror as his network, CBS, backs away from the story under pressure from the corporate wing--which fears, at a time when CBS is on the block, the impact of a major lawsuit on its value. (Oddly unmentioned in the film is that then-owner Lawrence Tisch had his own tobacco company, Lorillard, and had separate dealings with Brown & Williamson.) We're used to hearing tales of witnesses, informants, or whistle-blowers who are urged to come forward and then, after they do, are "hung out to dry"--i.e., left unprotected by the agents who approached and exploited them. What gives this version its kick--and what has made it fodder for columnists for almost six months--is that the people who betray the whistle-blower are among the most famous and powerful journalists in America: Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt, the co-anchor and the executive producer of 60 Minutes . If they could be pressured to "spike" a segment that they knew to be true, the film implicitly asks, how much chance do others have of breaking stories about corporate wrongdoing? And what about news personnel with a financial stake in their companies? Even journalists and editors known for their integrity tend to look the other way at their own companies' malfeasances when they hear words like "stock options" and "IPO." But the movie's emotional hook isn't the CBS infighting or Bergman's quest to get the story. It's the fate of Wigand, played by Crowe as a prickly, blockish fellow with no social skills--an edgy wonk. Already isolated by temperament, he seems more vulnerable than a conventionally nice martyr. Wigand appears to have no friends, and his wife (a nearly unrecognizable Diane Venora), a Southern debutante type who clearly didn't bargain for a life of social and financial ostracization, is on the verge of bailing out on him even before the bullets start appearing in the family's mailbox and the death threats on Wigand's computer. You can't always tell what Crowe is doing--his opacity is sometimes a little too opaque. What's plain, though, is that Wigand doesn't want to have this role, didn't ask for it, and has no support system to get him through it. He's entirely dependent on Bergman, with whom he mostly communicates by cell phone and fax. The director, Michael Mann, has never tried to tell a story as complex (or nonviolent) as The Insider , and he and his co-screenwriter, Eric Roth, don't shape their narrative very satisfyingly. Wigand and Bergman are both "insiders," and both, ultimately, whistle-blowers. (It was Bergman's spilling his guts to the New York Times that finally shamed CBS into running the Wigand interview.) But although the 60 Minutes producer is played by the star (Pacino grandstands, but not to the point of distraction), Bergman's story doesn't have the same primal force. Wigand's dark night of the soul is in a hotel, indicted, financially ruined, threatened with death, minus his wife and daughters; Bergman's is in an expensive-looking beach house with his warmly supportive spouse (Lindsay Crouse). The filmmakers seem to be bending over backward--even now--to protect Wigand from appearing to have disclosed what he disclosed too early. I admire their consideration for their subject, but in its wake come all kinds of narrative fuzziness. The movie isn't clear on where the secret report that kicked off Bergman's interest in tobacco came from, or who in the FDA thought it was a good idea to turn him onto Wigand. It's left vague just when Bergman decided that Wigand was important not for what he might say about that report but about the industry as a whole. Mann must have had legal constraints that rivaled those at 60 Minutes . The FBI, which responds to a death threat, carries off Wigand's computer while he sputters that it contains all his important data. The implication is that the local FBI office is in cahoots with Brown & Williamson, but we hear no more about it; we never even know if Wigand got his computer back. And there's no dramatic payoff with the chillingly satanic tobacco company president (Michael Gambon) whose threats first make Wigand think about going public. Given how many lawyers must have vetted this thing, it's probably an achievement that Mann got as much as he did on the screen. Should Mike Wallace be pissed off? Depends what really happened. In a delicious turn, Christopher Plummer makes the co-anchor less a journalist than a pompous prima donna, but he also gives him a bullying force and real charisma. It's not Wallace's initial caving-in to the network--"I'm with Don on this," he tells Bergman--that does him the most damage. It's the scene in a posh restaurant in which Wallace regards the Wigands' paroxysms of fear over the coming 60 Minutes interview with aristocratic contempt. He says, "Who are these people?"--which opens the door for Bergman's too-pat rebuke: "Ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances, Mike. What do you expect? Grace and consistency?" It's Wallace's lack of interest in Wigand's story--the movie's most powerful--that damns him in the audience's eyes. The Insider doesn't note a couple of key, maybe hopeful ironies. The first is that CBS's "spiking" of the interview turned Wigand into an even bigger story than he would have been otherwise. And in the "Where are they now?" titles at the end, the filmmakers omit the most important detail of Bergman's and Wigand's current lives: that they're being played by Al Pacino and Russell Crowe in a major Hollywood movie, and that they're big news again. Is there a less savory subgenre than the hardcore forensics thriller? A corpse is discovered in a grotesque state of mutilation, then the scene shifts to an autopsy room where skulls are popped off and innards held up for inspection. A short time later, detectives pore over glossies of fatal wounds. Yummy. In The Bone Collector , the wily serial killer leaves clues for the brainy forensics expert, played by Denzel Washington--clues that amount to a forensics jigsaw puzzle. If Washington solves the puzzle fast enough, he has a shot at saving the latest manacled and tortured victim; if not, he has to scour the gore-drenched death scene for clues to the next murder. Yummy yummy. One fact quickly becomes apparent: "The perp knows forensics," murmurs Washington. Yummy yummy yummy. The rub is that Washington is a quadriplegic. He can't "walk the grid"--he needs a pair of eyes as sensitive as his but attached to a good pair of legs. As luck would have it, they're attached to a very good pair of legs and a great pair of breasts. Angelina Jolie plays the cop who discovers a body and snaps some photos that convince Washington she has a "gift" for forensics. He dispatches his new protégé to grisly crime scenes, purring into her headphones and demanding to know what she sees. Better than phone sex! He says, "I want to know what you feel in the deepest recesses of your senses," and "Follow the instincts you were born with. ... Process the body." I was thinking that she could process my body anytime, but Jolie rises above such adolescent spasms. Well, almost. She's a thoughtful actress, but she wasn't born to play a beat cop. Those tire-tread lips are model lips; those exquisitely chiseled cheekbones, model cheekbones. Washington scans her file on his fancy bedside computer: Guess what? She was a teen-age model! Clever save! The Bone Collector is less rancid than the last big serial-killer-fetishist picture, Copycat (1995), and it's expertly shot and edited. Phillip Noyce, the director, and Dean Semler, the cinematographer, cook up some eerily muzzy images inside the brackish tunnels and abandoned warehouses where the fiend does his/her demented surgery. But the film is still a piece of exploitive schlock. A mediocre mystery, too: It never approaches the ingenuity of Thomas Harris, still the maestro of forensic porn. For some reason, Noyce telegraphs the identity of the killer halfway through (does he mean to? Or does the hammy framing give it away by accident?), but it's left to the laughably garish climax for the wacko to spell out his/her arbitrary motive. (The killer's lines are on the level of: "You think I'm m-m-mad, don't you?") The only aspect of The Bone Collector that can't be derided is Washington. The option of walking through the part clearly not available to him, he doesn't sleep through it either: Every muscle in this man's ruined body seems to strain against his fate while the wheels in his brain grind fiercely. He deserves a smarter psycho--a smarter movie, too.

test

20042

Dead Head Back when I was a journalist--before I became a provider of digital content--I thought life would always be simple: I would write articles, and people would pay to read them. But then I heard about the impending death of intellectual property, a scenario painted by cyberfuturists John Perry Barlow and Esther Dyson. As all media move online, they say, content will be so freely available that getting paid to produce it will be hard, if not impossible. At first, I dismissed this as garden-variety, breathless overextrapolation from digerati social theorists. But even as I scoffed, the Barlow-Dyson scenario climbed steadily toward the rank of conventional wisdom. Barlow and Dyson do have a solution. In the future people like me, having cultivated a following by providing free content on the Web, will charge our devotees for services that are hard to replicate en masse. We will answer individual questions online, say, or go around giving speeches, or spew out insights at private seminars, or (this one is actually my idea) have sex with young readers. The key, writes Barlow, will be not content but "performance." Barlow, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, offers this analogy: The Dead let people tape concerts, and the tapes then led more people to pay for the concerts. The seminal version of the Barlow-Dyson thesis is Barlow's 10,000-word 1994 essay in Wired . It is with some trepidation that I challenge the logic of this argument. Barlow is a noted visionary, and he is famously derisive of people less insightful than himself (a group which, in his opinion, includes roughly everyone). He says, for example, that the ability of courts to deal correctly with cyberissues depends on the "depth of the presiding judge's clue-impairment." Well, at the risk of joining Barlow's long roster of the clue-impaired, here goes. Barlow's argument begins with a cosmic premise: "Digital technology is detaching information from the physical plane, where property law of all sorts has always found definition." This is wrong on two counts. First, all information does take physical form. Whether digital or analog, whether in ink or sound waves or synaptic firings or electrons, information always resides in patterns of matter or energy (which, as Einstein noted, are interchangeable manifestations of the physical world). To be sure, the significance of information is independent of its particular physical incarnation. So is its value. You download this article from Slate's servers and copy it onto your own hard disk, and it's still worth--well, nothing, but that's a . Suppose it were a Madonna video: You'd get just as much enjoyment out of it regardless of which particular bunch of electrons embodied it. B >ut this independence of meaning and value from physical incarnation is nothing new. It is as old as Sumerian tablets, to say nothing of the Gutenberg press. Indeed, the whole reason intellectual-property law exists is that people can acquire your information without acquiring the particular physical version of it that you created. Thus Barlow's belief that "property law of all sorts" has always "found definition" on the "physical plane" signals a distressing confusion on his part. The one sense in which it's true that information is "detached" from the "physical plane"--the fact that information's value transcends its physical incarnation--not only fails to qualify as an original insight, and not only fails to make intellectual-property rights obsolete; it's the very insight that led to intellectual-property rights in the first place! Barlow announces from the mountaintop: "It's fairly paradigm warping to look at information through fresh eyes--to see how very little it is like pig iron or pork bellies." Maybe so, but it's hard to say for sure, since the people who really did take that fresh look have been dead for centuries. If you somehow forced Barlow to articulate his thesis without the wacky metaphysics, he'd probably say something like this: The cost of copying and distributing information is plummeting--for many purposes, even approaching zero. Millions of people can now do it right at their desks. So in principle, content can multiply like fruit flies. Why should anyone buy an article when a copy can be had for nothing? Answer: Because it can't. The total cost of acquiring a "free" copy includes more than just the copying-and-transmitting costs. There's 1) the cost--in time and/or money--of finding someone who already has a copy, and will give it to you for free or for cheap; 2) the risk of getting caught stealing intellectual property; 3) any premiums you pay to others for incurring such risks (as when you get copies from bootleggers); and 4) informal punishments such as being labeled a cheat or a cheapskate. The size of this last cost will depend on how norms in this area evolve. Even in the distant future, the total cost of cheating on the system, thus figured, will almost never be zero. Yes, it will be way, way closer to zero than it used to be. But the Barlow-Dyson scenario still is wrong. Why? Because whether people cheat doesn't depend on the absolute cost of cheating. It depends on the cost of cheating compared with the cost of not cheating. And the cost of getting data legally will plummet roughly as fast as the cost of getting it illegally--maybe faster. In their writings, Barlow and Dyson make clear they're aware of this fact. But they seems unaware of its fatal impact on their larger thesis. How could cybersages have such a blind spot? One theory: Because they're cyber sages. You have to be a career paleohack like me, getting paid for putting ink on paper, to appreciate how much of the cost of legally acquiring bits of information goes into the ink and paper and allied anachronisms, like shipping, warehousing, and displaying the inky paper. I wrote a book that costs $14 in paperback. For each copy sold, I get $1. The day may well come, as Barlow and Dyson seem to believe, when book publishers as we know them will disappear. People will download books from Web sites and either print them out on new, cool printers or read them on superlight wireless computers. But if so, it will then cost you only $1--oh hell, make it $1.25--to get a copy of my book legally from my Web site. Now imagine being at my Web site, reading my promotional materials, and deciding you'd like to read the book. (Thank you.) A single keystroke will give you the book, drain your bank account of five shiny quarters, and leave you feeling like an honest, upstanding citizen. Do you think you'll choose, instead, to call a few friends in hopes of scoring an illegal copy? And don't imagine that you can just traipse on over to the "black-market book store" section of the Web and find a hot copy of my book. As in the regular world, the easier it is for Joe Consumer to track down an illegal distributor, the easier it is for cops to do the same. Black marketeers will have to charge enough to make up for this risk, making it hard to undersell my $1.25 by much. And there are , too, why the cost of cheating will be nontrivial. M >eanwhile, on the other side of the ledger, there's another reason for the cost of legal copies to drop. Many journalists will reach a much larger audience on the Web than they do now. The "magazine" model of bringing information to the attention of readers is stunningly inefficient. I hope it's not egotistical of me to think that when I write an article for, say, the New Republic , I am not reaching nearly everyone who might have an interest in it. Granted, the Web is not yet a picture of efficiency itself. Search engines, for example, are in the reptilian phase of their evolution. But most observers--certainly the Barlows of the world--expect radical improvement. (I'm not saying all journalists will see their audiences grow. The likely trend, when you , will be for many obscure and semiobscure journalists to see their audiences grow, while the few rich and famous journalists will see their audiences shrink. Cool.) One much-discussed cybertrend is especially relevant here: the scenario in which various data brokers offer a "Daily Me," a batch of articles tailored to your tastes, cheaply gleaned from all over the Web. When this happens, guys like me will be living the life of Riley. We will wake up at noon, stumble over to the keyboard in our pajamas, hammer out 1,000 words, and then--without talking to a single bothersome editor--make our work available to all data brokers. Likely fans of my article will be shown, say, the first couple of paragraphs. If they want to read more, they deposit a quarter. Will you try to steal a copy instead? Do you steal Tootsie pops at checkout counters? The broker and the electronic cash service will pocket a dime of that. I take my 15 cents and head for the liquor store. Of course, this "disaggregation of content" may be ruinous for magazines like Slate. But consider the upside. Not only will the efficiency of the system permit rock-bottom pricing that discourages cheating, but the fluidity of content will disrupt channels of potential cheating. If you subscribe to a regular, old-fashioned online magazine, it's easy to split the cost of a subscription with a few friends and furtively make copies. (You wretched scum.) But if you subscribe to the "Daily Me," this arrangement makes no sense, because every Me is different. Sure, you may e-mail a friend the occasional article from your "Me." (You wretched scum.) And, in general, this sort of "leakage" will be higher than in pre-Web days. But it would have to reach massive proportions to negate the overall gains in efficiency that will keep people like me in business. This argument, like all arguments about the future, is speculative. It may even be wrong. But it is consistent with the history of the world. The last half-millennium has seen 1) data getting cheaper and easier to copy; and 2) data-creation occupying a larger and larger fraction of all economic activity. Thus far, in other words, as the realm of information has gotten more lubricated, it has become easier , not harder, to make a living by generating information. Cyberspace is essentially a quantum leap in lubrication. Barlow's insistence that intellectual property will soon be worthless is especially puzzling since he is one of the biggest troubadours of the Third Wave information economy. Sometimes he seem to think it's possible for a sector of a market economy to get bigger and bigger even while the connection between work and reward in that sector breaks down. He writes: "Humanity now seems bent on creating a world economy primarily based on goods that take no material form. In doing so, we may be eliminating any predictable connection between creators and a fair reward for the utility or pleasure others may find in their works." Far out, man.

test

20045

Speech and Spillover The Supreme Court probably will overturn the notorious Communications Decency Act. But the issues are not as cut-and-dried as some might suggest. By Eugene Volokh (1,777 words; posted Thursday, July 18; to be composted Thursday, July 25) One of the great recurring problems in free-speech law is spillover. Free speech, the Supreme Court has held, has limits: Some speech is so harmful and so lacking in redeeming value that it may be restricted. Threats, blackmail, and false advertising are obvious examples. There's no right to say, "Your money or your life" to a stranger in a dark alley; there's no right to spread intentional falsehoods about your product or your enemy's character. The Supreme Court likewise has held, rightly or wrongly, that minors have no right to see very sexually explicit material, and that people (except, perhaps, the minors' parents) have no right to distribute such material to them. Psychologists and philosophers can debate this, but as a constitutional matter, the question is settled. But it's often impossible to keep such materials from children without also denying them to adults. Bookstores can check customers' ages, but TV broadcasters, muralists, or people who post things on the Internet can't. The law can allow public display of this material, protecting adults' access but also making it available to children; or the law can prohibit public display, insulating children but also restricting adults. Either way there's spillover. Either the restriction spills over onto speech that should be free, or the freedom spills over onto speech that, in the judgment of most legislators, voters, and judges, should be restricted. This spillover problem is a recurring question in First Amendment law. The law cannot restrict all harmful, valueless speech and at the same time protect all valuable speech. A classic illustration of the spillover problem is the Communications Decency Act, passed earlier this year in an attempt to stop "indecency" on the Internet. A three-judge federal court was probably correct in striking down the CDA June 11. But the judges' opinions don't squarely face the spillover problem. Perhaps--contrary to the suggestions of some Supreme Court cases--spillover questions should always be resolved in favor of free speech. Perhaps children's increased vulnerability is a price worth paying for extra freedom for adults. But it's important to confront honestly both what's being lost and gained in the process. The most controversial part of the CDA prohibits anyone from "us[ing] an interactive computer service" "to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age" "any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication" "that, in context, depicts or describes," "in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards," "sexual or excretory activities or organs." Virtually any sort of speech in the public areas of cyberspace is available to minors, so the law really applies to all such areas, including Web sites, Internet newsgroups, e-mail discussion lists, chat rooms, and bulletin boards. And "patently offensive" can cover a lot of territory. Many profanities might be considered "patently offensive" descriptions of "sexual or excretory activities or organs," especially under the standards of some conservative communities. Putting a David Mamet play on your Web site, thus, might be a crime. The term "patently offensive" is vague enough that no one knows for sure, but the wise user will take a conservative approach. Given some recent Supreme Court decisions, it seems unlikely that the vagueness alone would make the act unconstitutional. But there's no doubt that the law's vagueness does indeed make it more likely to stifle someone's freedom of expression. The CDA, though ostensibly intended to protect children, clearly has a spillover effect on adults. Adults generally have the right to see material that's "patently offensive." There are two exceptions to this: child pornography (sexually explicit pictures made using child models) and "obscenity"--but both are much smaller categories than the CDA's "indecency." May the government, in its quest to shield children, restrict the online choices of grownups? Or to look at it the other way: Must the courts, in order to protect the freedom of grownups, restrict the government's ability to shield children? The Supreme Court precedents are unclear. In a 1957 case called Butler vs. Michigan , a state law barred distribution of material that might be unsuitable for minors. The court concluded that such a ban was unconstitutional. The law, it said, "reduce[d] the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children. ... Surely, this is to burn the house to roast the pig." The court agreed that the state could bar distribution of such stuff directly to children. But clearly, such limited restrictions don't work as well as a total ban. The court apparently was willing to tolerate some perceived harm to children in order to protect the freedom of adults. But in some recent cases, the court has taken a different approach. One such case is the oft-criticized FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation (1978). The Pacifica court upheld a ban on "indecency"--George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" monologue--on radio and television broadcasts "when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience." The spillover was clear: Adults were deprived of access to certain materials on certain media (radio and television) during most hours. But the justices were willing to allow such a restriction of adults' access to speech in order to shield children. Pacifica is a narrow decision, and there's language in it suggesting that it only applies to over-the-air broadcasting. But in this year's cable indecency case, known as Denver Consortium , four Supreme Court justices were willing to use Pacifica as a guide for cable television as well as over-the-air broadcasting. (The CDA court's decision was written before Denver Consortium was handed down.) And during the last 10 years, some lower courts have upheld bans on public display of sexually explicit material that's not technically "obscene" on the grounds that the law may shield children even if this keeps, say, a would-be muralist from communicating to adults. The Supreme Court hasn't spoken on these specific statutes. Another important, though somewhat ambiguous, precedent is Sable Communications vs. FCC (1990), in which the court struck down a ban on dial-a-porn. The government argued the ban was needed to protect children. But the court pointed out that there might be "less restrictive alternatives" that would insulate children without entirely banning the medium. For example, the court said, the government could require services to take credit-card numbers, or require phone companies to let parents block area-code-900 phone calls. Still, the court was willing to tolerate some spillover; after all, even the alternatives it suggested would deny access to some adults. And it also hinted that it might even allow a total ban if such alternatives could be shown to be inadequate. Denver Consortium followed the same pattern: It struck down a restriction on indecent speech because there were other effective alternatives available; but it suggested that such a restriction might be constitutional if it were, in fact, the only effective way to shield children. Sable and Denver Consortium make clear that the court won't tolerate unnecessary spillover onto adults. But on the tough question--what happens if it's impossible to shield minors without burdening adults?--there's an unresolved tension. Butler says that the speech must be allowed. Pacifica , Sable , and now Denver Consortium suggest that the speech may be restricted. On the Internet, is it possible to shield children without restricting adults? Parents can get software--SurfWatch is one popular brand--that keeps their computers from accessing any place that's on a list of "dirty" locations, a list selected and frequently updated by the software designers. If the government wanted to, it could buy SurfWatch (for a fraction of what it would cost to enforce the CDA) and give it away to parents. Could this be the "less restrictive alternative" that the government could use instead of CDA's total ban? Well, it depends on how much shielding of children you're willing to sacrifice. The SurfWatch solution is limited by the software designers' ability to keep up with the latest "dirty" places. Dozens of Web sites are being added daily, and you never know what will get posted tomorrow even on existing sites or newsgroups. Some things will inevitably be missed. The purely technological fix, then, is less restrictive than the CDA, but it's also less effective. The CDA, of course, won't be perfect, either--many will flout it, and Web sites in other countries won't be bound by it--but the ban plus the technological fix probably will shield children better than the technological fix alone. Does this extra protection justify the considerable spillover? The precedents don't answer this. There's a hybrid technological and legal approach that might be more effective, and thus more likely to be the sort of "less restrictive alternative" that would make the total ban invalid. The law might demand that online material be rated--that any sufficiently sexually explicit text or image be marked "dirty" in a way that computers can easily recognize. Parents could then set up their children's computers to block access to these pages. Alternatively, the software could assume that any page is dirty unless it's labeled "clean," with the law making it illegal to falsely mark "clean" a page that's actually dirty. Many people, of course, might misrate their material--intentionally or accidentally. But the CDA will be intentionally or accidentally violated, too. In fact, a rating requirement might be more effective than a total ban. People may be more willing to comply with the rating law, since it would let them continue selling their wares or expressing their views. Still, ratings won't shield children using computers that don't have the rating software turned on. And no one knows how often this will happen. The CDA is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. Some say the justices should simply rule that sexually explicit material isn't as dangerous for children as it's cracked up to be, and therefore, free speech should prevail. But many people, probably including the justices, are willing to accept that sexually explicit material is indeed harmful to children. Other CDA critics assert that the technological alternatives will shield children every bit as well as a total ban would, and that the CDA therefore is entirely unnecessary. But that too will be hard to prove. Ultimately, then, the justices will have to make a hard choice: sacrifice some shielding of children in order to protect the freedom of grownups, or sacrifice some access by grownups in order to shield children. My guess is that the marginal benefit of the CDA over the technological alternatives is small enough, and the burden that the law creates is large enough, that the CDA will be overturned. But it's a closer question than many might think.

test

20047

The Norplant Option Now that Congress and President Clinton have opted to use the threat of utter destitution to dissuade poor teen-agers and women from having children on the public dole, it's time to revive a more humane, and perhaps more effective, proposal with the same objective. This idea surfaced briefly and spectacularly in 1990, when the Philadelphia Inquirer suggested in an editorial that perhaps some welfare mothers should be "offered an increased benefit" if they would agree to practice effective birth control--specifically, to use the then-new Norplant contraceptive, which prevents pregnancy for five years after being implanted under the skin of the upper arm. An uproar followed. The editorial writers--who had insensitively suggested a desire to reduce births of poor black babies in particular--were savaged by many Inquirer staffers and others as racist advocates of eugenics, even of "genocide." They also caught it from some abortion-rights zealots, who are suspicious of any government efforts to influence reproductive choices, and from conservatives, who think the only proper way to discourage teen pregnancy is to preach abstinence. The newspaper abjectly apologized for a "misguided and wrongheaded editorial opinion." And ever since, the whole subject has been taboo. But it's still a good idea, for poor girls and women themselves, and for the rest of us. Millions of babies are being born to poor teen-agers so lacking in elementary skills, work habits, and self-discipline that they are unlikely to be either responsible parents or self-supporting providers. Many of these babies grow up in squalor and themselves become dependent denizens of the welfare culture. The only realistic hope for breaking the bleak cycle of teen pregnancy and welfare dependency is to find ways to persuade poor teen-agers not to have babies--at least, not until they are old enough, and capable enough, and self-supporting enough to provide a decent home life. But nobody--nobody--has any great ideas for realizing this hope, short of reverting to the cruelest, let-'em-starve brand of social Darwinism. Thoughtful progressives like Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., have properly stressed the need to push welfare mothers into jobs and job-training programs. This makes sense because some of these women will rise to the occasion, learn the work ethic, and become self-supporting. And others may be dissuaded from having children by the prospect of being required to work. But (as Moynihan acknowledges) many welfare mothers are so crippled by their own early childhood environments as to be essentially unemployable, no matter how well-financed and well-run the jobs programs and related counseling, training, and child-care programs. And under the harsh new welfare reform, the jobs programs will not be well financed. It appears that millions of welfare mothers and children will simply be cut off--unable to get or hold jobs, and left to beg from relatives and strangers, to steal what they can, even to sleep on the streets, depending on how much Calcutta-style misery the taxpayers are willing to tolerate. Given the stark ugliness of trying to end the welfare culture by spreading homelessness and hunger, it's especially striking that one pretty good, pretty humane idea has been virtually ignored in the welfare debate of the past year. In a small effort to reopen discussion of this option, here's a specific proposal: States should experiment with programs in which all qualifying teen-agers and women would be offered lump-sum $1,000 cash payments--on top of any other benefits they receive--to have Norplant (or another long-term contraceptive) implanted at government expense. They would be free to have it removed whenever they chose, but would be rewarded with additional payments (of, say, $30) for each month in which they kept it. The category of qualifying teen-agers and women could include all recipients of welfare or other public assistance (including daughters of recipients) who are competent to give informed consent to the implant procedure. Or the program could be restricted in various ways in order to blunt possible objections. For example, you could require parental consent. Or, eligibility could be restricted to those who have already been pregnant, or at least sexually active; to those over age 13, or under age 21; or some combination thereof. Why Norplant? Because it requires no ongoing effort or supervision to be effective, and it can be discontinued only after some (rather small) effort. As such, Norplant is the only contraceptive the government could pay people to use with any hope of affecting those who aren't strongly motivated to either become pregnant or avoid pregnancy. How much good the Norplant option would do is debatable. But the arguments that it would do harm seem unpersuasive. Here's a quick review of possible objections, left and right: B ribing poor women and girls to implant Norplant would coerce them into not having children, thus violating their rights to reproductive choice, like the one-child-per-family policy and coerced abortions in China. To the contrary, a government offer of money is not coercion--and not even remotely comparable to what goes on in China. Existing benefits would not be reduced for anyone declining Norplant. This means that nobody who really wanted a child would be prevented from having one. To be sure, the government would be trying to influence reproductive choices. But the same is true of existing policies promoting free contraception, and of laws like the Hyde Amendment, which denies Medicaid funding for abortions--not to mention the still extant statutes making it a crime to commit statutory rape (sex with a consenting minor), fornication (premarital sex), and adultery. In its groveling 1990 editorial apology, the Inquirer said: "Our critics countered that to dangle cash or some other benefit in front of a desperately poor woman is tantamount to coercion. They're right." No, they were wrong, and the Inquirer was right in its initial Norplant editorial, when it noted that women would be free to "change their minds at any point and become fertile again." "Many people," David Boldt, then-editor of the Inquirer's editorial page, noted in a subsequent commentary, "saw the editorial as part of an ongoing white conspiracy to carry out genocide of blacks in America." This is pernicious nonsense, no matter how many people say it. The original Inquirer editorial unwittingly invited such smears by linking its Norplant proposal to race--specifically, to a report that nearly half the nation's black children are living in poverty. But nobody is proposing that race be a factor in any program promoting Norplant to welfare recipients, most of whom are white. Nobody is proposing to sterilize women or forbid them from having children. And while a disproportionate percentage of welfare mothers and children are black, black America, like white America, can only benefit from any program that rewards people for avoiding pregnancy unless and until they are old enough and self-supporting enough to provide decently for children. G irls and women on Norplant may be at greater risk of contracting and spreading AIDS, because they will be less likely to demand that their sex partners use condoms. A 1994 study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine found that Norplant had no effect on recipients' decisions whether to use condoms or visit doctors--and was 19 times as effective as the pill in preventing pregnancy. Any Norplant incentive program should include vigorous counseling about the need to use condoms against disease. But even now, how many women and girls are so much more afraid of pregnancy than of death that they use condoms solely to avoid the former, and would stop once on Norplant? Not many, I suspect. N orplant itself may be unhealthy. The possibility of serious long-term health damage from any relatively new contraceptive like Norplant must be taken seriously, and the risks should, of course, be fully disclosed to women considering using it. But no contraceptive is risk-free. And the available evidence indicates that the risks inherent in pregnancy and childbirth--and in abortion--are at least as great as the risks inherent in Norplant. Plaintiffs' tort lawyers have nearly killed off Norplant, scaring away many women and doctors, by a torrent of personal-injury suits against its manufacturer. The lawyers include many of the same folks who created a tidal wave of litigation based on the apparently bogus claim about the dangers of silicone breast implants. But the Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly found Norplant to be safe and effective. More than a million women have used it with only minor side effects, such as changing menstrual bleeding patterns, reported. There have been complaints by a small percentage of Norplant users of severe pain or scarring from having it removed. But the apparent reason was inadequate training of physicians in the (usually quick and painless) removal procedure--an easily remedied problem--and not any inherent defect in the product. I t is sexist to seek to thrust contraception only upon women. Sexism has nothing to do with it. First, almost all welfare checks are written to women--not to men, who don't get pregnant. Second, the only forms of contraception now available for men are condoms and vasectomies. It would hardly make sense to hand out $1,000 payments to men for taking home a bunch of condoms, or to try to police their use. And a vasectomy--unlike a Norplant implant-- cannot always be reversed. Giving teen-agers contraceptives encourages promiscuity, and bribing them to use Norplant will encourage it even more. The weight of the evidence suggests that teen-agers' decisions whether or not to engage in sexual activity don't have much to do with whether the government gives them contraceptives. Many have unprotected sex, and almost all can get contraceptives if they want them. As I have suggested, one possible restriction (although not one I would favor) on any Norplant incentive program would be to limit eligibility to teen-agers who have already been pregnant or, at least, sexually active. Norplant counselors could also stress the benefits of abstinence, while presenting the contraceptive as a backup safeguard. T een-agers should learn about sex and contraception from their parents, not the government. A parental-consent requirement would answer this objection. I would not advocate such a requirement, however, because of the overwhelming evidence that many parents have little or no constructive communication with their children about such matters. I hope that my own two daughters (now 12 and nine years old) would consult with me and my wife before getting Norplant or becoming sexually active. But if they end up deciding to go their own ways, I'd rather that they have unrestricted access to Norplant than that they risk pregnancy. Would a Norplant program be thwarted by the fact that many poor teen-agers actually want to get pregnant and have a child? I don't think so. First, there are about 3 million unwanted pregnancies in the United States every year, half of which end in abortion. Many of these involve teen-agers and women who are (or will be) on welfare. Norplant could stop almost all these. Second, the allure of pregnancy for many other poor teen-agers may be so slight, or so fleeting, or so fraught with ambivalence, that a $1,000 Norplant incentive would have plenty of takers. And even if such a program only delayed pregnancies a few years, that would be a very good thing. Most 15-year-olds would be better mothers, and have a better chance of making something of their own lives, if they waited five or seven years before having babies. Norplant is no panacea for poverty; nothing is. The question is whether a Norplant incentive program might do some good. There's only one way to find out: Give it a try. If it fails, the cost--in terms of numbers of teen-agers and women taking the $1,000 offer--will be tiny. And it just might help.

test

20039

What So Different About Cyberspace? It seems as though the initial round of discussion between Larry and myself has produced a "two cultures" problem, which it is worth setting out briefly here. Over the past several years I have had extensive contact with the Internet, not only as an academic but also as a lawyer. But it is not because of any affection for, or preoccupation with its technical architecture, or with its internal folkways. Rather, I have come to it by indirection. If you have an expertise in privacy and defamation, then someone will ask you to testify on the question of whether one should allow strong encryption by private parties on the Net, or whether the publication online of confidential information obtained by fraud or trickery is protected under the First Amendment. For someone who sees the Internet as the latest advance in technology, which is not all that different from the radio, the cell phone, or the fax machine, there is a strong tendency to see issues on the Internet as though they were outgrowths of familiar problems elsewhere. I thought (and still think) that one of the great strengths of Larry's book is the way in which he integrates nice examples from physical space with those from cyberspace. Thus he is right on to say that there are two ways in which to reduce the theft of car radios (Page 90), one of them is to increase the punishment for theft, and the other is to render them useless once they are taken out of the car by someone who does not know the code (old-fashioned sense) for their release. Here I might add that the second remedy is, in conventional terms, a better one that the first. The higher penalties will have multiple effects: One is to reduce the number of thefts, but another is to encourage more violent action by the thieves that remain when faced with the risk of capture. The marginal cost of killing an innocent party would be quite low if the sanction for stealing radios were life imprisonment for first-time offenders. But the puzzles of marginal deterrence are not invoked if the radios are disabled when removed, and so architecture, or technology, works nicely in real space, and it should work well in cyberspace to avoid similar problems. So far so good. No one could doubt that architecture matters in cyberspace. The ability to limit the number of times that someone can resort to a computer program, for example, means that technology allows for a form of price discrimination that eliminates some of the unwelcome cross-subsidies associated with the sale of certain programs, just as an accurate billing system means that pricing for phones is not subject to flat fees only. Here again, the point is useful to make but does not get us to the question of the proper approach for understanding the distinctive use and regulation of cyberspace. So we come to the third point: Larry mentions that the original architecture of cyberspace was given to us by researchers and hackers. And so it was. The usual ethic among both groups is for the public dissemination of information. With researchers, the community I know best, the free interchange of ideas of critical for the advancement of knowledge. There are no secrets in this world. But many of the best researchers also have jobs that require them to work for industry, where the protection of innovation via trade secrets and patents is the norm, and for equally good reason: Business cannot turn a profit if all its improvements are instantly appropriable by others. Now, it happens that the best minds are frequently used for both research and commerce, and we have to develop protocols, and we do develop protocols, that deal with the potential conflict of interest as they move from one regime to another. And in ordinary space we have both public and private property, with the same individuals participating in both regimes. In ordinary affairs, I do not think that the rise of commerce results in the loss of liberty. As a member of the university community, I have worked over the years in setting out the guidelines to deal with conflicts-of-interest regulations that allow most people to participate in both. I see no reason why that cannot happen in cyberspace as well. Those people who wish to set up commercial portals through which others must come do not violate the liberty of those who choose not to enter. The different values are certainly there, but the Net is a richer and not a poorer place by virtue of the fact that some folks can live in gated communities while others can run free over a commons on some other part of the Net. There is no more loss of freedom here in any intelligible sense that there is a loss of freedom when my neighbor erects a new house to which he invites only his friends. Of course, the values in commerce are different from those in the code (i.e., practices) of the Internet. But these new arrivals will not, as Larry suggests, "flip" the character of the Net. The original enclaves can hold firm as new people open up new territory. The Net is not some single homogenous object that admits to only a single culture. We can have private and public, commercial and charitable, spaces on the Net, just as we do anywhere else. If in so doing we change the character of the Net, we do so by proper means, and so be it. That said, how does this tie into the grander questions of what a libertarian does or should believe. Larry says that his point was really that the attitude of "leave the Net alone" will lead to a loss of liberty. His words are ominous: "My argument is that this response will lead to a Net with far less liberty than the Net we know now, with a potential to be far more regulated than any world we have known--ever." I don't get it. In one sense, the statement is right. If folks can defame at will on the Internet and escape through anonymity, there is something deeply amiss. But if the argument is that commercialization poses the same dreaded threat to the Net as defamation, then I think that he is wrong, given that the two could live side by side in the manner just described. These conclusions follow, I think, from any account of libertarianism that pays attention to the views within the ivory tower. It is, I might add, relatively close to that which is given the idea of liberty by the ordinary man. "Your freedom to use your fist stops at the edge of my face" is a recognition of the universal duties of forbearance that lie at the heart of the libertarian code. But I am told that there is a different world out there that represents some present and powerful political reality: It is a world in which it is wrong to think about defamation, wrong to think about trade secrets, wrong to think about blackmail. That would make me a Red. So here is the irony. To take a traditional libertarian position makes one a Red. If this libertarianism has the message keep government out, then perhaps it is wrong to describe this as a form of anarchy. Rather, it starts to resemble a self-appointed militia that wants to keep out others who do not want to share in their values. It is the most unlibertarian position of a monopoly on custom and mores to the early arrivals. That said, I don't think that Larry has tried in Code to respond to the popular sentiment on the street. The passages I quoted in the first round come from Chapter 7 of his book, "What Things Regulate," which begins with a reference to that most ivory-towered individual John Stuart Mill, the author of On Liberty , who articulated the famous "harm principle" with which libertarian thought of all stripes has grappled since he wrote. Mill, as Larry points out, did believe that public opinion was one counterweight to private action, and it has been a hard question since that time, whether popular sentiment is an equal obstacle to individual freedom as law backed by force, or whether it works with sufficient cohesion to influence conduct in a single direction. That is a fair and important set of questions to ask, but again, it is not one that is unique to cyberspace. Larry then goes astray in my view when he writes, "Threats to liberty change. ... The labor movement was founded on the idea that the market is sometimes a threat to liberty--not just because of low wages but also because the market form of organization itself disables a certain form of freedom. In other societies, at other times, the market is the key, not the enemy, of liberty." (Page 85-86). So here is where I am left. I do not understand how the market is the enemy of liberty, at least if the competitive market is understood. I do not see why low wages could ever be regarded as a threat to liberty, even if workers would prefer, ceteris paribus , higher ones. I do not know what it means to say that "the market form of organization itself disables a certain form of freedom." At most, the competition of new forms of social organization draw people away from older forms of association. So that said, the passages that I quote do not reflect a non-academic view of liberty by guys on the street. It reflects at least in part the conception of liberty that was championed earlier in this century by such writers as Robert Lee Hale, who found coercion in every refusal to deal. Or, to the extent that it really means keep the government out, it sounds like an attempt by the earlier settlers of the new domain to monopolize its structure at the expense of later comers who wish to play by a different set of rules in some portion of that space. I think that Larry is trying to reach a larger audience with his book, and to do so, he has to explain why under the influence of commerce, cyberspace is becoming highly regulable for those who do not participate in that commerce, and why the regulation that commerce imposes on those who voluntarily join into it should be a bad thing. Stated otherwise, the task that I think remains is to translate the language and sentiments of those within the Internet culture so that their positions can be better understood by those of us who do not yet understand what is so distinctive and special about the Net.

test

20023

Why You're So Screwed Up Let's stipulate that you are unique, unfathomable, singular, sui generis. Now, let's find out how to categorize you, classify you, and sort you into a group that explains your temperament, your career choices, the strength of your immune system, and your ability to make up puns. Here follows an admittedly random guide to four popular methods designed to explain who you really are. I deliberately picked systems that purport to pinpoint something intrinsic in our natures. I judged the ease of use and applicability of each system, and since all of them illustrate their points with the lives of famous people, I also gauged how successfully each one explains the process by which Gandhi became Gandhi . BIRTH ORDER Would your friends and family say you are more like: a) Carlos the Jackal or b) Martin Luther King Jr.?; a) Phyllis Schlafly or b) Florence Nightingale? According to Frank J. Sulloway, author of Born To Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives , if your loved ones chose a), you are a typical firstborn--an achieving, status conscious, defensive, incipient fascist terrorist. If you're a b), you are certainly a "laterborn"--a bold, compassionate iconoclast. Sulloway is hardly the first to extract personality distinctions from birth order. His twist is to use Darwinism to show how the familial struggle among siblings for parental attention accounts for everything in society from social rebellions to scientific revolutions. In Sulloway's universe, firstborns are dictatorial types who just don't get it, but they're happy to oppress freedom-loving laterborns who do. So how does Sulloway explain that the greatest scientific revolutionary of the 20 th century, Albert Einstein, is a firstborn? He doesn't. Sulloway (surprise! he's the third of four) also thinks his findings should be applied to selecting corporate leaders. In a nutshell: Oldests need not apply. As devoted as he is to birth order as a personality determinant, Sulloway allows other variables to creep into his theory to account for those rare firstborn revolutionaries. "Whenever one encounters a firstborn radical (and family life does occasionally produce them), such individuals are likely to have experienced substantial conflict with a parent. Parent-offspring conflict makes honorary laterborns out of some firstborns." This is a little like saying all men prefer dogs and all women prefer cats. So a man with a cat is either an honorary woman, or the cat is an honorary dog. Ease of Use: Excellent. You already know your own status and it's easy to ask others, "Do you have siblings?" Sulloway also provides a 10-variable formula to measure "Your Own Propensity To Rebel." Applicability: As a method of understanding yourself and others, Sulloway's theory seems rather limited, except if you're in charge of hiring for Slobodan Milosevic. Gandhi Explanation: He was the youngest of four. PERSONALITY Why do people act like that? Hippocrates believed the answer was in the balance of four bodily fluids, or humors--blood, black bile, phlegm, and yellow bile. This notion lives on in our language today. We all know people who are essentially hotblooded, or melancholy (which literally means "black bile"), or phlegmatic, or who view the world with a jaundiced eye. Plato, less interested in humans' inner states than in their behavior as members of the state, redefined the four humors in social terms: as artisans, guardians, rationals, and idealists. According to psychologist David Keirsey, you are one of Plato's four types, you were born that way, you will always be that way, and you can find out which one you are by taking the temperament sorter quiz on his Web site. Sample questions: When the phone rings do you: a) hurry to get it first? or b) hope someone else will answer? Do you find visionaries and theorists: a) somewhat annoying? or b) rather fascinating? Keirsey does not muck around in your excretions in order to determine your personality. His criteria come from Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung by way of an American mother-daughter team named Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, who created the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The two women translated Jung's idea that personality is composed of four pairs of preferences--the most famous being extroverted and introverted--and created a systematic test to discern people's types. Keirsey has redefined these four pairs this way: Expressive (E) or Reserved (I) Observant (S) or Introspective (N) Tough-minded (T) or Friendly (F) Scheduling (J) or Probing (P) [Probing might better be defined as looking for alternatives] The four sets of pairs can be matched up 16 different ways--with Keirsey organizing these into those Platonic groups of four. For example, I'm an NT, which makes me a Rational, therefore naturally curious, restless, and doubting. More specifically I'm an ENTP. As Keirsey writes: "A rough draft is all they need to feel confident and ready to proceed into action. ... [They] have been known to engage in brinkmanship with their superiors. ... [ENTPs] like to spar verbally with their loved ones." OK, he nailed me. As an example of how uncanny the type sorter can be, take Bill Clinton, who Keirsey classifies as an ESFP. In Keirsey's book Please Understand Me II , ESFP's are described as "inclined to be impulsive and self-indulgent, which makes them vulnerable to seduction. ... Pleasure seems to be an end in itself ... they will do what they feel like in the moment rather than what is good for them in the long run ... blaming someone else if things don't turn out well. ... Intent on pleasing everybody, [ESFPs] can appear fickle, even promiscuous, to other types." On the other hand, maybe Clinton is just too hotblooded. Ease of Use: Good. I recommend taking the Temperament Sorter II and ignoring the Character Sorter, which I found confusing and not particularly accurate. Applicability: High. I feel I now understand better why I keep acting that way. It's also given me the sly sense that I know why other people are acting their way. Of course, that's very ENTP of me. Gandhi Explanation: According to Keirsey, Gandhi is an Idealist (an NF), what else? More specifically, an INFJ. "INFJs have an unusually strong desire to contribute to the welfare of others. ... INFJs are scarce, little more than one percent of the population, which is too bad, considering their usefulness in the social order." INTELLIGENCE Until Harvard professor Howard Gardner came along, intelligence was like the Soviet Union: It was large, permanent, and unified. Then in 1983 he published his book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences , which cleaved intelligence into seven components. Recently, like a breakaway republic, Gardner has added an eighth intelligence and is considering a ninth. Gardner rejects the notion that intelligence is a "single, general capacity" that can be measured by taking a test. He believes an intelligence is the ability to "solve problems or create products" in a way that society values--that having it must have conferred an evolutionary advantage to us, and that there is biological evidence for it. That is, an intelligence can be destroyed due to brain injury, which could be called the "man who mistook his wife for a hat" criterion. Gardner says if you excel at one type of intelligence, it has no bearing on whether you'll be skilled at another. Instead of burdening people with eight ways to be inadequate instead of one, multiple intelligence advocates says the theory liberates people to find their own set of strengths. The seven original intelligences are: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal (my favorite, since I have a genius for self-absorption). The latest addition is naturalist intelligence. Gardner defines it as "the ability to recognize and classify plants, minerals and animals." Gardner says you can see it in action in people who know every kind of dinosaur, or sneaker, or automobile. He is also considering adding existential intelligence, which, he says, refers to the inclination to ask: "Who are we? Where do we come from? What's it all about? Why do we die?" This could also be known as the "Oy gevalt " intelligence. Since I felt that his theory left out people who are skilled at the use of the senses of taste and smell, I lobbied him to add culinary intelligence. Gardner wasn't biting. I decided to forgo making a pitch for my own area of brilliance: procrastination intelligence. One of Gardner's missions is to apply his work to the classroom, since he believes schools are designed by people excelling in linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences to reward people who share those intelligences. He also believes that while our propensity toward certain types of intelligence is inborn, our abilities are not fixed. Understanding our areas of strength and weakness, he says, can provide more self-awareness and help users move to a "higher level of skill." Ease of Use: Fair. Gardner says, "Common sense, self-observation, and talking to others should suffice to tell you what is distinctive about your mind." But we want a quiz, Dr. Gardner! One is available in the book 7 Kinds of Smart: Identifying and Developing Your Many Intelligences , by Thomas Armstrong, which offers choices such as, "I enjoy entertaining myself or others with tongue twisters, nonsense rhymes, or puns" and "I find it difficult to sit still for long periods of time." The MIDAS Web site provides descriptions of the intelligences, links to other multiple intelligence sites, and sells multiple intelligence testing materials (prices range from $10 to $35). Applicability: Assessing multiple intelligences probably has most value for schoolchildren or people who feel they have made a wrong career choice. Gandhi Explanation: In Frames of Mind Gardner writes that Gandhi exemplified interpersonal intelligence. BLOOD TYPE What would Hippocrates think of a recent best seller that asserted that our health, diet, and even our personality are determined by our blood type? He would probably get to work on The Bile Bible . But if Hippocrates were Japanese, he wouldn't be at all surprised. They've been obsessed with blood type and personality for almost 30 years. They also choose mates with "compatible" blood types and their corporations assemble work teams based on blood type. Luckily, the Japanese economy died in time to save us from the corporate bloodletting fad. Until now. In Eat Right for Your Type , naturopath Peter J. D'Adamo writes that our ancient genetic heritage is represented today in the four human blood groups--O, A, B, and AB--and that we must follow the nutritional dictates that evolution laid down. He says Type O is the most ancient blood group, the one of the carnivorous big-game hunter, the self-reliant, risk-taking optimist. A later mutation is Type A, he writes, that of people adapting to an agrarian diet, who were cooperative, law-abiding, yet high-strung. Next came Type B from the Mongolian nomads, the most flexible and creative of the blood types. Finally, a modern quirk, is the rare AB, people who are somewhat confused, edgy, sensitive, yet charismatic. According to D'Adamo, eat the right foods for your type and your immune system will be strengthened and you'll lose weight. Unfortunately, D'Adamo's understanding of human origins is, according to Dr. Eric Meikle of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, "completely worthless." According to Meikle, there is no evidence that Type O is the earliest blood type--quite the opposite since A and B occur in chimpanzees. Nor is it likely that humans went from being primarily carnivores to omnivores. Among living hunter-gatherers, he says, most of their calories come from vegetable matter, because bagging game is difficult. "People who are able to eat the most meat are agriculturists," says Meikle. "They keep [animals], raise them, and eat them." Not surprisingly, this kind of information is of little interest when you've got a new companion volume ( Cook Right for Your Type ) to your best seller. Greg Kelly, a naturopath who works in D'Adamo's practice says, "It's not a productive way for me to spend my time debating with people who have a different belief system. We try to help sick people get better." Ease of Use: Ouch. If you know your blood type, it is easy. If you don't, march down to the Red Cross, donate a pint, and they'll tell you. Applicability: Scientific questions aside, I'm an AB (OK, OK, I am charismatic), and I'm not following any diet that encourages me to eat a lot of snails. Gandhi Explanation: None. But D'Adamo's promotional materials do quote Elizabeth Hurley (Type O), in a Cosmopolitan interview, saying she read D'Adamo's "absurd book," followed his plan, and "lost an astounding amount of weight."

test

20050

Temperance Kills First, to prevent any misunderstanding, the warning: Alcohol, when abused, is vicious, dangerous stuff. Each year about 100,000 Americans die alcohol-related deaths. No one should drink and drive or drink to excess. Some people--teen-agers, people on contraindicated medications, pregnant women, and those who have trouble controlling their consumption--should avoid alcohol, period. And all that you know already. Here is what you may not know--or may know only fuzzily. For most people of middle age and beyond, one drink a day helps prevent heart disease and makes you less likely to die prematurely. After one or (for men) two drinks, bad effects swamp the good--dosage is everything! But on average the positive cardiovascular effect of moderate drinking is not small, and it is not in dispute. Epidemiologists figure that if all Americans became teetotalers tomorrow, about 80,000 more people might die each year of heart disease. So there are lives on both sides of the equation. One of those lives might, just as an example, belong to my father. He is 69, has mild hypertension (controlled with medication) and, but for the rare social occasion, doesn't drink. He has read some news reports suggesting moderate alcohol use may yield benefits, but his doctor has never mentioned such benefits, and my father has never given a thought to changing his drinking habits. And, in the standard view of public health officialdom, that is as it should be: People should not be encouraged to drink, even in moderation, and alcohol should not be linked with better health. The trouble is that moderate drinking is linked with better health. We don't know exactly why; some evidence suggests alcohol--of whatever sort, by the way, not just red wine--stimulates "good" (HDL, for high density lipoprotein) cholesterol and may help prevent blood clotting. But we do know the effects: On average, if you're over about 40, a drink a day will reduce your chances of heart trouble. "Besides the association between smoking and lung cancer, I think this is the most consistent association I've seen in the literature," says Eric Rimm, a Harvard epidemiologist. Research has shown heart benefits consistently since the 1970s with, Rimm guesses, 70 or 80 studies of 30 to 35 countries by now. Not surprisingly, he has a drink on most days. Alcohol also causes harm, of course. It can increase chances of breast cancer, cirrhosis, accidents, and so on. Heart disease, however, is an enormous cause of death; improve those odds, and the net effect is significantly to the good. Last December, the New England Journal of Medicine reported the results of the biggest and probably best mortality study yet conducted, one that followed almost half a million people over nine years. It found that, after netting out all causes of death, moderate drinkers over 30 were 20 percent less likely than nondrinkers to die prematurely. But there are a lot of people like my father out there: uninformed or vaguely informed or not thinking about it. In 1995, a free market advocacy group called the Competitive Enterprise Institute commissioned a survey asking people whether they believed "that scientific evidence exists showing that moderate consumption of alcohol, approximately one or two drinks per day, may reduce the risk of heart disease for many people." Only 42 percent of those who responded said they did, and a majority of those believed, wrongly, that the potential benefits come only from wine. The evidence on alcohol and health is now more than 20 years old--so why the confusion? Two groups have a stake in getting the word out, but one of them, the alcohol industry, is effectively forbidden to do so. Every bottle of alcohol carries a government warning label, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has never permitted ads or labels to carry any health claims, even mild ones. (For more on rejected health claims, click here.) Given that the government restricts health claims even for innocuous foods such as orange juice and eggs, it's reasonable to decide that booze merchants are the wrong people to entrust with public education about drinking. That leaves only one other constituency for getting the word out: the public health community. Its approach, however, might charitably be called cautious--or, less charitably, embarrassed mumbling. For example, the authors of the aforementioned New England Journal study characterized their finding of a 20 percent mortality reduction as "slight." The accompanying editorial called it "small." I phoned Michael J. Thun, one of the study's authors and an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society, and asked him whether a 20 percent mortality reduction is indeed small in the world of epidemiology. "It's a sizable benefit in terms of prolonged survival," he said. Why not say so? "Messages about alcohol don't come out the way you say them when they're broadcast," he replied. "There's been a very long history in society of problems with alcohol." The British health authorities, in their 1995 guidelines ("Sensible Drinking"), say that people who drink very little or not at all and are in an age group at high risk for heart disease should "consider the possibility that light drinking might benefit their health." But American authorities balk even at such a modest suggestion. And so the U.S. official nutritional guidelines say just this about potential benefits: "Current evidence suggests that moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk for coronary heart disease in some individuals." They then go on to recite a litany of risks (for the text, click here). Similarly, the American Heart Association's official recommendation advises, "If you drink, do so in moderation." It goes on to say heart disease is lower in moderate drinkers but then warns of other dangers and cautions against "guidelines to the general public" that encourage drinking (for the full text, click here). See for yourself, but I think the message most people would get from both sources is "Drinking isn't all bad, but eschew it anyway." Iasked Ronald Krauss--a doctor who, as the immediate past chairman of the American Heart Association's nutrition committee, helped write that statement--whether it was aggressive enough. "We don't have much leeway around that 'one or two drinks a day,' " he said, and what isn't known is whether encouraging moderate drinking will also encourage excessive drinking. The public health people understandably dread creating more drunks, more broken marriages, more crime, more car wrecks. "When somebody calls you up saying, 'You're putting out a message to people to drink, and my daughter just got killed last night because of some drunk,' that's the other side of the equation," Thun says. "There are substantial numbers of people out there who are looking for justification to drink more than they should." Areal worry. But there are lives, again, on both sides of the equation. The question, then, is what would happen if the public health folks ran a campaign saying, for example, "Just One Drink" or "Drink a Little--Not a Lot." Would people's drinking habits improve, or would we create a nation of drunks--or what? The answer is: Nobody knows. What is surprising, given the public health community's usual eagerness to save lives, is that no one is trying to find out. It is simply assumed that too many people will do the wrong thing. "People have a very hard time with complicated messages," says Thun. No doubt some people do. But is it really so hard to understand that a glass a day may help save your life if you're of middle age or beyond, but that more than that is dangerous? Presumably an avoidable heart attack is equally tragic whether the cause is too much alcohol or too little. To continue today's policy of muttering and changing the subject verges perilously on saying not just that too much alcohol is bad for you but that ignorance is good for you. ENDNOTES Note 1 By law, the label on alcoholic beverages reads: GOVERNMENT WARNING: (1) According to the Surgeon General, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects. (2) Consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems. Back Note 2 The law forbids "curative and therapeutic claims" in alcohol marketing "if such statement is untrue in any particular or tends to create a misleading impression." In practice, the BATF interprets this to mean that any health claim must be fully balanced and says it "considers it extremely unlikely that such a balanced claim would fit on a normal alcoholic beverage label." The only health statement the bureau has said it will accept is a four page government report, complete with 34 footnotes. (You can read that report by clicking here.) According to documents obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in its lawsuit to have the current policy overturned, the statements that the bureau has barred include the following: "Several medical authorities say that a glass or two of wine enjoyed daily is not only a pleasant experience but can be beneficial to an adult's health." "Having reviewed modern research on the benefits of modest wine consumption, we believe that our wine, when enjoyed with wholesome food, will promote health and enhance the pleasure of life." Currently the wine industry is pushing--so far without success--for approval of wine labels that read "To learn the health effects of moderate wine consumption, send for the federal government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans"--followed by the Agriculture Department's address and Web site. Back Note 3 Excerpts from the U.S. government's current (1995) dietary guidelines (click here for the full text) include the following: Current evidence suggests that moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk for coronary heart disease in some individuals. However, higher levels of alcohol intake raise the risk for high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, certain cancers, accidents, violence, suicides, birth defects, and overall mortality (deaths). Too much alcohol may cause cirrhosis of the liver, inflammation of the pancreas, and damage to the brain and heart. Heavy drinkers also are at risk of malnutrition because alcohol contains calories that may substitute for those in more nutritious foods. If you drink alcoholic beverages, do so in moderation, with meals, and when consumption does not put you or others at risk. Moderation is defined as no more than one drink per day for women and no more than two drinks per day for men. Count as a drink-- --12 ounces of regular beer (150 calories) --5 ounces of wine (100 calories) --1.5 ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits (100 calories) Back Note 4 Here is the American Heart Association's recommendation on alcohol: If you drink, do so in moderation. The incidence of heart disease in those who consume moderate amounts of alcohol (an average of one to two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women) is lower than in nondrinkers. However, with increased intake of alcohol, there are increased public health dangers, such as alcoholism, high blood pressure, obesity, stroke, suicide, and accidents. In light of these and other risks, the AHA believes it is not advisable to issue guidelines to the general public that may lead some to increase their intake of alcohol or start drinking if they do not already do so. It is best to consult with your doctor for advice on consuming alcohol in moderation (no more than 2 drinks per day). Back If you missed your government warning, click here. And here, again, is additional information on the BATF's onerous restrictions on health claims, the U.S. government's current dietary guidelines dealing with alcohol, and the American Heart Association's recommendation on alcohol.

test

20053

Thank Heaven for Little Girls Is it tasteless to suggest of JonBenet Ramsey--the cute, blond 6-year-old from Colorado who was strangled to death a few weeks ago--that it is her grisly death, rather than her career as a juvenile beauty queen, that makes her so uncannily resemble a girl in a fairy tale? For while a pageant princess is merely tacky, a murdered pageant princess takes her place in the illustrious line of pretty young girls in what, pace multiculturalists, we might call our collective lore, to meet, or at least be threatened with, a gruesome end. Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, Gretel, Alice--there is an intimate connection in our culture, it would seem, between being a sweet young miss and getting garroted. By curious coincidence, this fairy-tale conjunction of appealing nymphets and gory murder is currently the subject of an unusual show at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York: an exhibition of eccentrically magnificent watercolors by the late painter and writer Henry Darger. If Darger were alive today, he would be fascinated by the story of JonBenet. Darger collected clippings on the subject of little girls, murdered and otherwise, and went on to write and illustrate a truly amazing, Scheherazadean 15,145-page epic about seven cute prepubescent sisters being tortured by brutish men who like to capture little girls in order to enslave them and torture them and take their clothes off. In the course of Darger's story--titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnean War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion --the sisters (the Vivian Girls) manage to escape from the men (the Glandelinians) time and time again, but countless less fortunate girl-slaves are spectacularly mutilated and slaughtered along the way. Darger is what is known as an "outsider" artist--which is to say that he didn't receive any formal art training; was not, during his lifetime, part of the art world; and was exposed very little, if at all, to traditional art in general. As such, he is presumed to have produced his work out of some unusually pure sort of inner compulsion, rather than in response to other art. Darger spent nearly all his life living alone in a rented room in Chicago, earning his living as a janitor in a hospital during the day, going to Mass frequently, and coming home at night to work on his paintings and his writing. He was born in 1892, sent to a Catholic boys home at 8, and then placed in an institution for the feebleminded, from which he escaped at the age of 16. Shortly before his death in 1973, after Darger moved out to a nursing home, his landlord opened up his room and discovered, amid piles of presumably artistic debris (hundreds of pairs of smashed eyeglasses, balls of string, old pairs of shoes, scores of empty Pepto-Bismol bottles), one 2,600-page autobiography, an 11-year weather log, 87 watercolors, 67 pencil drawings, and the tale of the Vivian Girls. The Darger watercolors on exhibit include both peacetime tableaux of tiny lassies, some naked, some in dresses, disporting themselves among butterflies and enormous flowers and odd little birds--and scenes of maniacal carnage, in which the same tiny lassies are strangled naked (distorted faces, tongues stuck out) and disemboweled by merciless Glandelinians. (Presumably in anticipation of a fainter-hearted audience, the gorier pictures were excluded from last year's Darger exhibition at the University of Iowa, of which this show is an expanded version.) Some paintings combine the two types of scenes, with comic nonchalance. In one, a group of placid girls jump rope while immediately behind them lie the severed heads of three men, horrified expressions on their faces, and pairs of disembodied hands (their own? their murderers?) still clenched around their necks. In all paintings, the colors are extraordinary and fantastical--a cross between Yellow Submarine and a pastel version of Matisse. Darger produced a lot of his little-girl pictures by tracing comic strips or magazine illustrations (on occasion he cut pictures out and stuck them on the paintings directly). In some works he transposed the illustrations more or less intact; in others he stripped off the girls' clothes and added penises (all his naked girls have penises). Several images appear over and over again in Darger's work, often within the same painting--a girl mixing something in a bowl, a girl sitting on a fence, a girl running fearfully away from something, her school bag flying out behind her. Often these repeated images are rendered identically (same colors, no alterations in the pose), and sometimes they even appear next to each other in series of as many as eight. But the effect is not at all proto-Warhol. It's subtler, less programmatic. It's reminiscent, if anything, of those groups of angels or monks or soldiers in medieval manuscripts in which some of the figures are identical to each other, and others only slightly different--but the repetition seems to be employed for the purpose of visual economy, in order not to divert attention from the picture's central theme, rather than to draw attention to repetition or image-making itself. Of the enormous quantity of material Darger produced, his watercolors have received the lion's share of attention. The Museum of American Folk Art did sponsor a reading of passages from the written version of Vivian Girls . Still, it's a pity there's none of Darger's writing in the exhibition itself, because it's marvelous, strange stuff, quite as startling as the paintings--in dizzying magnitude as well as vividness, since in the written version, Darger's gory battle scenes extend for hundreds of pages. Take this excerpt, for instance (don't read this if you're squeamish): Indeed the screams and pleads of the victims could not be described, and thousands of mothers went insane over the scene, or even committed suicide. ... About nearly 56,789 children were literally cut up like a butcher does a calf, after being strangled or slain, in all ways, indeed the sights of the bloody windrows [sic] , with their intestines exposed or gushed out, was a sight that no one could bear to witness without losing their reason. Hearts of children were hung up by strings to the walls of houses, so many of the bleeding bodies had been cut up that they looked as if they had gone through a machine of knives. The writing also complicates the naked-girl scenes in the pictures, since it combines vintage Darger bloodthirstiness with the gentlest, softest grandpa porn. For instance, "The little girls were even glad to leave the building, which they hastily did after looking for their clothes which they could not find, having to leave in their nighties." The outsider-art movement responsible for raising Darger from obscurity to fame is a rapidly expanding niche of the art world that has come into its own in this country in the past decade or so: The fifth annual Outsider Art Fair took place a couple of weeks ago in New York; there is a new federally funded museum devoted to outsider art in Baltimore. These days, pieces by the most popular outsider artists, of which Darger is one, are priced in the mid to high five-figures. But while the notion of outsider art has proved an effective marketing concept, it is often an unfortunate interpretive one--outsider artists tend to attract a particularly crude and irritating kind of psycho-biographical analysis. Chief culprit in Darger's case is one John MacGregor, an art historian to whom Darger's former landlord, now his executor, has bequeathed semi-exclusive access to some of the Darger material, and who is thus the main disseminator of Darger criticism. Despite the fact that virtually nothing is known about Darger's inner life, MacGregor (typically, for a critic of outsider art) writes confidently about how compulsive Darger was; how he couldn't control his urge to produce all that crazy stuff; how he couldn't distinguish between fantasy and reality; how he was a potential serial killer; how he got sexually excited writing descriptions of burning forests. MacGregor careers from the vulgar Freudian to the idiosyncratically bizarre--for instance, "The trauma of [Darger's mother's] death was represented in his later life by an obsessional preoccupation with weather." "Clearly," MacGregor wrote in a 1992 exhibition catalog, "Darger was not free." It's true that Darger's more gruesome pictures can be a little disturbing. But think of Darger in the context either of children's books and cartoons (anything from Tom & Jerry to the terrifyingly brutal but also extremely popular German children's book Strumpelpeter ) or of contemporary art (Maggie Robbins' 1989 "Barbie Fetish," for instance--a naked Barbie doll stuck all over with little nails), and it's MacGregor who begins to look like the outsider. Indeed, seen in a contemporary light, Darger begins to look like a progenitor of that rather common, campy sensibility--what might be called Mouseketeer Gothic--that sees angelic pop-culture figures as actually creepy and frightening. (Think "It's a Small World" or David Lynch.) It's ironic, too, that critics such as MacGregor persist in seeing Darger as an unself-conscious obsessive, unable to separate his life from his created fantasy world, since in fact Darger's work is full of precisely the sort of self-referentiality that in a contemporary insider artist would be read as a rather ordinary example of postmodern detachment. Many of Darger's watercolors, for instance, include depictions of framed pictures whose images are indistinguishable from the images outside them. In the written epic, Darger himself appears as several different characters, on both sides of the conflict--private Darger, Darger the war correspondent, volcanology expert Hendro Dargar, etc. Darger's very title draws attention to the fact that the epic takes place "in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal." And the written version of Darger's epic even contains a number of amusing references to the strange task of drawing and writing about Darger's own grisly subject. To wit: About noon, a frenzied mob of Glandelinians came swarming for the prison of Violet and her sisters. The standards they followed were the heads and even gashed bodies of six beautiful little children, with their intestines protruding from their bellies, and every one of these were on pikes dripping with blood. ... [When Violet and her sisters appeared] they thrust up on to their windows the heads and bodies of these lovely children, and managed to cast them inside amongst them. Then, bursting into the doors, they thrust the heads into their laps, ordering them to make a copy of them in pencil. Although it seems to them that they would die of horror, [Violet and her sisters] thought it best to obey. ... [T]hey started to draw the hideous bodies and heads, being good at drawing pictures in the most perfect form. What to make of this? Depending on your taste, you might conclude that Darger is indeed a deranged outsider confusing himself with his characters. Or you might see him as a latter-day Grimm, in whose macabre universe getting your intestines torn out and sketching other children's severed heads are regrettable but quite ordinary parts of life as a little girl. On either interpretation, though, the paintings remain extraordinary, and extraordinarily beautiful.

test

20052

The Pickup Artists Sometimes when a man and woman first meet, the man speaks words so true, so stirring, that the woman is helpless to resist. See if you can identify the world-class smooth operators who spoke these opening lines: 1) "I could get lost in those blue eyes." 2) "You've got eyes like Julia Roberts'--they're so big." [If this fails, follow with:] "Your eyes haunt me." 3) "You're really beautiful, you know that? ... Call me, it'll be fun." 4) "You're as pretty as my wife." Sure, you were tempted to guess Bill Clinton for all four, but the answers are: 1) Clinton; 2) Leonardo DiCaprio; 3) Jerry Springer; 4) Frank Gifford. This month the tabs explore the sexual gambits of famous men. Chief among them is the commander in chief. The Star breaks news this week with an account by a flight attendant on Clinton's 1992 campaign plane of an alleged sexual assault by him. The plane was called Longhorn One (Clinton had to settle for this name; Long Dong Silver and Monkey Business were already taken) and is described by the National Enquirer as the "lust-crazed Bill Clinton campaign jet." The plane has figured prominently in the tabloid universe in recent weeks. The Enquirer quotes an "insider" as saying, "Bill Clinton had his own 'Mile-High Club' up in the front of the plane." And the Star last week ran pictures of Clinton arm in arm with, and with his hand on the leg of, flight attendant Debra Schiff, who later went on to become a White House receptionist. But it is the account of flight attendant Cristy Zercher that fleshes out the Clinton seduction style. His opening comment to her was Answer 1, above. And Zercher claims that late one night, while almost everyone was sleeping--including Hillary, who was about six feet from Zercher's jump seat--Clinton came over to talk. He laid his head on Zercher's shoulder, asked her to talk about herself and, for 40 minutes, on and off, rubbed the side of her left breast. "I thought, 'Is he really doing what I think he's doing?' " she recalls. While feeling her breast, he also wanted to feel her pain. When she mentioned she was divorced, Clinton began asking repeatedly of the marriage, "Was the sex at least good?" On another occasion, Zercher says, she pushed open an unlocked lavatory door to find Clinton standing there, unzipped. She says he said to her, "Well, why don't you come in and shut the door?" Then there was the time he saw the flight attendants reading Gennifer Flowers' interview in Penthouse . Zercher says Clinton kept asking them what the best part was. Schiff finally said that it was Flowers' comment that he was good at giving oral sex. "That's pretty accurate," Zercher recalls him saying. "It's one of my favorite things." He also told them that one thing he was afraid of reporters uncovering was a story about a couple who were friends of his. They were getting divorced because the wife found the husband cheating on her with barnyard animals. Zercher recalls her reaction: "My God, can you imagine if he becomes president that we were sitting here talking about farm animals--and he's the one that brought it up." Finally, there's the orange incident. Clinton got a fruit basket that contained an orange that was, in Zercher's words, "shrivelled and deformed--it looked like a woman's sexual organ." Clinton brought it to the galley to show the flight attendants. He said: "I'm going to keep this. This is so great because I haven't been getting any of this lately." He carried it around and flashed it at Zercher for the next two weeks, until someone finally had to take the deformed orange away from the future leader of the free world. This isn't the first time Zercher's name has surfaced. In a 1994 Washington Post story she says that after being contacted by reporter Michael Isikoff, who wanted to know about events on the Clinton plane, she relayed news of the phone call to Debra Schiff, who, in turn, relayed it to Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey. Zercher says Lindsey called her and urged her to say "all positive things" about her experiences. It's become a pattern in reports of Clinton's sexual advances that friends of the women in question confirm the advance but often say it wasn't unwelcome. Sure enough, a Zercher friend tells the New York Daily News that Zercher, who is now an executive assistant in New Jersey, told her several years ago that Clinton groped her and grabbed her breasts. But instead of finding his behavior "humiliating," as she now tells the Star was the case, the friend says she laughed it off. Schiff has also appeared recently in the tabs. The Star has an account from Clinton's former chief White House steward Mike McGrath--who has testified before the grand jury investigating the current White House scandal--about the Saturday that Schiff locked him in the pantry off the Oval Office and reportedly said, "We don't want to be disturbed for 20 minutes." He said he heard Schiff go into the study, where the president was. Twenty minutes later, she let McGrath out. Schiff told the Star the story was "absolutely not true." McGrath also solves the mystery of the account of the stained Kleenex reportedly found by another steward, Bayani Nelvis. McGrath says Nelvis told him he saw Monica Lewinsky emerge from the president's study looking "shaky" and "in shock" in late 1995. Like some of the other women who reportedly emerge from the study, her hair was mussed and her clothes askew. After she left, Nelvis told McGrath, he went into the study, where he found towels smeared with lipstick on the floor. In the world of the tabloids, Clinton's exploits are just an appetizer for someone whose sex life they really care about: Titanic star DiCaprio, who has obviously chosen Clinton as a role model and who, at only 23, has a good chance of surpassing the president's accomplishments. According to the Globe , after he sorrowfully bid adieu at the airport to his latest love, singer Alanis Morissette, he began chatting up a blonde waiting to get on the same plane. He has been on a "date-a-day spree" for almost a year, friends tell the publication. Though DiCaprio has gone out with a string of models and actresses, including Liv Tyler, Claire Danes, Juliette Lewis, and Kate Moss, a friend says he is no snob and that a woman doesn't have to be famous to merit his advances. "Leo's motto is, 'So many girls, so little time.' " In this, too, DiCaprio is like his mentor, Clinton. The Star 's story on the depositions of the Arkansas state troopers who acted as Clinton's bodyguards says of his liaisons, "[S]ome [were] on-going affairs, others just stands of one night or even one hour. The women named included aides, wives of major supporters, executives, reporters, beauty queens, barflies, and even a judge." The Wright brothers probably never anticipated their contribution to priapism but, like Clinton, DiCaprio is also an advocate of airborne sex. For one woman, according to the Globe , he hired a jet. He "served her champagne with fresh strawberries and ice cream, and they made love while looking at the stars." The publication does not mention if any oranges were involved. And both DiCaprio and Clinton have found themselves in a few cock-ups over their sexual escapades. This week the Enquirer reports that while in Cuba, DiCaprio ran into model Naomi Campbell, and the two swam naked at a Havana hotel. But Campbell became outraged when she found out DiCaprio was simultaneously dating an 18-year-old Cuban model. Later, however, DiCaprio and Campbell were seen together in Paris and London, although the New York Post quotes a Campbell representative who says the two are just "good friends." There is yet another DiCaprio love triangle, the Star reports this week. According to the publication, DiCaprio was smitten with actress Elizabeth Berkley, but in a strange Cyrano-like move, he had a friend conduct a phone romance for him. During one phone call, Berkley's boyfriend picked up the receiver and became furious. DiCaprio's friend told the boyfriend to meet him in front of the New York hotel where DiCaprio and his pals were staying. A brawl ensued, although DiCaprio emerged from the hotel bar only after the fight, to smoke a cigarette. As for the black eye DiCaprio is now sporting, the Globe reports that the actor was accidentally hit by a men's room door at another New York bar. All these high jinks have the Globe worried that DiCaprio could end up with the same medical condition for which the Star says Clinton is receiving treatment. ("Clinton has secretly begun therapy for sexual addiction in a bid to save his presidency," the publication reports.) According to the Globe , DiCaprio is still only a sex addict in training. To avoid this fate, a "pal" warns, the actor "needs to settle down and find out what real love is all about." No one is worrying about the fate of talk show host Jerry Springer. The Star labels his lines as "dumb and dumber" in an account of how he tried to pick up a "Los Angeles lovely" with an offer to fly her to Chicago and give her tickets to his show. "I burst out laughing--he just looked so desperate," the woman says. Springer does have one thing in common with Clinton: He likes to use staffers to approach women for him. The Star reports that Clinton, while governor, would spot women in the audience while he was speaking. According to one trooper, he would then say: "The lady in the red dress, the lady in the green dress ... would you go get me her name and phone number? She has that come-hither look." Springer's approach is similar, says the publication. "He peeks at the audience before the show to pick out pretty girls, then sends crew members to get their phone numbers," says an ex-staffer. Perhaps no one's opening line is lamer than Frank Gifford's. "You're as pretty as my wife" was his pathetic, yet successful, approach with Suzen Johnson, the former flight attendant with whom the Globe taped him having sex. (Perhaps the lesson here is that guys with sex problems should take Amtrak.) But now the Enquirer reports there's hope for men who stray in even the most public ways. After being wooed back for almost a year, Gifford's wife and talk show hostess Kathie Lee has told a friend, she forgives him. "At first I thought I'd die. But now I've come to love Frank more than ever," Kathie Lee told the friend who told the Enquirer . "And I know our love will last forever!"

test

20058

The Gamer The USAir Arena sits on the edge of the Beltway, old and dim, not much more than a big gymnasium. The Washington Bullets play here, often quite badly. They haven't made the playoffs in eight years. They were supposed to be better this year but have found ways to enforce the tradition of mediocrity. The arena is usually sold out--technically--but with plenty of empty seats, the signature of a town full of lawyers and big shots who aren't sure they want to be sports fans. But on Friday, Feb. 21, everything was different. A strange and powerful gravitational force surrounded that stale and unloved arena that night. People swarmed the access road outside, begging for tickets. The mayor of Washington showed up, and the coach of the Redskins, and then, to snarl traffic once and for all, the president of the United States came rolling up in his motorcade. Clinton took his seat with little fanfare. No one played "Hail to the Chief." The crowd applauded politely. The real action was over in the corner, outside the locker room of the Chicago Bulls. Fans were straining at the railings of the stands. Eyes were riveted on the locker room's exit. No one dared look away. The great one was about to emerge. When he finally appeared, people did not clap--they shouted, screamed, as guards told them to back off. "Michael! Michael!" Michael Jordan didn't look up. His head was bowed as he jogged toward the court. Everywhere he goes, people shout his name. He has mastered the art of not noticing them. Jordan is smoother than everyone else--his movements, his skin, the top of his shaved head. He looks polished. Next to Jordan, the other Bulls are big slabs of meat with protruding limbs. Luc Longley: a human ham hock. Dennis Rodman: all knuckles and knees and elbows and tattoos and nose rings and yellow hair. For Rodman, every night's a full moon. On the radio the other day, sportswriter Frank Deford called Jordan "our Lindbergh." (Was Lindbergh really that good? What was his percentage from three-point range?) This night at the USAir Arena, the sportswriters kept looking at Jordan and saying, "He's Babe Ruth." Like Ruth, Jordan so exceeds the norm as to be an anomaly. Ruth didn't just hit more home runs than anyone else. He hit a lot more home runs than anyone else. How did he do it? OK, he was strong, he used a big, heavy bat, and he had an elegant uppercut swing. But the formula for "greatest-ever" is always mysterious. You can't reduce it to any obvious variables. You just say a god walked among us. Jordan is 34 years old, borderline geriatric, and he still leads the league in scoring, racking up nearly 31 points a game, while the next-highest scorer averages only about 26. How does Jordan do it? He's got that Babe Ruth stuff. The god force. We just have to watch and wonder. For the national anthem Jordan rocked from one leg to the other, still staring at the floor in front of him, while nearby the president lustily sang--or at least moved his mouth dramatically so that even fans across the arena could see him singing. Seconds after tipoff, Jordan launched a turnaround jumper, his new signature shot, hitting nothing but net. That proved to be the anomaly for the next three quarters of the game. Jordan missed a shot, and then he missed four more shots, and he threw the ball out of bounds, and he got slapped with two fouls, and by the end of the first quarter he had stunk up the joint. He had five measly points while his sidekick, Scottie Pippen, had scorched the Bullets for 17. The sportswriters had a potential story line: Jordan might not be the high scorer on his team for the third consecutive game, something that hasn't happened in years. Was Jordan slipping? Were we seeing it tonight? The sportswriters were tapping on their laptops. In a night game, you have to write as the game progresses. It might be too soon to write the end-of-an-era story, but one could hint at it, start practicing the inevitable eulogy. Jordan kept struggling. At one point, he'd taken 14 shots and hit only four. By the end of the third quarter, he'd cobbled together 18 sloppy points to Pippen's authoritative 28. The Bulls were winning by 11 points, but the Bullets were hanging tough. Jordan had been outplayed by their Calbert Cheaney, a streaky player. Then the fourth quarter began. The fourth quarter is Jordan Time. Jordan got free on a fast break. He streaked down the right side of the court, took a pass, veered toward the bucket, and went airborne. The tongue emerged. When the tongue comes out, fans stand up to watch. Jordan, flying, wore a face of absolute manic rage. The dunk was apocalyptic. It was the kind of dunk you wouldn't want a small child to see. It was as though Jordan was funneling all his frustration into a single thermonuclear jam. The fans of both teams roared. The Bullets called a timeout, knowing they'd have no chance if Jordan caught fire. A minute later Jordan hit a pull-up jumper. Then he hit another. One of the young Bullets, Jaren Jackson, tried to smother Jordan and prevent him from getting the ball. Jordan knew what to do: Cheat a little. With his left hand Jordan almost imperceptibly held Jackson--this showed up on the television replay--and then dashed past him toward the hoop, taking a pass and launching himself for a two-handed dunk, hanging on the rim an extra second to make sure everyone knew who was in charge. The next time down the court Jordan hit a wide-open three-point shot. The Bullets kept assigning different players to cover him, but Jordan seemed to be emitting some kind of paralysis beam. Even Jordan's teammates were rooted in place. The game plan was, "Pass it to Jordan." Jordan hit an impossible 15-foot turnaround jumper. Jordan hit foul shots. Jordan hit another three-pointer. Jordan juked right, shook his man, dashed right past 7-foot-7 Gheorghe Muresan, and burgled the backboard for an easy layup. Jordan hit six shots in a row, missed one, then hit again, at which point he was laughing. He knew what everyone else in the arena was thinking: Jordan had done it again! Impossible! A 34-year-old geezer! The paralysis beam still works. Statisticians insist there is no such thing as a "hot hand" in basketball, that accurate shots distribute themselves in random patterns, that just the fact that a player has made several shots in a row does not increase the likelihood that he will make the next one. So we are to believe that Jordan's feat this night--his ability to seize a game and absolutely dominate it in the fourth quarter when everything is on the line--is a fluke. What the statisticians don't realize is that some things in life aren't logical, and that the Jordan phenomenon is one of them. He scored 18 points in the fourth quarter, 36 for the game, making him the high scorer. The Bulls won 103-99. "There's no way Michael was going to let the Bulls lose in front of the president," Johnny Red Kerr, a Hall of Famer and former Bulls coach, said outside the locker room. There has been talk in recent days about human cloning, and you repeatedly hear people mention the idea of cloning Michael Jordan. The New York Times cited the idea of a Jordan clone in its lead editorial. Such talk robs Jordan of his due. It subtly suggests that he is just a "natural athlete" who merely has to walk onto the court and let his DNA take over. The fact is, Jordan's greatest gift is in his head. He dominates the game at 34 even though he can no longer out-quick and out-jump and out-dunk his opponents. When he came into the league he was strictly a slasher, relying on speed and a 42-inch vertical leap. He wasn't considered a top-flight shooter. Now he has this deadly turnaround jumper and routinely hits three-pointers. What do you call someone who changes his game, his style, his tactics, and still comes out on top? A genius. (Come to think of it, didn't Babe Ruth start out as a pitcher?) Like that politician sitting in the stands, Jordan is compulsively competitive. When you apply the lessons of their successes to your life, you get caught short, because the rest of us don't want it that badly. Jordan has to win at everything, at cards, at tennis, at golf (he has lost hundreds of thousands gambling at that game). After the death of his father, Jordan took up the doomed mission of becoming a professional baseball player. "He had balls the size of an elephant to fail in public in another sport," my colleague Tony Kornheiser said before the Bulls game. Bob Greene reports that Jordan--the greatest basketball player of all time--was motivated by a sports fantasy: that he'd be batting for the White Sox in his first professional baseball game, and would hit a home run, round the bases and, never stopping running, just head straight from home plate to the tunnel leading out of the stadium, disappearing in front of the awed crowd. As the USAir Arena emptied out, the sportswriters gathered outside the Bulls' locker room. The president of the United States suddenly appeared a short distance away, heading toward his limo. He saw the press and, for a moment, seemed to be coming toward us. Then he stopped, and just stared. One could imagine that he felt a little hurt when he realized that we didn't want to talk to him. No one even shouted a question. He boarded the limo and left. We went into the locker room, and soon Jordan emerged, already dressed in a perfectly pressed olive suit, his tie knotted tight at the stiff collar of a white shirt. Jordan always dresses this way in public. A professional. "I totally hadn't found my rhythm the first three quarters," Jordan said. "When I found it, things started to click." Sweat popped out on his head in the close-up glare of television lights. Reporters pressed him up against the little wire cage that passes for a locker. He obliged every question, then stepped outside to sign a few autographs. His agent, David Falk, said his client would play as long as he meets his own standards. He'd decide year by year. He's a free agent after this season and if the Bulls want him back they'll have to pay the big money. This year Falk got Jordan $30 million. Next year? Falk wouldn't say what it would take. How would one ever calculate such a thing? Some things are beyond money, beyond numbers. How much would you pay the amber fields, the purple mountains? Someone asked Jordan if he'd stick around town the next day to watch his alma mater, North Carolina, play Maryland. It was a huge game in college basketball. He shook his head. "I got a job to do." Jordan drives to the hoop in Game 2 of the 1991 NBA Championship Series against the Los Angeles Lakers (30 seconds; video only) :

test

51662

BREAKDOWN By HERBERT D. KASTLE Illustrated by COWLES [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine June 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He didn't know exactly when it had started, but it had been going on for weeks. Edna begged him to see the doctor living in that new house two miles past Dugan's farm, but he refused. He point-blank refused to admit he was sick that way—in the head! Of course, a man could grow forgetful. He had to admit there were moments when he had all sorts of mixed-up memories and thoughts in his mind. And sometimes—like right now, lying in bed beside Edna, watching the first hint of light touch the windows—he began sweating with fear. A horrible, gut-wrenching fear, all the more horrible because it was based on nothing. The chicken-run came alive; the barn followed minutes later. There were chores to do, the same chores he'd done all his forty-one years. Except that now, with the new regulations about wheat and corn, he had only a vegetable patch to farm. Sure, he got paid for letting the fields remain empty. But it just didn't seem right, all that land going to waste.... Davie. Blond hair and a round, tanned face and strong arms growing stronger each day from helping out after school. He turned and shook Edna. "What happened to Davie?" She cleared her throat, mumbled, "Huh? What happened to who?" "I said, what...." But then it slipped away. Davie? No, that was part of a dream he'd had last week. He and Edna had no children. He felt the fear again, and got up fast to escape it. Edna opened her eyes as soon as his weight left the bed. "Like hotcakes for breakfast?" "Eggs," he said. "Bacon." And then, seeing her face change, he remembered. "Course," he muttered. "Can't have bacon. Rationed." She was fully awake now. "If you'd only go see Dr. Hamming, Harry. Just for a checkup. Or let me call him so he could—" "You stop that! You stop that right now, and for good! I don't want to hear no more about doctors. I get laid up, I'll call one. And it won't be that Hamming who I ain't never seen in my life! It'll be Timkins, who took care'n us and brought our son into the world and...." She began to cry, and he realized he'd said something crazy again. They had no son, never had a son. And Timkins—he'd died and they'd gone to his funeral. Or so Edna said. He himself just couldn't remember it. He went to the bed and sat down beside her. "Sorry. That was just a dream I had. I'm still half asleep this morning. Couldn't fall off last night, not till real late. Guess I'm a little nervous, what with all the new regulations and not working regular. I never meant we had a son." He waited then, hoping she'd say they had had a son, and he'd died or gone away. But of course she didn't. He went to the bathroom and washed. By the time he came to the kitchen, Edna had hotcakes on a plate and coffee in a cup. He sat down and ate. Part way through the meal, he paused. "Got an awful craving for meat," he said. "Goddam those rations! Man can't even butcher his own stock for his own table!" "We're having meat for lunch," she said placatingly. "Nice cut of multi-pro." "Multi-pro," he scoffed. "God knows what's in it. Like spam put through a grinder a hundred times and then baked into slabs. Can't hardly taste any meat there." "Well, we got no choice. Country's on emergency rations. The current crisis, you know." The way she said it irritated him. Like it was Scripture; like no one could question one word of it without being damned to Hell. He finished quickly and without speaking went on out to the barn. He milked and curried and fed and cleaned, and still was done inside of two hours. Then he walked slowly, head down, across the hay-strewn floor. He stopped, put out his hand as if to find a pole or beam that was too familiar to require raising his eyes, and almost fell as he leaned in that direction. Regaining his balance after a sideward staggering shuffle, he looked around, startled. "Why, this ain't the way I had my barn...." He heard his own voice, and stopped. He fought the flash of senseless panic. Of course this was the way he'd had his barn built, because it was his barn! He rubbed his hard hands together and said aloud, "Get down to the patch. Them tomatoes need fertilizer for tang." He walked outside and took a deep breath. Air was different, wasn't it? Sweet and pure and clean, like country air always was and always would be; but still, different somehow. Maybe sharper. Or was sharp the word? Maybe.... He went quickly across the yard, past the pig-pen—he'd had twelve pigs, hadn't he? Now he had four—behind the house to where the half-acre truck farm lay greening in the sun. He got to work. Sometime later, Edna called to him. "Delivery last night, Harry. I took some. Pick up rest?" "Yes," he shouted. She disappeared. He walked slowly back to the house. As he came into the front yard, moving toward the road and the supply bin, something occurred to him. The car. He hadn't seen the old Chevvy in ... how long? It'd be nice to take a ride to town, see a movie, maybe have a few beers. No. It was against the travel regulations. He couldn't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They couldn't go further than his. And the gas rationing. Besides, he'd sold the car, hadn't he? Because it was no use to him lying in the tractor shed. He whirled, staring out across the fields to his left. Why, the tractor shed had stood just fifty feet from the house! No, he'd torn it down. The tractor was in town, being overhauled and all. He was leaving it there until he had use for it. He went on toward the road, his head beginning to throb. Why should a man his age, hardly sick at all since he was a kid, suddenly start losing hold this way? Edna was worried. The Shanks had noticed it too. He was at the supply bin—like an old-fashioned wood bin; a box with a sloping flap lid. Deliveries of food and clothing and home medicines and other things were left here. You wrote down what you needed, and they left it—or whatever they allowed you—with a bill. You paid the bill by leaving money in the bin, and the next week you found a receipt and your new stuff and your new bill. And almost always you found some money from the government, for not planting wheat or not planting corn. It came out just about even. He hauled out a sack of flour, half the amount of sugar Edna had ordered, some dried fruit, a new Homekit Medicine Shelf. He carried it into the house, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to the sugar bag. A television program guide. Edna hustled over excitedly. "Anything good on this week, Harry?" He looked down the listings, and frowned. "All old movies. Still only one channel. Still only from nine to eleven at night." He gave it to her, turned away; then stopped and waited. He'd said the same thing last week. And she had said the films were all new to her. She said it now. "Why Harry, I've never seen this movie with Clark Gable. Nor the comedy with Red Skeleton. Nor the other five neither." "I'm gonna lie down," he said flatly. He turned and stepped forward, and found himself facing the stove. Not the door to the hall; the stove. "But the door...." he began. He cut himself short. He turned and saw the door a few feet to the left, beside the table. He went there and out and up the stairs (they too had moved; they too weren't right) and into the bedroom and lay down. The bedroom was wrong. The bed was wrong. The windows were wrong. The world was wrong! Lord, the whole damned world was wrong! Edna didn't wake him, so they had a late lunch. Then he went back to the barn and let the four cows and four sheep and two horses into the pastures. Then he checked to see that Edna had fed the chickens right. They had only a dozen or so now. When had he sold the rest? And when had he sold his other livestock? Or had they died somehow? A rough winter? Disease? He stood in the yard, a tall, husky man with pale brown hair and a face that had once been long, lean and strong and was now only long and lean. He blinked gray eyes and tried hard to remember, then turned and went to the house. Edna was soaking dishes in the sink, according to regulations—one sinkful of dishwater a day. And one tub of bath water twice a week. She was looking at him. He realized his anger and confusion must be showing. He managed a smile. "You remember how much we got for our livestock, Edna?" "Same as everyone else," she said. "Government agents paid flat rates." He remembered then, or thought he did. The headache was back. He went upstairs and slept again, but this time he had dreams, many of them, and all confused and all frightening. He was glad to get up. And he was glad to hear Walt and Gloria talking to Edna downstairs. He washed his face, combed his hair and went down. Walt and Gloria were sitting on the sofa, Edna in the blue armchair. Walt was saying he'd gotten the new TV picture tube he'd ordered. "Found it in the supply bin this morning. Spent the whole day installing it according to the book of directions." Harry said hi and they all said hi and he sat down and they talked about TV and gardens and livestock. Then Harry said, "How's Penny?" "Fine," Gloria answered. "I'm starting her on the kindergarten book next week." "She's five already?" Harry asked. "Almost six," Walt said. "Emergency Education Regulations state that the child should be five years nine months old before embarking on kindergarten book." "And Frances?" Harry asked. "Your oldest? She must be starting high...." He stopped, because they were all staring at him, and because he couldn't remember Frances clearly. "Just a joke," he said, laughing and rising. "Let's eat. I'm starved." They ate in the kitchen. They talked—or rather Edna, Gloria and Walt did. Harry nodded and said uh-huh and used his mouth for chewing. Walt and Gloria went home at ten-fifteen. They said goodbye at the door and Harry walked away. He heard Gloria whispering something about Doctor Hamming. He was sitting in the living room when Edna came in. She was crying. "Harry, please see the doctor." He got up. "I'm going out. I might even sleep out!" "But why, Harry, why?" He couldn't stand to see her crying. He went to her, kissed her wet cheek, spoke more softly. "It'll do me good, like when I was a kid." "If you say so, Harry." He left quickly. He went outside and across the yard to the road. He looked up it and down it, to the north and to the south. It was a bright night with moon and stars, but he saw nothing, no one. The road was empty. It was always empty, except when Walt and Gloria walked over from their place a mile or so south. But once it hadn't been empty. Once there'd been cars, people.... He had to do something. Just sitting and looking at the sky wouldn't help him. He had to go somewhere, see someone. He went to the barn and looked for his saddle. There was no saddle. But he'd had one hanging right behind the door. Or had he? He threw a blanket over Plum, the big mare, and tied it with a piece of wash line. He used another piece for a bridle, since he couldn't find that either, and didn't bother making a bit. He mounted, and Plum moved out of the barn and onto the road. He headed north, toward town. Then he realized he couldn't go along the road this way. He'd be reported. Breaking travel regulations was a serious offense. He didn't know what they did to you, but it wasn't anything easy like a fine. He cut into an unfenced, unplanted field. His headache was back, worse now than it had ever been. His entire head throbbed, and he leaned forward and put his cheek against Plum's mane. The mare whinnied uneasily, but he kicked her sides and she moved forward. He lay there, just wanting to go somewhere, just wanting to leave his headache and confusion behind. He didn't know how long it was, but Plum was moving cautiously now. He raised his head. They were approaching a fence. He noticed a gate off to the right, and pulled the rope so Plum went that way. They reached the gate and he got down to open it, and saw the sign. "Phineas Grotton Farm." He looked up at the sky, found the constellations, turned his head, and nodded. He'd started north, and Plum had continued north. He'd crossed land belonging both to himself and the Franklins. Now he was leaving the Franklin farm. North of the Franklins were the Bessers. Who was this Phineas Grotton? Had he bought out Lon Besser? But anything like that would've gotten around. Was he forgetting again? Well, no matter. Mr. Grotton would have to excuse his trespass. He opened the gate, led Plum through it, closed the gate. He mounted and rode forward, still north, toward the small Pangborn place and after the Pangborns the biggest farm in the county—old Wallace Elverton's place. The fields here, as everywhere in the county, lay fallow. Seemed as if the government had so much grain stored up they'd be able to get along without crops for years more. He looked around. Somehow, the country bothered him. He wasn't sure why, but ... everything was wrong. His head weighed an agonized ton. He put it down again. Plum went sedately forward. After a while she stopped. Harry looked up. Another fence. And what a fence! About ten feet of heavy steel mesh, topped by three feet of barbed-wire—five separate strands. What in the world had Sam Pangborn been thinking of to put up a monster like this? He looked around. The gate should be further west. He rode that way. He found no gate. He turned back, heading east. No gate. Nothing but fence. And wasn't the fence gradually curving inward? He looked back. Yes, there was a slight inward curve. He dismounted and tied Plum to the fence, then stepped back and figured the best way to get to the other side. The best way, the only way, was to claw, clutch and clamber, as they used to say back when he was a kid. It took some doing. He tore his shirt on the barbed wire, but he got over and began walking, straight ahead, due north. The earth changed beneath his feet. He stooped and touched it. Sand. Hard-packed sand. He'd never seen the like of it in this county. He walked on. A sound came to him; a rising-falling whisper. He listened to it, and looked up every so often at the sky, to make sure he was heading in the right direction. And the sand ended. His shoes plunked over flooring. Flooring! He knelt to make sure, and his hand felt wooden planks. He rose, and glanced up to see if he was still outdoors. Then he laughed. It was a sick laugh, so he stopped it. He took another step. His shoes sounded against the wood. He walked. More wood. Wood that went on, as the sand had. And the roaring sound growing louder. And the air changing, smelling like air never had before in Cultwait County. His entire body trembled. His mind trembled too. He walked, and came to a waist-high metal railing, and made a tiny sound deep in his throat. He looked out over water, endless water rolling in endless waves under the night sky. Crashing water, topped with reflected silver from the moon. Pounding water, filling the air with spray. He put out his hands and grasped the railing. It was wet. He raised damp fingers to his mouth. Salt. He stepped back, back, and turned and ran. He ran wildly, blindly, until he could run no more. Then he fell, feeling the sand beneath him, and shut his eyes and mind to everything. Much later, he got up and went to the fence and climbed it. He came down on the other side and looked around and saw Plum. He walked to her, mounted her, sat still. The thoughts, or dreams, or whatever they were which had been torturing him these past few weeks began torturing him again. It was getting light. His head was splitting. Davie. His son Davie. Fourteen years old. Going to high school in town.... Town! He should've gone there in the first place! He would ride east, to the road, then head south, back toward home. That would bring him right down Main Street. Regulations or not, he'd talk to people, find out what was happening. He kicked Plum's sides. The mare began to move. He kept kicking until she broke into a brisk canter. He held on with hands and legs. Why hadn't he seen the Pangborns and Elvertons lately—a long time lately? The ocean. He'd seen the ocean. Not a reservoir or lake made by flooding and by damming, but salt water and enormous. An ocean, where there could be no ocean. The Pangborns and Elvertons had been where that ocean was now. And after the Elvertons had come the Dobsons. And after them the new plastics plant. And after that the city of Crossville. And after that.... He was passing his own farm. He hadn't come through town, and yet here he was at his own farm. Could he have forgotten where town was? Could it be north of his home, not south? Could a man get so confused as to forget things he'd known all his life? He reached the Shanks' place, and passed it at a trot. Then he was beyond their boundaries and breaking regulations again. He stayed on the road. He went by a small house and saw colored folks in the yard. There'd been no colored folks here. There'd been Eli Bergen and his family and his mother, in a bigger, newer house. The colored folks heard Plum's hooves and looked up and stared. Then a man raised his voice. "Mistah, you breakin' regulations! Mistah, the police gonnah get you!" He rode on. He came to another house, neat and white, with three children playing on a grassy lawn. They saw him and ran inside. A moment later, adult voices yelled after him: "You theah! Stop!" "Call the sheriff! He's headin' foah Piney Woods!" There was no place called Piney Woods in this county. Was this how a man's mind went? He came to another house, and another. He passed ten all told, and people shouted at him for breaking regulations, and the last three or four sounded like Easterners. And their houses looked like pictures of New England he'd seen in magazines. He rode on. He never did come to town. He came to a ten-foot fence with a three-foot barbed-wire extension. He got off Plum and ripped his clothing climbing. He walked over hard-packed sand, and then wood, and came to a low metal railing. He looked out at the ocean, gleaming in bright sunlight, surging and seething endlessly. He felt the earth sway beneath him. He staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees, and shook his head like a fighter hit too many times. Then he got up and went back to the fence and heard a sound. It was a familiar sound, yet strange too. He shaded his eyes against the climbing sun. Then he saw it—a car. A car! It was one of those tiny foreign jobs that run on practically no gas at all. It stopped beside him and two men got out. Young men with lined, tired faces; they wore policemen's uniforms. "You broke regulations, Mr. Burr. You'll have to come with us." He nodded. He wanted to. He wanted to be taken care of. He turned toward Plum. The other officer was walking around the horse. "Rode her hard," he said, and he sounded real worried. "Shouldn't have done that, Mr. Burr. We have so very few now...." The officer holding Harry's arm said, "Pete." The officer examining Plum said, "It won't make any difference in a while." Harry looked at both of them, and felt sharp, personal fear. "Take the horse back to his farm," the officer holding Harry said. He opened the door of the little car and pushed Harry inside. He went around to the driver's side and got behind the wheel and drove away. Harry looked back. Pete was leading Plum after them; not riding him, walking him. "He sure must like horses," he said. "Yes." "Am I going to jail?" "No." "Where then?" "The doctor's place." They stopped in front of the new house two miles past Dugan's farm. Except he'd never seen it before. Or had he? Everyone seemed to know about it—or was everyone only Edna and the Shanks? He got out of the car. The officer took his arm and led him up the path. Harry noticed that the new house was big. When they came inside, he knew it wasn't like any house he'd ever seen or heard of. There was this long central passageway, and dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways went down from it in at least three places that he could see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls and dull black floors and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. Except that he didn't see or hear people. He did hear something ; a low, rumbling noise. The further they came along the hall, the louder the rumbling grew. It seemed to be deep down somewhere. They went through one of the doors on the right, into a windowless room. A thin little man with bald head and frameless glasses was there, putting on a white coat. His veiny hands shook. He looked a hundred years old. "Where's Petey?" he asked. "Pete's all right, Dad. Just leading a horse back to Burr's farm." The old man sighed. "I didn't know what form it would take. I expected one or two cases, but I couldn't predict whether it would be gradual or sudden, whether or not it would lead to violence." "No violence, Dad." "Fine, Stan." He looked at Harry. "I'm going to give you a little treatment, Mr. Burr. It'll settle your nerves and make everything...." "What happened to Davie?" Harry asked, things pushing at his brain again. Stan helped him up. "Just step this way, Mr. Burr." He didn't resist. He went through the second door into the room with the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so as to know whether or not he was insane. "What happened to my son Davie?" The old man walked across the room and examined what looked like the insides of a dozen big radios. He turned, his hand on a switch. "Please," Harry whispered. "Just tell me about my son." The doctor blinked behind his glasses, and then his hand left the switch. "Dead," he said, his voice a rustling of dried leaves. "Like so many millions of others. Dead, when the bombs fell. Dead, as everyone knew they would be and no one did anything to prevent. Dead. Perhaps the whole world is dead—except for us." Harry stared at him. "I can't take the time to explain it all. I have too much to do. Just three of us—myself and my two sons. My wife lost her mind. I should have helped her as I'm helping you." "I don't understand," Harry said. "I remember people, and things, and where are they now? Dead? People can die, but farms, cities...." "I haven't the time," the doctor repeated, voice rising. "I have to run a world. Three of us, to run a world! I built it as best I could, but how large could I make it? The money. The years and years of work. The people calling me insane when they found out ... but a few giving me more money, and the work going on. And those few caught like everyone else, unprepared when the holocaust started, unprepared and unable to reach my world. So they died. As I knew they would. As they should have known they would." Harry felt the rumbling beneath him. Engines? "You survived," the doctor said. "Your wife. A few hundred others in the rural areas. One other family in your area. I survived because I lived for survival, like a mole deep in the earth, expecting the catastrophe every minute. I survived because I gave up living to survive." He laughed, high and thin. His son said, "Please, Dad...." "No! I want to talk to someone sane ! You and Petey and I—we're all insane, you know. Three years now, playing God, waiting for some land, any land, to become habitable. And knowing everything, and surrounded by people who are sane only because I made sure they would know nothing." He stepped forward, glaring at Harry. "Now do you understand? I went across the country, picking up a few of the few left alive. Most were farmers, and even where some weren't I picked the farmers anyway. Because farmers are what we'll need, and all the rest can evolve later. I put you and the others, eighty-six all told, from every section of the country, on my world, the only uncontaminated land left. I gave you back your old lives. I couldn't give you big crops because we don't need big crops. We would only exhaust our limited soil with big crops. But I gave you vegetable gardens and livestock and, best of all, sanity ! I wiped the insane moments from your minds. I gave you peace and consigned myself, my sons, my own wife...." He choked and stopped. Stan ran across the room to the switch. Harry watched him, and his brain struggled with an impossible concept. He heard the engines and remembered the ocean on two sides; on four sides had he bothered to check south and east; on all sides if that fence continued to curve inward. Ocean, and there was no ocean in Iowa. And this wasn't Iowa. The explosions had ripped the world, and he'd tried to get to town to save Davie, and there'd been no town and there'd been no people and there'd been only death and poison in the air and even those few people left had begun to die, and then the truck with the huge trailer had come, the gleaming trailer with the little man and his trembling wife and his two sons.... Suddenly, he understood. And understanding brought not peace but the greatest terror he'd ever known. He screamed, "We're on...." but the switch was thrown and there was no more speech. For an hour. Then he got out of the chair and said, "Sure glad I took my wife's advice and came to see you, Doctor Hamming. I feel better already, and after only one.... What do you call these treatments?" "Diathermy," the little doctor muttered. Harry gave him a five-dollar bill. The doctor gave him two singles in change. "That's certainly reasonable enough," Harry said. The doctor nodded. "There's a police officer in the hall. He'll drive you home so there won't be any trouble with the travel regulations." Harry said, "Thanks. Think we'll ever see the end of travel regulations and rationing and all the rest of the emergency?" "You will, Mr. Burr." Harry walked to the door. "We're on an ark," the doctor said. Harry turned around, smiling. "What?" "A test, Mr. Burr. You passed it. Goodbye." Harry went home. He told Edna he felt just great! She said she'd been worried when an officer found Plum wandering on the road; she thought maybe Harry had gone off somewhere and broken travel regulations. "Me?" he exclaimed, amazed. "Break travel regulations? I'd as soon kill a pig!"

test

51194

Made to Measure By WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT Illustrated by L. WOROMAY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Somewhere is an ideal mate for every man and woman, but Joe wasn't willing to bet on it. He was a man who rolled his own! The pressure tube locks clicked behind them, as the train moved on. It was a strange, sighing click and to Joe it sounded like, "She's not right—she's not right—she's not right—" So, finally, he said it. "She's not right." Sam, who was riding with him, looked over wonderingly. "Who isn't?" "Vera. My wife. She's not right." Sam frowned. "Are you serious, Joe? You mean she's—?" He tapped his temple. "Oh, no. I mean she's not what I want." "That's why we have the Center," Sam answered, as if quoting, which he was. "With the current and growing preponderance of women over men, something had to be done. I think we've done it." Sam was the Director of the Domestic Center and a man sold on his job. "You've done as well as you could," Joe agreed in an argumentative way. "You've given some reason and order to the marital competition among women. You've almost eliminated illicit relations. You've established a basic security for the kids. But the big job? You've missed it completely." "Thanks," Sam said. "That's a very small knife you've inserted between my shoulder blades, but I'm thin-skinned." He took a deep breath. "What, in the opinion of the Junior Assistant to the Adjutant Science Director, was the big job?" Joe looked for some scorn in Sam's words, found it, and said, "The big job is too big for a sociologist." Sam seemed to flinch. "I didn't think that axe would fit alongside the knife. I underestimated you." "No offense," Joe said. "It's just that you have to deal with human beings." "Oh," Sam said. "Now it comes. You know, for a minute I forgot who you were. I forgot you were the greatest living authority on robots. I was thinking of you as my boyhood chum, good old Joe. You're beyond that now, aren't you?" "Beyond my adolescence? I hope so, though very few people are." Joe looked at Sam squarely. "Every man wants a perfect wife, doesn't he?" Sam shrugged. "I suppose." "And no human is perfect, so no man gets a perfect wife. Am I right, so far?" "Sounds like it." "Okay." Joe tapped Sam's chest with a hard finger. "I'm going to make a perfect wife." He tapped his own chest. "For me, just for me, the way I want her. No human frailties. Ideal." "A perfect robot," Sam objected. "A wife," Joe corrected. "A person. A human being." "But without a brain." "With a brain. Do you know anything about cybernetics, Sam?" "I know just as much about cybernetics as you know about people. Nothing." "That's not quite fair. I'm not sentimental about people, but it's inaccurate to say I don't know anything about them. I'm a person. I think I'm—discerning and sensitive." "Sure," Sam said. "Let's drop the subject." "Why?" "Because you're talking nonsense. A person without faults is not a person. And if—it or he—she were, I don't think I'd care to know him or her or it." "Naturally. You're a sentimentalist. You've seen so much misery, so much human error, so much stupidity that you've built up your natural tolerance into a sloppy and unscientific sentimentality. It happens to sociologists all the time." "Joe, I'm not going to argue with you. Only one thing I ask. When you—break the news to Vera, break it gently. And get her back to the Center as quickly as you can. She's a choice, rare number." Joe said nothing to that. Sam looked miserable. They sat there, listening to the swishing, burring clicks of the airlocks, two friends—one who dealt with people and had grown soft, the other who dealt with machines and might not have grown at all. As the car rose for the Inglewood station, Sam looked over, but Joe's eyes were straight ahead. Sam got up and out of the seat. There was a whispering sigh of escaping air and the sunlight glare of the Inglewood station, synthetic redwood and chrome and marble. Sam was out of the cylindrical, stainless steel car and hurrying for the Westchester local when Joe came out onto the platform. Sam was annoyed, it was plain. Joe's glance went from his hurrying friend to the parking lot, and his coupe was there with Vera behind the wheel. It was only a three block walk, but she had to be there to meet him, every evening. That was her major fault, her romantic sentimentality. "Darling," she said, as he approached the coupe. "Sweetheart. Have a good day?" He kissed her casually. "Ordinary." She slid over and he climbed in behind the wheel. "Sat with Sam Tullgren on the train." "Sam's nice." He turned on the ignition and said, "Start." The motor obediently started and he swung out of the lot, onto Chestnut. "Sam's all right. Kind of sentimental." "That's what I mean." Joe was silent. The coupe went past a row of solar homes and turned on Fulsom. Three houses from the corner, he turned into their driveway. "You're awfully quiet," Vera said. "I'm thinking." "About what?" Her voice was suddenly strained. "Sam didn't try to sell you—" "A new wife?" He looked at her. "What makes you think that?" "You're thinking about me, about trading me in. Joe, haven't I—darling, is there—?" She broke off, looking even more miserable than Sam had. "I don't intend to trade you in," he said quietly. She took a deep breath. He didn't look at her. "But you're going back to the Center." She stared at him, a film of moisture in her eyes. She didn't cry or ask questions or protest. Joe wished she would. This was worse. "It's not your fault," he said, after a moment. "I'm not going to get another. You're as ideal, almost, as a human wife can ever be." "I've tried so hard," she said. "Maybe I tried too hard." "No," he said, "it isn't your fault. Any reasonable man would be delighted with you, Vera. You won't be at the Center long." "I don't want a reasonable man," she said quietly. "I want you, Joe. I—I loved you." He had started to get out of the car. He paused to look back. "Loved? Did you use the past tense?" "I used the past tense." She started to get out on her side of the car. "I don't want to talk about it." "But I do," he told her. "Is this love something you can turn on and off like a faucet?" "I don't care to explain it to you," she said. "I've got to pack." She left the car, slammed the door, and moved hurriedly toward the house. Joe watched her. Something was troubling him, something he couldn't analyze, but he felt certain that if he could, it would prove to be absurd. He went thoughtfully into the living room and snapped on the telenews. He saw troops moving by on foot, a file of them dispersed along a Brazilian road. He turned the knob to another station and saw the huge stock market board, a rebroadcast. Another twist and he saw a disheveled, shrieking woman being transported down some tenement steps by a pair of policemen. The small crowd on the sidewalk mugged into the camera. He snapped it off impatiently and went into the kitchen. The dinette was a glass-walled alcove off this, and the table was set. There was food on his plate, none on Vera's. He went to the living room and then, with a mutter of impatience, to the door of the back bedroom. She had her grips open on the low bed. "You don't have to leave tonight, you know." "I know." "You're being very unreasonable." "Am I?" "I wasn't trying to be intentionally cruel." "Weren't you?" His voice rose. "Will you stop talking like some damned robot? Are you a human being, or aren't you?" "I'm afraid I am," she said, "and that's why I'm going back to the Center. I've changed my mind. I want to get registered. I want to find a man ." She started to go past him, her grip in her hand. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Vera, you—" Something flashed toward his face. It was her slim, white hand, but it didn't feel slim and white. She said, "I can see now why you weren't made Senior Assistant to the Adjutant Science Director. You're a stupid, emotionless mechanic. A machine." He was still staring after her when the door slammed. He thought of the huge Domestic Center with its classes in Allure, Boudoir Manners, Diet, Poise, Budgeting. That vast, efficient, beautifully decorated Center which was the brain child of Sam Tullgren, but which still had to deal with imperfect humans. People, people, people ... and particularly women. He rose, after a while, and went into the dinette. He sat down and stared moodily at his food. Little boys are made of something and snails and puppydogs' tails. What are little girls made of? Joe didn't want a little girl; he wanted one about a hundred and twenty-two pounds and five feet, four inches high. He wanted her to be flat where she should be and curved where she should be, with blonde hair and gray-green eyes and an exciting smile. He had a medical degree, among his others. The nerves, muscles, flesh, circulatory system could be made—and better than they were ever made naturally. The brain would be cybernetic and fashioned after his own, with his own mental background stored in the memory circuits. So far, of course, he had described nothing more than a robot of flesh and blood. The spark, now—what distinguished the better-grade robots from people? Prenatal heat, that was it. Incubation. A mold, a heated mold. Warmth, the spark, the sun, life. For the skin, he went to Pete Celano, the top syntho-dermatologist in the Department. "Something special?" Pete asked. "Not just a local skin graft? What then?" "A wife. A perfect wife." Pete's grin sagged baffledly. "I don't get it, Joe. Perfect how?" "In all ways." Joe's face was grave. "Someone ideal to live with." "How about Vera? What was wrong with her?" "A sentimentalist, too romantic, kind of—well, maybe not dumb, exactly, but—" "But not perfect. Who is, Joe?" "My new wife is going to be." Pete shrugged and began putting together the ingredients for the kind of skin Joe had specified. They're all the same, Joe thought, Sam and Pete and the rest. They seemed to think his idea childish. He built the instillers and incubator that night. The mold would be done by one of the Department's engravers. Joe had the sketches and dimensions ready. Wednesday afternoon, Burke called him in. Burke was the Senior assistant, a job Joe had expected and been miffed about. Burke was a jerk, in Joe's book. This afternoon, Burke's long nose was twitching and his thin face was gravely bleak. He had a clipped, efficient way of speaking. "Tired, Joe?" "What do you mean?" "Not hitting the ball, not on the beam, no zipperoo." "I'm—yes, I guess you're right. I've been working at home on a private project." "Scientific?" "Naturally." "Anything in particular?" Joe took a breath, looked away, and back at Burke. "Well, a wife." A frown, a doubtful look from the cold, blue eyes. "Robot? Dishwasher and cook and phone answerer and like that?" "More than that." Slightly raised eyebrows. "More?" "Completely human, except she will have no human faults." Cool smile. "Wouldn't be human, then, of course." " Human, but without human faults, I said! " "You raised your voice, Joe." "I did." "I'm the Senior Assistant. Junior Assistants do not raise their voices to Senior Assistants." "I thought you might be deaf, as well as dumb," Joe said. A silence. The granite face of Burke was marble, then steel and finally chromium. His voice matched it. "I'll have to talk to the Chief before I fire you, of course. Department rule. Good afternoon." "Go to hell." Joe went back to his desk and burned. He started with a low flame and fed it with the grievances of the past weeks. When it began to warm his collar, he picked up his hat and left. Click, burr, click went the airlocks. Very few riders, this time of the afternoon. The brain would go in, intact, and then the knowledge instiller would work during the incubation period, feeding the adolescent memories to the retentive circuits. She would really spend her mental childhood in the mold, while the warmth sent the human spark through her body. Robot? Huh! What did they know? A human being, a product of science, a flawless human being. The rise, the big hiss of the final airlock, and Inglewood. Joe stood on the platform a second, looking for his car, and then realized she wasn't there. She hadn't been there for a week, and he'd done that every night. Silly thing, habit. Human trait. Tonight, he'd know. The flesh had been in the mold for two days. The synthetic nerves were plump and white under the derma-ray, the fluxo heart was pumping steadily, the entire muscular structure kept under pneumatic massage for muscle tone. He'd thought of omitting the frowning muscles, but realized it would ruin the facial contours. They weren't, however, under massage and would not be active. And the mind? Well, naturally it would be tuned to his. She'd know everything he knew. What room was there for disagreement if the minds were the same? Smiling, as she agreed, because she couldn't frown. Her tenderness, her romanticism would have an intensity variable, of course. He didn't want one of these grinning simperers. He remembered his own words: "Is this love something you can turn on and off like a faucet?" Were his own words biting him, or only scratching him? Something itched. An intensity variable was not a faucet, though unscientific minds might find a crude, allegorical resemblance. To hell with unscientific minds. He went down to the basement. The mold was 98.6. He watched the knowledge instiller send its minute current to the head end of the mold. The meter read less than a tenth of an amp. The slow, plastic pulse of the muscle tone massage worked off a small pump near the foot of the mold. On the wall, the big master operating clock sent the minute currents to the various bodily sections, building up the cells, maintaining the organic functions. In two hours, the clock would shut off all power, the box would cool, and there would be his—Alice. Well, why not Alice? She had to have a name, didn't she? Warmth, that was the difference between a human and a robot, just warmth, just the spark. Funny he'd never thought of it before. Warmth was—it had unscientific connotations. It wasn't, though. He went upstairs and fried some eggs. Twice a day, for a week, he had fried eggs. Their flavor was overrated. Then he went into the living room and snapped on the ball game. Martin was on third and Pelter was at bat. On the mound, the lank form of Dorffberger cast a long, grotesque shadow in the afternoon sun. Dorffberger chewed and spat and wiped his nose with the back of his glove. He looked over at third and yawned. At the plate, Pelter was digging in. Pelter looked nervous. Joe said, "Bet that Dorffberger fans him. He's got the Indian sign on Pelter." Then he realized he was talking to himself. Damn it. On the telenews screen, Dorffberger looked right into the camera and nodded. He was winding up, and the director put the ball into slow motion. Even in slow motion, it winged. "Ho-ho!" Joe said. "You can't hit what you can't see." Pelter must have seen it. He caught it on the fat part of the bat, twisting into it with all his hundred and ninety pounds. The impact rattled the telenews screen and the telescopic cameras took over. They followed the ball's flight about halfway to Jersey and then the short-range eyes came back to show Pelter crossing the plate, and Martin waiting there to shake his hand. Joe snapped off the machine impatiently. Very unscientific game, baseball. No rhyme or reason to it. He went out onto the porch. The grass was dry and gray; he'd forgotten to set the sprinkler clock, Vera's old job. Across the street, Dan Harvey sat with his wife, each with a drink. Sat with his human wife, the poor fish. They looked happy, though. Some people were satisfied with mediocrities. Unscientific people. Why was he restless? Why was he bored? Was he worried about his job? Only slightly; the Chief thought a lot of him, a hell of a lot. The Chief was a great guy for seniority and Burke had it, or Joe would certainly have been Senior Assistant. The stirring in him he didn't want to analyze and he thought of the days he'd courted Vera, going to dances at the Center, playing bridge at the Center, studying Greek at the Center. A fine but too well-lighted place. You could do everything but smooch there; the smooching came after the declaration of intentions and a man was bound after the declaration to go through with the wedding, to live with his chosen mate for the minimum three months of the adjustment period. Adjustment period ... another necessity for humans, for imperfect people. Across the street, the perfectly adjusted Harveys smiled at each other and sipped their drinks. Hell, that wasn't adjustment, that was surrender. He got up and went into the living room; fighting the stirring in him, the stirring he didn't want to analyze and find absurd. He went into the bathroom and studied his lean, now haggard face. He looked like hell. He went into the back bedroom and smelled her perfume and went quickly from the house and into the backyard. He sat there until seven, listening to the throb from the basement. The molecule agitator should have the flesh firm and finished now, nourished by the select blood, massaged by the pulsating plastic. At seven, she should be ready. At seven, he went down to the basement. His heart should have been hammering and his mind expectant, but he was just another guy going down to the basement. The pumps had stopped, the agitator, the instiller. He felt the mold; it was cool to the touch. He lifted the lid, his mind on Vera for some reason. A beauty. The lid was fully back and his mate sat up, smiled and said, "Hello, Joe." "Hello, Alice. Everything all right?" "Fine." Her hair was a silver blonde, her features a blend of the patrician and the classical. Her figure was neither too slim nor too stout, too flat nor too rounded. Nowhere was there any sag. "Thought we'd drop over to the Harveys' for a drink," Joe said. "Sort of show you off, you know." "Ego gratification, Joe?" "Of course. I've some clothes upstairs for you." "I'm sure they're lovely." "They are lovely." While she dressed, he phoned the Harveys. He explained about Vera first, because Vera was what the Harveys considered a good neighbor. Dan Harvey said sympathetically, "It happens to the best of us. Thinking of getting a new one, Joe?" "I've got one right here. Thought I'd drop over, sort of break the ice." "Great," Dan said. "Fine. Dandy." The event was of minor importance, except for the revelation involved. The Harveys had a gift for putting guests at ease, the gift being a cellar full of thirty-year-old bourbon the elder Harvey had bequeathed them at the end of their adjustment period. The talk moved here and there, over the bourbon, Alice sharing in it rarely, though nodding when Joe was talking. Then, at mention of someone or other, Mrs. Harvey said tolerantly, "Well, none of us are perfect, I guess." Alice smiled and answered, "Some of us are satisfied with mediocrities in marriage." Mrs. Harvey frowned doubtfully. "I don't quite understand, dear. In any marriage, there has to be adjustment. Dan and I, for example, have adjusted very well." "You haven't adjusted," Alice said smilingly. "You've surrendered." Joe coughed up half a glass of bourbon, Dan turned a sort of red-green and Mrs. Harvey stared with her mouth open. Alice smiled. Finally, Mrs. Harvey said, "Well, I never—" "Of all the—" Dan Harvey said. Joe rose and said, "Must get to bed, got to get to bed." "Here?" Alice asked. "No, of course not. Home. Let's go, dear. Have to rush." Alice's smile had nothing sentimental about it. He didn't berate her until morning. He wanted time to cool off, to look at the whole thing objectively. It just wouldn't get objective, though. At breakfast, he said, "That was tactless last night. Very, very tactless." "Yes, Joe. Tact requires deception. Tact is essentially deception." When had he said that? Oh, yes, at the Hydra Club lecture. And it was true and he hated deception and he'd created a wife without one. He said, "I'll have to devise a character distiller that won't require putting you back in the mold." "Of course, dear. Why?" "You need just a touch of deception, just a wee shade of it." "Of course, Joe." So she had tact. He went to the office with very little of the absurdity mood stirring in him. He'd had a full breakfast, naturally. At the office, there was a note on his desk: Mr. Behrens wants to see you immediately. It bore his secretary's initials. Mr. Behrens was the Chief. He was a fairly short man with immense shoulders and what he'd been told was a classical head. So he let his hair grow, and had a habit of thrusting his chin forward when he listened. He listened to Joe's account of the interview with Burke. When Joe had finished, the Chief's smile was tolerant. "Ribbing him, were you? Old Burke hasn't much sense of humor, Joe." Joe said patiently, "I wasn't ribbing him. I took her out of the mold last night. I ate breakfast with her this morning. She's—beautiful, Chief. She's ideal." The Chief looked at him for seconds, his head tilted. Joe said, "Heat, that's what does it. If you'd like to come for dinner with us tonight, Chief, and see for yourself—" The Chief nodded. "I'd like that." They left a little early to avoid the crowd in the tube. Burke saw them leaving, and his long face grew even longer. On the trip, Joe told his boss about the cybernetic brain, about his background and his beliefs stored in the memory circuits, and the boss listened quietly, not committing himself with any comments. But he did say, "I certainly thought a lot of Vera. You wouldn't have to warm her in any incubating mold." "Wait'll you see this one," Joe said. And when she walked into the living room at home, when she acknowledged the introduction to the Chief, Joe knew the old boy was sold. The Chief could only stare. Joe took him down to the basement then to show him the molecule agitator, the memory feeder, the instillers. The old boy looked it over and said, quite simply, "I'll be damned!" They went up to a perfect dinner—and incident number two. The Chief was a sentimentalist and he'd just lost a fine friend. This friend was his terrier, Murph, who'd been hit by a speeding car. The story of Murph from birth to death was a fairly long one, but never dull. The Chief had a way with words. Even Joe, one of the world's top-ranking non-sentimentalists, was touched by the tale. When they came to the end, where Murph had lain in his master's arms, whimpering, as though to comfort him, trying to lick his face, Joe's eyes were wet and the drink wobbled in his hand. The Chief finished in a whisper, and looked up from the carpet he'd been staring at through the account. And there was Alice, sitting erect, a smile of perfect joy on her face. "How touching," she said, and grinned. For one horror-stricken second, the Chief glared at her, and then his questioning eyes went to Joe. "She can't frown," Joe explained. "The muscles are there, but they need massage to bring them to life." He paused. "I wanted a smiling wife." The Chief inhaled heavily. "There are times when a smile is out of order, don't you think, Joe?" "It seems that way." It didn't take long. Massage, orientation, practice, concentration. It didn't take long, and she was so willing to cooperate. Golly, she was agreeable. She was more than that; she voiced his thoughts before he did. Because of the mental affinity, you see. He'd made sure of that. She could frown now and she had enough deception to get by in almost any company. These flaws were necessary, but they were still flaws and brought her closer to being—human. At the office on Saturday morning, Sam Tullgren dropped in. Sam said, "I've been hearing things, Joseph." "From Vera? At the Center?" Sam shook his head. "Vera's been too busy to have much time for the director. She's our most popular number." Sam paused. "About the new one. Hear she's something to see." "You heard right. She's practically flawless, Sam. She's just what a man needs at home." His voice, for some reason, didn't indicate the enthusiasm he should have felt. Sam chewed one corner of his mouth. "Why not bring her over, say, tonight? We'll play some bridge." That would be something. Two minds, perfectly in harmony, synchronized, working in partnership. Joe's smile was smug. "We'll be there. At eight-thirty." Driving over to Westchester that night, Joe told Alice, "Sam's a timid bidder. His wife's inclined to overbid. Plays a sacrificing game when she knows it will gain points. Our job will be to make her oversacrifice." Sam's eyes opened at sight of her; his wife's narrowed. Joe took pride in their reaction, but it was a strange, impersonal pride. They had a drink and some small talk, and settled around the table. It was more like a seance than a game. They bid and made four clubs, a heart. Sam's wife got that determined look. With the opposition holding down one leg of the rubber, she figured to make the next bid a costly one. She won it with six diamonds, and went down nine tricks, doubled. Sam started to say something, after the debacle, but one look at his wife's anguished countenance stopped him short of audibility. Sam said consolingly, "I'm such a lousy bidder, dear. I must have given you the wrong idea of my hand." Next time, Sam made up for his timidity. Sam, with one heart in his hand, tried a psychic. "One heart," he said firmly. Sam knew there was a good chance the hearts were in the oppositions' hands, and this looked like a fine defensive tactic. However, his wife, with a three-suit powerhouse, couldn't conceive of a psychic from Sam. She had need of only a second round stopper in hearts and a small slam in no trump was in the bag. She had no hearts, but timid Sam was undoubtedly holding the ace-king. She bid six no-trump, which was conservative for her. She didn't want to make the mistake of having Sam let the bid die. Joe had the ace, king, queen and jack of hearts and a three to lead to Alice's hand. Alice finished up the hearts for a total of seven tricks, and this time it was Mrs. Tullgren who opened her mouth to speak. But she remembered Sam's kindness in the former hand, and she said, "It was all my fault, darling. To think I couldn't recognize a psychic, just because it came from you. I think we're overmatched, sweet." She paused to smile at Joe. "Up against the man who invented the comptin-reduco-determina." She added, as an afterthought, "And his charming, brilliant new wife." Which brought about incident number three. Alice turned to Mrs. Tullgren sweetly and asked, "Don't you really understand the comptin-reduco-determina?" "Not even faintly," Mrs. Tullgren answered. She smiled at Alice. The smile faded after about ten minutes. For Alice was telling her all about the comptin-reduco-determina. For an hour and nineteen minutes, Alice talked to this woman who had been humiliated twice, telling her all the things about the famous thinking machine that Mrs. Tullgren didn't want to know. It wasn't until Alice was through talking animatedly that the entranced Joe began to suspect that perhaps the Tullgrens weren't as interested in the dingus as a scientific mind would assume. They weren't. There was a strain after that, a decided heaviness to the rest of the evening. Sam seemed to sigh with relief when they said good night. In the car, Joe was thoughtful. Halfway home, he said, "Darling, I think you know too much—for a female, that is. I think you'll have to have a go with the knowledge-instiller. In reverse, of course." "Of course," she agreed. "I don't object to females knowing a lot. The world does." "Of course," she said. She was a first model and, therefore, experimental. These bugs were bound to show up. She was now less knowing, more deceptive, and she could frown. She began to remind him of Vera, which didn't make sense. Alice was sad when he was sad, gay when he was gay, and romantic to the same split-degree in the same split-second. She even told him his old jokes with the same inflection he always used. Their mood affinity was geared as closely as the comptin-reduco-determina. What more could a man want? And, damn it, why should Vera's perfume linger in that back bedroom?

test

20036

Triumph of the Middlebrow? This book comes with a triumphant blaring of publishers' trumpets, and one supposes that it is a signal sort of triumph for black studies or Africana studies (take your pick of names). The field has arrived to such an extent that a publisher thinks that it can make money, significant money, publishing such a work. Assignments in black studies have filtered down to the high-school, junior-high, and even elementary-school level (and remember the black liturgical occasions we now have on the calendar that beg for special schoolchild reports of one sort or another: the King holiday, Black History Month, Black Music Month, Kwanzaa, Malcolm X's birthday, Juneteenth), and while not every school does all of this, most schools must do some of this. (And this, of course, has nothing to do with the occasional racial killing or major protest that took place or may be taking place somewhere that require a report and discussion in a current-events or social-studies class.) Moreover, blacks cannot be left out of Women's History Month or Veteran's Day or, for the truly daring, Gay Appreciation Month. So, a book like Africana is bound to get a great deal of use, to be sold to virtually every school, public, and university library in the country, as well as to a number of churches, to say nothing of the private homes that will have a copy right next to the Britannica . (In some more Afrocentric black homes, it may replace the Britannica entirely, that Eurocentric collection of lies, although Britannica has become as multicultural as everyone else these days.) Those of us who have labored in the field of black studies (politically incorrectly such as the present author or very much politically correctly like a good many very good scholars) are heartened by this commercial venture. Indeed, it would be disheartening, as well as entirely untrue, if one were to think that this book was published as an act of philanthropy, as something that ought to be done. (It is so tiresome as a black person to be the recipient of charity all the time, to be the object of the moral imperative.) It is good to know that, partly through the energetic offices of Henry Louis Gates, black studies can, as it were, pay its way these days and not be dependent for its existence on a kind of political and cultural moralism on the part of whites and a kind of fetishlike piety on the part of blacks. It can be, alas, a business of an entirely good sort or needful sort, justifying itself in the marketplace. But I would think that most black-studies scholars are only partly heartened by this; for this rather triumphalist book (and Gates is important in black studies, in part, for the promotion of a triumphalist view of black history and black culture--globally speaking--which is why he is hated by Afrocentrists who take a somewhat different view of the long-term meaning of "the coming of the white man") is nothing less than the middlebrow arrival of black studies in American culture. Encyclopedias, after all, are middlebrow, bourgeois books that tend, in the end, not to promote intellectual inquiry on the part of the people who use them but rather to stifle it. Children tend to copy verbatim from such books without ever reading what they are copying. Adults, with far too much deference for the printed word, tend to consult such a book in much the way they consult the dictionary or the Bible (or in the way baseball fanatics consult the official record books): as the final arbiter, as that which settles all arguments. Why, for goodness' sake, would anyone actually read a book like this? Knowledge, in the instance of the definitive reference book, becomes entombed and sanctified, very much serving the anti-intellectual ends of the middlebrow, who want not to encounter knowledge and to wrestle with it but to store it as an authority on the bookshelf. But I suppose it is something of a triumph, which the publication of this book is meant to acknowledge, that black studies has achieved middlebrow status in the United States, that bourgeois people, both white and black, feel bad if they don't know something about the history and culture of African-descended people, in much the same way they feel bad, inadequate, if they don't know something about opera or a bit about Impressionist painting or if they have never seen a film by D. W. Griffith or Fritz Lang. How terrible at a party to discover that one has never seen The Grand Illusion --one of the all-time great films--or that one has not read, alas, a Toni Morrison novel or one does not own a Wynton Marsalis album. (The truly knowing coves own albums by Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, no less, and do reports for their book clubs on the blues.) What most thinking people in black studies find dangerous about the middlebrow apotheosis of the field is that it usually leads to the enshrinement of what Jacques Barzun calls thought-clichés, half-truths or non-truths that are accepted as the truth because someone said so in some reference book like Africana . Thought-clichés are like narcotics; people love them because they relieve them of the very thing they do not wish to do in any case, that is, think, think hard, and think critically and against the grain of their own beliefs or psychological needs or neurotic fantasy projections. Thought-clichés confirm one's stupidity and one's laziness. With all the goodwill in the world, a book like Africana cannot help but produce thought-clichés; it is, indeed, why most people will consult such a work, to find them and be comforted by them. No intellectual or scholar can, therefore, be fully at ease with a work of this sort, no matter his or her ideological stripe. Such a book as Africana simply washes the practitioners in the field in a sea of ambivalence, with a sense of lost faith, as we all stand before it a bit as Matthew Arnold stood before Dover Beach. Now, Gates and Appiah published a multicultural dictionary about a year ago, and Gates and Nellie McKay published the Norton Anthology of African American Literature shortly before that. With Africana , where Gates and Appiah, rather sentimentally and opportunistically, see themselves as the descendants of Du Bois, whose unfilled dream was to produce such a book, Gates seems to have cornered the market on black reference books that shape the canon of black studies, that define the field and its major players. Building a canon is very important to Gates, and it is, without question, an important pedagogical pursuit. A field must have order and it must have pioneers and heroes. It is also a power pursuit. He who defines the field controls it, in a manner of speaking. Some are jealous that Gates wants this sort of power. Others find it unseemly. I think Gates is wasting his considerable talents in the pursuit of it, but that is another issue for another type of review. It is amazing that Gates has done this volume so successfully and so quickly, that he has flooded the market with first-rate black reference books in such short order. It took him and Appiah only four years to produce Africana . Even with modern technology, that is an astonishing feat, so astonishing that some will dismiss the book (I have heard some comments of this sort even before the book was published) as some half-baked enterprise. That would be a mistake, for this is an incredibly polished work. This is a beautiful book, one of the most striking reference works I have ever seen. Gates and Appiah must be quite the field marshals to have hustled together this army of academics and to have gotten the work from them on time or nearly so. They deserve much credit for this. Most academics would have felt lucky to have finished this enterprise in 10 years. That Du Bois--who exists in the field of black studies these days as rather the black equivalent of Einstein (theorist), Dr. Johnson (wordsmith), Emerson (humanist), and Kant (moral philosopher), separately and together, as it were--is evoked by the editors in their introduction provides this volume with a pedigree that I suppose they thought it needed, making Gates and Appiah our intellectual knights who have given us the Holy Grail. (The editors called the quest for producing a black encyclopedia "a Holy Grail." More triumphalist history!) The introduction offers a good and useful account of Du Bois' attempt to produce an Africana encyclopedia, the professional jealousy he encountered, the racism that sometimes thwarted his efforts. It should be read by all who purchase the book. But the history of the publication of this book is only incompletely told by the editors. After 1970, when black studies was established on the white college campus, a number of reference books about the black experience were published and continue to be published. The editors make no attempt to place their book within that particular context, a more accurate historical context for understanding the appearance of this book, as it was made possible not by Du Bois' dream in any respect but by the rise of multiculturalism and black studies as intellectual industries in the United States after 1970. The increasing professionalization of black studies made this book possible, more scholars in the field, both black and white, being produced since 1970, more scholarship being produced. This book was also made possible by the rise of professionalism among African-Americans since the 1960s and the rise of a black middle class that has demanded more artifacts and objects, more "education" about its experience (more institutionalization of it, in other words, and more orthodoxy about its significance), that are all meant to reinforce its sense of identity, its psychological well-being, its sense of race mission, all important reasons for the existence of black studies, but all clearly anti-intellectual. In other words, the forces that brought this book into existence had little enough to do with Du Bois--although evoking him is of critical importance to the book's audience as a kind of typology about the struggle of black people to gain self-knowledge, a story that black people never tire of reciting, even today with a plethora of black bookshops and publishers grinding out books on black subjects or with a black point of view with ever-increasing regularity--and a great deal to do with the shift that has taken place within the black population of the United States in the last 25 years and the dramatic change in its status. This book is the product of both a strong movement toward the intellectualization of black experience among an elite and the anti-intellectualization of black experience by the public at large (earnest and respectful of black experience as it has now generally become) and those who cater to the public's access to intellectual material by rounding off the rough edges and making it thoroughly anti-intellectual by designing and evoking certain emotional markers about "struggle" and "resistance." I shall begin my next entry with a discussion of a set of entries in Africana , those dealing with aspects of Philadelphia, my hometown, and a response to David Nicholson's impressions of the book.

test

51072

SHAMAR'S WAR BY KRIS NEVILLE ILLUSTRATED BY GUINTA [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1964. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He was Earth's secret weapon, as deadly as a sword—and two-edged! I The year was 2346, and Earth, at the time, was a political democracy. The population was ruled by the Over-Council and, in order of decreasing importance, by Councils, and Local Councils. Each was composed of representatives duly apportioned by popular vote between the two contending parties. Executive direction was provided by a variety of Secretaries, selected by vote of the appropriate Councils. An independent Judiciary upheld the laws. A unified Earth sent colonists to the stars. Back came strange tales and improbable animals. Back, too, came word of a burgeoning technological civilization on the planet Itra, peopled by entirely humanoid aliens. Earth felt it would be wise for Itra to join in a Galactic Federation and accordingly, submitted the terms of such a mutually advantageous agreement. The Itraians declined.... Space Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to the New York office of the company. When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the Interscience Committee of the Over-Council. No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent awe. General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific. When they were seated, Old Tom swiveled around and gazed long in silence across the spires of the City. Capt. Shaeffer waited respectfully. General Reuter fidgetted. "Some day," Old Tom said at last, "I'm going to take my leave of this. Yes, gentle Jesus! Oh, when I think of all the souls still refusing to admit our precious Savior, what bitterness, oh, what sorrow is my wealth to me! Look down upon the teeming millions below us. How many know not the Lord? Yes, some morning, I will forsake all this and go out into the streets to spend my last days bringing the words of hope to the weary and oppressed. Are you a Christian, Merle?" General Reuter cracked his knuckles nervously while Capt. Shaeffer muttered an embarrassed affirmative. "I am a deeply religious man," Old Tom continued. "I guess you've heard that, Merle?" "Yes sir," Capt. Shaeffer said. "But did you know that the Lord has summoned you here today?" Old Tom asked. "No, sir," Capt. Shaeffer said. "General Reuter, here, is a dear friend. We've known each other, oh, many years. Distantly related through our dear wives, in fact. And we serve on the same Board of Directors and the same Charity Committees.... A few weeks ago, when he asked me for a man, I called for your file, Merle. I made discreet inquiries. Then I got down on my knees and talked it over with God for, oh, it must have been all of an hour. I asked, 'Is this the man?' And I was given a sign. Yes! At that moment, a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds!" General Reuter had continued his nervous movements throughout the speech. For the first time, he spoke. "Good God, Tom, serve us a drink." He turned to Capt. Shaeffer. "A little drink now and then helps a man relax. I'll just have mine straight, Tom." Old Tom studied Capt. Shaeffer. "I do not feel the gentle Master approves of liquor." "Don't try to influence him," General Reuter said. "You're embarrassing the boy." "I—" Capt. Shaeffer began. "Give him the drink. If he doesn't want to drink it, he won't have to drink it." Sighing, Old Tom poured two bourbons from the bar in back of his desk and passed them over. Martyrdom sat heavily upon his brow. After a quick twist of the wrist and an expert toss of the head, General Reuter returned an empty glass. "Don't mind if I do have another," he said. He was already less restless. "How's your ability to pick up languages?" General Reuter asked. "I learned Spanish and Russian at TUT PS," Capt. Shaeffer said apologetically. "I'm supposed to have a real high aptitude in languages, according to some tests I took. In case we should meet intelligent aliens, TUT gives them." "You got no association with crackpot organizations, anything like that?" General Reuter asked. "You're either a good Liberal-Conservative or Radical-Progressive, aren't you? I don't care which. I don't believe in prying into a man's politics." "I never belonged to anything," Capt. Shaeffer said. "Oh, I can assure you, that's been checked out very, very thoroughly," Old Tom said. The General signaled for another drink. With a sigh of exasperation, Old Tom complied. "Bob," Old Tom said, "I really think you've had enough. Please, now. Our Master counsels moderation." "Damn it, Tom," the General said and turned back to the space pilot. "May have a little job for you." Old Tom shook his head at the General, cautioning him. "Actually," the General said, ignoring the executive, "we'll be sort of renting you from TUT. In a way you'll still be working for them. I can get a million dollars out of the—" "Bob!" "—unmarked appropriation if it goes in in TUT's name. No questions asked. National Defense. I couldn't get anywhere near that much for an individual for a year. It gives us a pie to slice. We were talking about it before you came in. How does a quarter of a million dollars a year sound to you?" "When it comes to such matters," Old Tom interjected hastily, "I think first of the opportunities they bring to do good." The General continued, "Now you know, Merle. And this is serious. I want you to listen to me. Because this comes under World Security laws, and I'm going to bind you to them. You know what that means? You'll be held responsible." "Yes, sir," Merle said, swallowing stiffly. "I understand." "Good. Let's have a drink on that." "Please be quiet, General," Old Tom said. "Let me explain. You see, Merle, the Interscience Committee was recently directed to consider methods for creating a climate of opinion on Itra—of which I'm sure you've heard—which would be favorable to the proposed Galactic Federation." "Excuse me," General Reuter said. "They don't have a democracy, like we do. They don't have any freedom like we do. I have no doubt the average whateveryoucallem—Itraians, I guess—the average gooks—would be glad to see us come in and just kick the hell out of whoever is in charge of them." "Now, General," Old Tom said more sharply. "But that's not the whole thing," the General continued. "Even fit were right thing to do, an' I'm not saying isn't—right thing to do—there's log-lo-lo-gistics. I don't want to convey the impresh, impression that our Defense Force people have been wasting money. Never had as much as needed, fact. No, it's like this. "We have this broad base to buil' from. Backbone. But we live in a democracy. Now, Old Tom's Liberal-Conservative. And me, I'm Radical-Progresshive. But we agree on one thing: importance of strong defense. A lot of people don' understan' this. Feel we're already spendin' more than we can afford. But I want to ask them, what's more important than the defense of our planet?" "General, I'm afraid this is not entirely germane," Old Tom said stiffly. "Never mind that right now. Point is, it will take us long time to get the serious nature of the menace of Itra across to the voters. Then, maybe fifteen, twenty years.... Let's just take one thing. We don't have anywhere near enough troop transports to carry out the occupation of Itra. You know how long it takes to build them? My point is, we may not have that long. Suppose Itra should get secret of interstellar drive tomorrow, then where would we be?" Old Tom slammed his fist on the desk. "General, please! The boy isn't interested in all that." The General surged angrily to his feet. "By God, that's what's wrong with this world today!" he cried. "Nobody's interested in Defense. Spend only a measly twenty per cent of the Gross World Product on Defense, and expect to keep strong! Good God, Tom, give me a drink!" Apparently heresy had shocked him sober. Old Tom explained, "The General is a patriot. We all respect him for it." "I understand," Capt. Shaeffer said. General Reuter hammered his knuckles in rhythm on the table. "The drink, the drink, the drink! You got more in the bottle. I saw it!" Old Tom rolled his eyes Heavenward and passed the bottle across. "This is all you get. This is all I've got." The General held the bottle up to the light. "Should have brought my own. Let's hurry up and get this over with." Old Tom smiled the smile of the sorely beset and persecuted and said, "You see, Merle, there's massive discontent among the population of Itra. We feel we should send a man to the planet to, well, foment change and, uh, hasten the already inevitable overthrow of the despotic government. That man will be strictly on his own. The Government will not be able to back him in any way whatsoever once he lands on Itra." The General had quickly finished the bottle. "You she," he interrupted, "there's one thing they can't fight, an' that's an idea. Jus' one man goes to Itra with the idea of Freedom, that's all it'll take. How many men did it take to start the 'Merican Revolution? Jefferson. The Russian Revolution? Marx!" "Yes," Old Tom said. "One dedicated man on Itra, preaching the ideas of Liberty—liberty with responsibility and property rights under one God. That man can change a world." Exhausted by the purity of his emotions, Old Tom sat back gasping to await the answer. "A quarter of a million dollars a year?" Capt. Shaeffer asked at length. II The Itraians spoke a common language. It was somewhat guttural and highly inflected. Fortunately, the spelling appeared to be phonetic, with only forty-three characters being required. As near as anyone could tell, centuries of worldwide communication had eliminated regional peculiarities. The speech from one part of Itra was not distinguishable from that of another part. Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity, Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated. It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent. The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a Defense Facility. At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the New Mexican space port. A ship waited. The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants. Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions. It was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had always regarded with a circumspect indifference. The slums were there. He supposed they always would be there. But now, for the first time in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent threat once and for all. He felt relief and guilt. During the last three years, he had earned $750,000. As a civilian stationed on a Defense Force Base, he had, of course, to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. But the charge was nominal. Since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000. Which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from Itra. Shaeffer's ship stood off Itra while he prepared to disembark. In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing. Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker. In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a technologically advanced civilization. His plan was as follows: 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses. 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party. 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the University of Xxla. 4. Working through student contacts, he was to ingratiate himself with such rebel intellectuals as could be found. 5. Once his contacts were secure, he was to assist in the preparation of propaganda and establish a clandestine press for its production. 6. As quickly as the operation was self-sufficient, he was to move on to another major city ... and begin all over. The ship descended into the atmosphere. The bell rang. Shamar the Worker seated himself, put on his oxygen mask and signaled his readiness. He breathed oxygen. The ship quivered, the door fell away beneath him and he was battered unconscious by the slipstream. Five minutes later, pinwheeling lazily in free fall, he opened his eyes. For an instant's panic he could not read the altimeter. Then seeing that he was safe, he noted his physical sensations. He was extremely cold. Gyrating wildly, he beat his chest to restore circulation. He stabilized his fall by stretching out his hands. He floated with no sensation of movement. Itra was overhead, falling up at him slowly. He turned his back to the planet and checked the time. Twelve minutes yet to go. He spent, in all, seventeen minutes in free fall. At 2000 feet, he opened his parachute. The sound was like an explosion. He floated quietly, recovering from the shock. He removed his oxygen mask and tasted the alien air. He sniffed several times. It was not unpleasant. Below was darkness. Then suddenly the ground came floating up and hit him. The terrain was irregular. He fought the chute to collapse it, tripped, and twisted his ankle painfully. The chute lay quiet and he sat on the ground and cursed in English. At length he bundled up the chute and removed all of the packages of money but the one disguised as a field pack. He used the shovel to dig a shallow grave at the base of a tree. He interred the chute, the oxygen cylinder, the mask, the shovel and scooped dirt over them with his hands. He sat down and unlaced his shoe and found his ankle badly swollen. Distant, unfamiliar odors filled him with apprehension and he started at the slightest sound. Dawn was breaking. III Noting his bearings carefully, he hobbled painfully westward, with thirty pounds of money on his back. He would intersect the major North-South Intercontinental highway by at least noon. Two hours later, he came to a small plastic cabin in a clearing at the edge of a forest. Wincing now with each step, he made his way to the door. He knocked. There was a long wait. The door opened. A girl stood before him in a dressing gown. She frowned and asked, " Itsil obwatly jer gekompilp? " Hearing Itraian spoken by a native in the flesh had a powerful emotional impact on Shamar the Worker. Stumblingly, he introduced himself and explained that he was camping out. During the previous night he had become lost and injured his ankle. If she could spare him food and directions, he would gladly pay. With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian, "Come in, Chom the Worker." He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor had picked that name for whatever obscure reason. "Sit down," she invited. "I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and bacon—" the Itraian equivalent—"if that's all right with you. I'm Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge." The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal, was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach. "Good coffee," he said. "Thank you. Care for a cigarette?" "I sure would." He had no matches, so she lit it for him, hovering above him a moment, leaving with him the fresh odor of her hair. The taste of the cigarette was mild. Rather surprisingly, it substituted for nicotine and allayed the sharp longing that had come with the coffee. "Let's look at your ankle," she said. She knelt at his feet and began to unlace the right shoe. "My, it's swollen," she said sympathetically. He winced as she touched it and then he reddened with embarrassment. He had been walking across dusty country. He drew back the foot and bent to restrain her. Playfully she slapped his hand away. "You sit back! I'll get it. I've seen dirty feet before." She pulled off the shoe and peeled off the sock. "Oh, God, it is swollen," she said. "You think it's broken, Shamar?" "Just sprained." "I'll get some hot water with some MedAid in it, and that'll take the swelling out." When he had his foot in the water, she sat across from him and arranged her dressing gown with a coquettish gesture. She caught him staring at the earring, and one hand went to it caressingly. She smiled that universal feminine smile of security and recklessness, of invitation and rejection. "You're engaged," he noted. She opened her eyes wide and studied him above a thumbnail which she tasted with her teeth. "I'm engaged to Von Stutsman—" as the name might be translated—"perhaps you've heard of him? He's important in the Party. You know him?" "No." "You in the Party?" she said. She was teasing him now. Then, suddenly: "Neither am I, but I guess I'll have to join if I become Mrs. Von Stutsman." They were silent for a moment. Then she spoke, and he was frozen in terror, all thoughts but of self-preservation washed from his mind. "Your accent is unbelieveably bad," she said. "I'm from Zuleb," he said lamely, at last. "Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?" He said nothing. "Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?" she asked. "No," he said hollowly. "They'll behead you." She laughed, not unkindly. "If you could see yourself! How ridiculous you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix more coffee and we can talk." She called cheerily over her shoulder, "You're safe here. No one will be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday." She brought him a steaming mug. "Drink this while I dress." She disappeared into the bedroom. He heard the shower running. He sat waiting, numb and desperate, and drank the coffee because it was there. His thoughts scampered in the cage of his skull like mice on a treadmill. When Ge-Ge came back, he had still not resolved the conflict within him. She stood barefoot upon the rug and looked down at him, hunched miserably over the pan of water, now lukewarm. "How's the foot?" "All right." "Want to take it out?" "I guess." "I'll get a towel." She waited until he had dried the foot and restored the sock and shoe. The swelling was gone. He stood up and put his weight on it. He smiled wanly. "It's okay now. It's not broken, I guess." She gestured him to the sofa. He complied. "What's in the field pack?" she asked. "Money? How much?" She moved toward it. He half rose to stop her, but by then she had it partly open. "My," she said, bringing out a thick sheaf of bills. She rippled them sensuously. "Pretty. Very, very pretty." She examined them for texture and appearance. "They look good, Shamar. I'll bet it would cost ten million dollars in research on paper and ink and presses to do this kind of a job. Only another government has got that kind of money to throw around." She tossed the currency carelessly beside him and came to sit at his side. She took his hand. Her hand was warm and gentle. "Tell me, Shamar," she said. "Tell me all about it." So this is how easily spies are trapped in real life, Shamar told himself with numb disbelief. The story came out slowly and hesitantly at first. She said nothing until he had finished. "And that's all? You really believe that, don't you? And I guess your government does, too. That all we need is just some little idea or something." She turned away from him. "But of course, that's neither here nor there, is it? I never imagined an adventurer type would look like you. You have such a soft, honest voice. As a little girl, I pictured myself being carried off by a tanned desert sheik on a camel; and oh, he was lean and handsome! With dark flashing eyes and murderously heavy lips and hands like iron! Well, that's life, I guess." She stood and paced the room. "Let me think. We'll pick up a flyer in Zelonip when we catch the bus next Tuesday. How much does the money weigh?" "Eighty pounds." "I can carry about 10 pounds in my bag. You can take your field pack. How much is in it? Thirty pounds? That'll leave about forty which we can ship through on extra charges. Then, when we get to Xxla, I can hide you out in an apartment over on the East side." "Why would you run a risk like that for me?" he asked. She brushed the hair from her face. "Let's say—what? I don't really think you can make it, because it's so hopeless. But maybe, just maybe, you might be one of the rare ones who, if he plays his cards right, can beat the system. I love to see them licked! "Well, I'm a clerk. That's all. Just a lowly clerk in one of the Party offices. I met Von Stutsman a year ago. This is his cabin. He lets me use it. "He's older than I am; but there's worse husband material. But then again, he's about to be transferred to one of the big agricultural combines way out in the boondocks where there's no excitement at all. Just little old ladies and little old men and peasants having children. "I'm a city girl. I like Xxla. And if I marry him, all that goes up the flue. I'll be marooned with him, God knows where, for years. Stuck, just stuck. "Still—he is Von Stutsman, and he's on his way up. Everyone says that. Ten, twenty years, he'll be back to Xxla, and he'll come back on top. "Oh ... I don't know what I want to do! If I marry him, I can get all the things I've always wanted. Position, security. He's older than I am, but he's really a nice guy. It's just that he's dull. He can't talk about anything but Party, Party, Party. "That's what I came out to this cabin for. To think things over, to try to get things straightened out. And then you came along. Maybe it gives me a chance for something exciting before I ship off to the boondocks. Does that make sense to you? "I'll get married and sit out there, and I'll turn the pages of the Party magazine and smile sweetly to myself. Because, you see, I'll always be able to lean forward and say, 'Dear? Once upon a time, I helped hide an Earth spy in Xxla.' And that'll knock that silly and self-satisfied look off his face for once.... Oh, I don't know! Let me alone!" With that, she fled to the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. He could hear her sobbing helplessly. In the afternoon, she came out. He had fallen asleep. She shook him gently to waken him. "Eh? Oh! Huh?" He smiled foolishly. "Wash up in there," she told him. "I'm sorry I blew up on you this morning. I'll cook something." When he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming platters. "Look, Ge-Ge," he said over coffee. "You don't like your government. We'll help you out. There's this Galactic Federation idea." He explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures. "Shamar, my friend," she said, "did you see Earth's proposal? There was nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. We were required to give Earth all transportation franchises. The organization you used to work for was to be given, as I remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine year right to carry all Earth-Itra commerce. It was all covered in the newspapers, didn't you see it?" Shamar said, "Well, now, I'm not familiar with the details. I wasn't keeping up with them. But I'm sure these things could be, you know, worked out. Maybe, for Security reasons, we didn't want to give you the interstellar drive right off, but you can appreciate our logic there. Once we saw you were, well, like us, a peace-loving planet, once you'd changed your government to a democracy, you would see it our way and you'd have no complaints on that score." "Let's not talk politics," she said wearily. "Maybe it's what you say, and I'm just naturally suspicious. I don't want to talk about it." "Well, I was just trying to help—" The sentence was interrupted by a monstrous explosion. "Good God!" Shamar cried. "What was that?" "Oh, that," Ge-Ge said, shaking off the effects. "They were probably testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was explosion proof and it wasn't." IV During the week alone in the cabin, Ge-Ge fell in love with Shamar. "Oh, my God!" she cried. "What will I do when they catch you? I'll die, Shamar! I couldn't bear it. We'll go to Xxla, we'll hide away as quietly as two mice, somewhere. We won't go out. The two of us, alone but together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. Nobody will ever know about us. We'll be the invisible people." Shamar protested. "I don't see how we can ever be secure until something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time." She wept quietly. The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food and clothing. Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home. One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his arms and sobbed, "I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man." Shamar held her tensely. She broke away. "You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?" "You told him I didn't have any papers?" "Millions of people don't have any papers—the drifters, people that do casual labor, the people that don't work at all. The thing is, without papers he doesn't have any way to check on you. Oh, you should have seen his face when I gave him back his earring. He was absolutely livid. I didn't think he had it in him. I suppose I'll have to quit my job now. Oh, if you only had papers so we could be married!" Ge-Ge's mood, that evening, alternated between despair and optimism. In the end, she was morose and restless. She repeated several times, "I just don't know what's going to happen to us." "Ge-Ge," he said, "I can't spend my life in this apartment I've got to get out." "You're mad." She faced him from across the room. She stood with her legs apart, firmly set. "Well, I don't care what happens any more. I can't stand things to go on like they are. I'll introduce you to some people I know, since you won't be happy until I do. But God help us!"

test

51445

SORDMAN THE PROTECTOR BY TOM PURDOM Illustrated by WOOD [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine August 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He was the most powerful man in the world. He could make anybody do anything—and yet he was the slave of a mad criminal's mind! In a beer hall on the eighty-first floor of the Hotel Mark Twain fourteen men held an adolescent girl prisoner. "I'll go up there by myself," Sordman said. He was a big young man with sloppy black hair and a red beard. His fashionably ornate clothes covered the body of a first class Talent. Disciplined training, plus drugs and his natural gift, had made him one of the four truly developed psionic adepts in the world. With drugs and preparation, he could command the entire range of psi powers. Without drugs, he could sense the emotions and sometimes the general thought patterns of the people near him. "We'd better go with you," Lee Shawn said. "There's an awful lot of fear up there. They'll kill you as soon as they learn you're a Talent." She was a lean, handsome woman in her early forties. A lawyer-politician, she was the Guggenheim Foundation's lobbyist. For years she had fought against laws to outlaw the development of Talent. "Thanks, Mama, but I think I'd better go alone." Sordman, though he didn't tell her, knew that symbolically Lee saw him as the tree and herself as the rain and the earth. "Go ahead and laugh," George Aaron said. "But you'll need big medicine to fight that fear. Lee's symbolic place in your psyche is important." "I've thought it over," Sordman said. "I'll depend on God and nothing else." He felt George's mind squirm. As a psychologist, George accepted Sordman's Zen-Christian faith because Sordman needed it to control the powers of his Talent. But George himself was a confirmed skeptic. The men up there were scared. Sordman knew he would die if he lost control. But Lee and George were scared, too. Even now, standing in the park in early morning, their fear battered at his mind. He thought about swimming in the ocean. He made his skin remember salted wind. The real Atlantic, a mile away, helped the illusion. It was the right symbol. He felt his friends calm. "Let him go," George said. "He's manipulating us," Lee said. "I know. But let him go." Sordman laughed. Lee bent and tore a clump of grass from the earth. "Take this, Andy." "Thank you." It was wet with dew. He held it to his nose and smelled the dirt and grass. Two things kept him from destruction by his own Talent. He loved the physical world and he believed in God. "I'll call you if I need you," he said. "Be careful," George said. "Many people need you." "You've got status," Lee said. "Use it. You're dealing with the kind of people it impresses." The hotel stood three hundred stories tall. Surrounded by a five-mile-square park, connected to the major coastal cities by high speed vacuum tubes, the building was a small town. Eighty-five thousand people lived within its walls. Sordman rode an empty elevator. Through the glass sides he studied the deserted halls and shops. They were frightened here. Murder had been done. A Talent had destroyed two men. Lord, protect us from the malice of a witch. The eighty-first was a commercial floor. He got off the vator and walked down the main corridor. A man watched him through the door of a bar. A girl in a blue kimono froze behind the counter of a pastry shop. He stopped before the doors of the beer hall. He dropped to his knees and prayed. Once the brave leader walked into a panicky group and it was enough to look calm. Now he had to be calm. It was not enough to square the shoulders, walk erect, speak in a confident tone. Sordman's true emotions radiated from him every moment. Those within range felt them as their own. He drove thoughts like knives into the deepest corners of his mind. He begged release from fear. He prayed his God to grant him love for the frightened men within. He stood erect and squared his shoulders. His bulb-shouldered morning coat was grey as dawn. He thought a well loved formula, a Buddhist prayer from the Book of Universal Worship. All life is transitory. All people must suffer and die. Let us forgive one another. He roared his name and titles at the door. "I am Talent Andrew Sordman, Fellow for Life of the Guggenheim Foundation, by Senate Act Protector of the People! By the laws of our country, I ask the right to enter." Silence. "I am Talent Andrew Sordman, Fellow—" " Go away, witch! " Without drugs and preparation, Sordman needed visual contact to sense emotions. But he didn't need Talent to sense the hatred in that voice. He pictured a rough block of stone. Using a basic skill, he kept the picture in his mind as he opened the door and planned his words. "I have taken no drugs and made no preparation. You have nothing to fear. I'm your Protector and I've come to talk." The beer hall was large and gloomy. The butts and ashes of the night's smoking filled its trays. Fourteen men watched him come. Half a dozen had hunting rifles. Hunched over, weeping, a thin, dark-haired girl sat beneath an unshaded light. A shiver of anger crossed his brain. "Kill the witch!" a young man shouted. Lord, grant me love.... His eyes focused on the rifle bearers. One of them half-raised his gun. Then the butt clumped on the floor. "You're bewitched!" the young man said. "I told you not to let him in." "I've come to talk," Sordman said. "Who's the leader of your group?" The young man said, "We don't have a leader. Here we're all equals." Sordman studied the young man's emotions. He was frightened, but only a little more than the others. There was something else there, too. Something very strong. Sex frustration! The young man had an athletic body and a handsome, chiselled face. On his yellow vest he wore the emblem of a Second Class Technician. But even a young man with adequate finances could be frustrated. Keeping the stone in his mind, he undressed a certain actress. He loved women and engaged in sex with lusty, triumphant joy. To him it was a celebration of the sacred mystery of life. He hoped some of this emotion reached its target. He started talking without asking for a parley. "Two men died yesterday. I've come to hunt out the murderer and put him away. What's the evidence against this girl?" "We found drugs and a divining rod in her room." "She's had a reputation for a long time." "The school kids say she's a daydreamer." Sordman understood their fear. Psi was a new and dangerous force. Its use demanded moral and intellectual discipline. Only a rare and carefully developed personality could encounter the anger, hostility and fear in other minds and still retain compassion and reasonable respect for human beings. An undisciplined person panicked and went into a mental state approaching paranoia. Sordman fought panic every day. He fought it with a total acceptance of human motivations, cultivated tenderness and compassion, and a healthy ego which could accept and enjoy its own self-love. Those things, Sordman would have said, and also the necessary grace of God. But the most undisciplined personality could practice psi destructively. Hostile minds roamed the world. Death could strike you in a clear field beneath an open sky while your murderer lay home in his bed. No wonder they dragged a girl from her parents and bullied her till dawn. They talked. Sordman picked his way through fourteen minds. As always, he found what he wanted. A fat, redheaded man sat a little apart from the group. He radiated a special kind of concern. He was concerned for the girl and for his own children. He believed the actions of the night had been necessary, but he felt the girl's pain and he wasn't sure he was doing the right thing. Above all, he was a man who wanted to do the right thing—the really right thing. "You all have children," Sordman said. "Would you like to see them dragged out at night and treated the way you've treated this girl?" "We've got to protect ourselves!" the young man said. "Let him talk!" the fat man growled. He stared at the thick hands he spread on the table. "The girl has said all night she's innocent. Maybe she is. Maybe the Protector can do what we haven't done and find the real killer." "I'm a master Talent," Sordman said. "If the killer is in the hotel, I can track him down before midnight. Will you give me that long?" "How do we know you'll bring in the right man?" "If he's the right man, he'll make it plain enough." "You'll make him confess," the young man said. "You'll manipulate him like a puppet." "What good will that do?" Sordman said. "Do you think I could control a man all the time he's in prison and on trial? If I use my Talent more than a few hours, I collapse." "Can we hold the girl here?" asked the redheaded fat man. "Feed her and treat her right," Sordman said. "What's your name?" "John Dyer. My friends were about to use their belts on her." A rifleman shuffled uneasily. "It's the only way. Mind killers use their Talent to tie their tongues and confuse us. Only pain can break their control." "That's a fairy tale," Sordman said. "Without drugs a Talent is helpless." "We've got the girl," John Dyer said. "She can't hurt us while we're waiting." " He can! " the young man screamed. "Are you a plain fool? He can go outside and kill us all." Sordman laughed. "Sure I could. And tomorrow I'd have to fight off an army. That I couldn't do if I was fool enough to try. You're frightened, boy. Use your head." "You are excited, Leonard," said an armed man. He wore a blue morning coat with Manager's stars and the emblem of a transportation company. "We can wait a day. If we've got the killer, then we're safe. If we don't, then we've failed and the Protector should try." "I'm not frightened. I just don't like Talent." Most of the men frowned. They didn't share the prejudice. A few nodded and mumbled and shot dark glances at Sordman. He let them talk. He stood there and thought apple pies and the brotherhood of man and the time he and his second wife spent three days in bed. And the big block of stone. He was a high-powered transmitter broadcasting joy, good will toward men and tranquility. In the end they listened to Dyer. "But don't think you'll get a minute past midnight," said the young man. "Technician, your Protector will remember." Clarke Esponito had been a hard, quick little man in his early fifties. On the day of his death, the hotel newspaper had published his picture and announced his promotion to Director of Vocational Testing for the entire Atlantic Region. He had lived with his wife and his nineteen-year-old son, and his wife had been a lifetime wife. Esponito had been a Catholic, and that faith still called short-term marriages a mortal sin. For a moment Sordman wondered what it would be like to know only one woman your entire life. He loved the infinite variety of God's creation and wanted to sample as much of it as he could. "Mylady Widow, our apologies." Lee bowed, hands before her chest, and Sordman and George Aaron bowed with her. "We intrude on you," Lee said, "only because we have to find the real killer. Other people may be in danger." The Widow Esponito bowed in return. "I understand, Politician Shawn." Even with her face scarred by tears she looked lovely. From the earliest years of their marriage, her husband had been high in the Civil Service and able to buy her beauty treatments. "Mylady," Sordman said, "I need your help for two things. We want to know who you think wanted to kill your husband. And we need your want." "Our want?" her son asked. He stood rigidly beside his mother's chair. His clothes were rich and formal tweed. "Do you want to find the killer?" The boy nodded soberly. "The moment I heard of his murder, I promised to avenge him." "John!" His mother trembled. "You were raised to be a Christian!" Sordman said, "I want to locate the image I think was used to kill him. For that I want to hook your strong desires into my thoughts. You won't know I'm doing it. But if you're near me, I'll use your emotions." "Your husband was a very important man," Lee said. "Would anyone gain by his death?" "Everyone liked my husband. He was always laughing, he—" The old-young woman started crying. Her son put his arm around her shoulders. Sordman felt her pain and winced. Death and pain were part of Creation, but he hated them and often cursed them. At times like these, he understood George's skepticism. The boy said, "Manager Kurt didn't like him." Mylady stifled her sobs and sat up. "Manager Kurt has been our guest every month. Protector, John's upset. He's talking wildly." "Father told me. He said Manager Kurt didn't like him." "Your father and the Manager were good friends." He felt a sudden resentment in the woman. Why? The boy didn't feel as if he was lying. Maybe Esponito had been the kind of man who didn't talk about his job with his wife. But his son—who would some day be a member of his father's class—would have received a certain amount of practical advice. Perhaps Mylady resented being left out of her husband's professional life. That was a common family pattern, after all. George felt impatient. Sordman shot him a questioning glance. "Where does Manager Kurt live?" "In Baltimore," the boy said. "Mylady, may we use your phone?" "You don't take John seriously?" Mylady said. "We'll have to ask the Baltimore police to check on the Manager. It may not mean anything, but we have to follow every lead." "Use the phone, Protector." Sordman and George stepped into the dining room. "We're wasting time," George said. "They're both upset and there seems to be a family quarrel." "I know. But Esponito's murder gives us more leads than Bedler's. Bedler didn't even have a one-month wife when he died. Lots of people knew the Administrator and might have had a grudge against him." George clasped his hands behind his back. "We've unraveled twenty-three murders in the last four years. Judging by that experience, I'd say there are three possibilities: both victims were picked at random; both victims are in some way related; or one victim was killed to confuse the police." "Unless we have something entirely new." "That's been the pattern so far." "I think we're both coming to the same conclusion." "Find out if the murderer used the picture from the paper?" "Mmm. If he did, Administrator Esponito was probably attacked on the spur of the moment. And we should be seeing who wanted to kill Bedler." "What about Manager Kurt?" "Have Lee call the Baltimore police while I try to locate the murder weapon. At least they can search his home for drugs." George went back to the parlor and Sordman stripped to his yellow vest. From the pockets of his morning coat he removed a leather case and a tiny plastic package. Unfolded, the plastic became a thin red robe with a yellow bomb-burst on the back. He called it his battle robe. Habit played a big part in the development of Talent. The same clothing, the same ritualized movements, helped put his mind in the proper state. He filled a hypodermic with a pink liquid and jabbed the needle into his wrist. As the drug took effect, he knelt to pray. "Grant me, God, the strength to bind the demons in my mind." He stood up. At this point many Talents danced. Sordman loved to use his body, but ritual dancing made him feel ridiculous. It had been proven, however, that the Power flowed at its freest when the body was occupied, so he took three colored balls from the case and started juggling. The balls soared higher and faster. He mumbled a hymn. His voice grew stronger. He roared his love of life at the world. The wall between his conscious and unconscious mind collapsed. Lightning flashed in his eyes. Colors sang in his brain. Walls, floor, table, chairs became extensions of his mind. They danced with the balls between his hands. The Universe and he flowed together like a sea of molten iron. His hands, miles from his mind, fumbled in the case. The balls danced and bobbed in the air. He laughed and unfolded his divining rod. The furniture bounced. Mylady Esponito screamed. All Creation is a flow. Dance, you parts of me, you living things, you atoms of my dust! He had torn Esponito's photo from a newspaper. Now he let the colored balls drop and stuck the picture on the end of the rod. "This and that are one in kind. Servant rod, find me that!" He stretched out the rod and turned on his heels. He sang and blanked his mind and listened to the tremors in his hands. Stop. Back right. Now the left. Too far. Down. Correct left.... Here! He pressed a button on the rod. A tripod sprang out. A pair of sights flipped up. Carefully he sighted down the rod, out through the window-wall beside the table, to a grove of trees in the park. Creation roaring in his open head, divining rod in hand, he stormed out the door and down the hall. Lee and George hurried after him. The presence of their well known minds pleased him. There was George's unexpressed belief that he had "mastered" and guided the Power he feared. There was Lee's worry for him and her keen awareness of human realities. And there, too, were self-discipline, intelligence, affection, and a richness of experience and thought he expected to draw on for another forty years. And filling the world, pounding on the walls of existence, the Power. His power. He, the master of the world! He who could uproot the trees, spin the earth, make the ground shake and change the colors of the sky. He felt George's clear-eyed, good-humored tolerance. A hypnotic command triggered in his mind. He saw a Roman Caesar ride in triumph and the slave behind him said, "Caesar, remember you are mortal." My power? It is a gift from the Fountain of Creation. Mine to use with the wisdom and restraint implanted by my teachers. Or else I'll be destroyed by my power. He laughed and rolled into a cannon ball and hurled his body through the wood. "Andy! Andy, you're losing us!" He picked them up and towed them with him. The girl in the beer hall cried in his heart. The fox is many hills away and the hound grows impatient. They landed in a heap. George said, "Andy, what the hell are you doing?" "I brought you down in a soft spot." "You felt like an elephant running amok! Boy, you've got to be careful. Since you were a little boy I've taught you to watch every move. For a moment I don't think you knew how you felt." "You're right," Sordman mumbled. "That was close." "Let's find the picture," Lee said. "Has the drug worn off?" "Just about. The picture's over by that tree. It feels like it's rumpled up." After a minute's hunt, they found it. It had been rolled into a ball and tossed away. "We're dealing with an amateur," Lee said. "A Talent who was even half-developed would have burned this." Unrolled, the picture fell in half. It had been sliced with a blade. "Let's walk back," Sordman said. "Let's talk." They crossed a log bridge. He ran his hands along the rough bark and smelled the cool water of the stream. Most of the big park was wilderness, but here and there were pavilions, an outdoor theatre, open playing fields and beautifully planned gardens. A man could have a home surrounded by the shops and pleasures of civilized living and yet only be a ten-minute elevator ride from God's bounty. "The fact the killer used the newspaper picture doesn't prove Bedler was the real victim," George said. "But it indicates it." "Let's assume it's true," Sordman said, "and see where it leads us." "Bedler was married," Lee said. "I remember that from our briefing." Sordman rabbit-punched a tree as he passed it. "It was a one-year contract, and it ended two weeks ago." "I smell jealousy," Lee said. "The world is filled with it," George said. "I favor short-term marriages. They're the only way a person can practice a difficult art and make mistakes without committing himself for life. But about half the mental breakdowns I used to get were due to the insecurities caused by a temporary contract. One party almost always hopes the marriage will somehow become permanent." "Let's talk to Bedler's ex-wife," Sordman said. Her name was Jackie Baker. She was just over five feet tall and blonde. She wore glasses with green frames. Sordman liked big women but he had to admit this little creature made him feel like swatting and rubbing. She wore a sea-green kimono and bowed gracefully at the door. "Citizen Baker, I'm Protector Andrew Sordman. May we talk to you?" "Certainly, Protector. Welcome." They entered and he introduced Lee and George. After they exchanged bows, the girl offered them some wine. She took a bottle of clear Rhine wine from the cooler and asked George to open it. There were several journals on a throw table. "Are you a doctor, Citizen?" Lee asked. "No, Politician. A medical technician." They drank the first glass of wine. "Technician," George said, "we have to ask you some questions. We'll try not to upset you." The girl closed her eyes. "I'll try not to be upset. I hope you find whoever killed him. I'd like to find her." The girl felt lonely. She ached with unsatisfied needs. I'd like to lie with you and comfort you, Sordman thought. I'd like to hold you in my arms and drain all the tears you're holding back. But he couldn't. His contract with his wife had six months to run and no one committed adultery any more. "When the rules are carefully tailored to human needs," Lee often said, "there's no excuse for breaking them." "Why 'her'?" Lee asked. "Why 'her' instead of 'him'?" The girl looked at Sordman. "Can't you just probe my mind? Do I have to answer questions?" "I'm afraid so," Sordman said. "My Talent has its limits. I can't deep-probe everybody's mind, any more than a baseball pitcher can pitch all day." Lee said, "Even if he could, our warrant says we can't probe more than four suspects." "Now can you tell us why you think the killer is a woman?" George asked. The girl held out her glass and George filled it. "Because he was the kind of man who made you want to kill him. He was understanding and loving. He made me feel like a princess all the time I lived with him. But he can't keep to one girl." She gulped down the whole glass. "He told me so himself. He was so wonderful to live with I went insane every time he looked at another girl. I knew he was shopping for his next wife." She wiggled in her chair. "Is that what you want to know?" "I'm sorry," Sordman said. "Do you know who he was interested in before he died?" The girl had big, myopic eyes. "Our contract ended sixteen days ago." She took a cigarette from inside her kimono. "Protector Sordman, could I just talk to you?" "Certainly," Sordman said. Lee and George went to a coffee house on the next floor down. "I want to talk to just you," the girl said. "I feel safe with you. You make me feel right." "It goes with being a Talent," Sordman said. "Either we like people and let them know it or we crack." "I know it's all right to tell you things. I love Joe. I broke the rules for him. I didn't avoid him for three months the way you're supposed to. I went everywhere I knew he'd be. I had to see him." Sordman stroked his beard. Mentally, he cuddled her in his arms and murmured comfort to her. She hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around her body. "Just before our marriage ended, I found out he was seeing Raven English as much as he could. He didn't break the rules. But when we went to dances he always danced with her once or twice. And she and her husband used to meet us in bars. After the contract expired, he couldn't see her much because she and her husband have another six months to go. But there was a dance last week and I saw the two of them disappear into the park. Raven's husband hunted all over for her. He looked horrible. I pitied him." "Who's Raven English?" "She's a sadist. I know she is. She's just the type to do this. She likes to play with men and hurt them. Her poor husband is a nervous wreck. I know she killed Joe, Protector. She hates us!" He stood up. The girl watched him with big eyes. He put his hand on her head. "Sleep is a joy," he said. Unprepared, he couldn't have done that to many people. But she was a woman, which added to his influence, and totally exhausted. He got off the vator and looked around for the coffee house. Dozens of people wandered the halls and the shops. As he walked down the hall, some of them looked away or got as far from him as they could. Others ignored him or found his presence reassuring or studied him curiously. A fat woman in a black kimono walked toward him. She had one hand on her hip and her eyes were narrowed and hard. Sordman smiled. He felt her fear and distrust, and her determination not to let such emotions conquer her. "Good afternoon, Protector." "Good afternoon, Citizen Mother." He felt her triumph and her pleasure with herself. His fellow humans often made him gawk in wonder. Some people say we're psychic cripples, he thought. And maybe we are. But we do our work and we enjoy ourselves. And we do dangerous things like putting bases on Venus and falling in love. Surrounded by death and danger, crippled though we are, we go on. He swelled with feeling. People smiled and glanced at each other or hid shyly from the organ chords of his emotion. An old man stepped in front of him. "Monster! Freak!" He was thin and perfectly dressed. Sordman stopped. God of Infinite Compassion, this is my brother.... "They ought to lock you up," the man said. "They ought to keep you away from decent people. Get out of my head! Leave me alone!" People stared at them. A small crowd gathered. Lee appeared in the door of the coffee house. "It's all right," Sordman told the people. "It's all right." He started to go on. The man stepped in front of him. "Leave me alone, freak. Let me think my own thoughts!" "Citizen, I haven't touched your mind." "I felt it just then!" "It was no more than I could help. I'm sorry if I've hurt you." "Go away!" "I'm trying to." "Murderer! Mind witch!" He was faced with a strong mind that valued its independence. Anything he did would be detected and resented. "Citizens," he said, "this man deserves your respect. No matter what a man does, he's bound to offend someone. This Citizen values his privacy—which is good—and therefore I make him angry. I hope the good my Talent lets me do outweighs the bad. Forgive me, brother." He stepped to one side. "Leave him alone," someone said. "Let the Protector work." "Leave him alone, old man." " I'm not an old man. " "No, you're not," Sordman said. "I admire your courage." He walked on. Behind him the old man shouted curses. "Are you all right?" Lee said. "Sure. Let's go in and sit down." There were just a few people in the coffee house. Sordman ordered and told them what he had learned. "I wish you could probe everyone in the building," George said. "All we get is gossip." "The husband of this Raven English has a motive," Lee said. "Why don't we visit her?" "I think we should." Sordman drank his coffee. "Citizen English herself might have killed them." "I doubt it," George said. "It all sounds like a lot of talk," Sordman said. "But we have to follow it up. This business is nothing but wearing out your legs running after every lead. If your legs are strong, you can run anybody down." They finished their coffee and cigarettes and trudged out. Raven English, one-year wife of Leonard Smith, did not meet them at the door with gracious bows. Instead, a wall panel by the door shot back. They stared at a square of one way glass. "Who are you?" a girl's voice said. "I'm Andrew Sordman, your Protector. I come on lawful business. May we enter?" "No." "Why not?" Lee asked. "Because I don't like witches. Keep out." "We're hunting the killer," Sordman said. "We're on your side. I've taken no drugs and made no preparations. You don't have to be afraid." "I'm not afraid. I just don't want you in my home." "You have to let us in," Lee said. "Our warrant gives us entry into every room in this hotel. If we have to break the door down, we can." "I hope we don't have to break the door down." "You're getting fat," George said. "You need the exercise." "You won't break in," the girl said. Sordman crossed the hall to get a good start. "I'm about to, Mylady." His shoulder filled the doorway behind him. This looks like fun, he thought. He liked to feel his body working. The door opened. A dark-haired, slender girl stood in the doorway. Her skin was brown and her lips were pink, unpainted flesh. She wore a red kimono. "All right. Come in." "Gladly," Sordman said. It was a three-room apartment, with the kitchen tucked into one wall of the parlor. A painting stood on an easel by the window. The window was a shoulder-high slit and from it, here on the hundred and forty-first floor, he could see across the park to the beach and the rolling Atlantic. God grant me self-control, he thought. If this is the killer, grant me self-control. He made his savage thoughts lie down and purred at the world. "I'm sorry we have to force our way in," he said. "And I'm sorry you don't approve of Talent. But please remember two men have died and a little girl may die, too. There are lots of panicky people in the Mark Twain. We've got to find the killer soon and you can help us." "Why bother me?" the girl said. "This is awkward," Lee said. She stood erect but looked past the girl. She felt embarrassed. "Someone told us you and Bedler were seeing each other." "Oh, quit being prudish," George said. "These things happen all the time." He turned to the girl. "We were told you and Joe Bedler were making plans to get married when your present contract ends." "That's a lie!" Sordman laughed in his belly. No matter what the rules were, few women publicly admitted they had broken them. By the standards of the period from 1800 to 1990, the whole marriage system of the Twenty-First Century was immoral; but there were still prudes. And women still preserved the conventions. "Who told you that?" Raven English said. She frowned. "Was it that Jackie Baker?" "Why her?" George asked. "Because she's a logical person for you to talk to and because it's the kind of thing she'd say." "Yes," Sordman said. "She ought to see a psycher! And that's why you came?" "We're not accusing you," Sordman said. "But we've got to follow every lead."

test

51268

THE GIRLS FROM EARTH By FRANK M. ROBINSON Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Problem: How can you arrange marriages with men in one solar system, women in another—and neither willing to leave his own world? I "The beasts aren't much help, are they?" Karl Allen snatched a breath of air and gave another heave on the line tied to the raft of parampa logs bobbing in the middle of the river. "No," he grunted, "they're not. They always balk at a time like this, when they can see it'll be hard work." Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope's slack around his thick waist. "Together now, Karl. One! Two! " They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer. "If we're late for ship's landing, Joe, we'll get crossed off the list." Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope. "That's what I've been thinking about," he said, worried. They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn't matter. They'd be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free. "How much time have we got, Karl?" The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City. "Two hours, maybe a little more," he stated hastily when Hill looked more worried. "Time enough to get to Landing City and put in for our numbers on the list." He turned back to the raft, untied the leather and horn saddles, and threw them over the backs of their reluctant mounts. He cinched his saddle and tied on some robes and furs behind it. Hill watched him curiously. "What are you taking the furs for? This isn't the trading rocket." "I know. I thought that when we come back tonight, it might be cold and maybe she'll appreciate the coverings then." "You never would have thought of it yourself," Hill grunted. "Grundy must have told you to do it, the old fool. If you ask me, the less you give them, the less they'll come to expect. Once you spoil them, they'll expect you to do all the trapping and the farming and the family-raising yourself." "You didn't have to sign up," Karl pointed out. "You could have applied for a wife from some different planet." "One's probably just as good as another. They'll all have to work the farms and raise families." Karl laughed and aimed a friendly blow at Hill. They finished saddling up and headed into the thick forest. It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals. And it was time, he thought soberly, that he started to raise a family. He was mid-twenty now, old enough to want a wife and children. "You going to raise a litter, Joe?" Hill started. Karl realized that he had probably been thinking of the same thing. "One of these days I'll need help around the sawmill," Hill answered defensively. "Need some kids to cut the trees, a couple more to pole them down the river, some to run the mill itself and maybe one to sell the lumber in Landing City. Can't do it all myself." He paused a moment, thinking over something that had just occurred to him. "I've been thinking of your plans for a garden, Karl. Maybe I ought to have one for my wife to take care of, too." Karl chuckled. "I don't think she'll have the time!" They left the leafy expanse of the forest and entered the grasslands that sloped toward Landing City. He could even see Landing City itself on the horizon, a smudge of rusting, corrugated steel shacks, muddy streets, and the small rocket port—a scorched thirty acres or so fenced off with barbed wire. Karl looked out of the corner of his eye at Hill and felt a vague wave of uneasiness. Hill was a big, thick man wearing the soiled clothes and bristly stubble of a man who was used to living alone and who liked it. But once he took a wife, he would probably have to keep himself in clean clothes and shave every few days. It was even possible that the woman might object to Hill letting his yllumph share the hut. The path was getting crowded, more of the colonists coming onto the main path from the small side trails. Hill broke the silence first. "I wonder what they'll be like." Karl looked wise and nodded knowingly. "They're Earthwomen, Joe. Earth! " It was easy to act as though he had some inside information, but Karl had to admit to himself that he actually knew very little about it. He was a Second System colonist and had never even seen an Earthwoman. He had heard tales, though, and even discounting a large percentage of them, some of them must have been true. Old Grundy at the rocket office, who should know about these things if anybody did, seemed disturbingly lacking on definite information, though he had hinted broadly enough. He'd whistle softly and wink an eye and repeat the stories that Karl had already heard; but he had nothing definite to offer, no real facts at all. Some of the other colonists whom they hadn't seen for the last few months shouted greetings, and Karl began to feel some of the carnival spirit. There was Jenkins, who had another trapping line fifty miles farther up the Karazoo; Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember. "They say they're good workers," Hill said. Karl nodded. "Pretty, too." They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more. "Joe," Karl said suddenly, "what's supposed to make women from Earth better than women from any other world?" Hill located a faint itch and frowned. "I don't know, Karl. It's hard to say. They're—well, sophisticated, glamorous." Karl absorbed this in silence. Those particular qualities were, he thought, rather hard to define. The battered shack that served as rocket port office and headquarters for the colonial office on Midplanet loomed up in front of them. There was a crowd gathered in front of the building and they forced their way through to see what had caused it. "We saw this the last time we were here," Hill said. "I know," Karl agreed, "but I want to take another look." He was anxious to glean all the information that he could. It was a poster of a beautiful woman leaning toward the viewer. The edges of the poster were curling and the colors had faded during the last six months, but the girl's smile seemed just as inviting as ever. She held a long-stemmed goblet in one hand and was blowing a kiss to her audience with the other. Her green eyes sparkled, her smile was provocative. A quoted sentence read: "I'm from Earth !" There was nothing more except a printed list of the different solar systems to which the colonial office was sending the women. She was real pretty, Karl thought. A little on the thin side, maybe, and the dress she was wearing would hardly be practical on Midplanet, but she had a certain something. Glamour, maybe? A loudspeaker blared. "All colonists waiting for the wife draft assemble for your numbers! All colonists...." There was a jostling for places and then they were in the rapidly moving line. Grundy, fat and important-looking, was handing out little blue slips with numbers on them, pausing every now and then to tell them some entertaining bit of information about the women. He had a great imagination, nothing else. Karl drew the number 53 and hurried to the grassy lot beside the landing field that had been decorated with bunting and huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table was loaded with government pamphlets meant to be helpful to newly married colonists. Karl went over and stuffed a few in his pockets. Other tables had been set out and were loaded with luncheon food, fixed by the few colonial women in the community. Karl caught himself eyeing the women closely, wondering how the girls from Earth would compare with them. He fingered the ticket in his pocket. What would the woman be like who had drawn the companion number 53 aboard the rocket? For when it landed, they would pair up by numbers. The method had its drawbacks, of course, but time was much too short to allow even a few days of getting acquainted. He'd have to get back to his trapping lines and he imagined that Hill would have to get back to his sawmill and the others to their farms. What the hell, you never knew what you were getting either way, till it was too late. "Sandwich, mister? Pop?" Karl flipped the boy a coin, picked up some food and a drink, and wandered over to the landing field with Hill. There were still ten minutes or so to go before the rocket landed, but he caught himself straining his sight at the blue sky, trying to see a telltale flicker of exhaust flame. The field was crowded and he caught some of the buzzing conversation. "... never knew one myself, but let me tell you...." "... knew a fellow once who married one, never had a moment's rest afterward...." "... no comparison with colonial women. They got culture...." "... I'd give a lot to know the girl who's got number twenty-five...." "Let's meet back here with the girls who have picked our numbers," Hill said. "Maybe we could trade." Karl nodded, though privately he felt that the number system was just as good as depending on first impressions. There was a murmur from the crowd and he found his gaze riveted overhead. High above, in the misty blue sky, was a sudden twinkle of fire. He reached up and wiped his sweaty face with a muddy hand and brushed aside a straggly lock of tangled hair. It wouldn't hurt to try to look his best. The twinkling fire came nearer. II "A Mr. Macdonald to see you, Mr. Escher." Claude Escher flipped the intercom switch. "Please send him right in." That was entirely superfluous, he thought, because MacDonald would come in whether Escher wanted him to or not. The door opened and shut with a slightly harder bang than usual and Escher mentally braced himself. He had a good hunch what the problem was going to be and why it was being thrown in their laps. MacDonald made himself comfortable and sat there for a few minutes, just looking grim and not saying anything. Escher knew the psychology by heart. A short preliminary silence is always more effective in browbeating subordinates than an initial furious bluster. He lit a cigarette and tried to outwait MacDonald. It wasn't easy—MacDonald had great staying powers, which was probably why he was the head of the department. Escher gave in first. "Okay, Mac, what's the trouble? What do we have tossed in our laps now?" "You know the one—colonization problem. You know that when we first started to colonize, quite a large percentage of the male population took to the stars, as the saying goes. The adventuresome, the gamblers, the frontier type all decided they wanted to head for other worlds, to get away from it all. The male of the species is far more adventuresome than the female; the men left—but the women didn't. At least, not in nearly the same large numbers. "Well, you see the problem. The ratio of women to men here on Earth is now something like five to three. If you don't know what that means, ask any man with a daughter. Or any psychiatrist. Husband-hunting isn't just a pleasant pastime on Earth. It's an earnest cutthroat business and I'm not just using a literary phrase." He threw a paper on Escher's desk. "You'll find most of the statistics about it in that, Claude. Notice the increase in crimes peculiar to women. Shoplifting, badger games, poisonings, that kind of thing. It's quite a list. You'll also notice the huge increase in petty crimes, a lot of which wouldn't have bothered the courts before. In fact, they wouldn't even have been considered crimes. You know why they are now?" Escher shook his head blankly. "Most of the girls in the past who didn't catch a husband," MacDonald continued, "grew up to be the type of old maid who's dedicated to improving the morals and what-not of the rest of the population. We've got more puritanical societies now than we ever had, and we have more silly little laws on the books as a result. You can be thrown in the pokey for things like violating a woman's privacy—whatever that means—and she's the one who decides whether what you say or do is a violation or not." Escher looked bored. "Not to mention the new prohibition which forbids the use of alcohol in everything from cough medicines to hair tonics. Or the cleaned up moral code that reeks—if you'll pardon the expression—of purity. Sure, I know what you mean. And you know the solution. All we have to do is get the women to colonize." MacDonald ran his fingers nervously through his hair. "But it won't be easy, and that's why it's been given to us. It's your baby, Claude. Give it a lot of thought. Nothing's impossible, you know." "Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?" "What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. "Go back to the Board and tell them the problem is not solvable, that we can't think of anything?" Escher looked hurt. "Did I say that? I just said it wouldn't be easy." "The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not necessarily the spirit." "When do they have to have a solution?" "As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will happen then won't be good." "All right, by then we'll have the answer." MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for emigration to the colony planets is falling off." "How come?" MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?" When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it didn't work, you took the lumps, too. He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly. You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation, anyway. He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal chute. That would have to be the first to go. There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing, as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize. Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next. He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was still enough. Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to colonize who didn't want to colonize. The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not. No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all—provided you held your nose, silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was such a thing as a moral code. III Phyllis Hanson put the cover over her typewriter and locked the correspondence drawer. Another day was done, another evening about to begin. She filed into the washroom with the other girls and carefully redid her face. It was getting hard to disguise the worry lines, to paint away the faint crow's-feet around her eyes. She wasn't, she admitted to herself for the thousandth time, what you would call beautiful. She inspected herself carefully in her compact mirror. In a sudden flash of honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't even what you would call pretty. Her face was too broad, her nose a fraction too long, and her hair was dull. Not homely, exactly—but not pretty, either. Conversation hummed around her, most of it from the little group in the corner, where the extreme few who were married sat as practically a race apart. Their advice was sought, their suggestions avidly followed. "Going out tonight, Phyl?" She hesitated a moment, then slowly painted on the rest of her mouth. The question was technically a privacy violator, but she thought she would sidestep it this time, instead of refusing to answer point-blank. "I thought I'd stay home tonight. Have a few things I want to rinse out." The black-haired girl next to her nodded sympathetically. "Sure, Phyl, I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us—waiting for the phone to ring." Phyllis finished washing up and then left the office, carefully noting the girl who was waiting for the boss. The girl was beautiful in a hard sort of way, a platinum blonde with an entertainer's busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre. At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn't know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go. She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody's interest. It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor. What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn't rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about. Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman's life. But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn't take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again. She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn't had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn't worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta.... Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide. She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence. It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately! Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: "Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!" Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on.... The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren't nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications. She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist's conception, but even so.... And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages. It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn't think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn't tell her even if they had. But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities! She took another look at the poster. The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in. IV The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it. But she didn't intend to buy it. She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn't be back for five minutes. Time enough, at any rate. The dress was lying loose, so she didn't have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag. She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw. "Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice. "Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take." She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She'd get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she'd be out again. They couldn't do anything to her that mattered. She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor. "Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights. "I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer." She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill. And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture. "Name?" he asked in a tired voice. She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file." The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages. The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting. A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said: "... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration." "In view of some complicating factors, we're going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus." She thought for a minute that she hadn't heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it. "I wouldn't call that a choice," she said sourly. "I'll ship out." V Suzanne was proud of the apartment. It had all the modern conveniences, like the needle shower with the perfume dispenser, the built-in soft-drink bar in the library, the all-communications set, and the electrical massager. It was a nice, comfortable setup, an illusion of security in an ever-changing world. She lit a cigarette and chuckled. Mrs. Burger, the fat old landlady, thought she kept up the apartment by working as a buyer for one of the downtown stores. Well, maybe some day she would. But not today. And not tonight. The phone rang and she answered in a casual tone. She talked for a minute, then let a trace of sultriness creep into her voice. The conversation wasn't long. She let the receiver fall back on the base and went into the bedroom to get a hat box. She wouldn't need much; she'd probably be back that same night. It was a nice night and since the address was only a few blocks away, she decided to walk it. She blithely ignored the curious stares from other pedestrians, attracted by the sharp, clicking sound of her heels on the sidewalk. The address was a brownstone that looked more like an office building than anything else, but then you could never tell. She pressed the buzzer and waited a moment for the sound to echo back and forth on the inside. She pressed it again and a moment later a suave young man appeared in the doorway. "Miss Carstens?" She smiled pertly. "We've been expecting you." She wondered a little at the "we," but dutifully smiled and followed him in. The glare of the lights inside the office blinded her for a moment. When she could focus them again, her smile became slightly blurry at the edges and then disappeared entirely. She wasn't alone. There was a battery of chairs against one side of the room. She recognized most of the girls sitting in them. She forced a smile to her lips and tried to laugh. "I'm sure there's been some mistake! Why, I never...." The young man coughed politely. "I'm afraid there's been no mistake. Full name, please." "Suzanne Carstens," she said grimly, and gave the other statistics he wanted. She idly wondered what stoolie had peddled the phone numbers. "Suzanne Carstens," the young man noted, and slowly shook his head. "A very pretty name, but no doubt not your own. It actually doesn't matter, though. Take a seat over there." She did as he asked and he faced the entire group. "I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security." He stressed the word slightly. "Now, of course, if you don't prefer the colony planets, you can stay behind and face the penalties of ten years in jail and a fine of ten thousand dollars." Suzanne felt that her lower jaw needed support. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! And in either case she'd lose the apartment she had worked so hard for, her symbol of security. "Well, what do you say?" There was a dead silence. The young man from the Colonization Board turned to Suzanne. "How about you, Miss Carstens?" She smiled sickly and nodded her head. "I love to travel!" she said. It didn't sound at all witty even to herself.

test

43041

DOUBLE or NOTHING By JACK SHARKEY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Stories of Imagination May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The mind quails before certain contemplations? The existence of infinity, for instance. Or finity, for that matter. Or 50,000 batches of cornflakes dumped from the sky. I don't know why I listen to Artie Lindstrom. Maybe it's because at times (though certainly not—I hope—on as permanent a basis as Artie) I'm as screwy as he is. At least, I keep letting myself get sucked into his plans, every time he's discovered the "invention that will change the world". He discovers it quite a bit; something new every time. And, Artie having a natural mechanical aptitude that would probably rate as point-nine-nine-ad-infinitum on a scale where one-point-oh was perfection, all his inventions work. Except— Well, take the last thing we worked on. (He usually includes me in his plans because, while he's the better cooker-upper of these gadgets, I've got the knack for building them. Artie can't seem to slip a radio tube into its socket without shattering the glass, twist a screwdriver without gouging pieces out of his thumb, nor even solder an electrical connection without needing skin-grafts for the hole he usually burns in his hand.) So we're a team, Artie and me. He does the planning, I do the constructing. Like, as I mentioned, the last thing we worked on. He invented it; I built it. A cap-remover (like for jars and ketchup bottles). But not just a clamp-plus-handle, like most of the same gadgets. Nope, this was electronic, worked on a tight-beam radio-wave, plus something to do with the expansion coefficients of the metals making up the caps, so that, from anyplace in line-of-sight of her home, the housewife could shove a stud, and come home to find all the caps unscrewed on her kitchen shelves, and the contents ready for getting at. It did, I'll admit, have a nice name: The Teletwist. Except, where's the point in unscrewing caps unless you're physically present to make use of the contents of the jars? I mentioned this to Artie when I was building the thing, but he said, "Wait and see. It'll be a novelty, like hula hoops a couple of decades back. Novelties always catch on." Well, he was wrong. When we finally found a manufacturer softheaded enough to mass-produce a few thousand of the gadgets, total sales for the entire country amounted to seventeen. Of course, the price was kind of prohibitive: Thirteen-fifty per Teletwist. Why would a housewife lay that kind of money on the line when she'd already, for a two-buck license, gotten a husband who could be relied upon (well, most of the time) to do the same thing for her? Not, of course, that we didn't finally make money on the thing. It was just about that time, you'll remember, that the Imperial Martian Fleet decided that the third planet from Sol was getting a bit too powerful, and they started orbiting our planet with ultimatums. And while they were waiting for our answer, our government quietly purchased Artie's patent, made a few little adjustments on his cap-twister, and the next thing the Martians knew, all their airlocks were busily unscrewing themselves with nothing outside them except hungry vacuum. It was also the last thing the Martians knew. So Artie's ideas seem to have their uses, all right. Only, for some reason, Artie never thinks of the proper application for his latest newfound principle. That neat little disintegrator pistol carried by the footsoldiers in the Three Day War (with Venus; remember Venus?) was a variation on a cute little battery-powered device of Artie's, of which the original function had been to rid one's house of roaches. At any rate—at a damned good rate, in fact—the government always ended up paying Artie (and me, as his partner-confederate-cohort) an anything-but-modest fee for his patents. We weren't in the millionaire class, yet, but neither were we very far out of it. And we were much better off than any millionaires, since Artie had persuaded the government to let us, in lieu of payment for another patent of his (for his Nixsal; the thing that was supposed to convert sea-water into something drinkable, and did: Gin.), be tax-free for the rest of our lives. (It was quite a concession for the government to make. But then, the government-produced "George Washington Gin" is quite a concession in itself.) So I guess you could say I keep listening to Artie Lindstrom because of the financial rewards. I must admit they're nice. And it's kind of adventurous, when I'm working on Artie's latest brainstorm, to let myself wonder what—since I generally scrap Artie's prognosis for the gadget's future—the damned thing will actually be used for. Or, at least, it was kind of adventurous, until Artie started in on his scheme of three weeks ago: a workable anti-gravity machine. And now, I'm feeling my first tremors of regret that I ever hooked up with the guy. Because—Well, it happened like this: "It looks great," I said, lifting my face from the blueprint, and nodding across the workbench at Artie. "But what the hell does it do?" Artie shoved a shock of dust-colored hair back off his broad, dull pink forehead, and jabbed excitedly with a grimy forefinger at the diagram. "Can't you tell , Burt? What does this look like!" My eyes returned to the conglomeration of sketchy cones beneath his flailing finger, and I said, as truthfully as possible, "A pine forest on a lumpy hill." "Those," he said, his tone hurt as it always was when I inadvertently belittled his draftmanship, "are flywheels." "Cone-shaped flywheels?" I said. "Why, for pete's sake?" "Only," he said, with specious casualness, "in order to develop a centrifugal thrust that runs in a straight line !" "A centr—" I said, then sat back from the drawings, blinking. "That's impossible, Artie." "And why should it be?" he persisted. "Picture an umbrella, with the fabric removed. Now twirl the handle on its axis. What do the ribs do?" "I suppose they splay out into a circle?" "Right," he exulted. "And if they impeded from splaying out? If, instead of separate ribs, we have a hollow, bottomless cone of metal? Where does the force go?" I thought it over, then said, with deliberation, "In all directions, Artie. One part shoving up-to-the-right, one part up-to-the-left, like that." "Sure," he said, his face failing to fight a mischievous grin. "And since none of them move, where does the resultant force go?" I shrugged, "Straight up, I guess—" Then my ears tuned in belatedly on what I'd said, and a moment later I squeaked, "Artie! Straight up !" He nodded eagerly. "Or, of course, straight east, straight west, or whichever way the ferrule of this here theoretical umbrella was pointed at the time the twirling began. The point is, we can generate pure force in any direction. What do you think? Can you build it?" "It'd be child's play. In fact, Artie, it's too damned simple to be believed! What's the hitch? Why hasn't anyone tried it before now ?" "Who knows?" he said, his blue eyes dancing. "Maybe no one ever thought of it before. You could sit down and twist a paper clip out of a hunk of soft wire, couldn't you? Easy as pie. But someone had to invent the thing, first. All the great inventions have been simple. Look at the wheel." "Okay, okay," I said, since I'd been sold on his gadget the moment I pictured that umbrella moving ferruleward like a whirling arrow. "Still, it looks like you're getting something for nothing. A kind of by-your-own-bootstraps maneuver...." "An inventor," said Artie, quoting his favorite self-coined aphorism, "must never think like a scientist!" "But"—I said, more to stem the tide I expected than to really make a coherent objection. "An inventor," he went dreamily onward, "is essentially a dreamer; a scientist is an observer. An inventor tries to make a result he wants happen; a scientist tries to tell the inventor that the result cannot be achieved." "Please. Artie. Don't tell me about the bee again." But Artie told me about the bumblebee, and how there were still some scientists who insisted, according to the principles of aerodynamics, that it was not constructed properly to enable it to fly. And about how men of this short-sighted ilk were still scoffing at the ancient alchemist's talk of the Philosopher's Stone for transmuting metals, even though transmutation of metals was being done every day in atomic piles. And how he'd theorized that there was once a genuine Philosopher's Stone, probably a hunk of pure U-235, that someone had managed to make, which might explain why so many alchemists (lacking, unfortunately, any knowledge of heavy radiations or Geiger counters) sort of died off in their quest for the stone. It was nearly lunchtime when he finished his spiel, and I was kicking myself in my short-memoried brain for having let him get onto the subject, when abruptly the joyous glow behind his eyes damped its sparkle a bit. "There is one little hitch—" "I thought it looked too easy," I sighed, waiting for the clinker. "Don't tell me it has to be made out of pure Gallium, which has the regrettable tendency to liquiefy at about thirty degrees centigrade? Or perhaps of the most elusive of its eleven isotopes?" "No, no, nothing like that," he murmured almost distractedly. "It's the force-per-gram part that's weak." "Don't tell me," I said unhappily, "that this thing'll only generate enough force to lift itself?" A feeble ghost of his erstwhile grin rode briefly across his lips. "That's the way it works out on paper," he said. "Which means," I realized aloud, "that it's commercially useless, because what's the good of an anti-gravity machine that can't lift anything except itself ! It falls into the class of lifeboats that float up to the gunwales in the water while still empty . Fun to watch, but impossible to use. Hell, Artie, if that's the setup, then this thing wouldn't be any more help to a space-aiming government than an aborigine's boomerang; it flies beautifully, but not if the aborigine tries to go with it." "However," he said, a bit more brightly, "I've been wrong on paper before. Remember the bumblebee, Burt! That theory still holds up on paper. But the bee still flies." He had me, there. "So you want I should build it anyhow, just on the off-chance that it won't follow the rules of physical logic, and will decide to generate a force above and beyond its own gravitic drag?" "That's it," he said happily. "And even if it only manages to negate its own weight, we'll have an easier time ironing the bugs out of a model than we would out of a diagram. After all, who'd have figured that beyond Mach I , all the lift-surfaces on a plane work in reverse ?" It wasn't, I had to admit, anything that an inventor could have reasonably theorized at the outset.... So I locked myself in the lab for a week, and built his gadget, while he spent his time pacing through his fourteen-room mansion across the way from the lab building (the "way" being the flat grassy region on Artie's estate that housed his swimming pool, private heliport, and movie theatre), trying to coin a nifty name for the thing. We both finished in a dead heat. I unlocked the door of the lab, blinked hard against the sting of warm yellow sunlight after a week of cool blue fluorescents, and just as I wheezed, "Got it," Artie was counterpointing with, "We'll call it The Uuaa !" (He made four syllables out of it.) "The Oo-oo- ah -ah?" I glottaled. "In honor of the fiftieth state, or what? I know 'aa' is a type of lava, but what the hell's 'uu', besides the noise a man makes getting into an overheated bath?" Artie pouted. "'Uuaa' is initials. For 'Up, up, and away!' I thought it was pretty good." I shook my head. "Why feed free fodder to the telecomics? I can hear them now, doing monologues about people getting beri-beri flying from Walla Walla to Pago Pago on their Uuaas...." "So what would you call it!" he grunted. "A bust," I sighed, left-thumbing over my shoulder at the lab. "It sits and twirls and whistles a little, but that's about the size of it, Artie." He spanieled with his eyes, basset-hounded with his mouth, and orangutaned with his cheeks, then said, with dim hope, "Did you weigh it? Maybe if you weighed it—" "Oh, it lost, all right," I admitted. "When I connected the batteries, the needle on the scale dropped down to zero, and stopped there. And I found that I could lift the machine into the air, and it'd stay where it was put, just whistling and whirling its cones. But then it started to settle." I beckoned him back inside. "Settle? Why?" Artie asked. "Dust," I said. "There's always a little dust settling out of the air. It doesn't weigh much , but it made the machine weigh at least what the dust-weight equalled, and down it went. Slow and easy, but down." Artie looked at the gadget, sitting and whistling on the floor of the lab, then turned a bleak-but-still-hopeful glance my way. "Maybe—If we could make a guy take on a cone-shape, and whirled him—" "Sure," I muttered. "Bend over, grab his ankles, and fly anywhere in the world, with his torso and legs pivoting wildly around his peaked behind." I shook my head. "Besides the manifestly undignified posturing involved, we have to consider the other effects; like having his eyeballs fly out." "If—If we had a bunch of men lie in a circle around a kind of Maypole-thing, each guy clutching the ankles of the next one...." "Maybe they'd be weightless, but they still wouldn't go up ," I said. "Unless they could be towed, somehow. And by the time they landed, they'd be too nauseous to be of any use for at least three days. Always assuming, of course, that the weak-wristed member of the sick circlet didn't lose his grip, and have them end up playing mid-air crack-the-whip before they fell." "So all right, it's got a couple of bugs!" said Artie. "But the principle's sound, right?" "Well—Yeah, there you got me, Artie. The thing cancels weight, anyhow...." "Swell. So we work from there," He rubbed his hands together joyously. "And who knows what we'll come up with." " We never do, that's for sure," I mumbled. But Artie just shrugged. "I like surprises," he said. The end of the day—me working, Artie inventing—found us with some new embellishments for the machine. Where it was originally a sort of humped metal box (the engine went inside the hump) studded with toothbrush-bristle rows of counter-revolving cones (lest elementary torque send the machine swinging the other way, and thus destroy the thrust-effect of the cones), it now had an additional feature: A helical flange around each cone. "You see," Artie explained, while I was torching them to order from plate metal, "the helices will provide lift as the cones revolve." "Only in the atmosphere of the planet," I said. "Sure, I know. But by the time the outer limits of the air are reached, the machine, with the same mass-thrust, will have less gravity-drag to fight, being that much farther from the Earth. The effect will be cumulative. The higher it gets, the more outward thrust it'll generate. Then nothing'll stop it!" "You could be right," I admitted, hammering out helix after helix on an electric anvil (another gadget of Artie's; the self-heating anvil—The Thermovil—had begun life as a small inspiration in Artie's mind for a portable toaster). It was just after sunset when we figured the welds were cool enough so we could test it. Onto the scale it went again, I flicked the toggle, and we stood back to watch the needle as the cones picked up speed. Along with the original whistling sound made by the cones we began to detect a shriller noise, one which abruptly became a genuine pain in the ear. As Artie and I became somewhat busy with screaming (the only thing we could think of on the spur of the moment to counteract the terrible waves of noise assaulting our tympana), it was all at once much easier to see the needle of the scale dropping toward zero, as the glass disc facing the dial dissolved into gritty powder, along with the glass panes in every window in the lab, the house, the heliport, and the movie theatre. (Not to mention those of a few farmhouses a couple of miles down the highway, but we didn't find that out till their lawyers showed up with bills for damages.) Sure enough, though, the thing lifted. Up it bobbed, like a metal dirigible with agonizing gas pains, shrieking louder by the second. When the plaster started to trickle and flake from the walls, and the fillings in my teeth rose to a temperature just short of incandescence, I decided it was time to cancel this phase of the experiment, and, with very little regret, I flung a blanket-like canvas tarpaulin up and over the ascending machine before it started using its helices to screw into the ceiling. The cones bit into the tarpaulin, tangled, jammed, and the machine—mercifully noiseless, now—crashed back onto the scale, and lost a lot of symmetry and a couple of rivets. "What's Plan C?" I said to Artie. " Quiet! " he said, either because I'd interrupted his thinking or because that was our next goal. The next four days were spent in the arduous and quite tricky business of reaming acoustically spaced holes along the flanges. Artie's theory was that if we simply ("simply" was his word, not mine) fixed it so that the sound made by each flange (anything whirly with a hole or two in it is bound to make a calculated noise) was of the proper number of vibrations to intermesh with the compression/rarefaction phases of the sounds made by the other flanges, a veritable sphere of silence would be thereby created, since there'd be no room for any sound waves to pass through the already crowded atmosphere about the machine. "It'll make less noise than a mouse in sneakers drooling on a blotter!" enthused Artie, when I had it rigged again, and ready to go. "Still," I said uncertainly, "whether we hear it or not, all that soundwave-energy has to do something , Artie. If it turns ultrasonic, we may suddenly find ourselves in a showerbath of free electrons and even worse subatomic particles from disrupted air molecules. Or the lab might turn molten on us. Or—" "Oh, turn it on , Burt!" said Artie. "That's just a chance we have to take." "Don't see why we have to take it...." I groused, but I'm as curious as the next man, so I turned it on. (I could have arranged to do it by remote control, except for two pressing deterrents: One—At a remote point of control, I wouldn't be able to watch what, if anything, the machine did, and Two—Who knows where the safe spot is where soundwaves are concerned? With some sonic forces, you're safer the nearer you get to the source.) So, like I said, I turned it on. Silence. Beautiful, blissful, silence. There before us twirled the rows of shiny cones, lifting slowly into the air, and there was nothing to hear at all. Beside me, Artie's lips moved, but I couldn't catch a syllable. This time around, we'd looped a rope through a few metal grommets in the base of the machine, and as it rose, Artie slipped the trailing ends under his arms from behind, and proceeded to lash it across his chest, to test the thing's lift-power. As he fumbled with the knot, I shouted at him, "Use a firm hitch!" Nothing came out, but Artie wasn't a bad lip-reader. He scowled, and his lips made a " What?! " motion, so I repeated my caution. Next thing I knew, he was taking a poke at me, and I, to fend him off, ended up wrestling on the floor with him, while the untended machine burred its way into the ceiling, until the engine overheated and burned away the electrical insulation on the wires, and the machine, plus a good two feet square of lab-ceiling, once more descended to demolish the scale. "—your language!" Artie was snarling, as sound returned. "All I said was 'Use a firm hitch!'" I pleaded, trying to shove his shins off my floor-pinned biceps. Artie stared at me, then rocked off my prostrate body, convulsed in a fit of laughter. "Say it silently in front of a mirror, sometime," he choked out. Before I had time to see what he was talking about, I smelled smoke, above and beyond that engendered by the scorched insulation. I ran to the door, and opened it to observe the last glowing, crackling timbers of the house, the theatre, and the heliport vanish into hot orange sparks, in the grip of a dandy ring of fire that—in a seventy-yard path—had burned up everything in a sixty-five to hundred-thirty-five yard radius of the lab. "I told you those soundwaves had to do something," I said. "Ready to give up?" But Artie was already staring at the debris around the scale and making swift notes on a memo pad.... "It looks awfully damned complex—" I hedged, eight days later, looking at the repaired, refurbished, and amended gadget on the table. "Remember, Artie, the more parts to an invention, the more things can go wrong with it. In geometric progression...." "Unh-uh," he shook his head. "Not the more parts, Burt. The more moving parts. All we've done is added a parabolic sound-reflector, to force all the waves the cones make down through a tube in the middle of the machine. And we've insulated the tube to keep extraneous vibration from shattering it with super-induced metal fatigue." "Yeah," I said, "but about that insulation , Artie—" "You got a better idea?" he snapped. "We tried rubber; it charred and flaked away. We tried plastics; they bubbled, melted, extruded, or burned. We tried metal and mineral honeycombs; they distorted, incandesced, fused or vaporized. Ceramic materials shattered. Fabrics tore, or petrified and cracked. All the regular things failed us. So what's wrong with trying something new?" "Nothing, Artie, nothing. But— Cornflakes ?" "Well, we sogged 'em down good with water, right? And they've still got enough interstices between the particles to act as sound-baffles, right? And by the time they get good and hot and dry, they'll cook onto the metal, right? (Ask anyone who ever tried to clean a pot after scorching cereal just how hard they'll stick!) And even when most of them flake away, the random distribution of char will circumvent any chance the soundwaves have of setting up the regular pulse-beat necessary to fatigue the metal in the tube, okay?" "Yeah, sure, Artie, it's okay, but— Cornflakes ?" "I take it your objections are less scientific than they are esthetic?" he inquired. "Well, something like that," I admitted. "I mean, aw—For pete's sake, Artie! The patent office'll laugh at us. They'll start referring us to the copyright people, as inventors of cookbooks!" "Maybe not," he said philosophically. "The thing still may not work , you know." "Well, there's one bright spot, anyhow!" I agreed, fiddling with the starting switch. "So okay, I'm game if you are." "Let 'er rip," he pontificated, and I flicked the switch. It worked beautifully. Not even a faint hum. The only way we could tell it was working was from the needle on the—rebuilt again—scale, as it dropped lazily down to the zero mark. Our ears didn't sting, no glass went dusting into crystalline powder, and a quick peek through the door showed no ring of fire surrounding the lab. "We may just have done it!" I said, hopefully, as the silver-nosed machine began to float upward (We hadn't had to mount the parabolic reflector in the position of a nose-cone, but it made the thing look neater, somehow.) It seemed a little torpid in its ascent, but that could be credited to the extra weight of the reflector and cornflakes, not to mention the fact that the helices had to suck all their air in under the lip of the silvery nose-cone before they could thrust properly. But its rise was steady. Six inches, ten inches— Then, at precisely one foot in height, something unexpected happened. Under the base of the machine, where the sound-heated air was at its most torrid, a shimmering disc-like thing began to materialize, and warp, and hollow out slightly, and beside it, a glinting metal rod-thing flattened at one end, then the flat end went concave in the center and kind of oval about the perimeter, and something brownish and shreddy plopped and hissed into the now-very-concave disc-like thing. "Artie—!" I said, uneasily, but by then, he, too, had recognized the objects for what they were. "Burt—" he said excitedly. "Do you realize what we've done? We've invented a syntheticizer !" Even as he was saying it, the objects completed their mid-air materialization (time: five seconds, start to finish), and clattered and clinked onto the scale. We stood and looked down at them: A bowl of cornflakes and a silver spoon. "How—?" I said, but Artie was already figuring it out, aloud. "It's the soundwaves," he said. "At ultrasonic, molecule-disrupting vibrations, they're doing just what that Philosopher's Stone was supposed to: Transmuting. Somehow, we didn't clean out the reflector sufficiently, and some of the traces of our other trial insulations remained inside. The ceramics formed the bowl, the metals formed the spoon, the cornflakes formed the cornflakes!" "But," I said logically (or as logically as could be expected under the circumstances), "what about the rubber, or the fabrics?" Artie's face lit up, and he nodded toward the machine, still hovering at one foot above the scale. In its wake, amid the distorting turbulence of the sound-tortured air, two more objects were materializing: a neatly folded damask napkin, and a small rubber toothpick. As they dropped down to join their predecessors, the machine gave a satisfied shake, and rose steadily to the two-foot level. I was scribbling frantically in my notebook: Bowl + cereal + spoon: 5 seconds. Lag: 10 seconds. Napkin + toothpick: 3 seconds. Total synthesizing time: 18 seconds. Allowance for rise of machine per foot: 2 seconds. "Burt—!" Artie yelled joyously, just as I completed the last item, "Look at that, will you?!" I looked, and had my first presentiment of disaster. At two feet, the machine was busily fabricating—out of the air molecules themselves, for all I knew— two bowls, two spoons, and two bowlfuls of cereal. "Hey, Artie—" I began, but he was too busy figuring out this latest development. "It's the altimeter," he said. "We had it gauged by the foot, but it's taking the numerical calibrations as a kind of output-quota, instead!" "Look, Artie," I interrupted, as twin napkins and toothpicks dropped down beside the new bowls on the table where the scale lay. "We're going to have a little problem—" "You're telling me !" he sighed, unhappily. "All those damned random factors! How many times did the machine have to be repaired after each faulty test! What thickness of ceramics, or fabric, or rubber, or metal remained! What was the precise distribution and dampness of each of those soggy cornflakes! Hell, Burt, we may be forever trying to make a duplicate of this!" "Artie—" I said, as three toothpick-napkin combinations joined the shattered remains of triple bowl-cereal-spoon disasters from the one-yard mark over the scale, "that is not the problem I had in mind." "Oh?" he said, as four shimmering discs began to coalesce and shape themselves. "What, then?" "It's not that I don't appreciate the side-effect benefits of free cornflake dinners," I said, speaking carefully and somberly, to hold his attention. "But isn't it going to put a crimp in our anti-gravity machine sales? Even at a mere mile in height, it means that the spot beneath it is due for a deluge of five-thousand-two-hundred-eighty bowls of cornflakes. Not to mention all those toothpicks, napkins and spoons!" Artie's face went grave. "Not to mention the five-thousand-two-hundred-seventy-nine of the same that the spot beneath would get from the gadget when it was just one foot short of the mile!" "Of course," I said, calculating rapidly as the five-foot mark produced a neat quintet of everything, a quintet which crashed noisily onto the ten lookalikes below it as the machine bobbed silently to the six-foot mark, "we have one interesting thing in our favor: the time element." "How so?" said Artie, craning over my shoulder to try and read my lousy calligraphics on the pad. "Well," I said, pointing to each notation in turn, "the first batch, bowl-to-toothpick, took twenty seconds, if we include the time-lapse while the machine was ascending to the one-foot mark." "Uh-huh," he nodded. "I see. So?" "So the second batch took double. Forty seconds. Not only did it require thirty-six seconds for the formation of the stuff, it took the machine twice as many seconds to reach the two-foot mark." "I get it," he said. "So I suppose it took three times the base number for the third batch?" "Right. A full minute. And the materialization of the objects is—Boy, that's noisy!" I interrupted myself as batch number six came smashing down. "—always at a point where the objects fit into a theoretical conical section below the machine." "How's that again?" said Artie. "Well, bowl number one formed just below the exhaust vent of the central cylinder. Bowls two and three, or—if you prefer—bowl-batch two, formed about six inches lower, edge to edge, at the cross-section of an imaginary cone (whose rather truncated apex is the exhaust vent) that seems to form a vertical angle of thirty degrees." "In other words," said Artie, "each new formation comes in a spot beneath this cone where it's possible for the new formations to materialize side-by-side, right?" When I nodded, he said, "Fine. But so what?" "It means that each new materialization occurs at a steadily increasing height, but one which—" I calculated briefly on the pad "—is never greater than two-thirds the height of the machine itself." Artie looked blank. "Thank you very kindly for the math lesson," he said finally, "but I still don't see what you are driving at, Burt. How does this present a problem?" I pointed toward the un-repaired hole in the lab ceiling, where the machine, after dutifully disgorging the number-seven load, was slowly heading. "It means that unless we grab that thing before it gets too much higher, the whole damn planet'll be up to its ears in cornflakes. And the one-third machine-height gap between artifacts and machine means that we can't even use the mounding products to climb on and get it. We'd always be too low, and an increasing too-low at that!" "Are you trying to say, in your roundabout mathematical way, let's grab that thing, fast?" "Right," I said, glad I had gotten through to him. "I would've said as much sooner, only you never listen until somebody supplies you with all the pertinent data on a crisis first."

test

50928

HOT PLANET By HAL CLEMENT Illustrated by FINLAY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine August 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Mercury had no atmosphere—everyone knew that. Why was it developing one now? I The wind which had nearly turned the Albireo's landing into a disaster instead of a mathematical exercise was still playing tunes about the fins and landing legs as Schlossberg made his way down to Deck Five. The noise didn't bother him particularly, though the endless seismic tremors made him dislike the ladders. But just now he was able to ignore both. He was curious—though not hopeful. "Is there anything at all obvious on the last sets of tapes, Joe?" Mardikian, the geophysicist, shrugged. "Just what you'd expect ... on a planet which has at least one quake in each fifty-mile-square area every five minutes. You know yourself we had a nice seismic program set up, but when we touched down we found we couldn't carry it out. We've done our best with the natural tremors—incidentally stealing most of the record tapes the other projects would have used. We have a lot of nice information for the computers back home; but it will take all of them to make any sense out of it." Schlossberg nodded; the words had not been necessary. His astronomical program had been one of those sabotaged by the transfer of tapes to the seismic survey. "I just hoped," he said. "We each have an idea why Mercury developed an atmosphere during the last few decades, but I guess the high school kids on Earth will know whether it's right before we do. I'm resigned to living in a chess-type universe—few and simple rules, but infinite combinations of them. But it would be nice to know an answer sometime." "So it would. As a matter of fact, I need to know a couple right now. From you. How close to finished are the other programs—or what's left of them?" "I'm all set," replied Schlossberg. "I have a couple of instruments still monitoring the sun just in case, but everything in the revised program is on tape." "Good. Tom, any use asking you?" The biologist grimaced. "I've been shown two hundred and sixteen different samples of rock and dust. I have examined in detail twelve crystal growths which looked vaguely like vegetation. Nothing was alive or contained living things by any standards I could conscientiously set." Mardikian's gesture might have meant sympathy. "Camille?" "I may as well stop now as any time. I'll never be through. Tape didn't make much difference to me, but I wish I knew what weight of specimens I could take home." "Eileen?" Mardikian's glance at the stratigrapher took the place of the actual question. "Cam speaks for me, except that I could have used any more tape you could have spared. What I have is gone." "All right, that leaves me, the tape-thief. The last spools are in the seismographs now, and will start running out in seventeen hours. The tractors will start out on their last rounds in sixteen, and should be back in roughly a week. Will, does that give you enough to figure the weights we rockhounds can have on the return trip?" The Albireo's captain nodded. "Close enough. There really hasn't been much question since it became evident we'd find nothing for the mass tanks here. I'll have a really precise check in an hour, but I can tell right now that you have about one and a half metric tons to split up among the three of you. "Ideal departure time is three hundred ten hours away, as you all know. We can stay here until then, or go into a parking-and-survey orbit at almost any time before then. You have all the survey you need, I should think, from the other time. But suit yourselves." "I'd just as soon be space-sick as seasick," remarked Camille Burkett. "I still hate to think that the entire planet is as shivery as the spot we picked." Willard Rowson smiled. "You researchers told me where to land after ten days in orbit mapping this rockball. I set you just where you asked. If you'd found even five tons of juice we could use in the reaction tanks I could still take you to another one—if you could agree which one. I hate to say 'Don't blame me,' but I can't think of anything else that fits." "So we sit until the last of the tractors is back with the precious seismo tapes, playing battleship while our back teeth are being shaken out by earthquakes—excuse the word. What a thrill! Glorious adventure!" Zaino, the communications specialist who had been out of a job almost constantly since the landing, spoke sourly. The captain was the only one who saw fit to answer. "If you want adventure, you made a mistake exploring space. The only space adventures I've heard of are second-hand stories built on guesswork; the people who really had them weren't around to tell about it. Unless Dr. Marini discovers a set of Mercurian monsters at the last minute and they invade the ship or cut off one of the tractors, I'm afraid you'll have to do without adventures." Zaino grimaced. "That sounds funny coming from a spaceman, Captain. I didn't really mean adventure, though; all I want is something to do besides betting whether the next quake will come in one minute or five. I haven't even had to fix a suit-radio since we touched down. How about my going out with one of the tractors on this last trip, at least?" "It's all right with me," replied Rowson, "but Dr. Mardikian runs the professional part of this operation. I require that Spurr, Trackman, Hargedon and Aiello go as drivers, since without them even a minor mechanical problem would be more than an adventure. As I recall it, Dr. Harmon, Dr. Schlossberg, Dr. Marini and Dr. Mardikian are scheduled to go; but if any one of them is willing to let you take his or her place, I certainly don't mind." The radioman looked around hopefully. The geologists and the biologist shook their heads negatively, firmly and unanimously; but the astronomer pondered for a moment. Zaino watched tensely. "It may be all right," Schlossberg said at last. "What I want to get is a set of wind, gas pressure, gas temperature and gas composition measures around the route. I didn't expect to be more meteorologist than astronomer when we left Earth, and didn't have exactly the right equipment. Hargedon and Aiello helped me improvise some, and this is the first chance to use it on Darkside. If you can learn what has to be done with it before starting time, though, you are welcome to my place." The communicator got to his feet fast enough to leave the deck in Mercury's feeble gravity. "Lead me to it, Doc. I guess I can learn to read a home-made weathervane!" "Is that merely bragging, or a challenge?" drawled a voice which had not previously joined the discussion. Zaino flushed a bit. "Sorry, Luigi," he said hastily. "I didn't mean it just that way. But I still think I can run the stuff." "Likely enough," Aiello replied. "Remember though, it wasn't made just for talking into." Schlossberg, now on his feet, cut in quickly. "Come on, Arnie. We'll have to suit up to see the equipment; it's outside." He shepherded the radioman to the hatch at one side of the deck and shooed him down toward the engine and air lock levels. Both were silent for some moments; but safely out of earshot of Deck Five the younger man looked up and spoke. "You needn't push, Doc. I wasn't going to make anything of it. Luigi was right, and I asked for it." The astronomer slowed a bit in his descent. "I wasn't really worried," he replied, "but we have several months yet before we can get away from each other, and I don't like talk that could set up grudges. Matter of fact, I'm even a little uneasy about having the girls along, though I'm no misogynist." "Girls? They're not—" "There goes your foot again. Even Harmon is about ten years older than you, I suppose. But they're girls to me. What's more important, they no doubt think of themselves as girls." "Even Dr. Burkett? That is—I mean—" "Even Dr. Burkett. Here, get into your suit. And maybe you'd better take out the mike. It'll be enough if you can listen for the next hour or two." Zaino made no answer, suspecting with some justice that anything he said would be wrong. Each made final checks on the other's suit; then they descended one more level to the airlock. This occupied part of the same deck as the fusion plants, below the wings and reaction mass tanks but above the main engine. Its outer door was just barely big enough to admit a spacesuited person. Even with the low air pressure carried by spaceships, a large door area meant large total force on jamb, hinges and locks. It opened onto a small balcony from which a ladder led to the ground. The two men paused on the balcony to look over the landscape. This hadn't changed noticeably since the last time either had been out, though there might have been some small difference in the volcanic cones a couple of miles away to the northeast. The furrows down the sides of these, which looked as though they had been cut by water but were actually bone-dry ash slides, were always undergoing alteration as gas from below kept blowing fresh scoria fragments out of the craters. The spines—steep, jagged fragments of rock which thrust upward from the plain beyond and to both sides of the cones—seemed dead as ever. The level surface between the Albireo and the cones was more interesting. Mardikian and Schlossberg believed it to be a lava sheet dating from early in Mercury's history, when more volatile substances still existed in the surface rocks to cut down their viscosity when molten. They supposed that much—perhaps most—of the surface around the "twilight" belt had been flooded by this very liquid lava, which had cooled to a smoother surface than most Earthly lava flows. How long it had stayed cool they didn't guess. But both men felt sure that Mercury must have periodic upheavals as heat accumulated inside it—heat coming not from radioactivity but from tidal energy. Mercury's orbit is highly eccentric. At perihelion, tidal force tries to pull it apart along the planet-to-sun line, while at aphelion the tidal force is less and the little world's own gravity tries to bring it back to a spherical shape. The real change in form is not great, but a large force working through even a small amount of distance can mean a good deal of energy. If the energy can't leak out—and Mercury's rocks conduct heat no better than those of Earth—the temperature must rise. Sooner or later, the men argued, deeply buried rock must fuse to magma. Its liquefaction would let the bulk of the planet give farther under tidal stress, so heat would be generated even faster. Eventually a girdle of magma would have to form far below the crust all around the twilight strip, where the tidal strain would be greatest. Sooner or later this would melt its way to the surface, giving the zone a period of intense volcanic activity and, incidentally, giving the planet a temporary atmosphere. The idea was reasonable. It had, the astronomer admitted, been suggested long before to account for supposed vulcanism on the moon. It justified the careful examination that Schlossberg and Zaino gave the plain before they descended the ladder; for it made reasonable the occasional changes which were observed to occur in the pattern of cracks weaving over its surface. No one was certain just how permanent the local surface was—though no one could really justify feeling safer on board the Albireo than outside on the lava. If anything really drastic happened, the ship would be no protection. The sun, hanging just above the horizon slightly to the watcher's right, cast long shadows which made the cracks stand out clearly; as far as either man could see, nothing had changed recently. They descended the ladder carefully—even the best designed spacesuits are somewhat vulnerable—and made their way to the spot where the tractors were parked. A sheet-metal fence a dozen feet high and four times as long provided shade, which was more than a luxury this close to the sun. The tractors were parked in this shadow, and beside and between them were piles of equipment and specimens. The apparatus Schlossberg had devised was beside the tractor at the north end of the line, just inside the shaded area. It was still just inside the shade when they finished, four hours later. Hargedon had joined them during the final hour and helped pack the equipment in the tractor he was to drive. Zaino had had no trouble in learning to make the observations Schlossberg wanted, and the youngster was almost unbearably cocky. Schlossberg hoped, as they returned to the Albireo , that no one would murder the communications expert in the next twelve hours. There would be nothing to worry about after the trip started; Hargedon was quite able to keep anyone in his place without being nasty about it. If Zaino had been going with Aiello or Harmon—but he wasn't, and it was pointless to dream up trouble. And no trouble developed all by itself. II Zaino was not only still alive but still reasonably popular when the first of the tractors set out, carrying Eileen Harmon and Eric Trackman, the Albireo's nuclear engineer. It started more than an hour before the others, since the stratigrapher's drilling program, "done" or not, took extra time. The tractor hummed off to the south, since both Darkside routes required a long detour to pass the chasm to the west. Routes had been worked out from the stereo-photos taken during the orbital survey. Even Darkside had been covered fairly well with Uniquantum film under Venus light. The Harmon-Trackman vehicle was well out of sight when Mardikian and Aiello started out on one of the Brightside routes, and a few minutes later Marini set out on the other with the spacesuit technician, Mary Spurr, driving. Both vehicles disappeared quickly into a valley to the northeast, between the ash cones and a thousand-foot spine which rose just south of them. All the tractors were in good radio contact; Zaino made sure of that before he abandoned the radio watch to Rowson, suited up and joined Hargedon at the remaining one. They climbed in, and Hargedon set it in motion. At about the same time, the first tractor came into view again, now traveling north on the farther side of the chasm. Hargedon took this as evidence that the route thus far was unchanged, and kicked in highest speed. The cabin was pretty cramped, even though some of the equipment had been attached outside. The men could not expect much comfort for the next week. Hargedon was used to the trips, however. He disapproved on principle of people who complained about minor inconveniences such as having to sleep in spacesuits; fortunately, Zaino's interest and excitement overrode any thought he might have had about discomfort. This lasted through the time they spent doubling the vast crack in Mercury's crust, driving on a little to the north of the ship on the other side and then turning west toward the dark hemisphere. The route was identical to that of Harmon's machine for some time, though no trace of its passage showed on the hard surface. Then Hargedon angled off toward the southwest. He had driven this run often enough to know it well even without the markers which had been set out with the seismographs. The photographic maps were also aboard. With them, even Zaino had no trouble keeping track of their progress while they remained in sunlight. However, the sun sank as they traveled west. In two hours its lower rim would have been on the horizon, had they been able to see the horizon; as it was, more of the "sea level" lava plain was in shadow than not even near the ship, and their route now lay in semi-darkness. The light came from peaks projecting into the sunlight, from scattered sky-light which was growing rapidly fainter and from the brighter celestial objects such as Earth. Even with the tractor's lights it was getting harder to spot crevasses and seismometer markers. Zaino quickly found the fun wearing off ... though his pride made him cover this fact as best he could. If Hargedon saw this, he said nothing. He set Zaino to picking up every other instrument, as any partner would have, making no allowance for the work the youngster was doing for Schlossberg. This might, of course, have had the purpose of keeping the radioman too busy to think about discomfort. Or it might merely have been Hargedon's idea of normal procedure. Whatever the cause, Zaino got little chance to use the radio once they had driven into the darkness. He managed only one or two brief talks with those left at the ship. The talks might have helped his morale, since they certainly must have given the impression that nothing was going on in the ship while at least he had something to do in the tractor. However, this state of affairs did not last. Before the vehicle was four hours out of sight of the Albireo , a broadcast by Camille Burkett reached them. The mineralogist's voice contained at least as much professional enthusiasm as alarm, but everyone listening must have thought promptly of the dubious stability of Mercury's crust. The call was intended for her fellow geologists Mardikian and Harmon. But it interested Zaino at least as much. "Joe! Eileen! There's a column of what looks like black smoke rising over Northeast Spur. It can't be a real fire, of course; I can't see its point of origin, but if it's the convection current it seems to be the source must be pretty hot. It's the closest thing to a genuine volcano I've seen since we arrived; it's certainly not another of those ash mounds. I should think you'd still be close enough to make it out, Joe. Can you see anything?" The reply from Mardikian's tractor was inaudible to Zaino and Hargedon, but Burkett's answer made its general tenor plain. "I hadn't thought of that. Yes, I'd say it was pretty close to the Brightside route. It wouldn't be practical for you to stop your run now to come back to see. You couldn't do much about it anyway. I could go out to have a look and then report to you. If the way back is blocked there'll be plenty of time to work out another." Hargedon and Zaino passed questioning glances at each other during the shorter pause that followed. "I know there aren't," the voice then went on, responding to the words they could not hear, "but it's only two or three miles, I'd say. Two to the spur and not much farther to where I could see the other side. Enough of the way is in shade so I could make it in a suit easily enough. I can't see calling back either of the dark-side tractors. Their work is just as important as the rest—anyway, Eileen is probably out of range. She hasn't answered yet." Another pause. "That's true. Still, it would mean sacrificing that set of seismic records—no, wait. We could go out later for those. And Mel could take his own weather measures on the later trip. There's plenty of time!" Pause, longer this time. "You're right, of course. I just wanted to get an early look at this volcano, if it is one. We'll let the others finish their runs, and when you get back you can check the thing from the other side yourself. If it is blocking your way there's time to find an alternate route. We could be doing that from the maps in the meantime, just in case." Zaino looked again at his companion. "Isn't that just my luck!" he exclaimed. "I jump at the first chance to get away from being bored to death. The minute I'm safely away, the only interesting thing of the whole operation happens—back at the ship!" "Who asked to come on this trip?" "Oh, I'm not blaming anyone but myself. If I'd stayed back there the volcano would have popped out here somewhere, or else waited until we were gone." "If it is a volcano. Dr. Burkett didn't seem quite sure." "No, and I'll bet a nickel she's suiting up right now to go out and see. I hope she comes back with something while we're still near enough to hear about it." Hargedon shrugged. "I suppose it was also just your luck that sent you on a Darkside trip? You know the radio stuff. You knew we couldn't reach as far this way with the radios. Didn't you think of that in advance?" "I didn't think of it, any more than you would have. It was bad luck, but I'm not grousing about it. Let's get on with this job." Hargedon nodded with approval, and possibly with some surprise, and the tractor hummed on its way. The darkness deepened around the patches of lava shown by the driving lights; the sky darkened toward a midnight hue, with stars showing ever brighter through it; and radio reception from the Albireo began to get spotty. Gas density at the ion layer was high enough so that recombination of molecules with their radiation-freed electrons was rapid. Only occasional streamers of ionized gas reached far over Darkside. As these thinned out, so did radio reception. Camille Burkett's next broadcast came through very poorly. There was enough in it, however, to seize the attention of the two men in the tractor. She was saying: "—real all right, and dangerous. It's the ... thing I ever saw ... kinds of lava from what looks like ... same vent. There's high viscosity stuff building a spatter cone to end all spatter cones, and some very thin fluid from somewhere at the bottom. The flow has already blocked the valley used by the Brightside routes and is coming along it. A new return route will have to be found for the tractors that ... was spreading fast when I saw it. I can't tell how much will come. But unless it stops there's nothing at all to keep the flow away from the ship. It isn't coming fast, but it's coming. I'd advise all tractors to turn back. Captain Rowson reminds me that only one takeoff is possible. If we leave this site, we're committed to leaving Mercury. Arnie and Ren, do you hear me?" Zaino responded at once. "We got most of it, Doctor. Do you really think the ship is in danger?" "I don't know. I can only say that if this flow continues the ship will have to leave, because this area will sooner or later be covered. I can't guess how likely ... check further to get some sort of estimate. It's different from any Earthly lava source—maybe you heard—should try to get Eileen and Eric back, too. I can't raise them. I suppose they're well out from under the ion layer by now. Maybe you're close enough to them to catch them with diffracted waves. Try, anyway. Whether you can raise them or not you'd better start back yourself." Hargedon cut in at this point. "What does Dr. Mardikian say about that? We still have most of the seismometers on this route to visit." "I think Captain Rowson has the deciding word here, but if it helps your decision Dr. Mardikian has already started back. He hasn't finished his route, either. So hop back here, Ren. And Arnie, put that technical skill you haven't had to use yet to work raising Eileen and Eric." "What I can do, I will," replied Zaino, "but you'd better tape a recall message and keep it going out on. Let's see—band F." "All right. I'll be ready to check the volcano as soon as you get back. How long?" "Seven hours—maybe six and a half," replied Hargedon. "We have to be careful." "Very well. Stay outside when you arrive; I'll want to go right out in the tractor to get a closer look." She cut off. "And that came through clearly enough!" remarked Hargedon as he swung the tractor around. "I've been awake for fourteen hours, driving off and on for ten of them; I'm about to drive for another six; and then I'm to stand by for more." "Would you like me to do some of the driving?" asked Zaino. "I guess you'll have to, whether I like it or not," was the rather lukewarm reply. "I'll keep on for awhile, though—until we're back in better light. You get at your radio job." III Zaino tried. Hour after hour he juggled from one band to another. Once he had Hargedon stop while he went out to attach a makeshift antenna which, he hoped, would change his output from broadcast to some sort of beam; after this he kept probing the sky with the "beam," first listening to the Albireo's broadcast in an effort to find projecting wisps of ionosphere and then, whenever he thought he had one, switching on his transmitter and driving his own message at it. Not once did he complain about lack of equipment or remark how much better he could do once he was back at the ship. Hargedon's silence began to carry an undercurrent of approval not usual in people who spent much time with Zaino. The technician made no further reference to the suggestion of switching drivers. They came in sight of the Albireo and doubled the chasm with Hargedon still at the wheel, Zaino still at his radio and both of them still uncertain whether any of the calls had gotten through. Both had to admit, even before they could see the ship, that Burkett had had a right to be impressed. The smoke column showed starkly against the sky, blowing back over the tractor and blocking the sunlight which would otherwise have glared into the driver's eyes. Fine particles fell from it in a steady shower; looking back, the men could see tracks left by their vehicle in the deposit which had already fallen. As they approached the ship the dark pillar grew denser and narrower, while the particles raining from it became coarser. In some places the ash was drifting into fairly deep piles, giving Hargedon some anxiety about possible concealed cracks. The last part of the trip, along the edge of the great chasm and around its end, was really dangerous; cracks running from its sides were definitely spreading. The two men reached the Albireo later than Hargedon had promised, and found Burkett waiting impatiently with a pile of apparatus beside her. She didn't wait for them to get out before starting to organize. "There isn't much here. We'll take off just enough of what you're carrying to make room for this. No—wait. I'll have to check some of your equipment; I'm going to need one of Milt Schlossberg's gadget's, I think, so leave that on. We'll take—" "Excuse me, Doctor," cut in Hargedon. "Our suits need servicing, or at least mine will if you want me to drive you. Perhaps Arnie can help you load for a while, if you don't think it's too important for him to get at the radio—" "Of course. Excuse me. I should have had someone out here to help me with this. You two go on in. Ren, please get back as soon as you can. I can do the work here; none of this stuff is very heavy." Zaino hesitated as he swung out of the cab. True, there wasn't too much to be moved, and it wasn't very heavy in Mercury's gravity, and he really should be at the radio; but the thirty-nine-year-old mineralogist was a middle-aged lady by his standards, and shouldn't be allowed to carry heavy packages.... "Get along, Arnie!" the middle-aged lady interrupted this train of thought. "Eric and Eileen are getting farther away and harder to reach every second you dawdle!" He got, though he couldn't help looking northeast as he went rather than where he was going. The towering menace in that direction would have claimed anyone's attention. The pillar of sable ash was rising straighter, as though the wind were having less effect on it. An equally black cone had risen into sight beyond Northeast Spur—a cone that must have grown to some two thousand feet in roughly ten hours. It had far steeper sides than the cinder mounds near it; it couldn't be made of the same loose ash. Perhaps it consisted of half-melted particles which were fusing together as they fell—that might be what Burkett had meant by "spatter-cone." Still, if that were the case, the material fountaining from the cone's top should be lighting the plain with its incandescence rather than casting an inky shadow for its entire height. Well, that was a problem for the geologists; Zaino climbed aboard and settled to his task. The trouble was that he could do very little more here than he could in the tractor. He could have improvised longer-wave transmitting coils whose radiations would have diffracted a little more effectively beyond the horizon, but the receiver on the missing vehicle would not have detected them. He had more power at his disposal, but could only beam it into empty space with his better antennae. He had better equipment for locating any projecting wisps of charged gas which might reflect his waves, but he was already located under a solid roof of the stuff—the Albireo was technically on Brightside. Bouncing his beam from this layer still didn't give him the range he needed, as he had found both by calculation and trial. What he really needed was a relay satellite. The target was simply too far around Mercury's sharp curve by now for anything less. Zaino's final gesture was to set his transmission beam on the lowest frequency the tractor would pick up, aim it as close to the vehicle's direction as he could calculate from map and itinerary and set the recorded return message going. He told Rowson as much. "Can't think of anything else?" the captain asked. "Well, neither can I, but of course it's not my field. I'd give a year's pay if I could. How long before they should be back in range?" "About four days. A hundred hours, give or take a few. They'll be heading back anyway by that time." "Of course. Well, keep trying." "I am—or rather, the equipment is. I don't see what else I can do unless a really bright idea should suddenly sprout. Is there anywhere else I could be useful? I'm as likely to have ideas working as just sitting." "We can keep you busy, all right. But how about taking a transmitter up one of those mountains? That would get your wave farther." "Not as far as it's going already. I'm bouncing it off the ion layer, which is higher than any mountain we've seen on Mercury even if it's nowhere near as high as Earth's." "Hmph. All right." "I could help Ren and Dr. Burkett. I could hang on outside the tractor—" "They've already gone. You'd better call them, though, and keep a log of what they do." "All right." Zaino turned back to his board and with no trouble raised the tractor carrying Hargedon and the mineralogist. The latter had been trying to call the Albireo and had some acid comments about radio operators who slept on the job.

test

51210

I, the Unspeakable By WALT SHELDON Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem! I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep. " Do it! " she said. " Please do it! For me! " It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning. I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard. I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way. I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces. I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor. Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds. I'd go out again today. The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last. As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag. Everything came back in a rush— My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion. Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk? You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition. The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform. If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night. There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem. The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat. We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa." Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned. Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word. A four letter word. Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be. Mine was. It was unspeakable. The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories. I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself. I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important—magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars—and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons. Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer. The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard. "Er—old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work." "Nutrition kits? Me? On nutrition kits?" "Well, I—er—know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies." Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract—deliberately infract—it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning. "I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract." He looked vastly relieved. "Uh—fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would." It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve. But I didn't know what I was in for. I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department—any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up.... A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed. And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive. But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package—and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again. "Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later." You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages. Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I couldn't get a post. Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior. That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone. Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice—to her —in a moment. I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication—not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal. But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate. Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted. He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse." "Yes, I understand that." "M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod. I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him. The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes. I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost.... About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong. The next night I heard the woman's voice again. " Try it ," she said. " Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please—for me. " She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me. And I heard the voice nearly every night. It hammered away. " What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now! " One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be. She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, " Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way. " Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy—desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself. I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office. I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care. II Like most important places, the Govpub Office in Center Four was underground. I could have taken a tunnelcar more quickly, but it seemed pleasanter to travel topside. Or maybe I just wanted to put this off a bit. Think about it. Compose myself. At the entrance to the Govpub warren there was a big director cyb, a plate with a speaker and switch. The sign on it said to switch it on and get close to the speaker and I did. The cyb's mechanical voice—they never seem to get the "th" sounds right—said, "This is Branch Four of the Office of Government Publications. Say, 'Publications,' and/or, 'Information desired,' as thoroughly and concisely as possible. Use approved voice and standard phraseology." Well, simple enough so far. I had always rather prided myself on my knack for approved voice, those flat, emotionless tones that indicate efficiency. And I would never forget how to speak Statese. I said, "Applicant desires all pertinent information relative assignment, change or amendment of State Serial designations, otherwise generally referred to as nomenclature." There was a second's delay while the audio patterns tripped relays and brought the memory tubes in. Then the cyb said, "Proceed to Numbering and Identity section. Consult alphabetical list and diagram on your left for location of same." "Thanks," I said absent-mindedly. I started to turn away and the cyb said, "Information on tanks is military information and classified. State authorization for—" I switched it off. Numbering and Identity wasn't hard to find. I took the shaft to the proper level and then it was only a walk of a few hundred yards through the glowlit corridors. N. & I. turned out to be a big room, somewhat circular, very high-ceilinged, with banks of cyb controls covering the upper walls. Narrow passageways, like spokes, led off in several directions. There was an information desk in the center of the room. I looked that way and my heart went into free fall. There was a girl at the information desk. An exceptionally attractive girl. She was well within the limits of acceptable standard, and her features were even enough, and her hair a middle blonde—but she had something else. Hard to describe. It was a warmth, a buoyancy, a sense of life and intense animation. It didn't exactly show; it radiated. It seemed to sing out from her clear complexion, from her figure, which even a tunic could not hide, from everything about her. And if I were to state my business, I would have to tell her my name. I almost backed out right then. I stopped momentarily. And then common sense took hold and I realized that if I were to go through with this thing, here would be only the first of a long series of embarrassments and discomforts. It had to be done. I walked up to the desk and the girl turned to face me, and I could have sworn that a faint smile crossed her lips. It was swift, like the shadow of a bird across one of the lawns in one of the great parks topside. Very non-standard. Yet I wasn't offended; if anything, I felt suddenly and disturbingly pleased. "What information is desired?" she asked. Her voice was standard—or was it? Again I had the feeling of restrained warmth. I used colloquial. "I want to get the dope on State Serial designations, how they're assigned and so forth. Especially how they might be changed." She put a handsteno on the desk top and said, "Name? Address? Post?" I froze. I stood there and stared at her. She looked up and said, "Well?" "I—er—no post at present. N/P status." Her fingers moved on the steno. I gave her my address and she recorded that. Then I paused again. She said, "And your name?" I took a deep breath and told her. I didn't want to look into her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't find a decent excuse to. I saw her eyes become wide and noticed for the first time that they were a warm gray, almost a mouse color. I felt like laughing at that irrelevant observation, but more than that I felt like turning and running. I felt like climbing and dashing all over the walls like a frustrated cat and yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt like anything but standing there and looking stupid, meeting her stare— She looked down quickly and recorded my name. It took her a little longer than necessary. In that time she recovered. Somewhat. "All right," she said finally, "I'll make a search." She turned to a row of buttons on a console in the center of the desk and began to press them in various combinations. A typer clicked away. She tore off a slip of paper, consulted it, and said, "Information desired is in Bank 29. Please follow me." Well, following her was a pleasure, anyway. I could watch the movement of her hips and torso as she walked. She was not tall, but long-legged and extremely lithe. Graceful and rhythmic. Very, very feminine, almost beyond standard in that respect. I felt blood throb in my temples and was heartily ashamed of myself. I would like to be in a mating booth with her, I thought, the full authorized twenty minutes. And I knew I was unconformist and the realization hardly scared me at all. She led me down one of the long passageways. A few moments later I said, "Don't you sometimes get—well, pretty lonely working here?" Personal talk at a time like this wasn't approved behavior, but I couldn't help it. She answered hesitantly, but at least she answered. She said, "Not terribly. The cybs are company enough most of the time." "You don't get many visitors, then." "Not right here. N. & I. isn't a very popular section. Most people who come to Govpub spend their time researching in the ancient manuscript room. The—er—social habits of the pre-atomic civilization." I laughed. I knew what she meant, all right. Pre-atomics and their ideas about free mating always fascinated people. I moved up beside her. "What's your name, by the way?" "L-A-R-A 339/827." I pronounced it. "Lara. Lah-rah. That's beautiful. Fits you, too." She didn't answer; she kept her eyes straight ahead and I saw the faint spot of color on her cheek. I had a sudden impulse to ask her to meet me after hours at one of the rec centers. If it had been my danger alone, I might have, but I couldn't very well ask her to risk discovery of a haphazard, unauthorized arrangement like that and the possibility of going to the psycho-scan. We came to a turn in the corridor and something happened; I'm not sure just how it happened. I keep telling myself that my movements were not actually deliberate. I was to the right of her. The turn was to the left. She turned quickly, and I didn't, so that I bumped into her, knocking her off balance. I grabbed her to keep her from falling. For a moment we stood there, face to face, touching each other lightly. I held her by the arms. I felt the primitive warmth of her breath. Our eyes held together ... proton ... electron ... I felt her tremble. She broke from my grip suddenly and started off again. After that she was very business-like. We came finally to the controls of Bank 29 and she stood before them and began to press button combinations. I watched her work; I watched her move. I had almost forgotten why I'd come here. The lights blinked on and off and the typers clacked softly as the machine sorted out information. She had a long printed sheet from the roll presently. She frowned at it and turned to me. "You can take this along and study it," she said, "but I'm afraid what you have in mind may be—a little difficult." She must have guessed what I had in mind. I said, "I didn't think it would be easy." "It seems that the only agency authorized to change a State Serial under any circumstances is Opsych." "Opsych?" You can't keep up with all these departments. "The Office of Psychological Adjustment. They can change you if you go from a lower to higher E.A.C." "I don't get it, exactly." As she spoke I had the idea that there was sympathy in her voice. Just an overtone. "Well," she said, "as you know, the post a person is qualified to hold often depends largely on his Emotional Adjustment Category. Now if he improves and passes from, let us say, Grade 3 to Grade 4, he will probably change his place of work. In order to protect him from any associative maladjustments developed under the old E.A.C, he is permitted a new number." I groaned. "But I'm already in the highest E.A.C.!" "It looks very uncertain then." "Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the mines, or on Marscol—or—in the hell of the pre-atomics!" She looked amused. "What did you say your E.A.C. was?" "Oh, all right. Sorry." I controlled myself and grinned. "I guess this whole thing has been just a little too much for me. Maybe my E.A.C.'s even gone down." "That might be your chance then." "How do you mean?" "If you could get to the top man in Opsych and demonstrate that your number has inadvertently changed your E.A.C., he might be able to justify a change." "By the State, he might!" I punched my palm. "Only how do I get to him?" "I can find his location on the cyb here. Center One, the capital, for a guess. You'll have to get a travel permit to go there, of course. Just a moment." She worked at the machine again, trying it on general data. The printed slip came out a moment later and she read it to me. Chief, Opsych, was in the capital all right. It didn't give the exact location of his office, but it did tell how to find the underground bay in Center One containing the Opsych offices. We headed back through the passageway then and she kept well ahead of me. I couldn't keep my eyes from her walk, from the way she walked with everything below her shoulders. My blood was pounding at my temples again. I tried to keep the conversation going. "Do you think it'll be hard to get a travel permit?" "Not impossible. My guess is that you'll be at Travbur all day tomorrow, maybe even the next day. But you ought to be able to swing it if you hold out long enough." I sighed. "I know. It's that way everywhere in Northem. Our motto ought to be, 'Why make it difficult when with just a little more effort you can make it impossible?'" She started to laugh, and then, as she emerged from the passageway into the big circular room, she cut her laugh short. A second later, as I came along, I saw why. There were two Deacons by the central desk. They were burly and had that hard, pinched-face look and wore the usual black belts. Electric clubs hung from the belts. Spidery looking pistols were at their sides. I didn't know whether these two had heard my crack or not. I know they kept looking at me. Lara and I crossed the room silently, she back to her desk, I to the exit door. The Deacons' remote, disapproving eyes swung in azimuth, tracking us. I walked out and wanted to turn and smile at Lara, and get into my smile something of the hope that someday, somewhere, I'd see her again—but of course I didn't dare. III I had the usual difficulties at Travbur the next day. I won't go into them, except to say that I was batted from office to office like a ping pong ball, and that, when I finally got my travel permit, I was made to feel that I had stolen an original Picasso from the State Museum. I made it in a day. Just. I got my permit thirty seconds before closing time. I was to take the jetcopter to Center One at 0700 hours the following morning. In my living machine that evening, I was much too excited to work at theoretical research as I usually did after a hard day of tramping around. I bathed, I paced a while, I sat and hummed nervously and got up and paced again. I turned on the telepuppets. There was a drama about the space pilots who fly the nonconformist prisoners to the forests and pulp-acetate plants on Mars. Seemed that the Southem political prisoners who are confined to the southern hemisphere of Mars, wanted to attack and conquer the north. The nonconformists, led by our pilot, came through for the State in the end. Corn is thicker than water. Standard. There were, however, some good stereofilm shots of the limitless forests of Mars, and I wondered what it would be like to live there, in a green, fresh-smelling land. Pleasant, I supposed, if you could put up with the no doubt revolting morality of a prison planet. And the drama seemed to point out that there was no more security for the nonconformists out there than for us here on Earth. Maybe somewhere in the universe, I thought, there would be peace for men. Somewhere beyond the solar system, perhaps, someday when we had the means to go there.... Yet instinct told me that wasn't the answer, either. I thought of a verse by an ancient pre-atomic poet named Hoffenstein. (People had unwieldy, random combinations of letters for names in those days.) The poem went: Wherever I go, I go too, And spoil everything. That was it. The story of mankind. I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time. Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious. " You have taken the first step ," she said. " You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer.... " I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm.... " The woman, Lara, attracts you ," said the voice. I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it. " Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way. " The idea at once thrilled and frightened me. I woke writhing and in a sweat again. It was morning. I dressed and headed for the jetcopter stage and the ship for Center One. The ship was comfortable and departed on time, a transport with seats for about twenty passengers. I sat near the tail and moodily busied myself watching the gaunt brown earth far below. Between Centers there was mostly desert, only occasional patches of green. Before the atomic decade, I had heard, nearly all the earth was green and teemed with life ... birds, insects, animals, people, too. It was hard rock and sand now, with a few scrubs hanging on for life. The pre-atomics, who hadn't mastered synthesization, would have a hard time scratching existence from the earth today. I tried to break the sad mood, and started to look around at some of the other passengers. That was when I first noticed the prisoners in the forward seats. Man and woman, they were, a youngish, rather non-descript couple, thin, very quiet. They were manacled and two Deacons sat across from them. The Deacons' backs were turned to me and I could see the prisoners' faces. They had curious faces. Their eyes were indescribably sad, and yet their lips seemed to be ready to smile at any moment. They were holding hands, not seeming to care about this vulgar emotional display. I had the sudden crazy idea that Lara and I were sitting there, holding hands like that, nonconforming in the highest, and that we were wonderfully happy. Our eyes were sad too, but we were really happy, quietly happy, and that was why our lips stayed upon the brink of a smile.

test

51398

Well, naturally Kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! He was— GROWING UP ON BIG MUDDY By CHARLES V. DE VET Illustrated by TURPIN [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. How long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? And why hadn't he noticed it before? Why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it? He went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should. OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW. SS II Kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. Overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground. "Damn this climate!" Kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "Doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?" His attention returned to the matter at hand. Why the baby talk? And why was his memory so hazy? How long had he been here? What had he been doing during that time? Listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. The air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. He'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. He remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone—or without better equipment, at least. Yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here. Calmly, deliberately, Kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them: The mother ship, Soscites II , had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. It had dropped Kaiser in the one remaining scout ship—the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds—and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that Kaiser had named Big Muddy. The Soscites II had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. Its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, Earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. And now its fuel was low. Kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever. That was all he could remember. Nothing of what he had been doing recently. A small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. Baby talk.... One thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. He turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. It held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages—both those sent and those received. He pulled it out impatiently and began reading. The first was from himself: YOUR SUGGESTIONS NO HELP. HOW AM I GOING TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO SCOUT WITHOUT PROPER EQUIPMENT? AND WHERE DO I GET IT? DO YOU THINK I FOUND A TOOL SHOP DOWN HERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER. VISITED SEAL-PEOPLE AGAIN TODAY. STILL HAVE THEIR STINK IN MY NOSE. FOUND HUTS ALONG RIVER BANK, SO I GUESS THEY DON'T LIVE IN WATER. BUT THEY DO SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME THERE. NO, I HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THEIR INTELLIGENCE. I WOULD JUDGE IT AVERAGES NO HIGHER THAN SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HUMAN. THEY DEFINITELY DO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. WILL TRY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, BUT YOU GET TO WORK FAST ON HOW I REPAIR SCOUT. SWELLING IN ARM WORSE AND AM DEVELOPING A FEVER. TEMPERATURE 102.7 AN HOUR AGO. SMOKY The ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange. DOING OUR BEST, SMOKY. YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM, AS WE SEE IT, IS TO KEEP WELL. WE FED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU GAVE US INTO SAM, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE MUCH EXCEPT THE STING IN YOUR ARM. AS EXPECTED, ALL THAT CAME OUT WAS "DATA INSUFFICIENT." TRY TO GIVE US MORE. ALSO DETAIL ALL SYMPTOMS SINCE YOUR LAST REPORT. IN THE MEANTIME, WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN AT THIS END. GOOD LUCK. SS II Sam, Kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. His report followed: ARM SWOLLEN. UNABLE TO KEEP DOWN FOOD LAST TWELVE HOURS. ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO, ENTIRE BODY TURNED LIVID RED. BRIEF PERIODS OF BLANKNESS. THINGS KEEP COMING AND GOING. SICK AS HELL. HURRY. SMOKY The ship's next message read: INFECTION QUITE DEFINITE. BUT SOMETHING STRANGE THERE. GIVE US ANYTHING MORE YOU HAVE. SS II His own reply perplexed Kaiser: LAST LETTER FUNNY. I NOT UNDERSTAND. WHY IS OO SENDING GARBLE TALK? DID USNS MAKE UP SECRET MESSAGES? SMOKY The expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he: WHAT'S THE MATTER, SMOKY? THAT LAST MESSAGE WAS IN PLAIN TERRAN. NO REASON WHY YOU COULDN'T READ IT. AND WHY THE BABY TALK? IF YOU'RE SPOOFING, STOP. GIVE US MORE SYMPTOMS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW? SS II The baby talk was worse on Kaiser's next: TWAZY. WHAT FOR OO TENDING TWAZY LETTERS? FINK UM CAN WEAD TWAZY LETTERS? SKIN ALL YELLOW NOW. COLD. COLD. CO The ship's following communication was three hours late. It was the last on the tape—the one Kaiser had read earlier. Apparently they decided to humor him. OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW. SS II That was not much help. All it told him was that he had been sick. He felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Cool. No fever anyway. He glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. Twenty hours. He hadn't been out of his head too long. He began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit. SEEM TO BE FULLY RECOVERED. FEELING FINE. ANYTHING NEW FROM SAM? AND HOW ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO SCOUT? GIVE ME ANYTHING YOU HAVE ON EITHER OR BOTH. SMOKY Kaiser felt suddenly weary. He lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. Soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness—he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream. It was the same dream he had had many times before. In it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. He had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, Helene, did not love him. She had married him for the security his pay check provided. And though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. Instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way. Her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. His mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment Kaiser. Kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. The clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. Still five more long hours to wait. He rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout. After a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of Big Muddy. The rain seemed to have eased off some. Not much more than a heavy drizzle now. Kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. He opened the door. The scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and Kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground. The weather outside was normal for Big Muddy: wet, humid, and warm. Kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. He half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. Beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. Tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. The octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study. Kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. Once there, he headed upstream. He could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. As usual, most were swimming in the river. One old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. Perhaps a lookout. He pulled himself to his feet as he spied Kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting—or a warning to the others that a stranger approached. The native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. Membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. The arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. His legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. They gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. About him hung a rank-fish smell that made Kaiser's stomach squirm. The old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as Kaiser came near. Feeling slightly ineffectual, Kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. The other chirped again and Kaiser went on toward the main group. They had stopped their play and eating as Kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. They varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. Some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths. They had mammalian characteristics, Kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. The proportion was roughly fifty-fifty. Several of the bolder males climbed up beside Kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. Kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. One native smeared Kaiser's face with an exploring paw and Kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. He was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this. A young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. The entire group seemed to lose interest in Kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. Kaiser's inspectors followed. They were a mindless lot, Kaiser observed. The river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies. Kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. He took time to study their construction more closely this time. They were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. How they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, Kaiser did not know. He had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. They then had to have sunlight. Maybe it rained less during certain seasons. The domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. When the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. Each tier thus furnished support for the next above. No other framework was needed. The final tier formed the roof. They made sound shelters, but Kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank—and as smelly as the natives themselves. The few loungers in the village paid little attention to Kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout. The Soscites II sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and Kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout. The job appeared maddeningly simply. As the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. The bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing. Opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. Kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar—the best leverage he had on hand—but it resisted his best efforts. He still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day. That evening, Kaiser received information from the Soscites II that was at least definite: SET YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, SMOKY. SAM FINALLY CAME THROUGH. YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. AT LEAST NOT AT FIRST. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED BY A SYMBIOTE—SIMILAR TO THE TYPE FOUND ON THE SAND WORLD, BARTEL-BLEETHERS. GIVE US A FEW MORE HOURS TO WORK WITH SAM AND WE'LL GET YOU ALL THE PARTICULARS HE CAN GIVE US. HANG ON NOW! SOSCITES II Kaiser's reply was short and succinct: WHAT THE HELL? SMOKY Soscites II's next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor: JUST A FEW WORDS, SMOKY, IN CASE YOU'RE WORRIED. I THOUGHT I'D GET THIS OFF WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM SAM. REMEMBER THAT A SYMBIOTE IS NOT A PARASITE. IT WILL NOT HARM YOU, EXCEPT INADVERTENTLY. YOUR WELFARE IS AS ESSENTIAL TO IT AS TO YOU. ALMOST CERTAINLY, IF YOU DIE, IT WILL DIE WITH YOU. ANY TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD SO FAR WAS PROBABLY CAUSED BY THE SYMBIOTE'S DIFFICULTY IN ADJUSTING ITSELF TO ITS NEW ENVIRONMENT. IN A WAY, I ENVY YOU. MORE LATER, WHEN WE FINISH WITH SAM. J. G. ZARWELL Kaiser did not answer. The news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. He lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours—until the next communication came in: WELL, THIS IS WHAT SAM HAS TO SAY, SMOKY. SYMBIOTE AMICABLE AND APPARENTLY SWIFTLY ADAPTABLE. YOUR CHANGING COLOR, DIFFICULTY IN EATING AND EVEN BABY TALK WERE THE RESULT OF ITS EFFORTS TO GIVE YOU WHAT IT BELIEVED YOU NEEDED OR WANTED. CHANGING COLOR: PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE. TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD DOWN: IT KEPT YOUR STOMACH EMPTY BECAUSE IT SENSED YOU WERE IN TROUBLE AND MIGHT HAVE NEED FOR SHARP REFLEXES, WITH NO EXCESS WEIGHT TO CARRY. THE BABY TALK WE AREN'T TOO CERTAIN ABOUT, BUT OUR BEST CONCLUSION IS THAT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, YOU WERE MOST HAPPY. IT WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU BACK THAT HAPPY STATE OF MIND. OBVIOUSLY IT QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THE MISTAKES IT MADE AND CORRECTED THEM. SAM CAME UP WITH A FEW MORE IDEAS, BUT WE WANT TO WORK ON THEM A BIT BEFORE WE SEND THEM THROUGH. SLEEP ON THIS. SS II Kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. He was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. He had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. True, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city. His naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. He did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. They would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. He was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. And he returned the dislike. The suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. He hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, Kaiser realized—and fell instantly asleep. The communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke: SAM COULDN'T HELP US MUCH ON THIS PART, BUT AFTER RESEARCH AND MUCH DISCUSSION, WE ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING TWO CONCLUSIONS. FIRST, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF SYMBIOTE IS EITHER THAT OF A VERY THIN LIQUID OR, MORE PROBABLY, A VIRUS FORM WITH SWIFT PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTIC. IT UNDOUBTEDLY LIVES IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM AND PERMEATES YOUR SYSTEM. SECOND, IT SEEMED TO US, AS IT MUST HAVE TO YOU, THAT THE SYMBIOTE COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED BY READING YOUR MIND. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY NOW. WE THINK THAT IT HAS SUCH CLOSE CONTACT WITH YOUR GLANDS AND THEIR SECRETIONS, WHICH STIMULATE EMOTION, THAT IT CAN GAUGE YOUR FEELINGS EVEN MORE ACCURATELY THAN YOU YOURSELF CAN. THUS IT CAN JUDGE YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES QUITE ACCURATELY. WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU TEST OUR THEORY. THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS. IF YOU ARE STUMPED AND NEED SUGGESTIONS, JUST LET US KNOW. WE AWAIT WORD FROM YOU WITH GREAT INTEREST. SS II By now, Kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. His distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. With eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. After a few minutes, an idea occurred to him. Taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. He knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. The cut bled a few slow drops—and as Kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped. That checked pretty well with the ship's theory. Perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. He tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. It seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. Walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. Each letter stood out sharp and clear! Kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. Concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. The result surprised and pleased him. The temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here. As a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. Temperature 102, humidity 113—just about the same as it had been on earlier readings. During the next twenty-four hours, Kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. In between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. He had no more success than before. He tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. Each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately—and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. At first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. His one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged. At last Kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. He sent out a terse message to the Soscites II : TAKING SHORT TRIP TO ANOTHER LOCATION ON RIVER. HOPE TO FIND MORE INTELLIGENT NATIVES. COULD BE THAT THE SETTLEMENT I FOUND HERE IS ANALOGOUS TO TRIBE OF MONKEYS ON EARTH. I KNOW THE CHANCE IS SMALL, BUT WHAT HAVE I TO LOSE? I CAN'T FIX SCOUT WITHOUT BETTER TOOLS, AND IF MY GUESS IS RIGHT, I MAY BE ABLE TO GET EQUIPMENT. EXPECT TO RETURN IN TEN OR TWELVE HOURS. PLEASE KEEP CONTACT WITH SCOUT. SMOKY Kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. He had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. He intended to find out. Wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, Kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. He hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey—in the opposite direction from the first native settlement. He walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. And a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. He received a further pleasant surprise. This group was decidedly more advanced than the first! They were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. And their odor was more subdued, less repugnant. By signs, Kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. A thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. The first male took the weed and brought it to Kaiser. This was obviously a gesture of friendship. The weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. Kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it. The weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. He swallowed the mouthful and tried another. He ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction. As dusk fell, Kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. All apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. Apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. Lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world. Once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. However, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and Kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went. The next morning, Kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. The seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly. That friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. The natives crowded around as he swam—they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency—and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. He had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. As he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under. Kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. They sank deeper. When his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, Kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. He reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom. As he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. He stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. He shrugged helplessly. There was no longer anything to be gained by staying here—if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them—and he packed and started back to the scout. Kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. He had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. Above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel. When he reached the scout, Kaiser began to unload the sled. The tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. To his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground. Perplexed, Kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. They felt exceptionally light. He paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened. Moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. He did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there. Inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. Nothing happened. He rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. The metal beneath yielded slightly—but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever. Only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. His hands ached and tingled. His strength must have been increased tremendously. With his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. The metal of the scout bottom gave slowly—until the fuel pump hung free! Kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. He let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act. He transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him. The first was quite routine: REPORTS FROM THE OCTOPUS INDICATE THAT BIG MUDDY UNDERGOES RADICAL WEATHER-CYCLE CHANGES DURING SPRING AND FALL SEASONS, FROM EXTREME MOISTURE TO EXTREME ARIDITY. AT HEIGHT OF DRY SEASON, PLANET MUST BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SURFACE LIQUID. TO SURVIVE THESE UNUSUAL EXTREMES, SEAL-PEOPLE WOULD NEED EXTREME ADAPTABILITY. THIS VERIFIES OUR EARLIER GUESS THAT NATIVES HAVE SYMBIOSIS WITH THE SAME VIRUS FORM THAT INVADED YOU. WITH SYMBIOTES' AID, SUCH RADICAL PHYSICAL CHANGE COULD BE POSSIBLE. WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED. GIVE US ANY NEW INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE ON NATIVES. SS II The second report was not so routine. Kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it. SUGGEST YOU DEVOTE ALL TIME AND EFFORT TO REPAIR OF SCOUT. INFORMATION ON SEAL-PEOPLE ADEQUATE FOR OUR PURPOSES. SS II Kaiser did not answer either communication. His earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. He lay on his cot and went to sleep. In the morning, another message was waiting: VERY PLEASED TO HEAR OF PROGRESS ON REPAIR OF SCOUT. COMPLETE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND RETURN HERE IMMEDIATELY. SS II Kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. Could the Soscites II be experiencing some difficulty? He shrugged the thought aside. If they were, they would have told him. The last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency—there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information. Strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod Kaiser. He knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. And the Soscites II would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet. Without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, Kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. When he became hungry, he went back inside. Another message came in as he finished eating. This one was from the captain himself: WHY HAVE WE RECEIVED NO VERIFICATION OF LAST INSTRUCTIONS? REPAIR SCOUT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY. THIS IS AN ORDER! H. A. HESSE, CAPT. Kaiser pushed the last of his meal—which he had been eating with his fingers—into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor. He pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. For some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. He placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. It was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip. The tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when Kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. However, there were other seal-people here. And they were almost human! The resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup—that was little changed from the first he had found—as in their obviously greater intelligence. This was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. Kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. Where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. Also, these had no odor—only a mild, rather pleasing scent. When they came to meet him, Kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings. Most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as Kaiser set up his tent. One was a female. They made small noises while he went about his work. After a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. He tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. Kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. He was fairly successful. He was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation. The male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until Kaiser finished. She motioned to him then to follow. When they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water. Before he had time to decide, Kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. He stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape: STILL ANXIOUSLY AWAITING WORD FROM YOU. IN MEANTIME, GIVE VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO FOLLOWING. WE KNOW THAT THE SYMBIOTES MUST BE ABLE TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEAL-PEOPLE. THERE IS EVERY PROBABILITY THAT YOURS WILL ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME TO YOU—TO BETTER FIT YOUR BODY TO ITS PRESENT ENVIRONMENT. THE DANGER, WHICH WE HESITATED TO MENTION UNTIL NOW—WHEN YOU HAVE FORCED US BY YOUR OBSTINATE SILENCE—IS THAT IT CAN ALTER YOUR MIND ALSO. YOUR REPORT ON SECOND TRIBE OF SEAL-PEOPLE STRONGLY INDICATES THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. THEY WERE PROBABLY NOT MORE INTELLIGENT AND HUMANLIKE THAN THE OTHERS. ON THE CONTRARY, YOU ARE BECOMING MORE LIKE THEM. DANGER ACUTE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: IMMEDIATELY! SS II Kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts. When he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. She pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. Kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. They ran, still laughing, into the water. Already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots.

test

50827

Orphans of the Void By MICHAEL SHAARA Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick—the Universe is full of them. Finding one worth living for is the genuine problem! In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any significance in the number. He had no idea. "What do you make of it?" he asked. Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit. "Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways, maybe?" Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him. "No inscriptions," he pointed out. "They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it much of a civilization." "You don't think these are native?" Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded. Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old— too old. He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks. Ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "Want to set up shop, Skipper?" Steffens paused. "All right, if you think it will do any good." "You never can tell. Excavation probably won't be much use. These things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. And you can see that the rock itself is native—" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet—"and was cut out a long while back." "How long?" Ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "I wouldn't like to say off-hand." "Make a rough estimate." Ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. He smiled wryly and said: "Five thousand years? Ten thousand? I don't know." Steffens whistled. Ball pointed again at the wall. "Look at the striations. You can tell from that alone. It would take even a brisk Earth wind at least several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force." The two men stood for a long moment in silence. Man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. It was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history. Man had been in space for only three hundred years. Whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years. Which ought to give them , thought Steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start. While the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, Steffens remained alone among the buildings. Ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls. "Well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since." "No? How can you be sure?" Steffens grunted. "A space-borne race was roaming this part of the Galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, that long ago. And this planet is only a parsec from Varius II, a civilization as old as Earth's. Did whoever built these get to Varius? Or did they get to Earth? How can you know?" He kicked at the sand distractedly. "And most important, where are they now? A race with several thousand years...." "Fifteen thousand," Ball said. When Steffens looked up, he added: "That's what the geology boys say. Fifteen thousand, at the least." Steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. When he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him. "But why buildings? Why did they have to build in stone, to last? There's something wrong with that. They shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. And castaways would have left something behind. The only reason they would need a camp would be—" "If the ship left and some of them stayed." Steffens nodded. "But then the ship must have come back. Where did it go?" He ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "We'll never know." "How about the other planets?" Ball asked. "The report was negative. Inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. The third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but it has a CO 2 atmosphere." "How about moons?" Steffens shrugged. "We could try them and find out." The third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. The ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. They came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone. The moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. The third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. Steffens expected nothing, but he had to try. At a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the Mapping Command. Faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below. Steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently. After a while he saw a city. The main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. Someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and Steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead. He looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. Near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. In all the piled rubble, nothing moved. Steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. The rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities—all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing. No one on the ship had anything to say. None had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on Earth or near it for more than three hundred years. The ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. When they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. It became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive. After a while Ball said: "Well, which do you figure? Did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?" Steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. They were coming around to the daylight side. "We'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "Break out the radiation suits." He paused, thinking. If the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. They had starships and were warlike. Then, thousands of years ago. He began to realize how important it really was that Ball's question be answered. When the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, Steffens was still by the screen. It was Steffens, then, who saw the thing move. Down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. Steffens froze. And he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot. Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past. Quickly Steffens called for height. The ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. Steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. And he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms. Nothing alive but robots, he thought, robots . He adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. Behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement. A band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen. The ship leveled off. Steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. He had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. Now he had nothing to do. He tried to concentrate on what the League Law would have him do. The Law was no help. Contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. But could a bunch of robots be called a race? The Law said nothing about robots because Earthmen had none. The building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. But at any rate, Steffens thought, he had made contact already. While Steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, Lieutenant Ball came up, hobbling slightly. From the bright new bruise on his cheek, Steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. The exec was pale with surprise. "What were they?" he said blankly. "Lord, they looked like robots!" "They were." Ball stared confoundedly at the screen. The things were now a confusion of dots in the mist. "Almost humanoid," Steffens said, "but not quite." Ball was slowly absorbing the situation. He turned to gaze inquiringly at Steffens. "Well, what do we do now?" Steffens shrugged. "They saw us. We could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on Tyban IV." " Can we go down?" "Legally? I don't know. If they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. But there's another possibility." He tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "They don't have to be robots at all. They could be the natives." Ball gulped. "I don't follow you." "They could be the original inhabitants of this planet—the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. Anyway," he added, "they're the most perfect mechanicals I've ever seen." Ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. Steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the Main Deck, thinking. The Mapping Command, they called it. Theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. Make a check and nothing else. But he knew very clearly that if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty. And there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone. He stopped in the center of the deck. A whole new line of thought opened up. If the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost? An outpost! He turned and raced for the bridge. If he went in and landed and was lost, then the League might never know in time. If he went in and stirred up trouble.... The thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. A voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say: " Greetings. Do not be alarmed. We do not wish you to be alarmed. Our desire is only to serve.... " "Greetings, it said! Greetings!" Ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips. Everyone on the ship had heard the voice. When it spoke again, Steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices. "We await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "Our desire is only to serve." And then the robots sent a picture . As perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in Steffens' mind. On the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. With slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its right side, and extended it toward Steffens, a graciously offered hand. Steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. The robot mind had helped. When the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. He waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. He had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. So when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear. While the crew watched in fascination, Steffens tried to talk back. He concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands. "Greetings," he said, because it was what they had said, and explained: "We have come from the stars." It was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. He wondered baffledly if he should have let the Alien Contact crew handle it. Order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and think a message? No, it was his responsibility; he had to go on: "We request—we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet." Steffens had not realized that there were so many. They had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. Others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that Steffens felt a momentary anxiety. Most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. Others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for Steffens when he came out. One of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as Steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. The black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. Steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit. "Welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now Steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. It was less friendly now, less—Steffens could not understand—somehow less interested , as if the robot had been—expecting someone else. "Thank you," Steffens said. "We are deeply grateful for your permission to land." "Our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve." Suddenly, Steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. He tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they should seem inhuman. But.... "Will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically. Steffens felt his embarrassment. The ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently. "They must remain with the ship," Steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. Although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask. For a long while, neither spoke, long enough for Steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. He could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the Aliencon men to come on out of the skiff. They came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. Steffens heard the one robot speak again. The voice was now much more friendly. "We hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. It is our—custom—not to communicate unless we are called upon. But when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real—nature—and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data." Steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action. "We perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be—dismayed—to learn that we have been gathering information from you. We must—apologize. Our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. Only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and—understanding. We will enter your minds henceforth only at your request." Steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. Nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the Aliencon men went to work. The robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. Since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, Steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the Earthmen would feel more at home. The picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of Earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. The one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. Steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail. It was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the Earthmen. The most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. Symbols in row upon row—numbers, perhaps—were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. If they were numbers, Steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. But he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. He was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical. It wasn't until he was on his way home that Steffens remembered the symbols again. And only then did he realized what they were. After a while, convinced that there was no danger, Steffens had the ship brought down. When the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. There were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. The mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat. The robots had obviously been built to serve. Steffens began to feel their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. They were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. Whoever had built them, Steffens thought in wonder, had built them well. Ball came to join Steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. A robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. The first to speak had remained with Steffens. Realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, Ball was for a while apprehensive. But the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. It was impossible not to like the things. There was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing. Their builders, Steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too. "There's no harm in them," said Ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "They seem actually glad we're here. My God, whoever heard of a robot being glad?" Steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "I hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but—yours is a remarkable race. We have never before made contact with a race like yours." It was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do. The robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head. "I perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. Your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' I am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey—I would have to examine your thought more fully—but I believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures." The robot paused. Steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted. "I must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are—curious." It stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. Steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. It said at length: "We know of only two types of living structure. Ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the Makers , which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. I am not a—doctor—and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the Makers' composition, but if you are interested I will have a doctor brought forward. It will be glad to be of assistance." It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers. The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush: "Can you tell us where the Makers are?" Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty. "The Makers—are not here." Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on: "The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time." Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind. War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed. He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing , nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide brought him up sharp. If there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. If the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere—good God, how old were the robots? Steffens looked at Ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. The black wheat. Steffens felt a deep chill. Were they immortal? "Would you like to see a doctor?" Steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring. "No, not yet," he said, "thank you." He swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently. "Could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? Individually?" "By your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "I am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive." Steffens tried to understand that. "It would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. Using the first—letters—of my designation, my name would translate as Elb." "Glad to meet you," Steffens mumbled. "You are called 'Stef,'" said the robot obligingly. Then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near Ball: "The age of—Peb—is seventeen years, one month and four days. Peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years." Steffens was trying to keep up. Then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. But the cities, and the carbon dioxide? The robot, Elb, had said that the Makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. Unless— He remembered the buildings on Tyban IV. Unless the Makers had not come from this planet at all. His mind helplessly began to revolve. It was Ball who restored order. "Do you build yourselves?" the exec asked. Peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering. "No, we do not build ourselves. We are made by the—" another pause for a word—"by the Factory ." "The Factory?" "Yes. It was built by the Makers. Would you care to see it?" Both of the Earthmen nodded dumbly. "Would you prefer to use your—skiff? It is quite a long way from here." It was indeed a long way, even by skiff. Some of the Aliencon crew went along with them. And near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the Factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. A huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. Steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. Robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance—moving around their birthplace. The Earthmen remained for several weeks. During that time, Steffens was usually with Elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the Aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. There was still the mystery of those buildings on Tyban IV; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave. Surprisingly, Steffens did not think about the future. Whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking. Something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. It came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. Not a bug, a worm, a leaf. They did not know what flesh was. Only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." It had taken them some time to recognize that the Earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed. But when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing. At first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the Earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. And one morning, when Steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area. It was at this point that Steffens asked how many robots there were. He learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. The great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive. Steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed Elb to probe into his mind. The robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that Steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. Steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life. He had a vague idea of the robot's history—more, perhaps, then they knew themselves—but he refrained from forming an opinion until Aliencon made its report. What fascinated him was Elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had. "What do you do ?" Steffens asked. Elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "We can do very little. A certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the Makers. We spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. We have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. Our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the Makers. Any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the Makers return." "When they return?" It had not occurred to Steffens until now that the robots expected the Makers to do so. Elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "I see you had surmised that the Makers were not coming back." If the robot could have laughed, Steffens thought it would have, then. But it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic. "It has always been our belief that the Makers would return. Why else would we have been built?" Steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. The question, to Elb, was no question at all. Although Steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known—that the Makers were gone and would never come back—he was a long time understanding. What he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from Elb. He had no desire to destroy a faith. But it created a problem in him. He had begun to picture for Elb the structure of human society, and the robot—a machine which did not eat or sleep—listened gravely and tried to understand. One day Steffens mentioned God. "God?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "What is God?" Steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered: "It is a matter which has troubled us. We thought at first that you were the Makers returning—" Steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed—"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the Makers or ourselves. You were not even—" Elb caught himself—"you did not happen to be telepaths. Therefore we troubled over who made you. We did detect the word 'Maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar—" Elb paused for a long while—"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you." Steffens understood. He nodded. The Makers were the robots' God, were all the God they needed. The Makers had built them, the planet, the universe. If he were to ask them who made the Makers, it would be like their asking him who made God. It was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself. But on that planet, it was the last time he smiled.

test

51167

Butterfly 9 By DONALD KEITH Illustrated by GAUGHAN [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Jeff needed a job and this man had a job to offer—one where giant economy-size trouble had labels like fakemake, bumsy and peekage! I At first, Jeff scarcely noticed the bold-looking man at the next table. Nor did Ann. Their minds were busy with Jeff's troubles. "You're still the smartest color engineer in television," Ann told Jeff as they dallied with their food. "You'll bounce back. Now eat your supper." "This beanery is too noisy and hot," he grumbled. "I can't eat. Can't talk. Can't think." He took a silver pillbox from his pocket and fumbled for a black one. Those were vitamin pills; the big red and yellow ones were sleeping capsules. He gulped the pill. Ann looked disapproving in a wifely way. "Lately you chew pills like popcorn," she said. "Do you really need so many?" "I need something. I'm sure losing my grip." Ann stared at him. "Baby! How silly! Nothing happened, except you lost your lease. You'll build up a better company in a new spot. We're young yet." Jeff sighed and glanced around the crowded little restaurant. He wished he could fly away somewhere. At that moment, he met the gaze of the mustachioed man at the next table. The fellow seemed to be watching him and Ann. Something in his confident gaze made Jeff uneasy. Had they met before? Ann whispered, "So you noticed him, too. Maybe he's following us. I think I saw him on the parking lot where we left the car." Jeff shrugged his big shoulders. "If he's following us, he's nuts. We've got no secrets and no money." "It must be my maddening beauty," said Ann. "I'll kick him cross-eyed if he starts anything," Jeff said. "I'm just in the mood." Ann giggled. "Honey, what big veins you have! Forget him. Let's talk about the engineering lab you're going to start. And let's eat." He groaned. "I lose my appetite every time I think about the building being sold. It isn't worth the twelve grand. I wouldn't buy it for that if I could. What burns me is that, five years ago, I could have bought it for two thousand." "If only we could go back five years." She shrugged fatalistically. "But since we can't—" The character at the next table leaned over and spoke to them, grinning. "You like to get away? You wish to go back?" Jeff glanced across in annoyance. The man was evidently a salesman, with extra gall. "Not now, thanks," Jeff said. "Haven't time." The man waved his thick hand at the clock, as if to abolish time. "Time? That is nothing. Your little lady. She spoke of go back five years. Maybe I help you." He spoke in an odd clipped way, obviously a foreigner. His shirt was yellow. His suit had a silky sheen. Its peculiar tailoring emphasized the bulges in his stubby, muscular torso. Ann smiled back at him. "You talk as if you could take us back to 1952. Is that what you really mean?" "Why not? You think this silly. But I can show you." Jeff rose to go. "Mister, you better get to a doctor. Ann, it's time we started home." Ann laid a hand on his sleeve. "I haven't finished eating. Let's chat with the gent." She added in an undertone to Jeff, "Must be a psycho—but sort of an inspired one." The man said to Ann, "You are kind lady, I think. Good to crazy people. I join you." He did not wait for consent, but slid into a seat at their table with an easy grace that was almost arrogant. "You are unhappy in 1957," he went on. "Discouraged. Restless. Why not take trip to another time?" "Why not?" Ann said gaily. "How much does it cost?" "Free trial trip. Cost nothing. See whether you like. Then maybe we talk money." He handed Jeff a card made of a stiff plastic substance. Jeff glanced at it, then handed it to Ann with a half-smile. It read: 4-D TRAVEL BEURO Greet Snader, Traffic Ajent "Mr. Snader's bureau is different," Jeff said to his wife. "He even spells it different." Snader chuckled. "I come from other time. We spell otherwise." "You mean you come from the future?" "Just different time. I show you. You come with me?" "Come where?" Jeff asked, studying Snader's mocking eyes. The man didn't seem a mere eccentric. He had a peculiar suggestion of humor and force. "Come on little trip to different time," invited Snader. He added persuasively, "Could be back here in hour." "It would be painless, I suppose?" Jeff gave it a touch of derision. "Maybe not. That is risk you take. But look at me. I make trips every day. I look damaged?" As a matter of fact, he did. His thick-fleshed face bore a scar and his nose was broad and flat, as if it had been broken. But Jeff politely agreed that he did not look damaged. Ann was enjoying this. "Tell me more, Mr. Snader. How does your time travel work?" "Cannot explain. Same if you are asked how subway train works. Too complicated." He flashed his white teeth. "You think time travel not possible. Just like television not possible to your grandfather." Ann said, "Why invite us? We're not rich enough for expensive trips." "Invite many people," Snader said quickly. "Not expensive. You know Missing Persons lists, from police? Dozens people disappear. They go with me to other time. Many stay." "Oh, sure," Jeff said. "But how do you select the ones to invite?" "Find ones like you, Mr. Elliott. Ones who want change, escape." Jeff was slightly startled. How did this fellow know his name was Elliott? Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?" "They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them." "Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff. "You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here." Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything." Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness—a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car." Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body. "This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick." "First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said. "Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way." II Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful. Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back. "'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den." "No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said. "There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect." They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau." The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key. The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them. The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens—or were they giant television screens?—occupying a whole wall at either end of the room. The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante , and to the right with the word Post . Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction. "Somebody worked hard on this layout," he said to Snader. "What's it for?" "Time travel," said Snader. "You like?" "Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?" Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back. Ann gasped. "It was just as if they saw us." "They did," Snader said. "No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat." "What's he supposed to be?" Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past. Snader showed his teeth. "That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work." "What kind of work?" Jeff asked. "Building the groove further back." "Sounds like interesting work." Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. "Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip." Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, "Where do you propose to go? And how?" Snader said, "Watch me. Then look at other wall." He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water. Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader—and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again. "Simple," Snader said. "I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here." "Brother, that's the best trick I've seen in years," Jeff said. "How did you do it? Can I do it, too?" "I show you." Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. "Now," he said. "Step in." Jeff submitted to Snader's pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room. In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance. The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again. Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass." "You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered. "Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet." Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another. "Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long—how many years back are you taking us?" Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop." For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again." "We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would—" Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724. "Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions." He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it. Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream. "The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere." Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door. In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging." He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house. "Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street. The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine. "Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine. Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous. "Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us." Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now." "When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957." "You are? Look around." Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house. "Get in," Snader said curtly. Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car. Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!" Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going." Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?" "What about it?" "It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows." "Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street—" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner. "The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that." III They were headed back toward what should have been the boulevard. The car zoomed through a cloverleaf turn and up onto a broad freeway. Jeff knew for certain there was no freeway there in 1957—nor in any earlier year. But on the horizon, he could see the familiar dark bulk of the mountains. The whole line of moonlit ridges was the same as always. "Ann," he said slowly, "I think this is for real. Somehow I guess we escaped from 1957. We've been transported in time." She squeezed his arm. "If I'm dreaming, don't wake me! I was scared a minute ago. But now, oh, boy!" "Likewise. But I still wonder what Snader's angle is." He leaned forward and tapped the driver on his meaty shoulder. "You brought us into the future instead of the past, didn't you?" It was hard to know whether Snader was sleepy or just bored, but he shrugged briefly to show there was no reply coming. Then he yawned. Jeff smiled tightly. "I guess we'll find out in good time. Let's sit back and enjoy the strangest ride of our lives." As the limousine swept along through the traffic, there were plenty of big signs for turn-offs, but none gave any hint where they were. The names were unfamiliar. Even the language seemed grotesque. "Rite Channel for Creepers," he read. "Yaw for Torrey Rushway" flared at him from a fork in the freeway. "This can't be the future," Ann said. "This limousine is almost new, but it doesn't even have an automatic gear shift—" She broke off as the car shot down a ramp off the freeway and pulled up in front of an apartment house. Just beyond was a big shopping center, ablaze with lights and swarming with shoppers. Jeff did not recognize it, in spite of his familiarity with the city. Snader bounded out, pulled open the rear door and jerked his head in a commanding gesture. But Jeff did not get out. He told Snader, "Let's have some answers before we go any further." Snader gave him a hard grin. "You hear everything upstairs." The building appeared harmless enough. Jeff looked thoughtfully at Ann. She said, "It's just an apartment house. We've come this far. Might as well go in and see what's there." Snader led them in, up to the sixth floor in an elevator and along a corridor with heavy carpets and soft gold lights. He knocked on a door. A tall, silver-haired, important-looking man opened it and greeted them heartily. "Solid man, Greet!" he exclaimed. "You're a real scratcher! And is this our sharp?" He gave Jeff a friendly but appraising look. "Just what you order," Snader said proudly. "His name—Jeff Elliott. Fine sharp. Best in his circuit. He brings his lifemate, too. Ann Elliott." The old man rubbed his smooth hands together. "Prime! I wish joy," he said to Ann and Jeff. "I'm Septo Kersey. Come in. Bullen's waiting." He led them into a spacious drawing room with great windows looking out on the lights of the city. There was a leather chair in a corner, and in it sat a heavy man with a grim mouth. He made no move, but grunted a perfunctory "Wish joy" when Kersey introduced them. His cold eyes studied Jeff while Kersey seated them in big chairs. Snader did not sit down, however. "No need for me now," he said, and moved toward the door with a mocking wave at Ann. Bullen nodded. "You get the rest of your pay when Elliott proves out." "Here, wait a minute!" Jeff called. But Snader was gone. "Sit still," Bullen growled to Jeff. "You understand radioptics?" The blood went to Jeff's head. "My business is television, if that's what you mean. What's this about?" "Tell him, Kersey," the big man said, and stared out the window. Kersey began, "You understand, I think, that you have come back in time. About six years back." "That's a matter of opinion, but go on." "I am general manager of Continental Radioptic Combine, owned by Mr. Dumont Bullen." He nodded toward the big man. "Chromatics have not yet been developed here in connection with radioptics. They are well understood in your time, are they not?" "What's chromatics? Color television?" "Exactly. You are an expert in—ah—colored television, I think." Jeff nodded. "So what?" The old man beamed at him. "You are here to work for our company. You will enable us to be first with chromatics in this time wave." Jeff stood up. "Don't tell me who I'll work for." Bullen slapped a big fist on the arm of his chair. "No fog about this! You're bought and paid for, Elliott! You'll get a fair labor contract, but you do what I say!" "Why, the man thinks he owns you." Ann laughed shakily. "You'll find my barmen know their law," Bullen said. "This isn't the way I like to recruit. But it was only way to get a man with your knowledge." Kersey said politely, "You are here illegally, with no immigrate permit or citizen file. Therefore you cannot get work. But Mr. Bullen has taken an interest in your trouble. Through his influence, you can make a living. We even set aside an apartment in this building for you to live in. You are really very luxe, do you see?" Jeff's legs felt weak. These highbinders seemed brutally confident. He wondered how he and Ann would find their way home through the strange streets. But he put on a bold front. "I don't believe your line about time travel and I don't plan to work for you," he said. "My wife and I are walking out right now. Try and stop us, legally or any other way." Kersey's smooth old face turned hard. But, unexpectedly, Bullen chuckled deep in his throat. "Good pop and bang. Like to see it. Go on, walk out. You hang in trouble, call up here—Butterfly 9, ask for Bullen. Whole exchange us. I'll meet you here about eleven tomorrow pre-noon." "Don't hold your breath. Let's go, Ann." When they were on the sidewalk, Ann took a deep breath. "We made it. For a minute, I thought there'd be a brawl. Why did they let us go?" "No telling. Maybe they're harmless lunatics—or practical jokers." He looked over his shoulder as they walked down the street, but there was no sign of pursuit. "It's a long time since supper." Her hand was cold in his and her face was white. To take her mind off their problem, he ambled toward the lighted shop windows. "Look at that sign," he said, pointing to a poster over a display of neckties. "'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!' How do they expect to sell stuff with that crazy lingo?" "It's jive talk. They must cater to the high-school crowd." Ann glanced nervously at the strolling people around them. "Jeff, where are we? This isn't any part of the city I've ever seen. It doesn't even look much like America." Her voice rose. "The way the women are dressed—it's not old-fashioned, just different." "Baby, don't be scared. This is an adventure. Let's have fun." He pressed her hand soothingly and pulled her toward a lunch counter. If the haberdasher's sign was jive, the restaurant spoke the same jargon. The signs on the wall and the bill of fare were baffling. Jeff pondered the list of beef shingles, scorchers, smack sticks and fruit chills, until he noticed that a couple at the counter were eating what clearly were hamburgers—though the "buns" looked more like tortillas. Jeff jerked his thumb at them and told the waitress, "Two, please." When the sandwiches arrived, they were ordinary enough. He and Ann ate in silence. A feeling of foreboding hung over them. When they finished, the clerk gave him a check marked 1/20. Jeff looked at it thoughtfully, shrugged and handed it to the cashier with two dollar bills. The man at the desk glanced at them and laughed. "Stage money, eh?" "No, that's good money," Jeff assured him with a rather hollow smile. "They're just new bills, that's all." The cashier picked one up and looked at it curiously. "I'm afraid it's no good here," he said, and pushed it back. The bottom dropped out of Jeff's stomach. "What kind of money do you want? This is all I have." The cashier's smile faded. He caught the eye of a man in uniform on one of the stools. The uniform was dark green, but the man acted like a policeman. He loomed up beside Jeff. "What's the rasper?" he demanded. Other customers, waiting to pay their checks, eyed Jeff curiously. "I guess I'm in trouble," Jeff told him. "I'm a stranger here and I got something to eat under the impression that my money was legal tender. Do you know where I can exchange it?" The officer picked up the dollar bill and fingered it with evident interest. He turned it over and studied the printing. "United States of America," he read aloud. "What are those?" "It's the name of the country I come from," Jeff said carefully. "I—uh—got on the wrong train, apparently, and must have come further than I thought. What's the name of this place?" "This is Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. Say, you must come from an umpty remote part of the world if you don't know about this country." His eyes narrowed. "Where'd you learn to speak Federal, if you come from so far?" Jeff said helplessly, "I can't explain, if you don't know about the United States. Listen, can you take me to a bank, or some place where they know about foreign exchange?" The policeman scowled. "How'd you get into this country, anyway? You got immigrate clearance?" An angry muttering started among the bystanders. The policeman made up his mind. "You come with me." At the police station, Jeff put his elbows dejectedly on the high counter while the policeman talked to an officer in charge. Some men whom Jeff took for reporters got up from a table and eased over to listen. "I don't know whether to charge them with fakemake, bumsy, peekage or lunate," the policeman said as he finished. His superior gave Jeff a long puzzled stare. Jeff sighed. "I know it sounds impossible, but a man brought me in something he claimed was a time traveler. You speak the same language I do—more or less—but everything else is kind of unfamiliar. I belong in the United States, a country in North America. I can't believe I'm so far in the future that the United States has been forgotten." There ensued a long, confused, inconclusive interrogation. The man behind the desk asked questions which seemed stupid to Jeff and got answers which probably seemed stupid to him. The reporters quizzed Jeff gleefully. "Come out, what are you advertising?" they kept asking. "Who got you up to this?" The police puzzled over his driver's license and the other cards in his wallet. They asked repeatedly about the lack of a "Work License," which Jeff took to be some sort of union card. Evidently there was grave doubt that he had any legal right to be in the country. In the end, Jeff and Ann were locked in separate cells for the night. Jeff groaned and pounded the bars as he thought of his wife, imprisoned and alone in a smelly jail. After hours of pacing the cell, he lay down in the cot and reached automatically for his silver pillbox. Then he hesitated. In past weeks, his insomnia had grown worse and worse, so that lately he had begun taking stronger pills. After a longing glance at the big red and yellow capsules, he put the box away. Whatever tomorrow brought, it wouldn't find him slow and drowsy. IV He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a little man with a briefcase at his cell door. "Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release, if you are ready to be reasonable." Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?" "No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew." "All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here." The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?" "You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?" "If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war." Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?" The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?" "Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?" "Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?" "So far. Keep talking."

test

51184

INSIDE EARTH By POUL ANDERSON Illustrated by DAVID STONE [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Obviously, no conqueror wants his subjects to revolt against his rule. Obviously? This one would go to any lengths to start a rebellion! I The biotechnicians had been very thorough. I was already a little undersized, which meant that my height and build were suitable—I could pass for a big Earthling. And of course my face and hands and so on were all right, the Earthlings being a remarkably humanoid race. But the technicians had had to remodel my ears, blunting the tips and grafting on lobes and cutting the muscles that move them. My crest had to go and a scalp covered with revolting hair was now on the top of my skull. Finally, and most difficult, there had been the matter of skin color. It just wasn't possible to eliminate my natural coppery pigmentation. So they had injected a substance akin to melanin, together with a virus which would manufacture it in my body, the result being a leathery brown. I could pass for a member of the so-called "white" subspecies, one who had spent most of his life in the open. The mimicry was perfect. I hardly recognized the creature that looked out of the mirror. My lean, square, blunt-nosed face, gray eyes, and big hands were the same or nearly so. But my black crest had been replaced with a shock of blond hair, my ears were small and immobile, my skin a dull bronze, and several of Earth's languages were hypnotically implanted in my brain—together with a set of habits and reflexes making up a pseudo-personality which should be immune to any tests that the rebels could think of. I was Earthling! And the disguise was self-perpetuating: the hair grew and the skin color was kept permanent by the artificial "disease." The biotechnicians had told me that if I kept the disguise long enough, till I began to age—say, in a century or so—the hair would actually thin and turn white as it did with the natives. It was reassuring to think that once my job was over, I could be restored to normal. It would need another series of operations and as much time as the original transformation, but it would be as complete and scarless. I'd be human again. I put on the clothes they had furnished me, typical Earthly garments—rough trousers and shirt of bleached plant fibers, jacket and heavy shoes of animal skin, a battered old hat of matted fur known as felt. There were objects in my pockets, the usual money and papers, a claspknife, the pipe and tobacco I had trained myself to smoke and even to like. It all fitted into my character of a wandering, outdoors sort of man, an educated atavist. I went out of the hospital with the long swinging stride of one accustomed to walking great distances. The Center was busy around me. Behind me, the hospital and laboratories occupied a fairly small building, some eighty stories of stone and steel and plastic. On either side loomed the great warehouses, military barracks, officers' apartments, civilian concessions, filled with the vigorous life of the starways. Behind the monstrous wall, a mile to my right, was the spaceport, and I knew that a troopship had just lately dropped gravs from Valgolia herself. The Center swarmed with young recruits off duty, gaping at the sights, swaggering in their new uniforms. Their skins shone like polished copper in the blistering sunlight, and their crests were beginning to wilt a little. All Earth is not the tropical jungle most Valgolians think it is—northern Europe is very pleasant, and Greenland is even a little on the cold side—but it gets hot enough at North America Center in midsummer to fry a shilast. A cosmopolitan throng filled the walkways. Soldiers predominated—huge, shy Dacors, little slant-eyed Yangtusans, brawling Gorrads, all the manhood of Valgolia. Then there were other races, blue-skinned Vegans, furry Proximans, completely non-humanoid Sirians and Antarians. They were here as traders, observers, tourists, whatever else of a non-military nature one can imagine. I made an absent-minded way through the crowds. A sudden crack on the side of my head, nearly bowling me over, brought me to awareness. I looked up into the arrogant face of one of the new recruits and heard him rasp, "Watch where you're going, Terrie!" The young blood in the Valgolian military is deliberately trained to harshness, even brutality, for our militarism must impress such backward colonies as Earth. It goes against our grain, but it is necessary. At another time this might have annoyed me. I could have pulled rank on him. Not only was I an officer, but such treatment must be used with intellectual deliberation. The occasional young garrison trooper who comes here with the idea that the natives are an inferior breed to be kicked around misses the whole point of Empire. If, indeed, Earth's millions were an inferior breed, I wouldn't have been here at all. Valgol needs an economic empire, but if all we had in mind was serfdom we'd be perfectly content with the plodding animal life of Deneb VII or a hundred other worlds. I cringed appropriately, as if I didn't understand Valgolian Universal, and slunk past him. But it griped me to be taken for a Terrie. If I was to become an Earthling, I would at least be a self-respecting one. There were plenty of Terries—Terrestrials—around, of course, moving with their odd combination of slavish deference toward Valgolians and arrogant superiority toward mere Earthlings. They have adopted the habits and customs of civilization, entered the Imperial service, speak Valgolian even with their families. Many of them shave their heads save for a scalp lock, in imitation of the crest, and wear white robes suggesting those of civil functionaries at home. I've always felt a little sorry for the class. They work, and study, and toady to us, and try so hard to be like us. It's frustrating, because that's exactly what we don't want. Valgolians are Valgolians and Earthlings are men of Earth. Well, Terries are important to the ultimate aims of the Empire, but not in the way they think they are. They serve as another symbol of Valgolian conquest for Earth to hate. I entered the Administration Building. They expected me there and took me at once to the office of General Vorka, who's a general only as far as this solar system is concerned. Had there been any Earthlings around, I would have saluted to conform to the show of militarism, but General Vorka sat alone behind his desk, and I merely said, "Hello, Coordinator." The sleeves of his tunic rolled up, the heat of North America beading his forehead with sweat, the big man looked up at me. "Ah, yes. I'm glad you're finally prepared. The sooner we get this thing started—" He extended a silver galla-dust box. "Sniff? Have a seat, Conru." I inhaled gratefully and relaxed. The Coordinator picked up a sheaf of papers on his desk and leafed through them. "Umm-mm, only fifty-two years old and a captain already. Remarkably able, a young man like you. And your work hitherto has been outstanding. That Vegan business...." I said yes, I knew, but could he please get down to business. You couldn't blame me for being a bit anxious to begin. Disguised as I was as an Earthman, I felt uncomfortable, embarrassed, almost, at being with my ex-countrymen. The Coordinator shrugged. "Well, if you can carry this business off—fine. If you fail, you may die quite unpleasantly. That's their trouble, Conru: you wouldn't be regarded as an individual, but as a Valgolian. Did you know that they even make such distinctions among themselves? I mean races and sub-races and social castes and the like; it's keeping them divided and impotent, Conru. It's also keeping them out of the Empire. A shame." I knew all that, of course, but I merely nodded. Coordinator Vorka was a wonderful man in his field, and if he tended to be on the garrulous side, what could I do? I said, "I know that, sir. I also know I was picked for a dangerous job because you thought I could fill the role. But I still don't know exactly what the job is." Coordinator Vorka smiled. "I'm afraid I can't tell you much more than you must already have guessed," he said. "The anarch movement here—the rebels, that is—is getting no place, primarily because of internal difficulties. When members of the same group spit epithets at each other referring to what they consider racial or national distinctions which determine superiority or inferiority, the group is bound to be an insecure one. Such insecurity just does not make for a strong rebellion, Conru. They try, and we goad them—but dissention splits them constantly and their revolutions fizzle out. "They just can't unite against us, can't unite at all. Conru, you know how we've tried to educate them. It's worked, too, to some extent. But you can't educate three billion people who have a whole cultural pattern behind them." I winced. "Three billion?" "Certainly. Earth is a rich planet, Conru, and a fairly crowded one at the same time. Bickering is inevitable. It's a part of their culture, as much as cooperation has been a part of ours." I nodded. "We learned the hard way. The old Valgol was a poor planet and we had to unite to conquer space or we could not have survived." The Coordinator sniffed again at his silver box. "Of course. And we're trying to help these people unite. They don't have to make the same mistakes we did, long ago. They don't have to at all. Get them to hate us enough, get them to hate us until all their own clannish hatreds don't count at all.... Well, you know what happened on Samtrak." I knew. The Samtraks are now the entrepreneurs of the Empire, really ingenious traders, but within the memory of some of our older men they were a sore-spot. They didn't understand the meaning of Empire any more than Earth does, and they never did understand it until we goaded them into open rebellion. The very reverse of divide and rule, you might say, and it worked. We withdrew trading privileges one by one, until they revolted successfully, thus educating themselves sociologically in only a few generations. Vorka said, "The problem of Earth is not quite that simple." He leaned back, made a bridge of his fingers, and peered across them at me. "Do you know precisely what a provocateur job is, Conru?" I said that I did, but only in a hazy way, because until now my work had been pretty much restricted to social relations on the more advanced Empire planets. However, I told him that I did know the idea was to provoke discontent and, ultimately, rebellion. The Coordinator smiled. "Well, that's just the starter, Conru. It's a lot more complex than that. Each planet has its own special problems. The Samtraks, for example, had a whole background of cutthroat competition. That was easy: we eliminated that by showing them what real cutthroat competition could be like. But Earth is different. Look at it this way. They fight among themselves. Because of their mythical distinctions, not realizing that there are no inferior races, only more or less advanced ones, and that individuals must be judged as individuals, not as members of groups, nations or races. A planet like Earth can be immensely valuable to the Empire, but not if it has to be garrisoned. Its contribution must be voluntary and whole-hearted." "A difficult problem," I said. "My opinion is that we should treat all exactly alike— force them to abandon their unrealistic differences." "Exactly!" The Coordinator seemed pleased, but, actually, this was pretty elementary stuff. "We're never too rough on the eager lads who come here from Valgol and kick the natives around a bit. We even encourage it when the spirit of rebelliousness dies down." I told him I had met one. "Irritating, wasn't it, Conru? Humiliating. Of course, these lads will be reconditioned to civilization when they finish their military service and prepare for more specialized work. Yes, treating all Earthlings alike is the solution. We put restrictions on these colonials; they can't hold top jobs, and so on. And we encourage wild stories about brutality on our part. Not enough to make everybody mad at us, or even a majority—the rumored tyranny has always happened to someone else. But there's a certain class of beings who'll get fighting mad, and that's the class we want." "The leaders," I chimed in. "The idealists. Brave, intelligent, patriotic. The kind who probably wouldn't be a part of this racial bickering, anyway." "Right," said the Coordinator. "We'll give them the ammunition for their propaganda. We've been doing it. Result: the leaders get mad. Races, religions, nationalities, they hate us worse than they hate each other." The way he painted it, I was hardly needed at all. I told him that. "Ideally, that would be the situation, Conru. Only it doesn't work that way." He took out a soft cloth and wiped his forehead. "Even the leaders are too involved in this myth of differences and they can't concentrate all their efforts. Luron, of course, would be the other alternative—" That was a very logical statement, but sometimes logic has a way of making you laugh, and I was laughing now. Luron considered itself our arch-enemy. With a few dozen allies on a path of conquest, Luron thought it could wrest Empire from our hands. Well, we let them play. And each time Luron swooped down on one of the more primitive planets, we let them, for Luron would serve as well as ourselves in goading backward peoples to unite and advance. Perhaps Luron, as a social entity, grew wiser each time. Certainly the primitive colonials did. Luron had started a chain reaction which threatened to overthrow the tyranny of superstition on a hundred planets. Good old Luron, our arch-enemy, would see the light itself some day. The Coordinator shook his head. "Can't use Luron here. Technologies are entirely too similar. It might shatter both planets, and we wouldn't want that." "So what do we use?" "You, Conru. You get in with the revolutionaries, you make sure that they want to fight, you—" "I see," I told him. "Then I try to stop it at the last minute. Not so soon that the rebellion doesn't help at all—" The Coordinator put his hand down flat. "Nothing of the sort. They must fight. And they must be defeated, again and again, if necessary, until they are ready to succeed. That will be, of course, when they are totally against us." I stood up. "I understand." He waved me back into the chair. "You'll be lucky to understand it by the time you're finished with this assignment and transferred to another ... that is, if you come out of this one alive." I smiled a bit sheepishly and told him to go ahead. "We have some influence in the underground movement, as you might logically expect. The leader is a man we worked very hard to have elected." "A member of one of the despised races?" I guessed. "The best we could do at this point was to help elect someone from a minority sub-group of the dominant white race. The leader's name is Levinsohn. He is of the white sub-group known as Jews." "How well is this Levinsohn accepted by the movement?" "Considerable resistance and hostility," the Coordinator said. "That's to be expected. However, we've made sure that there is no other organization the minority-haters can join, so they have to follow him or quit. He's able, all right; one of the most able men they have, which helps our aims. Even those who discriminate against Jews reluctantly admire him. He's moved the headquarters of the movement out into space, and the man's so brilliant that we don't even know where. We'll find out, mainly through you, I hope, but that isn't the important thing." "What is?" I asked, baffled. "To report on the unification of Earth. It's possible that the anarch movement can achieve it under Levinsohn. In that case, we'll make sure they win, or think they win, and will gladly sign a treaty giving Earth equal planetary status in the Empire." "And if unity hasn't been achieved?" "We simply crush this rebellion and make them start all over again. They'll have learned some degree of unity from this revolt and so the next one will be more successful." He stood up and I got out of my chair to face him. "That's for the future, though. We'll work out our plans from the results of this campaign." "But isn't there a lot of danger in the policy of fomenting rebellion against us?" I asked. He lifted his shoulders. "Evolution is always painful, forced evolution even more so. Yes, there are great dangers, but advance information from you and other agents can reduce the risk. It's a chance we must take, Conru." "Conrad," I corrected him, smiling. "Plain Mr. Conrad Haugen ... of Earth." II A few days later, I left North America Center, and in spite of the ominous need to hurry, my eastward journey was a ramble. The anarchs would be sure to check my movements as far back as they could, and my story had better ring true. For the present, I must be my role, a vagabond. The city was soon behind me. It was far from other settlement—it is good policy to keep the Centers rather isolated, and we could always contact our garrisons in native towns quickly enough. Before long I was alone in the mountains. I liked that part of the trip. The Rockies are huge and serene, a fresh cold wind blows from their peaks and roars in the pines, brawling rivers foam through their dales and canyons—it is a big landscape, clean and strong and lonely. It speaks with silence. I hitched a ride for some hundreds of miles with one of the great truck-trains that dominate the western highways. The driver was Earthling, and though he complained much about the Valgolian tyranny he looked well-fed, healthy, secure. I thought of the wars which had been laying the planet waste, the social ruin and economic collapse which the Empire had mended, and wondered if Terra would ever be fit to rule itself. I came out of the enormous mountainlands into the sage plains of Nevada. For a few days I worked at a native ranch, listening to the talk and keeping my mouth shut. Yes, there was discontent! "Their taxes are killing me," said the owner. "What the hell incentive do I have to produce if they take it away from me?" I nodded, but thought: Your kind was paying more taxes in the old days, and had less to show for it. Here you get your money back in public works and universal security. No one on Earth is cold or hungry. Can you only produce for your own private gain, Earthling? "The labor draft got my kid the other day," said the foreman. "He'll spend two good years of his life working for them, and prob'ly come back hopheaded about the good o' the Empire." There was a time , I thought, when millions of Earthlings clamored for work, or spent years fighting their wars, gave their youth to a god of battle who only clamored for more blood. And how can we have a stable society without educating its members to respect it? "I want another kid," said the female cook. "Two ain't really enough. They're good boys, but I want a girl too. Only the Eridanian law says if I go over my quota, if I have one more, they'll sterilize me! And they'd do it, the meddling devils." A billion Earthlings are all the Solar System can hold under decent standards of living without exhausting what natural resources their own culture left us , I thought. We aren't ready to permit emigration; our own people must come first. But these beings can live well here. Only now that we've eliminated famine, plague, and war, they'd breed beyond reason, breed till all the old evils came back to throttle them, if we didn't have strict population control. "Yeah," said her husband bitterly. "They never even let my cousin have kids. Sterilized him damn near right after he was born." Then he's a moron, or carries hemophilia, or has some other hereditary taint , I thought. Can't they see we're doing it for their own good? It costs us fantastically in money and trouble, but the goal is a level of health and sanity such as this race never in its history dreamed possible. "They're stranglin' faith," muttered someone else. Anyone in the Empire may worship as he chooses, but should permission be granted to preach demonstrable falsehoods, archaic superstitions, or antisocial nonsense? The old "free" Earth was not noted for liberalism. "We want to be free." Free? Free for what? To loose the thousand Earthly races and creeds and nationalisms on each other—and on the Galaxy—to wallow in barbarism and slaughter and misery as before we came? To let our works and culture be thrown in the dust, the labor of a century be demolished, not because it is good or bad but simply because it is Valgolian? Epsilon Eridanian! "We'll be free. Not too long to wait, either—" That's up to nobody else but you! I couldn't get much specific information, but then I hadn't expected to. I collected my pay and drifted on eastward, talking to people of all classes—farmers, mechanics, shopowners, tramps, and such data as I gathered tallied with those of Intelligence. About twenty-five per cent of the population, in North America at least—it was higher in the Orient and Africa—was satisfied with the Imperium, felt they were better off than they would have been in the old days. "The Eridanians are pretty decent, on the whole. Some of 'em come in here and act nice and human as you please." Some fifty per cent was vaguely dissatisfied, wanted "freedom" without troubling to define the term, didn't like the taxes or the labor draft or the enforced disarmament or the legal and social superiority of Valgolians or some such thing, had perhaps suffered in the reconquest. But this group constituted no real threat. It would tend to be passive whatever happened. Its greatest contribution would be sporadic rioting. The remaining twenty-five per cent was bitter, waiting its chance, muttering of a day of revenge—and some portion of this segment was spreading propaganda, secretly manufacturing and distributing weapons, engaging in clandestine military drill, and maintaining contact with the shadowy Legion of Freedom. Childish, melodramatic name! But it had been well chosen to appeal to a certain type of mind. The real, organized core of the anarch movement was highly efficient. In those months I spent wandering and waiting, its activities mounted almost daily. The illegal radio carried unending programs, propaganda, fabricated stories of Valgolian brutality. I knew from personal experience that some were false, and I knew the whole Imperial system well enough to spot most of the rest at least partly invented. I realized we couldn't trace such a well-organized setup of mobile and coordinated units, and jamming would have been poor tactics, but even so— The day is coming.... Earthmen, free men, be ready to throw off your shackles.... Stand by for freedom! I stuck to my role. When autumn came, I drifted into one of the native cities, New Chicago, a warren of buildings near the remains of the old settlement, the same gigantic slum that its predecessor had been. I got a room in a cheap hotel and a job in a steel mill. I was Conrad Haugen, Norwegian-American, assigned to a spaceship by the labor draft and liking it well enough to re-enlist when my term was up. I had wandered through much of the Empire and had had a great deal of contact with Eridanians, but was most emphatically not a Terrie. In fact, I thought it would be well if the redskin yoke could be thrown off, both because of liberty and the good pickings to be had in the Galaxy if the Empire should collapse. I had risen to second mate on an interstellar tramp, but could get no further because of the law that the two highest officers must be Valgolian. That had embittered me and I returned to Earth, foot-loose and looking for trouble. I found it. With officer's training and the strength due to a home planet with a gravity half again that of Earth, I had no difficulty at all becoming a foreman. There was a big fellow named Mike Riley who thought he was entitled to the job. We settled it behind a shed, with the workmen looking on, and I beat him unconscious as fast as possible. The raw, sweating savagery of it made me feel ill inside. They'd let this loose among the stars ! After that I was one of the boys and Riley was my best friend. We went out together, wenching and drinking, raising hell in the cold dirty canyons of steel and stone which the natives called streets. Valgolia, Valgolia, the clean bare windswept heights of your mountains, soughing trees and thunderous waters and Maara waiting for me to come home! Riley often proposed that we find an Eridanian and beat him to death, and I would agree, hiccupping, because I knew they didn't go alone into native quarters any more. I sat in the smoky reek of the bars, half deafened by the clatter and raucousness called music, trying not to think of a certain low-ceilinged, quiet tavern amid the gardens of Kalariho, and sobbed the bitterness of Conrad Haugen into my beer. "Dirty redskins," I muttered. "Dirty, stinking, bald-headed, sons of bitches. Them and their god-damn Empire. Why, y'know, if 't hadn' been f' their laws I'd be skipper o' my own ship now. I knew more'n that slob o' a captain. But he was born Eridanian—God, to get my hands on his throat!" Riley nodded. Through the haze of smoke I saw that his eyes were narrowed. He wasn't drunk when he didn't want to be, and at times like this he was suddenly as sober as I was, and that in spite of not having a Valgolian liver. I bided my time, not too obviously anxious to contact the Legion. I just thought they were swell fellows, the only brave men left in the rotten, stinking Empire; I'd sure be on their side when the day came. I worked in the mill, and when out with the boys lamented the fact that we were really producing for the damned Eridanians, we couldn't even keep the products of our own sweat. I wasn't obtrusive about it, of course. Most of the time we were just boozing. But when the talk came to the Empire, I made it clear just where I stood. The winter went. I continued the dreary round of days, wondering how long it would take, wondering how much time was left. If the Legion was at all interested, they would be checking my background right now. Let them. There wouldn't be much to check, but what there was had been carefully manufactured by the experts of the Intelligence Service. Riley came into my room one evening. His face was tight, and he plunged to business. "Con, do you really mean all you've said about the Empire?" "Why, of course. I—" I glanced out the window, as if expecting to see a spy. If there were any, I knew he would be native. The Empire just doesn't have enough men for a secret police, even if we wanted to indulge in that sort of historically ineffective control. "You'd like to fight them? Like really to help the Legion of Freedom when they strike?" "You bet your obscenity life!" I snarled. "When they land on Earth, I'll get a gun somewhere and be right there in the middle of the battle with them!" "Yeah." Riley puffed a cigaret for a while. Then he said, "Look, I can't tell you much. I'm taking a chance just telling you this. It could mean my life if you passed it on to the Eridanians." "I won't." His eyes were bleak. "You damn well better not. If you're caught at that—" He drew a finger sharply across his throat. "Quit talking like a B-class stereo," I bristled. "If you've got something to tell me, let's have it. Otherwise get out." "Yeah, sure. We checked up on you, Con, and we think you're as good a prospect as we ever came across. If you want to fight the Eridanians now— join the Legion now—here's your chance." "My God, you know I do! But who—" "I can't tell you a thing. But if you really want to join, memorize this." Riley gave me a small card on which was written a name and address. "Destroy it, thoroughly. Then quit at the mill and drift to this other place, as if you'd gotten tired of your work and wanted to hit the road again. Take your time, don't make a beeline for it. When you do arrive, they'll take care of you." I nodded, grimly. "I'll do it, Mike. And thanks!" "Just my job." He smiled, relaxing, and pulled a flask from his overcoat. "Okay, Con, that's that. We'd better not go out to drink, after this, but nothing's to stop us from getting stinko here." III Spring had come and almost gone when I wandered into the little Maine town which was my destination. It lay out of the way, with forested hills behind it and the sea at its foot. Most of the houses were old, solidly built, almost like parts of the land, and the inhabitants were slow-spoken, steady folk, fishermen and artisans and the like, settled here and at home with the darkling woods and the restless sea and the high windy sky. I walked down a narrow street with a cool salt breeze ruffling my hair and decided that I liked Portsboro. It reminded me of my own home, twenty light-years away on the wide beaches of Kealvigh. I made my way to Nat Hawkins' store and asked for work like any drifter. But when we were alone in the back room, I told him, "I'm Conrad Haugen. Mike Riley said you'd be looking for me." He nodded calmly. "I've been expecting you. You can work here a few days, sleep at my house, and we'll run the tests after dark." He was old for an Earthling, well over sixty, with white hair and lined leathery face. But his blue eyes were as keen and steady, his gnarled hands as strong and sure as those of any young man. He spoke softly and steadily, around the pipe which rarely left his mouth, and there was a serenity in him which I could hardly associate with anarch fanaticism. But the first night he led me into his cellar, and through a well-hidden trapdoor to a room below, and there he had a complete psychological laboratory. I gaped at the gleaming apparatus. "How off Earth—" "It came piece by piece, much of it from Epsilon Eridani itself," he smiled. "There is, after all, no ban on humans owning such material. But to play safe, we spread the purchases over several years, and made them in the names of many people." "But you—" "I took a degree in psychiatry once. I can handle this." He could. He put me through the mill in the next few nights—intelligence tests, psychometry, encephalography, narcosis, psycho-probing, everything his machines and his skill could cover. He did not find out anything we hadn't meant to be found out. The Service had ways of guarding its agents with counter-blocks. But he got a very thorough picture of Conrad Haugen. In the end he said, still calmly, "This is amazing. You have an IQ well over the borderline of genius, an astonishing variety of assorted knowledge about the Empire and about technical subjects, and an implacable hatred of Eridanian rule—based on personal pique and containing self-seeking elements, but no less firm for that. You're out for yourself, but you'll stand by your comrades and your cause. We'd never hoped for more recruits of your caliber." "When do I start?" I asked impatiently. "Easy, easy," he smiled. "There's time. We've waited fifty years; we can wait a while longer." He riffled through the dossier. "Actually, the difficulty is where to assign you. A man who knows astrogation, the use of weapons and machines, and the Empire, who is physically strong as a bull, can lead men, and has a dozen other accomplishments, really seems wasted on any single job. I'm not sure, but I think you'll do best as a roving agent, operating between Main Base and the planets where we have cells, and helping with the work at the base when you're there."

test

51336

What is POSAT? By PHYLLIS STERLING SMITH Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Of course coming events cast their shadows before, but this shadow was 400 years long! The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines: MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS! What is the secret source of those profound principles that can solve the problems of life? Send for our FREE booklet of explanation. Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU can alter the course of your life! Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages! The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth POSAT an ancient secret society Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand. Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil. "You can alter the course of your life!" he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time. Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Not but what the cats weren't almost smart enough to read, she always said. It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible. Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object. He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn't be scratched until he turned back to the page. It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it. "I wonder what their racket is," he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn't fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn't bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters. Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form. Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope. He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility. Miss Arnable was delighted with the opportunity for autobiographical composition. It required five extra sheets of paper to convey all the information that she wished to give—all about her poor, dear father who had been a missionary to China, and the kinship that she felt toward the mystic cults of the East, her belief that her cats were reincarnations of her loved ones (which, she stated, derived from a religion of the Persians; or was it the Egyptians?) and in her complete and absolute acceptance of everything that POSAT had stated in their booklet. And what would the dues be? She wished to join immediately. Fortunately, dear father had left her in a comfortable financial situation. To Donald Alford, the booklet seemed to confirm his suspicion that POSAT was a racket of some sort. Why else would they be interested in his employment or financial position? It also served to increase his curiosity. "What do you suppose they're driving at?" he asked his wife Betty, handing her the booklet and questionnaire. "I don't really know what to say," she answered, squinting a little as she usually did when puzzled. "I know one thing, though, and that's that you won't stop until you find out!" "The scientific attitude," he acknowledged with a grin. "Why don't you fill out this questionnaire incognito, though?" she suggested. "Pretend that we're wealthy and see if they try to get our money. Do they have anything yet except your name and address?" Don was shocked. "If I send this back to them, it will have to be with correct answers!" "The scientific attitude again," Betty sighed. "Don't you ever let your imagination run away with the facts a bit? What are you going to give for your reasons for asking about POSAT?" "Curiosity," he replied, and, pulling his fountain pen from his vest pocket, he wrote exactly that, in small, neat script. It was unfortunate for his curiosity that Don could not see the contents of the three envelopes that were mailed from the offices of POSAT the following week. For this time they differed. Bill Evans was once again disappointed. The pamphlet that was enclosed gave what apparently meant to be final answers to life's problems. They were couched in vaguely metaphysical terms and offered absolutely no help to him. His disappointment was tempered, however, by the knowledge that he had unexpectedly found a job. Or, rather, it had fallen into his lap. When he had thought that every avenue of employment had been tried, a position had been offered him in a wholesale pharmacy in the older industrial part of the city. It was not a particularly attractive place to work, located as it was next to a large warehouse, but to him it was hope for the future. It amused him to discover that the offices of POSAT were located on the other side of the same warehouse, at the end of a blind alley. Blind alley indeed! He felt vaguely ashamed for having placed any confidence in them. Miss Arnable was thrilled to discover that her envelope contained not only several pamphlets, (she scanned the titles rapidly and found that one of them concerned the sacred cats of ancient Egypt), but that it contained also a small pin with the symbol of POSAT wrought in gold and black enamel. The covering letter said that she had been accepted as an active member of POSAT and that the dues were five dollars per month; please remit by return mail. She wrote a check immediately, and settled contentedly into a chair to peruse the article on sacred cats. After a while she began to read aloud so that her own cats could enjoy it, too. Don Alford would not have been surprised if his envelope had shown contents similar to the ones that the others received. The folded sheets of paper that he pulled forth, however, made him stiffen with sharp surprise. "Come here a minute, Betty," he called, spreading them out carefully on the dining room table. "What do you make of these?" She came, dish cloth in hand, and thoughtfully examined them, one by one. "Multiple choice questions! It looks like a psychological test of some sort." "This isn't the kind of thing I expected them to send me," worried Don. "Look at the type of thing they ask. 'If you had discovered a new and virulent poison that could be compounded from common household ingredients, would you (1) publish the information in a daily newspaper, (2) manufacture it secretly and sell it as rodent exterminator, (3) give the information to the armed forces for use as a secret weapon, or (4) withhold the information entirely as too dangerous to be passed on?'" "Could they be a spy ring?" asked Betty. "Subversive agents? Anxious to find out your scientific secrets like that classified stuff that you're so careful of when you bring it home from the lab?" Don scanned the papers quickly. "There's nothing here that looks like an attempt to get information. Besides, I've told them nothing about my work except that I do research in physics. They don't even know what company I work for. If this is a psychological test, it measures attitudes, nothing else. Why should they want to know my attitudes?" "Do you suppose that POSAT is really what it claims to be—a secret society—and that they actually screen their applicants?" He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't it be interesting if I didn't make the grade after starting out to expose their racket?" He pulled out his pen and sat down to the task of resolving the dilemmas before him. His next communication from POSAT came to his business address and, paradoxically, was more personal than its forerunners. Dear Doctor Alford: We have examined with interest the information that you have sent to us. We are happy to inform you that, thus far, you have satisfied the requirements for membership in the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. Before accepting new members into this ancient and honorable secret society, we find it desirable that they have a personal interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT. Accordingly, you are cordially invited to an audience with our Grand Chairman on Tuesday, July 10, at 2:30 P.M. Please let us know if this arrangement is acceptable to you. If not, we will attempt to make another appointment for you. The time specified for the appointment was hardly a convenient one for Don. At 2:30 P.M. on most Tuesdays, he would be at work in the laboratory. And while his employers made no complaint if he took his research problems home with him and worried over them half the night, they were not equally enthusiastic when he used working hours for pursuing unrelated interests. Moreover, the headquarters of POSAT was in a town almost a hundred miles distant. Could he afford to take a whole day off for chasing will-o-wisps? It hardly seemed worth the trouble. He wondered if Betty would be disappointed if he dropped the whole matter. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home, he couldn't consult her about it without telephoning. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible! He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them! "Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—" But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information. His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?" Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic. At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT. He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday. At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms. It was at the back of one of the alleys that he finally found a door marked with the now familiar emblem of POSAT. He opened the frosted glass door with a feeling of misgiving, and faced a dark flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. Somewhere above him a buzzer sounded, evidently indicating his arrival. He picked his way up through the murky stairwell. The reception room was hardly a cheerful place, with its battered desk facing the view of the empty alley, and a film of dust obscuring the pattern of the gray-looking wallpaper and worn rug. But the light of the summer afternoon filtering through the window scattered the gloom somewhat, enough to help Don doubt that he would find the menace here that he had come to expect. The girl addressing envelopes at the desk looked very ordinary. Not the Mata-Hari type , thought Don, with an inward chuckle at his own suspicions. He handed her the letter. She smiled. "We've been expecting you, Dr. Alford. If you'll just step into the next room—" She opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Don stepped through it. The sight of the luxurious room before him struck his eyes with the shock of a dentist's drill, so great was the contrast between it and the shabby reception room. For a moment Don had difficulty breathing. The rug—Don had seen one like it before, but it had been in a museum. The paintings on the walls, ornately framed in gilt carving, were surely old masters—of the Renaissance period, he guessed. Although he recognized none of the pictures, he felt that he could almost name the artists. That glowing one near the corner would probably be a Titian. Or was it Tintorretto? He regretted for a moment the lost opportunities of his college days, when he had passed up Art History in favor of Operational Circuit Analysis. The girl opened a filing cabinet, the front of which was set flush with the wall, and, selecting a folder from it, disappeared through another door. Don sprang to examine the picture near the corner. It was hung at eye level—that is, at the eye level of the average person. Don had to bend over a bit to see it properly. He searched for a signature. Apparently there was none. But did artists sign their pictures back in those days? He wished he knew more about such things. Each of the paintings was individually lighted by a fluorescent tube held on brackets directly above it. As Don straightened up from his scrutiny of the picture, he inadvertently hit his head against the light. The tube, dislodged from its brackets, fell to the rug with a muffled thud. Now I've done it! thought Don with dismay. But at least the tube hadn't shattered. In fact—it was still glowing brightly! His eyes registered the fact, even while his mind refused to believe it. He raised his eyes to the brackets. They were simple pieces of solid hardware designed to support the tube. There were no wires! Don picked up the slender, glowing cylinder and held it between trembling fingers. Although it was delivering as much light as a two or three hundred watt bulb, it was cool to the touch. He examined it minutely. There was no possibility of concealed batteries. The thumping of his heart was caused not by the fact that he had never seen a similar tube before, but because he had. He had never held one in his hands, though. The ones which his company had produced as experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded. Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment! But this is impossible! he thought. We're the only company that's working on this, and it's secret. There can't be any in actual production! And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth? The conviction grew in Don's mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now— With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked! A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous. "Our Grand Chairman will see you now," she said in a quiet voice. Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find. She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT. Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman. But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony. "Good Lord!" Don gasped. "That's an atomic reactor down there!" There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it. His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened. He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent? His scientist's mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn't—couldn't—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world! "Hello, Don," said a quiet voice beside him. "It's good to see you again." "Dr. Crandon!" he heard his own voice reply. " You're the Grand Chairman of POSAT?" He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn't anything make sense any longer? "I think we have rather abused you, Don," Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. "I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid." Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him. Crandon's voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. "You're partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don't condemn us yet, though. You'll be a member yourself before the day is over." Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility. "What do you use?" he asked bitterly. "Drugs? Hypnosis?" Crandon sighed. "I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You'll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We're probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves." Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue. "Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?" Don nodded, too bewildered to speak. "They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory." "Then the pictures are modern," said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. "I thought one was a Titian—" "It is," said Crandon. "We have several original Titians, although I really don't know too much about them." "But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?" "He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries." "But you said that he designed your atomic reactor." "Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however." Don's confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. "Let's start at the beginning," he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. "Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years. "Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man's thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly. "The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell's equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—" "But it can't be done," Don objected. "It's an observed phenomenon. It hasn't been derived." Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And yet—there sat the reactor, sheathed in its strange shield. Crandon watched the direction of Don's glance. "Yes, the reactor," said Crandon. "He built one like it. It confirmed his theories. His calculations showed him something else too. He saw the destructive potentialities of an atomic explosion. He himself could not have built an atomic bomb; he didn't have the facilities. But his knowledge would have enabled other men to do so. He looked about him. He saw a political setup of warring principalities, rival states, intrigue, and squabbles over political power. Giving the men of his time atomic energy would have been like handing a baby a firecracker with a lighted fuse. "What should he have done? Let his secrets die with him? He didn't think so. No one else in his age could have derived the knowledge that he did. But it was an age of brilliant men. Leonardo. Michelangelo. There were men capable of learning his science, even as men can learn it today. He gathered some of them together and founded this society. It served two purposes. It perpetuated his discoveries and at the same time it maintained the greatest secrecy about them. He urged that the secrets be kept until the time when men could use them safely. The other purpose was to make that time come about as soon as possible." Crandon looked at Don's unbelieving face. "How can I make you see that it is the truth? Think of the eons that man or manlike creatures have walked the Earth. Think what a small fraction of that time is four hundred years. Is it so strange that atomic energy was discovered a little early, by this displacement in time that is so tiny after all?" "But by one man," Don argued. Crandon shrugged. "Compared with him, Don, you and I are stupid men. So are the scientists who slowly plodded down the same road he had come, stumbling first on one truth and then the succeeding one. We know that inventions and discoveries do not occur at random. Each is based on the one that preceded it. We are all aware of the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. The path to truth is a straight one. It is only our own stupidity that makes it seem slow and tortuous. "He merely followed the straight path," Crandon finished simply. Don's incredulity thawed a little. It was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility. But if it were true! A vast panorama of possible achievements spread before him. "Four hundred years!" he murmured with awe. "You've had four hundred years head-start on the rest of the world! What wonders you must have uncovered in that time!" "Our technical achievements may disappoint you," warned Crandon. "Oh, they're way beyond anything that you are familiar with. You've undoubtedly noticed the shielding material on the reactor. That's a fairly recent development of our metallurgical department. There are other things in the laboratory that I can't even explain to you until you have caught up on the technical basis for understanding them. "Our emphasis has not been on physical sciences, however, except as they contribute to our central project. We want to change civilization so that it can use physical science without disaster." For a moment Don had been fired with enthusiasm. But at these words his heart sank. "Then you've failed," he said bitterly. "In spite of centuries of advance warning, you've failed to change the rest of us enough to prevent us from trying to blow ourselves off the Earth. Here we are, still snarling and snapping at our neighbors' throats—and we've caught up with you. We have the atomic bomb. What's POSAT been doing all that time? Or have you found that human nature really can't be changed?" "Come with me," said Crandon. He led the way along the narrow balcony to another door, then down a steep flight of stairs. He opened a door at the bottom, and Don saw what must have been the world's largest computing machine. "This is our answer," said Crandon. "Oh, rather, it's the tool by which we find our answer. For two centuries we have been working on the newest of the sciences—that of human motivation. Soon we will be ready to put some of our new knowledge to work. But you are right in one respect, we are working now against time. We must hurry if we are to save our civilization. That's why you are here. We have work for you to do. Will you join us, Don?" "But why the hocus-pocus?" asked Don. "Why do you hide behind such a weird front as POSAT? Why do you advertise in magazines and invite just anyone to join? Why didn't you approach me directly, if you have work for me to do? And if you really have the answers to our problems, why haven't you gathered together all the scientists in the world to work on this project—before it's too late?" Crandon took a sighing breath. "How I wish that we could do just that! But you forget that one of the prime purposes of our organization is to maintain the secrecy of our discoveries until they can be safely disclosed. We must be absolutely certain that anyone who enters this building will have joined POSAT before he leaves. What if we approached the wrong scientist? Centuries of accomplishment might be wasted if they attempted either to reveal it or to exploit it! "Do you recall the questionnaires that you answered before you were invited here? We fed the answers to this machine and, as a result, we know more about how you will react in any given situation than you do yourself. Even if you should fail to join us, our secrets would be safe with you. Of course, we miss a few of the scientists who might be perfect material for our organization. You'd be surprised, though, at how clever our advertisements are at attracting exactly the men we want. With the help of our new science, we have baited our ads well, and we know how to maintain interest. Curiosity is, to the men we want, a powerful motivator." "But what about the others?" asked Don. "There must be hundreds of applicants who would be of no use to you at all." "Oh, yes," replied Crandon. "There are the mild religious fanatics. We enroll them as members and keep them interested by sending pamphlets in line with their interests. We even let them contribute to our upkeep, if they seem to want to. They never get beyond the reception room if they come to call on us. But they are additional people through whom we can act when the time finally comes. "There are also the desperate people who try POSAT as a last resort—lost ones who can't find their direction in life. For them we put into practice some of our newly won knowledge. We rehabilitate them—anonymously, of course. Even find jobs or patch up homes. It's good practice for us. "I think I've answered most of your questions, Don. But you haven't answered mine. Will you join us?" Don looked solemnly at the orderly array of the computer before him. He had one more question. "Will it really work? Can it actually tell you how to motivate the stubborn, quarrelsome, opinionated people one finds on this Earth?" Crandon smiled. "You're here, aren't you?" Don nodded, his tense features relaxing. "Enroll me as a member," he said.

test

51534

Self Portrait By BERNARD WOLFE Illustrated by MARTIN SCHNEIDER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction November 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] In the credo of this inspiringly selfless cyberneticist, nothing was too good for his colleagues in science. Much too good for them ! October 5, 1959 Well, here I am at Princeton. IFACS is quite a place, quite a place, but the atmosphere's darned informal. My colleagues seem to be mostly youngish fellows dressed in sloppy dungarees, sweatshirts (the kind Einstein made so famous) and moccasins, and when they're not puttering in the labs they're likely to be lolling on the grass, lounging in front of the fire in commons, or slouching around in conference rooms chalking up equations on a blackboard. No way of telling, of course, but a lot of these collegiate-looking chaps must be in the MS end, whatever that is. You'd think fellows in something secret like that would dress and behave with a little more dignity. Guess I was a little previous in packing my soup-and-fish. Soon as I was shown to my room in the bachelor dorms, I dug it out and hung it way back in the closet, out of sight. When in Rome, etc. Later that day I discovered they carry dungarees in the Co-op; luckily, they had the pre-faded kind. October 6, 1959 Met the boss this morning—hardly out of his thirties, crew-cut, wearing a flannel hunting shirt and dirty saddleshoes. I was glad I'd thought to change into my dungarees before the interview. "Parks," he said, "you can count yourself a very fortunate young man. You've come to the most important address in America, not excluding the Pentagon. In the world, probably. To get you oriented, suppose I sketch in some of the background of the place." That would be most helpful, I said. I wondered, though, if he was as naive as he sounded. Did he think I'd been working in cybernetics labs for going on six years without hearing enough rumors about IFACS to make me dizzy? Especially about the MS end of IFACS? "Maybe you know," he went on, "that in the days of Oppenheimer and Einstein, this place was called the Institute for Advanced Studies. It was run pretty loosely then—in addition to the mathematicians and physicists, they had all sorts of queer ducks hanging around—poets, egyptologists, numismatists, medievalists, herbalists, God alone knows what all. By 1955, however, so many cybernetics labs had sprung up around the country that we needed some central coordinating agency, so Washington arranged for us to take over here. Naturally, as soon as we arrived, we eased out the poets and egyptologists, brought in our own people, and changed the name to the Institute for Advanced Cybernetics Studies. We've got some pretty keen projects going now, pret -ty keen." I said I'd bet, and did he have any idea which project I would fit into? "Sure thing," he said. "You're going to take charge of a very important lab. The Pro lab." I guess he saw my puzzled look. "Pro—that's short for prosthetics, artificial limbs. You know, it's really a scandal. With our present level of technology, we should have artificial limbs which in many ways are even better than the originals, but actually we're still making do with modifications of the same primitive, clumsy pegs and hooks they were using a thousand years ago. I'm counting on you to get things hopping in that department. It's a real challenge." I said it sure was a challenge, and of course I'd do my level best to meet it. Still, I couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed. Around cybernetics circles, I hinted, you heard a lot of talk about the hush-hush MS work that was going on at IFACS and it sounded so exciting that, well, a fellow sort of hoped he might get into that end of things. "Look here, Parks," the boss said. He seemed a little peeved. "Cybernetics is teamwork, and the first rule of any team is that not everybody can be quarterback. Each man has a specific job on our team, one thing he's best suited for, and what you're best suited for, obviously, is the Pro lab. We've followed your work closely these last few years, and we were quite impressed by the way you handled those photo-electric-cell insects. You pulled off a brilliant engineering stunt, you know, when you induced nervous breakdown in your robot moths and bedbugs, and proved that the oscillations they developed corresponded to those which the human animal develops in intention tremor and Parkinson's disease. A keen bit of cybernetic thinking, that. Very keen." It was just luck, I told him modestly. "Nonsense," the boss insisted. "You're first and foremost a talented neuro man, and that's exactly what we need in the Pro department. There, you see, the problem is primarily one of duplicating a nervous mechanism in the metal, of bridging the gap between the neuronic and electronic. So buckle down, and if you hear any more gossip about MS, forget it fast—it's not a proper subject of conversation for you. The loyalty oath you signed is very specific about the trouble you can get into with loose talk. Remember that." I said I certainly would, and thanks a whole lot for the advice. Damn! Everybody knows MS is the thing to get into. It gives you real standing in the field if it gets around that you're an MS man. I had my heart set on getting into MS. October 6, 1959 It never rains, etc.: now it turns out that Len Ellsom's here, and he's in MS! Found out about it in a funny way. Two mornings a week, it seems, the staff members get into their skiing and hunting clothes and tramp into the woods to cut logs for their fireplaces. Well, this morning I went with them, and as we were walking along the trail Goldweiser, my assistant, told me the idea behind these expeditions. "You can't get away from it," he said. "E=MC 2 is in a tree trunk as well as in a uranium atom or a solar system. When you're hacking away at a particular tree, though, you don't think much about such intangibles—like any good, untheoretical lumberjack, you're a lot more concerned with superficialities, such as which way the grain runs, how to avoid the knots, and so on. It's very restful. So long as a cyberneticist is sawing and chopping, he's not a sliver of uncontaminated cerebrum contemplating the eternal slippery verities of gravity and electromagnetism; he's just one more guy trying to slice up one more log. Makes him feel he belongs to the human race again. Einstein, you know, used to get the same results with a violin." Now, I've heard talk like that before, and I don't like it. I don't like it at all. It so happens that I feel very strongly on the subject. I think a scientist should like what he's doing and not want to take refuge in Nature from the Laws of Nature (which is downright illogical, anyhow). I, for one, enjoy cutting logs precisely because , when my saw rasps across a knot, I know that the innermost secret of that knot, as of all matter in the Universe, is E=MC 2 . It's my job to know it, and it's very satisfying to know that I know it and that the general run of people don't. I was about to put this thought into words, but before I could open my mouth, somebody behind us spoke up. "Bravo, Goldie," he said. "Let us by all means pretend that we belong to the human race. Make way for the new cyberneticists with their old saws. Cyberneticist, spare that tree!" I turned around to see who could be making jokes in such bad taste and—as I might have guessed—it was Len Ellsom. He was just as surprised as I was. "Well," he said, "if it isn't Ollie Parks! I thought you were out in Cal Tech, building schizophrenic bedbugs." After M. I. T. I had spent some time out in California doing neuro-cyber research, I explained—but what was he doing here? I'd lost track of him after he'd left Boston; the last I'd heard, he'd been working on the giant robot brain Remington-Rand was developing for the Air Force. I remembered seeing his picture in the paper two or three times while he was working on the brain. "I was with Remington a couple of years," he told me. "If I do say so myself, we built the Air Force a real humdinger of a brain—in addition to solving the most complex problems in ballistics, it could whistle Dixie and, in moments of stress, produce a sound not unlike a Bronx cheer. Naturally, for my prowess in the electronic simulation of I.Q., I was tapped for the brain department of these hallowed precincts." "Oh?" I said. "Does that mean you're in MS?" It wasn't an easy idea to accept, but I think I was pretty successful in keeping my tone casual. "Ollie, my boy," he said in an exaggerated stage whisper, putting his finger to his lips, "in the beginning was the word and the word was mum. Leave us avoid the subject of brains in this keen place. We all have a job to do on the team." I suppose that was meant to be a humorous imitation of the boss; Len always did fancy himself quite a clown. We were separated during the sawing, but he caught up with me on the way back and said, "Let's get together soon and have a talk, Ollie. It's been a long time." He wants to talk about Marilyn, I suppose. Naturally. He has a guilty conscience. I'll have to make it quite clear to him that the whole episode is a matter of complete indifference to me. Marilyn is a closed book in my life; he must understand that. But can you beat that? He's right in the middle of MS! That lad certainly gets around. It's the usual Ellsom charm, I suppose. The usual Ellsom technique for irritating people, too. He's still trying to get my goat; he knows how much I've always hated to be called Ollie. Must watch Goldweiser. Thought he laughed pretty heartily at Len's wisecracks. October 18, 1959 Things are shaping up in the Pro lab. Here's how I get the picture. A year ago, the boss laid down a policy for the lab: begin with legs because, while the neuro-motor systems in legs and arms are a lot alike, those in legs are much simpler. If we build satisfactory legs, the boss figures, we can then tackle arms; the main difficulties will have been licked. Well, last summer, in line with this approach, the Army picked out a double amputee from the outpatient department of Walter Reed Hospital—fellow by the name of Kujack, who lost both his legs in a land mine explosion outside Pyongyang—and shipped him up here to be a subject in our experiments. When Kujack arrived, the neuro boys made a major decision. It didn't make sense, they agreed, to keep building experimental legs directly into the muscles and nerves of Kujack's stumps; the surgical procedure in these cine-plastic jobs is complicated as all getout, involves a lot of pain for the subject and, what's more to the point, means long delays each time while the tissues heal. Instead, they hit on the idea of integrating permanent metal and plastic sockets into the stumps, so constructed that each new experimental limb can be snapped into place whenever it's ready for a trial. By the time I took over, two weeks ago, Goldweiser had the sockets worked out and fitted to Kujack's stumps, and the muscular and neural tissues had knitted satisfactorily. There was only one hitch: twenty-three limbs had been designed, and all twenty-three had been dismal flops. That's when the boss called me in. There's no mystery about the failures. Not to me, anyhow. Cybernetics is simply the science of building machines that will duplicate and improve on the organs and functions of the animal, based on what we know about the systems of communication and control in the animal. All right. But in any particular cybernetics project, everything depends on just how many of the functions you want to duplicate, just how much of the total organ you want to replace. That's why the robot-brain boys can get such quick and spectacular results, have their pictures in the papers all the time, and become the real glamor boys of the profession. They're not asked to duplicate the human brain in its entirety —all they have to do is isolate and imitate one particular function of the brain, whether it's a simple operation in mathematics or a certain type of elementary logic. The robot brain called the Eniac, for example, is exactly what its name implies—an Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, and it just has to be able to integrate and compute figures faster and more accurately than the human brain can. It doesn't have to have daydreams and nightmares, make wisecracks, suffer from anxiety, and all that. What's more, it doesn't even have to look like a brain or fit into the tiny space occupied by a real brain. It can be housed in a six-story building and look like an overgrown typewriter or an automobile dashboard or even a pogo stick. All it has to do is tell you that two times two equals four, and tell you fast. When you're told to build an artificial leg that'll take the place of a real one, the headaches begin. Your machine must not only look like its living model, it must also balance and support, walk, run, hop, skip, jump, etc., etc. Also , it must fit into the same space. Also , it must feel everything a real leg feels—touch, heat, cold, pain, moisture, kinesthetic sensations— as well as execute all the brain-directed movements that a real leg can. So you're not duplicating this or that function; you're reconstructing the organ in its totality, or trying to. Your pro must have a full set of sensory-motor communication systems, plus machines to carry out orders, which is impossible enough to begin with. But our job calls for even more. The pro mustn't only equal the real thing, it must be superior ! That means creating a synthetic neuro-muscular system that actually improves on the nerves and muscles Nature created in the original! When our twenty-fourth experimental model turned out to be a dud last week—it just hung from Kujack's stump, quivering like one of my robot bedbugs, as though it had a bad case of intention tremor—Goldweiser said something that made an impression on me. "They don't want much from us," he said sarcastically. "They just want us to be God." I didn't care for his cynical attitude at all, but he had a point. Len Ellsom just has to build a fancy adding machine to get his picture in the papers. I have to be God! October 22, 1959 Don't know what to make of Kujack. His attitude is peculiar. Of course, he's very co-operative, lies back on the fitting table and doesn't even wince when we snap on the pros, and he does his best to carry out instructions. Still, there's something funny about the way he looks at me. There's a kind of malicious expression in his eyes. At times, come to think of it, he reminds me of Len. Take this afternoon, for instance. I've just worked out an entirely different kind of leg based on a whole new arrangement of solenoids to duplicate the muscle systems, and I decided to give it a try. When I was slipping the model into place, I looked up and caught Kujack's eye for a moment. He seemed to be laughing at something, although his face was expressionless. "All right," I said. "Let's make a test. I understand you used to be quite a football player. Well, just think of how you used to kick a football and try to do it now." He really seemed to be trying; the effort made him sweat. All that happened, though, was that the big toe wriggled a little and the knee buckled. Dud Number Twenty-five. I was sore, of course, especially when I noticed that Kujack was more amused than ever. "You seem to think something's pretty funny," I said. "Don't get me wrong, Doc," he said, much too innocently. "It's just that I've been thinking. Maybe you'd have more luck if you thought of me as a bedbug." "Where did you get that idea?" "From Doc Ellsom. I was having some beers with him the other night. He's got a very high opinion of you, says you build the best bedbugs in the business." I find it hard to believe that Len Ellsom would say anything really nice about me. Must be his guilt about Marilyn that makes him talk that way. I don't like his hanging around Kujack. October 25, 1959 The boss came along on our woodcutting expedition this morning and volunteered to work the other end of my two-handled saw. He asked how things were coming in the Pro lab. "As I see it," I said, "there are two sides to the problem, the kinesthetic and the neural. We're making definite progress on the K side—I've worked out a new solenoid system, with some miniature motors tied in, and I think it'll give us a leg that moves damned well. I don't know about the N side, though. It's pretty tough figuring out how to hook the thing up electrically with the central nervous system so that the brain can control it. Some sort of compromise system of operation, along mechanical rather than neural lines, would be a lot simpler." "You mean," the boss said with a smile, "that it's stumping you." I was relieved to see him taking it so well because I know how anxious he is to get results from the Pro lab. Since Pro is one of the few things going on at IFACS that can be talked about, he's impatient for us to come up with something he can release to the press. As the public relations officer explained it to me at dinner the other night, people get worried when they know there's something like IFACS going, but don't get any real information about it, so the boss, naturally, wants to relieve the public's curiosity with a good, reassuring story about our work. I knew I was taking an awful chance spilling the whole K-N thing to him the way I did, but I had to lay the groundwork for a little plan I've just begun to work on. "By the way, sir," I said, "I ran into Len Ellsom the other day. I didn't know he was here." "Do you know him?" the boss said. "Good man. One of the best brains-and-games men you'll find anywhere." I explained that Len had gotten his degree at M.I.T. the year before I did. From what I'd heard, I added, he'd done some important work on the Remington-Rand ballistics computer. "He did indeed," the boss said, "but that's not the half of it. After that he made some major contributions to the robot chess player. As a matter of fact, that's why he's here." I said I hadn't heard about the chess player. "As soon as it began to play a really good game of chess, Washington put the whole thing under wraps for security reasons. Which is why you won't hear any more about it from me." I'm no Eniac, but I can occasionally put two and two together myself. If the boss's remarks mean anything, they mean that an electronic brain capable of playing games has been developed, and that it's led to something important militarily. Of course! I could kick myself for not having guessed it before. Brains-and-games—that's what MS is all about, obviously. It had to happen: out of the mathematical analysis of chess came a robot chess player, and out of the chess player came some kind of mechanical brain that's useful in military strategy. That's what Len Ellsom's in the middle of. "Really brilliant mind," the boss said after we'd sawed for a while. "Keen. But he's a little erratic—quirky, queer sense of humor. Isn't that your impression?" "Definitely," I said. "I'd be the last one in the world to say a word against Len, but he was always a little peculiar. Very gay one moment and very sour the next, and inclined to poke fun at things other people take seriously. He used to write poetry." "I'm very glad to know that," the boss said. "Confirms my own feeling about him." So the boss has some doubts about Len. October 27, 1959 Unpleasant evening with Len. It all started after dinner when he showed up in my room, wagged his finger at me and said, "Ollie, you've been avoiding me. That hurts. Thought we were pals, thick and thin and till debt and death do us part." I saw immediately that he was drunk—he always gets his words mixed up when he's drunk—and I tried to placate him by explaining that it wasn't anything like that; I'd been busy. "If we're pals," he said, "come on and have a beer with me." There was no shaking him off, so I followed him down to his car and we drove to this sleazy little bar in the Negro part of town. As soon as we sat down in a booth, Len borrowed all the nickels I had, put them in the jukebox and pressed the levers for a lot of old Louie Armstrong records. "Sorry, kid," he said. "I know how you hate this real jazzy stuff, but can't have a reunion without music, and there isn't a polka or cowboy ballad or hillbilly stomp in the box. They lack the folksy touch on this side of the tracks." Len has always been very snobbish about my interest in folk music. I asked him what he'd been doing during the day. "Lushing it up," he said. "Getting stinking from drinking." He still likes to use the most flamboyant slang; I consider it an infantile form of protest against what he regards as the "genteel" manner of academic people. "I got sort of restless this morning, so I ducked out and beat it into New York and looked up my friend Steve Lundy in the Village. Spent the afternoon liquidating our joint assets. Liquidating our assets in the joints." What, I wanted to know, was he feeling restless about? "Restless for going on three years now." His face grew solemn, as though he were thinking it over very carefully. "I'll amend that statement. Hell with the Aesopian language. I've been a plain lush for going on three years. Ever since—" If it was something personal—I suggested. "It is not something personal," he said, mimicking me. "Guess I can tell an old cyberneticist pal about it. Been a lush for three years because I've been scared for three years. Been scared for three years because three years ago I saw a machine beat a man at a game of chess." A machine that plays chess? That was interesting, I said. "Didn't tell you the whole truth the other day," Len mumbled. "I did work on the Remington-Rand computer, sure, but I didn't come to IFACS directly from that. In between I spent a couple years at the Bell Telephone Labs. Claude Shannon—or, rather, to begin with there was Norbert Wiener back at M.I.T.—it's complicated...." "Look," I said, "are you sure you want to talk about it?" "Stop wearing your loyalty oath on your sleeve," he said belligerently. "Sure I want to talk about it. Greatest subject I know. Begin at the beginning. Whole thing started back in the Thirties with those two refugee mathematicians who used to be here at the Institute for Advanced Studies when Einstein was around. Von Morgan and Neumanstern, no, Von Neu mann and Mor ganstern. You remember, they did a mathematical analysis of all the possible kinds of games, poker, tossing pennies, chess, bridge, everything, and they wrote up their findings in a volume you certainly know, The Theory of Games . "Well, that got Wiener started. You may remember that when he founded the science of cybernetics, he announced that on the basis of the theory of games, it was feasible to design a robot computing machine that would play a better than average game of chess. Right after that, back in '49 or maybe it was '50, Claude Shannon of the Bell Labs said Wiener wasn't just talking, and to prove it he was going to build the robot chess player. Which he proceeded withforth—forthwith—to do. Sometime in '53, I was taken off the Remington-Rand project and assigned to Bell to work with him." "Maybe we ought to start back," I cut in. "I've got a lot of work to do." "The night is young," he said, "and you're so dutiful. Where was I? Oh yes, Bell. At first our electronic pawn-pusher wasn't so hot—it could beat the pants off a lousy player, but an expert just made it look silly. But we kept improving it, see, building more and more electronic anticipation and gambit-plotting powers into it, and finally, one great day in '55, we thought we had all the kinks ironed out and were ready for the big test. By this time, of course, Washington had stepped in and taken over the whole project. "Well, we got hold of Fortunescu, the world's champion chess player, sat him down and turned the robot loose on him. For four hours straight we followed the match, with a delegation of big brass from Washington, and for four hours straight the machine trounced Fortunescu every game. That was when I began to get scared. I went out that night and got really loaded." What had he been so scared about? It seemed to me he should have felt happy. "Listen, Ollie," he said, "for Christ's sake, stop talking like a Boy Scout for once in your life." If he was going to insult me— "No insult intended. Just listen. I'm a terrible chess player. Any five-year-old could chatemeck—checkmate—me with his brains tied behind his back. But this machine which I built, helped build, is the champion chess player of the world. In other words, my brain has given birth to a brain which can do things my brain could never do. Don't you find that terrifying?" "Not at all," I said. " You made the machine, didn't you? Therefore, no matter what it does, it's only an extension of you. You should feel proud to have devised a powerful new tool." "Some tool," he sneered. He was so drunk by now that I could hardly understand what he was saying. "The General Staff boys in Washington were all hopped up about that little old tool, and for a plenty good reason—they understood that mechanized warfare is only the most complicated game the human race has invented so far, an elaborate form of chess which uses the population of the world for pawns and the globe for a chessboard. They saw, too, that when the game of war gets this complex, the job of controlling and guiding it becomes too damned involved for any number of human brains, no matter how nimble. "In other words, my beamish Boy Scout, modern war needs just this kind of strategy tool; the General Staff has to be mechanized along with everything else. So the Pentagon boys set up IFACS and handed us a top-priority cybernetics project: to build a superduper chess player that could oversee a complicated military maneuver, maybe later a whole campaign, maybe ultimately a whole global war. "We're aiming at a military strategy machine which can digest reports from all the units on all the fronts and from moment to moment, on the basis of that steady stream of information, grind out an elastic overall strategy and dictate concrete tactical directives to all the units. Wiener warned this might happen, and he was right. A very nifty tool. Never mind how far we've gotten with the thing, but I will tell you this: I'm a lot more scared today than I was three years ago." So that was the secret of MS! The most extraordinary machine ever devised by the human mind! It was hard to conceal the thrill of excitement I felt, even as a relative outsider. "Why all the jitters?" I said. "This could be the most wonderful tool ever invented. It might eliminate war altogether." Len was quiet for a while, gulping his beer and looking off into space. Then he turned to me. "Steve Lundy has a cute idea," he said. "He was telling me about it this afternoon. He's a bum, you see, but he's got a damned good mind and he's done a lot of reading. Among other things, he's smart enough to see that once you've got your theory of games worked out, there's at least the logical possibility of converting your Eniac into what he calls a Strategy Integrator and Computer. And he's guessed, simply from the Pentagon's hush-hush policy about it, that that's what we're working on here at IFACS. So he holds forth on the subject of Emsiac, and I listen." "What's his idea?" I asked. "He thinks Emsiac might eliminate war, too, but not in the way a Boy Scout might think. What he says is that all the industrialized nations must be working away like mad on Emsiac, just as they did on the atom bomb, so let's assume that before long all the big countries will have more or less equal MS machines. All right. A cold war gets under way between countries A and B, and pretty soon it reaches the showdown stage. Then both countries plug in their Emsiacs and let them calculate the date on which hostilities should begin. If the machines are equally efficient, they'll hit on the same date. If there's a slight discrepancy, the two countries can work out a compromise date by negotiation. "The day arrives. A's Emsiac is set up in its capital, B's is set up in its capital. In each capital the citizens gather around their strategy machine, the officials turn out in high hats and cut-aways, there are speeches, pageants, choral singing, mass dancing—the ritual can be worked out in advance. Then, at an agreed time, the crowds retreat to a safe distance and a committee of the top cyberneticists appears. They climb into planes, take off and—this is beautiful—drop all their atom bombs and H-bombs on the machines. It happens simultaneously in both countries, you see. That's the neat part of it. The occasion is called International Mushroom Day. "Then the cyberneticists in both countries go back to their vacuum tubes to work on another Emsiac, and the nuclear physicists go back to their piles to build more atom bombs, and when they're ready they have another Mushroom Day. One Mushroom Day every few years, whenever the diplomatic-strategic situation calls for it, and nobody even fires a B-B gun. Scientific war. Isn't it wonderful?"

test

51075

A Stone and a Spear BY RAYMOND F. JONES Illustrated by JOHN BUNCH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction December 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Given: The future is probabilities merging into one certainty. Proposition: Can the probabilities be made improbables so that the certainty becomes impossible? From Frederick to Baltimore, the rolling Maryland countryside lay under a fresh blanket of green. Wholly unaware of the summer glory, Dr. Curtis Johnson drove swiftly on the undulating highway, stirring clouds of dust and dried grasses. Beside him, his wife, Louise, held her blowing hair away from her face and laughed into the warm air. "Dr. Dell isn't going to run away. Besides, you said we could call this a weekend vacation as well as a business trip." Curt glanced at the speedometer and eased the pressure on the pedal. He grinned. "Wool-gathering again." "What about?" "I was just wondering who said it first—one of the fellows at Detrick, or that lieutenant at Bikini, or—" "Said what ? What are you talking about?" "That crack about the weapons after the next war. He—whoever it was—said there may be some doubt about what the weapons of the next war will be like, but there is absolutely no doubt about the weapons of World War IV. It will be fought with stones and spears. I guess any one of us could have said it." Louise's smile grew tight and thin. "Don't any of you ever think of anything but the next war— any of you?" "How can we? We're fighting it right now." "You make it sound so hopeless." "That's what Dell said in the days just before he quit. He said we didn't have to stay at Detrick producing the toxins and aerosols that will destroy millions of lives. But he never showed us how we could quit—and be sure of staying alive. His own walking out was no more than a futile gesture." "I just can't understand him, Curt. I think he's right in a way, but what brought him to that viewpoint?" "Hard to tell," Curt said, unconsciously speeding up again. "After the war, when the atomic scientists were publicly examining their consciences, Dell told them to examine their own guts first. That was typical of him then, but soon after, he swung just as strongly pacifist and walked out of Detrick." "It still seems strange that he abandoned his whole career. The world's foremost biochemist giving up the laboratory for a truck farm !" Louise glanced down at the lunch basket between them. In it were tomatoes that Dr. Hamon Dell had sent along with his invitation to visit him. For nearly a year Dr. Dell had been sending packages of choice fruit and vegetables to his former colleagues, not only at the biological warfare center at Camp Detrick but at the universities and other research centers throughout the country. "I wish we knew exactly why he asked us to come out," said Louise. "Nobody claims to have figured him out. They laugh a little at him now. They eat his gifts willingly enough, but consider him slightly off his rocker. He still has all his biological talents, though. I've never seen or tasted vegetables like the ones he grows." "And the brass at Detrick doesn't think he's gone soft in the head, either," she added much too innocently. "So they ordered you to take advantage of his invitation and try to persuade him to come back." Curt turned his head so sharply that Louise laughed. "No, I didn't read any secret, hush-hush papers," she said. "But it's pretty obvious, isn't it, the way you rushed right over to General Hansen after you got the invitation?" "It is hush-hush, top-secret stuff," said Curt, his eyes once more on the road. "The Army doesn't want it to leak, but they need Dell, need him badly. Anyone knowing bio-war developments would understand. They wanted to send me before. Dell's invitation was the break we needed. I may be the one with sufficient influence to bring him back. I hope so. But keep it under your permanent and forget your guessing games. There's more to it than you know." The car passed through a cool, wooded section and Louise leaned back and drank in the beauty of it. "Hush-hush, top secret stuff," she said. "Grown men playing children's games." "Pretty deadly games for children, darling." In the late afternoon they by-passed the central part of Baltimore and headed north beyond the suburb of Towson toward Dell's truck farm. His sign was visible for a half mile: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT Eat the Best EAT DELL'S VEGETABLES "Dr. Hamon Dell, world's foremost biochemist—and truck farmer," Curt muttered as he swung the car off the highway. Louise stepped out when the tires ceased crunching on the gravel lane. She scanned the fields and old woods beyond the ancient but preserved farmhouse. "It's so unearthly." Curt followed. The song of birds, which had been so noticeable before, seemed strangely muted. The land itself was an alien, faintly greenish hue, a color repulsive to more than just the eyes. "It must be something in this particular soil," said Curt, "something that gives it that color and produces such wonderful crops. I'll have to remember to ask Dell about it." "You want Dr. Dell?" They whirled at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. Louise uttered a startled cry. The gaunt figure behind them coughed asthmatically and pointed with an arm that seemed composed only of bones and brownish skin, so thin as to be almost translucent. "Yes," said Curt shakenly. "We're friends of his." "Dell's in back. I'll tell him you're here." The figure shambled away and Louise shook herself as if to rid her mind of the vision. "If our grandchildren ever ask about zombies, I can tell them. Who in the world do you suppose he is?" "Hired man, I suppose. Sounds as if he should be in a lung sanitarium. Funny that Dell would keep him around in that condition." From somewhere behind the house came the sound of a truck engine. Curt took Louise's arm and led her around the trim, graveled path. The old farmhouse had been very carefully renovated. Everywhere was evidence of exquisite care, yet the cumulative atmosphere remained uninviting, almost oppressive. Curt told himself it was the utter silence, made even more tense by the lonely chugging of the engine in back, and the incredible harsh color of the soil beneath their feet. Rounding the corner, they came in sight of a massive tank truck. From it a hose led to an underground storage tank and pulsed slowly under the force of the liquid gushing through it. No one was in sight. "What could that be for?" asked Louise. "You've got me. Could be gasoline, but Dell hasn't any reason for storing that much here." They advanced slowly and amazement crept over Curt as he comprehended the massiveness of the machine. The tank was of elliptical cross section, over ten feet on its major axis. Six double wheels supported the rear; even the front ones were double. In spite of such wide weight distribution, the tires were pressing down the utterly dry ground to a depth of an inch or more. "They must haul liquid lead in that thing," said Curt. "It's getting cool. I wish Dell would show up." Louise glanced out over the twenty-acre expanse of truck farm. Thick rows of robust plants covered the area. Tomatoes, carrots, beets, lettuce, and other vegetables—a hundred or so fruit trees were at the far end. Between them ran the road over which the massive truck had apparently entered the farm from the rear. A heavy step sounded abruptly and Dell's shaggy head appeared from around the end of the truck. His face lighted with pleasure. "Curt, my boy! And Louise! I thought you weren't going to show up at all." Curt's hand was almost lost in Dell's enormous grip, but it wasn't because of that that his grip was passive. It was his shocked reaction to Dell's haggard appearance. The fierce eyes looked merely old and tired now. The ageless, leathery hide of Dell's face seemed to have collapsed before some overpowering decay, its bronze smoothness shattered by deep lines that were like tool marks of pain. Curt spoke in a subdued voice. "It's hard to get away from Detrick. Always one more experiment to try—" "—And the brass riding you as if they expected you to win another war for them tomorrow afternoon," said Dell. "I remember." "We wondered about this truck," Louise commented brightly, trying to change the subject. "We finally gave up on it." "Oh, that. It brings liquid fertilizer to pump into my irrigation water, that's all. No mystery. Let's go on to the house. After you're settled we can catch up on everything and I'll tell you about the things I'm doing here." "Who's the man we saw?" asked Curt. "He looks as if his health is pretty precarious." "That's Brown. He came with the place—farmed it for years for my uncle before I inherited it. He could grow a garden on a granite slab. In spite of appearances, he's well enough physically." "How has your own health been? You have—changed—since you were at Detrick." Dell raised a lock of steel-gray hair in his fingers and dismissed the question with a wan smile. "We all wear out sometime," he said. "My turn had to come." Inside, some of the oppressiveness vanished as the evening passed. It was cool enough for lighting the fireplace, and they settled before it after dinner. While they watched the flickering light that whipped the beamed ceiling, Dell entertained them with stories of his neighbors, whose histories he knew clear back to Revolutionary times. Early, however, Louise excused herself. She knew they would want privacy to thresh out the purposes behind Dell's invitation—and Curt's acceptance. When she was gone, there was a moment's silence. The logs crackled with shocking pistol shots in the fireplace. The scientist moved to stir the coals and then turned abruptly to Curt. "When are you going to leave Detrick?" "When are you coming back?" Curt demanded instead of answering. "So they still want me, even after the things I said when I left." "You're needed badly. When I told Hansen I was coming down, he said it would be worth five years of my own work to bring you back." "They want me to produce even deadlier toxins than those I gave them," Dell said viciously. "They want some that can kill ten million people in four minutes instead of only one million—" "Any man would go insane if he looked at it that way. It would be the same as gun-makers being tormented by the vision of torn men destroyed by their bullets, the sorrowing families—" "And why shouldn't the gun-makers be tormented?" Dell's voice was low with controlled hate. "They are men like you and me who give the war -makers new tools for their trade." "Oh, Dell, it's not as simple as that." Curt raised a hand and let it fall wearily. They had been over this so many times before. "Weapon designers are no more responsible than any other agents of society. It's pure neurosis to absorb the whole guilt of wars yet unfought merely because you happened to have developed a potential weapon." Dell touched the massive dome of his skull. "Here within this brain of mine has been conceived a thing which will probably destroy a billion human lives in the coming years. D. triconus toxin in a suitable aerosol requires only a countable number of molecules in the lungs of a man to kill him. My brain and mine alone is responsible for that vicious, murderous discovery." "Egotism! Any scientist's work is built upon the pyramid of past knowledge." "The weapon I have described exists. If I had not created it, it would not exist. It is as simple as that. No one shares my guilt and my responsibility. And what more do they want of me now? What greater dream of mass slaughter and destruction have they dreamed?" "They want you," said Curt quietly, "because they believe we are not the only ones possessing the toxin. They need you to come back and help find the antitoxin for D. triconus." Dell shook his head. "That's a blind hope. The action of D. triconus is like a match set to a powder train. The instant its molecules contact protoplasm, they start a chain reaction that rips apart the cell structure. It spreads like fire from one cell to the next, and nothing can stop it once it's started operating within a given organism." "But doesn't this sense of guilt—unwarranted as it is—make you want to find an antitoxin?" "Suppose I succeeded? I would have canceled the weapon of an enemy. The military would know he could nullify ours in time. Then they would command me to work out still another toxin. It's a vicious and insane circle, which must be broken somewhere. The purpose of the entire remainder of my life is to break it." "When you are fighting for your life and the enemy already has his hands about your throat," Curt argued, "you reach for the biggest rock you can get your hands on and beat his brains in. You don't try to persuade him that killing is unethical." For an instant it seemed to Curt that a flicker of humor touched the corners of Dell's mouth. Then the lines tightened down again. "Exactly," he said. "You reach for a rock and beat his brains in. You don't wipe human life off the face of the Earth in order to reach that enemy. I asked you to come down here to help me break this circle of which I spoke. There has to be someone here—after I'm gone—" Dell's eyes shifted to the depths of shadows beyond the firelight and remained fixed on unseen images. "Me? Help you?" Curt asked incredulously. "What could I do? Give up science and become a truck gardener, too?" "You might say that we would be in the rock business," replied Dell. "Fighting is no longer on the level of one man with his hands about another's throat, but it should be. Those who want power and domination should have to fight for it personally. But it has been a long time since they had to. "Even in the old days, kings and emperors hired mercenaries to fight their wars. The militarists don't buy swords now. They buy brains. We're the mercenaries of the new day, Curt, you and I. Once there was honor in our profession. We searched for truth for its own sake, and because it was our way of life. Once we were the hope of the world because science was a universal language. "What a horrible joke that turned out to be! Today we are the terror of the world. The war-makers built us fine laboratories, shining palaces, and granted every whim—for a price. They took us up to the hills and showed us the whole world and we sold our souls for it. "Look what happened after the last war. Invading armies carried off prize Nazi brains like so much loot, set the scientists up in big new laboratories, and these new mercenaries keep right on pouring out knowledge for other kings and emperors. "Their loyalty is only to their science. But they can't experiment for knowledge any more, only weapons and counter-weapons. You'll say I'm anti-war, even, perhaps, anti-American or pro-Russian. I am not against just wars, but I am against unjust slaughter. And I love America too much to let her destroy herself along with the enemy." "Then what are we to do?" Curt demanded fiercely. "What are we to do while enemy scientists prepare these same weapons to exterminate us ? Sure, it's one hell of a mess. Science is already dead. The kind you talk about has been dead for twenty years. All our fine ideals are worthless until the politicians find a solution to their quarrels." "Politicians? Since when did men of science have to wait upon politicians for solutions of human problems?" Dell passed a hand over his brow, and suddenly his face contorted in pain. "What is it?" Curt exclaimed, rising. "Nothing—nothing, my boy. Some minor trouble I've had lately. It will pass in a moment." With effort, he went on. "I wanted to say that already you have come to think of science being divided into armed camps by the artificial boundaries of the politicians. Has it been so long ago that it was not even in your lifetime, when scientists regarded themselves as one international brotherhood?" "I can't quarrel with your ideals," said Curt softly. "But national boundary lines do, actually, divide the scientists of the world into armed camps." "Your premises are still incorrect. They do not deliberately war on each other. It is only that they have blindly sold themselves as mercenaries. And they can be called upon to redeem themselves. They can break their unholy contracts." "There would have to be simultaneous agreement among the scientists of all nations. And they are men, influenced by national ideals. They are not merely ivory-tower dabblers and searchers after truth." "Do you remember me five years ago?" Dell's face became more haggard, as if the memory shamed him. "Do you remember when I told the atomic scientists to examine their guts instead of their consciences?" "Yes. You certainly have changed." "And so can other men. There is a way. I need your help desperately, Curt—" The face of the aging biochemist contorted again with unbearable pain. His forehead beaded with sweat as he clenched his skull between his vein-knotted hands. "Dell! What is it?" "It will pass," Dr. Dell breathed through clenched teeth. "I have some medicine—in my bedroom. I'm afraid I'll have to excuse myself tonight. There's so much more I have to say to you, but we'll continue our talk in the morning, Curt. I'm sorry—" He stumbled out, refusing Curt's offer of aid with a grim headshake. The fire crackled loudly within the otherwise silent room. Curt felt cold at the descending chill of the night, his mind bewildered at Dell's barrage, some of it so reasonable, some of it so utterly confused. And there was no clue to the identity of the powerful force that had made so great a change in the once militant scientist. Slowly Curt mounted the staircase of the old house and went to the room Dell had assigned them. Louise was in bed reading a murder mystery. "Secret mission completed?" she asked. Curt sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm afraid something terrible is wrong with Dell. Besides the neurotic guilt complex because of his war work, he showed signs of a terrific and apparently habitual pain in his head. If that should be brain tumor, it might explain his erratic notions, his abandonment of his career." "Oh, I hope it's not that!" It seemed to Curt that he had slept only minutes before he was roused by sounds in the night. He rolled over and switched on the light. His watch said two o'clock. Louise raised up in sharp alarm. "What is it?" she whispered. "I thought I heard something. There it is again!" "It sounds like someone in pain. It must be Dell!" Curt leaped from the bed and wrestled into his bathrobe. As he hurried toward Dell's room, there was another deep groan that ended in a shuddering sob of unbearable agony. He burst into the scientist's room and switched on the light. Dell looked up, eyes glazed with pain. "Dr. Dell!" "Curt—I thought I had time left, but this is as far as I can go—Just remember all I said tonight. Don't forget a word of it." He sat up rigidly, hardly breathing in the effort of control. "The responsibility for the coming destruction of civilization lies at the doors of the scientist mercenaries. Don't allow it, Curt. Get them to abandon the laboratories of the warriors. Get them to reclaim their honor—" He fell back upon the pillow, his face white with pain and shining with sweat. "Brown—see Brown. He can tell you the—the rest." "I'll go for a doctor," said Curt. "Who have you had? Louise will stay with you." "Don't bring a doctor. There's no escaping this. I've known it for months. Wait here with me, Curt. I'll be gone soon." Curt stared with pity at the great scientist whose mind had so disintegrated. "You need a doctor. I'll call a hospital, Johns Hopkins, if you want." "Wait, maybe you're right. I have no phone here. Get Dr. Wilson—the Judge Building, Towson—find his home address in a phone book." "Fine. I'll only be a little while." He stepped to the door. "Curt! Take the lane down to the new road—behind the farm. Quicker—it cuts off a mile or so—go down through the orchard—" "All right. Take it easy now. I'll be right back." Curt frantically got dressed, ran down the stairs and out to the car. He wondered absently what had become of the cadaverous Brown, who seemed to have vanished from the premises. The wheels spun gravel as he started the car and whipped it out of the driveway. Then he was on the stretch of lane leading through the grove. The moonless night was utterly dark, and the stream of light ahead of the car seemed the only living thing upon the whole landscape. He almost wished he had taken the more familiar road. To get lost now might mean death for Dell. No traffic flowed past him in either direction. There were no buildings showing lights. Overwhelming desolation seemed to possess the countryside and seep into his soul. It seemed impossible that this lay close to the other highway with which he was familiar. He strained his eyes into the darkness for signs of an all-night gas station or store from which he could phone. Finally, he resigned himself to going all the way to Towson. At that moment he glimpsed a spark of light far ahead. Encouraged, Curt stepped on the gas. In less than ten minutes he was at the spot. He braked the car to a stop, and surveyed the building as he got out. It seemed more like a power substation than anything else. But there should be a telephone, at least. He knocked on the door. Almost instantly, footsteps sounded within. The door swung wide. "I wonder if I could use your—" Curt began. He gasped. "Brown! Dell's dying—we've got to get a doctor for him—" As if unable to comprehend, the hired man stared dumbly for a long moment. His hollow-cheeked face was almost skeletal in the light that flooded out from behind him. Then from somewhere within the building came a voice, sharp with tension. "Brown! What the devil are you doing? Shut that door!" That brought the figure to life. He whipped out a gun and motioned Curt inward. "Step inside. We'll have to decide what to do with you when Carlson finds you're here." "What's the matter with you?" Curt asked, stupefied. "Dell's dying. He needs help." "Get in here!" Curt moved slowly forward. Brown closed the door behind him and motioned toward a closed door at the other end of a short hall. They opened it and stepped into a dimly lighted room. Curt's eyes slowly adjusted and he saw what seemed to be a laboratory. It was so packed with equipment that there was scarcely room for the group of twelve or fifteen men jammed closely about some object with their backs to Curt and Brown. Brown shambled forward like an agitated skeleton, breaking the circle. Then Curt saw that the object of the men's attention was a large cathode ray screen occupied by a single green line. There was a pip on it rising sharply near one side of the two-foot tube. The pip moved almost imperceptibly toward a vertical red marker over the face of the screen. The men stared as if hypnotized by it. The newcomers' arrival, however, disturbed their attention. One man turned with an irritable growl. "Brown, for heaven's sake—" He was a bony creature, even more cadaverous than Brown. He caught sight of Curt's almost indecently robust face. He gasped and swore. "Who is this? What's he doing here?" The entire montage of skull faces turned upon Curt. He heard a sharp collective intake of breath, as if his presence were some unforeseen calamity that had shaken the course of their incomprehensible lives. "This is Curtis Johnson," said Brown. "He got lost looking for a doctor for Dell." A mummylike figure rose from a seat before the instrument. "Your coming is tremendously unfortunate, but for the moment we can do nothing about it. Sit here beside me. My name is Tarron Sark." The man indicated a chair. "My friend, Dr. Dell, is dying," Curt snapped out, refusing to sit down. "I've got to get help. I saw your light and hoped you'd allow me to use your phone. I don't know who you are nor what Dell's hired man is doing here with you. But you've got to let me go for help!" "No." The man, Sark, shook his head. "Dell is reconciled. He has to go. We are awaiting precisely the event you would halt—his death." He had known it, Curt thought, from the moment he entered that room. Like vultures sitting on cliffs waiting for the death of their prey, these fantastic men let their glance slip back to the screen. The green line was a third of the way toward the red marker now, and moving more rapidly. It was nightmare—meaningless— "I'm not staying," Curt insisted. "You can't prevent me from helping Dell without assuming responsibility for his death. I demand you let me call." "You're not going to call," said Sark wearily. "And we assumed responsibility for Dell's death long ago. Sit down!" Slowly Curt sank down upon the chair beside the stranger. There was nothing else to do. He was powerless against Brown's gun. But he'd bring them to justice somehow, he swore. He didn't understand the meaning of the slowly moving pattern on the 'scope face, yet, as his eyes followed that pip, he sensed tension in the watching men that seemed sinister, almost murderous. How? What did the inexorably advancing pip signify? No one spoke. The room was stifling hot and the breathing of the circle of men was a dull, rattling sound in Curt's ears. Quickly then, gathering sudden momentum, the pip accelerated. The circle of men grew taut. The pip crossed the red line—and vanished. Only the smooth green trace remained, motionless and without meaning. With hesitant shuffling of feet, the circle expanded. The men glanced uncertainly at one another. One said, "Well, that's the end of Dell. We'll soon know now if we're on the right track, or if we've botched it. Carlson will call when he's computed it." "The end of Dell?" Curt repeated slowly, as if trying to convince himself of what he knew had happened. "The pip on the screen—that showed his life leaving him?" "Yes," said Sark. "He knew he had to go. And there are perhaps hundreds more like him. But Dell couldn't have told you of that—" "What will we do with him?" Brown asked abruptly. "If Dell is dead, you murdered him!" Curt shouted. A rising personal fear grew within him. They could not release him now, even though his story would make no sense to anybody. But they had somehow killed Dell, or thought they had, and they wouldn't hesitate to kill Curt. He thought of Louise in the great house with the corpse of Haman Dell—if, of course, he was actually dead. But that was nonsense.... "Dell must have sent you to us!" Sark said, as if a great mystery had suddenly been lifted from his mind. "He did not have time to tell you everything. Did he tell you to take the road behind the farm?" Curt nodded bitterly. "He told me it was the quickest way to get to a doctor." "He did? Then he knew even better than we did how rapidly he was slipping. Yes, this was the quickest way." "What are you talking about?" Curt demanded. "Did Dell say anything at all about what he wanted of you?" "It was all wild. Something about helping with some crazy plans to retreat from the scientific world. He was going to finish talking in the morning, but I guess it wouldn't have mattered. I realize now that he was sick and irrational." "Too sick to explain everything, but not irrational," Sark said thoughtfully. "He left it to us to tell you, since you are to succeed him." "Succeed Dell? In what?" Sark suddenly flipped a switch on a panel at his right. A screen lighted with some fuzzy image. It cleared with a slight dial adjustment, and Curt seemed to be looking at some oddly familiar moonlit ruin. "An American city," said Sark, hurrying his words now. "Any city. They are all alike. Ruin. Death. This one died thirty years ago." "I don't understand," Curt complained, bewildered. "Thirty years—" "At another point in the Time Continuum," said Sark. "The future. Your future, you understand. Or, rather, our present, the one you created for us." Curt recoiled at the sudden venom in Sark's voice. "The future ?" That was what they had in common with Dell—psychosis, systematic delusions. He had suspected danger before; now it was imminent and terrifying. "Perhaps you are one of those who regard your accomplishments with pride," Sark went on savagely, ignoring or unaware of Curt's fear and horror. "That the hydrogen bombs smashed the cities, and the aerosols destroyed the remnants of humanity seems insignificant to you beside the high technical achievement these things represent." Curt's throat was dry with panic. Irrelevantly, he recalled the pain-fired eyes of Dell and the dying scientist's words: "The responsibility for the coming destruction of civilization lies at the doors of the scientist mercenaries—" "Some of us did manage to survive," said Sark, glaring at the scene of gaunt rubble. Curt could see the veins pounding beneath the thin flesh of his forehead. "We lived for twenty years with the dream of rebuilding a world, the same dream that has followed all wars. But at last we knew that the dream was truly vain this time. We survivors lived in hermetically sealed caverns, trying to exist and recover our lost science and technology. "We could not emerge into the Earth's atmosphere. Its pollution with virulent aerosols would persist for another hundred years. We could not bear a new race out of these famished and rickety bodies of ours. Unless Man was to vanish completely from the face of the Earth, we had only a single hope. That hope was to prevent the destruction from ever occurring!" Sark's eyes were burning now. "Do you understand what that means? We had to go back , not forward. We had to arm to fight a new war, a war to prevent the final war that destroyed Mankind." "Back? How could you go back?" Curt hesitated, grasping now the full insanity of the scene about him. "How have you come back?" He waited tautly for the answer. It would be gibberish, of course, like all the mad conversation before it.

test

50571

THE GREEN ODYSSEY by Philip José Farmer Make friends fast. — Handbook For The Shipwrecked Ballantine Books New York Copyright 1957, by Philip José Farmer Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 57-10603 Printed in the United States of America Ballantine Books, Inc. 101 Fifth Avenue, New York 3, N. Y. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] This is an original novel—not a reprint—published by Ballantine Books, Inc. To Nan Gerding DANGER! THRILLS! ADVENTURE! Alan Green was not exactly a hero. In fact he liked peace just as well as the next man. Not that he was really afraid of that crazy, hot-blooded hound-dog Alzo, or even of the hound's gorgeous owner, the Duchess Zuni—who was also hot-blooded (to say nothing of the Duke). After all, these things were understood on this backward, violent planet, and a man could manage, provided he was alert twenty-four hours a day. And as a matter of fact, Alan was only normally apprehensive of his Junoesque, tempestuous (but altogether lovable) wife Amra. Delightful, demanding Amra—and her five uproarious kids. The trouble was, he was tired. And homesick. So when he heard of two other downed spacemen, he hitched a ride with a piratical merchant-captain on a windroller destined to carry him to the spaceship and thence to the peaceful green hills of Earth. But he had reckoned without the vagaries of the windroller, pirates, the "traveling islands," the rascally Captain, and various flora and fauna peculiar to this planet—all of which, it now seemed, regarded Alan with unnerving malevolence. And worst of all, Amra was determined that he should be a hero. Amra won. 1 For two years Alan Green had lived without hope. From the day the spaceship had crashed on this unknown planet he had resigned himself to the destiny created for him by accident and mathematics. Chances against another ship landing within the next hundred years were a million to one. Therefore it would do no good to sit around waiting for rescue. Much as he loathed the idea, he must live the rest of his life here, and he must squeeze as much blood as he could out of this planet-sized turnip. There wasn't much to squeeze. In fact, it seemed to him that he was the one losing the blood. Shortly after he'd been cast away he'd been made a slave. Now, suddenly, he had hope. Hope came to him a month after he'd been made foreman of the kitchen slaves of the Duke of Tropat. It came to him as he was standing behind the Duchess during a meal and directing those who were waiting upon her. It was the Duchess Zuni who had not so subtly maneuvered him from the labor pens to his coveted, if dangerous, position. Why dangerous? Because she was very jealous and possessive, and the slightest hint of lack of attention from him could mean he'd lose his life or one limb or another. The knowledge of what had happened to his two predecessors kept him extremely sensitive to her every gesture, her every wish. That fateful morning he was standing behind her as she sat at one end of the long breakfast table. In one hand he held his foreman's wand, a little white baton topped by a large red ball. With it he gestured at the slaves who served food, who poured wine and beer, who fanned away the flies, who carried in the household god and sat it on the god chair, who played something like music. Now and then he bent over the Duchess Zuni's long black hair and whispered phrases from this or that love poem, praising her beauty, her supposed unattainability, and his burning, if seemingly hopeless, passion for her. Zuni would smile, or repeat the formula of thanks—the short one—or else giggle at his funny accent. The Duke sat at the other end of the table. He ignored the by-play, just as he ignored the so-called secret passage inside the walls of the castle, which Green used to get to the Duchess's apartments. Custom demanded this, just as custom demanded that he should play the outraged husband if she got tired of Green or angry at him and accused him publicly of amorous advances. This was enough to make Green jittery, but he had more than the Duke to consider. There was Alzo. Alzo was the Duchess's watchdog, a mastiff-like monster with shaggy red-gold hair. The dog hated Green with a vindictiveness that Green could only account for by supposing that the animal knew, perhaps from his body-odor, that he was not a native of this planet. Alzo rumbled a warning deep in his chest every time Green bent over the Duchess or made a too-sudden movement. Occasionally he rose to his four feet and nuzzled the man's leg. When that happened Green could not keep from breaking out into a sweat, for the dog had twice bitten him, playfully, so to speak, and severely lacerated his calf. As if that weren't bad enough, Green had to worry that the natives might notice that his scars healed abnormally fast, almost overnight. He'd been forced to wear bandages on his legs long after the new skin had come in. Even now, the nauseating canine was sniffing around Green's quivering hide in the hope of putting the fear of the devil in him. At that moment the Earthman resolved that, come the headsman's ax, rack, wheel, or other hellish tortures, he was going to kill that hound. It was just after he made that vow that the Duchess caused him to forget altogether the beast. "Dear," said Zuni, interrupting the Duke in the midst of his conversation with a merchant-captain, "what is this I hear about two men who have fallen from the sky in a great ship of iron?" Green quivered, and he held his breath as he waited for the Duke's reply. The Duke, a short, dark many-chinned man with white hair and very thick bristly salt-and-pepper eyebrows, frowned. "Men? Demons, rather! Can men fly in an iron ship through the air? These two claimed to have come from the stars, and you know what that means. Remember Oixrotl's prophecy: A demon will come, claiming to be an angel . No doubt about these two! Just to show you their subtlety, they claim to be neither demon nor angels, but men! Now, there's devilish clever thinking. Confusing to anybody but the most clear-headed. I'm glad the King of Estorya wasn't taken in." Eagerly Zuni leaned forward, her large brown eyes bright, and her red-painted mouth open and wet. "Oh, has he burned them already? What a shame! I should think he'd at least torture them for a while." Miran, the merchant-captain, said, "Your pardon, gracious lady, but the King of Estorya has done no such thing. The Estoryan law demands that all suspected demons should be kept in prison for two years. Everybody knows that a devil can't keep his human disguise more than two years. At the end of that time he reverts to his natural flesh and form, a hideous sight to behold, blasphemous, repulsive, soul-shaking." Miran rolled his one good eye so that only the white showed and made the sign to ward off evil, the index finger held rigidly out from a clenched fist. Jugkaxtr, the household priest, dived under the table, where he crouched praying, secure in the knowledge that demons couldn't touch him while he knelt beneath the thrice-blessed wood. The Duke swallowed a whole glass of wine, apparently to calm his nerves, and belched. Miran wiped his face and said, "Of course, I wasn't able to find out much, because we merchants are regarded with deep suspicion and scarcely dare to move outside the harbor or the marketplace. The Estoryans worship a female deity—ridiculous, isn't it?—and eat fish. They hate us Tropatians because we worship Zaxropatr, Male of Males, and because they must depend on us to bring them fish. But they aren't close-mouthed. They babble on and on to us, especially when one has given them wine for nothing." Green finally released his breath in a sigh of relief. How glad he was that he had never told these people his true origin! So far as they knew he was merely one of the many slaves who came from a distant country in the North. Miran cleared his throat, adjusted his violet turban and yellow robes, pulled gently at the large gold ring that hung from his nose and said, "It took me a month to get back from Estorya, and that is very good time indeed, but then I am noted for my good luck, though I prefer to call it skill plus the favor given by the gods to the truly devout. I do not boast, O gods, but merely give you tribute because you have smiled upon my ventures and have found pleasing the scent of my many sacrifices in your nostrils!" Green lowered his eyelids to conceal the expression of disgust which he felt must be shining from them. At the same time, he saw Zuni's shoe tapping impatiently. Inwardly he groaned, because he knew she would divert the conversation to something more interesting to her, to her clothes and the state of her stomach and/or complexion. And there would be nothing that anybody could do about it, because the custom was that the woman of the house regulated the subject of talk during breakfast. If only this had been lunch or dinner! Then the men would theoretically have had uncontested control. "These two demons were very tall, like your slave Green, here," said Miran, "and they could not speak a word of Estoryan. Or at least they claimed they couldn't. When King Raussmig's soldiers tried to capture them they brought from the folds of their strange clothes two pistols that only had to be pointed to send silent and awesome and sure death. Everywhere men dropped dead. Panic overtook many, but there were brave soldiers who kept on charging, and eventually the magical instruments became exhausted. The demons were overpowered and put into the Tower of Grass Cats from which no man or demon has yet escaped. And there they will be until the Festival of the Sun's Eye. Then they will be burnt...." From beneath the table rose the babble of the priest, Jugkaxtr, as he blessed everyone in the house, down to the latest-born pup, and the fleas living thereoff, and cursed all those who were possessed by even the tiniest demon. The Duke, growing impatient at the noise, kicked under the table. Jugkaxtr yelped and presently crawled out. He sat down and began gnawing the meat from a bone, a well-done-thou-good-and-faithful-servant expression on his fat features. Green also felt like kicking him, just as he often felt like kicking every single human being on this planet. It was hard to remember that he must exercise compassion and understanding for them, and that his own remote ancestors had once been just as nauseatingly superstitious, cruel and bloody. There was a big difference between reading about such people and actually living among them. A history or a romantic novel could describe how unwashed and diseased and formula-bound primitives were, but only the too-too substantial stench and filth could make your gorge rise. Even as he stood there Zuni's powerful perfume rose and clung in heavy festoons about him and slithered down his nostrils. It was a rare and expensive perfume, brought back by Miran from his voyages and given to her as a token of the merchant's esteem. Used in small quantities it would have been quite effective to express feminine daintiness and to hint at delicate passion. But no, Zuni poured it like water over her, hoping to cover up the stale odor left by not taking a bath more than once a month. She looked so beautiful, he thought. And stank so terribly. At least she had at first. Now she looked less beautiful because he knew how stupid she was, and didn't stink quite so badly because his nostrils had become somewhat adjusted. They'd had to. "I intend to be back in Estorya by the time of the festival," said Miran. "I've never seen the Eye of the Sun burn demons before. It's a giant lens, you know. There will be just time enough to make a voyage there and get back before the rainy season. I expect to make even greater profits than the last time, because I've established some highly placed contacts. O gods, I do not boast but merely praise your favor to your humble worshiper, Miran the Merchant of the Clan of Effenycan!" "Please bring me some more of this perfume," said the Duchess, "and I just love the diamond necklace you gave me." "Diamonds, emeralds, rubies!" cried Miran, kissing his hand and rolling his eye ecstatically. "I tell you, the Estoryans are rich beyond our dreams! Jewels flow in their marketplaces like drops of water in a cataract! Ah, if only the Emperor could be induced to organize a great raiding fleet and storm its walls!" "He remembers too well what happened to his father's fleet when he tried it," growled the Duke. "The storm that destroyed his thirty ships was undoubtedly raised by the priests of the Goddess Hooda. I still think that the expedition would have succeeded, however, if the late Emperor had not ignored the vision that came to him the night before they set sail. It was the great god Axoputqui, and he said...." There was a lengthy conversation which did not hold Green's attention. He was too busy trying to think of a plan whereby he could get to Estorya and to the demons' iron vessel, which was obviously a spaceship. This was his only chance. Soon the rainy season would start and there would be no vessels leaving for at least three months. He could, of course, just walk away and hope to get to Estorya on foot. Thousands of miles through countless perils, and he had only a general idea of where the city was ... no, Miran was his only hope. But how...? He didn't think that stowing away would work. There was always a careful search for slaves who might try just that very plan. He looked at Miran, the short, fat, big-stomached, hook-nosed, one-eyed fellow with many chins and a large gold ring in his nose. The fellow was shrewd, shrewd, and he would not want to offend the Duchess by helping her official gigolo escape. Not, that is, unless Green could offer him something that was so valuable that he couldn't afford not to take the risk. Miran boasted that he was a hard-headed businessman, but it was Green's observation that there was always a large soft spot in that supposedly impenetrable cranium: the Fissure of Cupiditas. 2 The Duke rose, and everybody followed his example. Jugkaxtr chanted the formula of dismissal, then sat down to finish gnawing on the bone. The others filed out. Green walked in front of Zuni in order to warn her of any obstacles in her path and to take the brunt of any attempted assassination. As he did so he was seized by the ankle and tripped headlong. He did not fall hard because he was a quick man, in spite of his six-foot-two and hundred ninety pounds. But he rose red-faced because of the loud laughter and from repressed anger at Alzo, who had again repeated his trick of grabbing Green's leg and upsetting him. He wanted to grab a spear from a nearby guard and spit Alzo. But that would be the end of Green. And whereas up to now there had been many times when he would not particularly have cared if he left this planet via the death route, he could not now make a false move. Not when escape was so near! So he grinned sheepishly and again preceded the Duchess, while the others followed her out. When they reached the bottom of the broad stone staircase that led to the upper floors of the castle, Zuni told Green that he was to go to the marketplace and buy tomorrow's food. As for her, she was going back to bed and sleep until noon. Inwardly Green groaned. How long could he keep up this pace? He was expected to stay up half the night with her, then attend to his official duties during the day. She slept enough to be refreshed by the time he visited her, but he never had a chance for any real rest. Even when he had his free hours in the afternoon he had to go to his house in the pens, and there he had to stay awake and attend to all his familial duties. And Amra, his slave-wife, and her six children demanded much from him. They were even more tyrannical than the Duchess, if that were possible. How long, O Lord, how long? The situation was intolerable; even if he'd not heard of the spaceship he would have plotted to escape. Better a quick death while trying to get away than a slow, torturous one by exhaustion. He bowed good-by to the Duke and Duchess, then followed the violet turban and yellow robes of Miran through the courtyard, through the thick stone walls, over the bridge of the broad moat, and into the narrow winding streets of the city of Quotz. Here the merchant-captain got into his silver-and-jewel-decorated rickshaw. The two long-legged men between its shafts, sailors and clansmen from Miran's vessel, the Bird of Fortune , began running through the crowd. The people made way for them, as two other sailors preceded them calling out Miran's name and cracking whips in the air. Green, after looking to make certain that nobody from the castle was around to see him, ran until he was even with the rickshaw. Miran halted it and asked what he wanted. "Your pardon, Your Richness, but may a humble slave speak and not be reprimanded?" "I presume it is no idle thought you have in mind," said Miran, looking Green over his one eye narrow in its fat-folds. "It has to do with money." "Ah, despite your foreign accent you speak with a pleasing voice; you are the golden trumpet of Mennirox, my patron god. Speak!" "First Your Richness must swear by Mennirox that you will under no circumstances divulge my proposal." "There is wealth in this? For me?" "There is." Miran glanced at his clansmen, standing there patiently, apparently oblivious of what was going on. He had power of life and death over them, but he didn't trust them. He said, "Perhaps it would be better if I thought about this before making such a drastic oath. Could you meet me tonight at the Hour of the Wineglass at the House of Equality? And could you perhaps give me a slight hint of what you have in mind?" "The answer to both is yes. My proposal has to do with the dried fish that you carry as cargo to the Estoryans. There is another thing, too, but I may not even hint at it until I have your oath." "Very well then. At the agreed hour. Fish, eh? I must be off. Time is money, you know. Get going boys, full sails." Green hailed a passing rickshaw and seated himself comfortably in it. As assistant majordomo he had plenty of money. Moreover, the Duke and Duchess would have been outraged if he had lowered their prestige by walking through the city's streets. His vehicle made good time, too, because everybody recognized his livery: the scarlet and white tricorn hat and the white sleeveless shirt with the Duke's heraldic arms on its chest—red and green concentric circles pierced by a black arrow. The street led always downward, for the city had been built on the foothills of the mountains. It wandered here and there and gave Green plenty of time to think. The trouble was, he thought, that if the two imprisoned men at Estorya were to die before he got to them he'd still be lost. He had no idea of how to pilot or navigate a spaceship. He'd been a passenger on a freighter when it had unaccountably blown up, and he'd been forced to leave the dying vessel in one of those automatic castaway emergency shells. The capsule had got him down to the surface of this planet and was, as far as he knew, still up in the hills where he'd left it. After wandering for a week and almost starving to death he'd been picked up by some peasants. They had turned him in to the soldiers of a nearby garrison, thinking he must be a runaway slave on whom they'd collect a reward. Taken to the capital city of Quotz, Green had almost been freed because there was no record of his being anybody's property. But his tallness, blondness and inability to speak the local language had convinced his captors that he must have wandered down from some far northern country. Therefore if he wasn't a slave he should be. Presto, changeo! He was. And he'd put in six months in a quarry and a year as a dock worker. Then the Duchess had chanced to see him on the streets as she rode by, and he'd been transferred to the castle. The streets were alive with the short, dark, stocky natives and the taller, lighter-complexioned slaves. The former wore their turbans of various colors, indicating their status and trade. The latter wore their three-cornered hats. Occasionally a priest in his high conical hat, hexagonal spectacles and goatee rode by. Wagons and rickshaws drawn by men or by big, powerful dogs went by. Merchants stood at the fronts of their shops and hawked their wares in loud voices. They sold cloth, grixtr nut, parchment, knives, swords, helmets, drugs, books—on magic, on religion, on travel—spices, perfumes, ink, rugs, highly sugared drinks, wine, beer, tonic, paintings, everything that went to make up their civilization. Butchers stood before open shops where dressed fowl, deer and dogs hung. Dealers in birds pointed out the virtues of their many-colored and multi-songed pets. For the thousandth time Green wondered at this strange planet where the only large animals were men, dogs, grass cats, a small deer and a very small equine. In fact, there was a paucity of any variety of animal life, except for the surprisingly large number of birds. It was this scarcity of horses and oxen, he supposed, that helped perpetuate slavery. Man and dog had to provide most of the labor. No doubt there was an explanation for all this, but it must be buried so deep in this people's forgotten history that one would never know. Green, always curious, wished that he had time and means to explore. But he didn't. He might as well resign himself to keeping a whole skin and to getting out of this mess as fast as he could. There was enough to do merely to make his way through the narrow and crowded streets. He had to display his baton often to clear a path, though when he approached the harbor area he had less trouble because the streets were much wider. Here great wagons drawn by gangs of slaves carried huge loads to or from the ships. The thoroughfares had to be broad, else the people would have been crushed between wagon and house. Here also were the so-called Pens, where the dock-slaves lived. Once the area had actually been an enclosure where men and women were locked up for the night. But the walls had been torn down and new houses built in the old Duke's time. The closest Earthly parallel Green could think of for these edifices was a housing project. Small cottages, all exactly alike, set in military columns. For a moment he considered stopping off to see Amra, then decided against it. She'd get him tied up in an argument or something, and he'd spend too much time trying to soothe her, time that should be spent at the marketplace. He hated scenes, whereas Amra was a born self-dramatist who reveled in them, almost wallowed, one might say. He averted his eyes from the Pens and looked at the other side of the street, where the walls of the great warehouses towered. Workmen swarmed around them, and cranes, operated by gangs pushing wheels like a ship's capstan, raised or lowered big bundles. Here, he thought, was a business opportunity for him. Introduce the steam engine. It'd be the greatest thing that ever hit this planet. Wood-burning automobiles could replace the rickshaws. Cranes could be run by donkey-engines. The ships themselves could have their wheels powered by steam. Or perhaps, he thought, rails could be laid across the Xurdimur, and locomotives would make the ships obsolete. No, that wouldn't work. Iron rails cost too much. And the savages that roved over the grassy plains would tear them up and forge weapons from them. Besides, every time he suggested to the Duke a new and much more efficient method of doing something he ran dead into the brick wall of tradition and custom. Nothing new could be accepted unless the gods accepted it. The gods' will was interpreted by the priests. The priests clutched the status quo as tightly as a hungry infant clutches its mother's breast or an old man clings to his property. Green could make a fight against the theocracy, but he didn't feel it was worth while to become a martyr. He heard a familiar voice behind him calling his name. "Alan! Alan!" He hunched his shoulders like a turtle withdrawing his head and thought desperately for a moment of trying to ignore the voice. But, though a woman's, it was powerful and penetrating, and everybody around him had already turned to see its owner. So he couldn't pretend he hadn't heard it. "ALAN, YOU BIG BLOND NO-GOOD HUNK OF MAN, STOP!" Reluctantly Green told his rickshaw boy to turn around. The boy, grinning, did so. Like everybody else along the harbor front he knew Amra and was familiar with her relations with Green. She held their one-year-old daughter in her arms, cradled against her magnificent bosom. Behind her stood her other five children, her two sons by the Duke, her daughter by a visiting prince, her son by the captain of a Northerner ship, her daughter by a temple sculptor. Her rise and fall and slow rise again was told in the children around her; the tableau embodied an outline of the structure of the planet's society. 3 Her mother had been a Northerner slave; her father, a native freeman, a wheelwright. When she was five years old they had died in a plague. She had been transferred to the Pens and raised by her aunt. When she was fifteen her beauty had attracted the Duke and he had installed her in the palace. There she gave birth to his two sons, now ten and eleven, who would soon be taken away from her and raised in the Duke's household as free and petted servants. The Duke had married the present Duchess several years after his liaison with Amra began and her jealousy had forced him to get rid of Amra. Back to the Pens she had gone; perhaps the Duke had not been too sad to see her go, for living with her was like living with a hurricane, and he liked peace and quiet too well. Then, in accordance with the custom, she had been recommended by the Duke to a visiting prince; the prince had overstayed his leave from his native country because he hated to part with her, and the Duke had wanted to give her as a present. But here he'd overstepped his legal authority. Slaves had certain rights. A woman who had borne a citizen a child could not be shipped away or sold unless she gave her permission. Amra didn't choose to go, so the sorrowing prince had gone home, though not without leaving a memento of his visit behind him. The captain of a ship had purchased her, but here again the law came to her rescue. He could not take her out of the country, and she again refused to leave. By now she had purchased several businesses—slaves were allowed to hold property and even have slaves of their own—and she knew that her two boys by the Duke would be valuable later on, when they'd go to live with him. The temple sculptor had used her as his model for his great marble statue of the goddess of Fertility. Well he might, for she was a magnificent creature, a tall woman with long, richly auburn hair, a flawless skin, large russet brown eyes, a mouth as red and ripe as a plum, breasts with which neither child nor lover could find fault, a waist amazingly slender considering the rest of her curved body and her fruitfulness. Her long legs would have looked good on an Earthwoman and were even more outstanding among a population of club-ankled females. There was more to her than beauty. She radiated a something that struck every male at first sight; to Green she sometimes seemed to be a violent physical event, perhaps even a principle of Nature herself. There were times when Green felt proud because she had picked him as her mate, chosen him when he was a newly imported slave who could say only a few words in the highly irregular agglutinative tongue. But there were times when he felt that she was too much for him, and those times had been getting too frequent lately. Besides, he felt a pang whenever he saw their child, because he loved it and dreaded the moment when he would have to leave it. As for deserting Amra, he wasn't sure how that would make him feel. Undeniably, she did affect him, but then so did a blow in the teeth or wine in the blood. He got down out of the rickshaw, told the boy to wait, said, "Hello, honey," and kissed her. He was glad she was a slave, because she didn't wear a nose-ring. When he kissed the Duchess he was always annoyed by hers. She refused to take it off when with him because that would put her on his level, and he mustn't ever forget he was a slave. It was perfectly moral for her to take a bondsman as a lover but not a freeman, and she was nothing if not moral. Amra's return kiss was passionate, part of which was the vigor of asperity. "You're not fooling me," she said. "You meant to ride right by. Kiss the children! What's the matter, are you getting tired of me? You told me you only accepted the Duchess's offer because it meant advancement, and you were afraid that if you turned her down she'd find an excuse to kill you. Well, I believed you—half-believed you, anyway. But I won't if you try sneaking by without seeing me. What's the matter? Are you a man or not? Are you afraid to face a woman? Don't shake your head. You're a liar! Don't forget to kiss Grizquetr; you know he's an affectionate boy and worships you, and it's absurd to say that in your country grown men don't kiss boys that old. You're not in your country—what a strange, frigid, loveless race must live there—and even if you were you might overlook their customs to show some tenderness to the boy. Come on back to our house and I'll bring up some of that wonderful Chalousma wine that came in the other day out of the cellar——" "What was a ship doing in your cellar?" he said, and he whooped with laughter. "By all the gods, Amra, I know it's been two days since I've seen you, but don't try to crowd forty-eight hours' conversation into ten minutes, especially your kind of conversation. And quit scolding me in front of the children. You know it's bad for them. They might pick up your attitude of contempt for the head of the house." "I? Contempt? Why, I worship the ground you walk on! I tell them continually what a fine man you are, though it's rather hard to convince them when you do show up and they see the truth. Still...."

test

50774

CONTAGION By KATHERINE MacLEAN [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really. It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf shadows. The hunt party of the Explorer filed along the narrow trail, guns ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries of strange birds. A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had been fired. "Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the forest. "Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked like a duck." "This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said soberly. "Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet. They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship Explorer towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and clouds, and they longed to be outside. But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships which had touched on some plague planet. The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion. The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the copper and purple shadows. They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved. This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder. They lowered their guns. "It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?" The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be wearing a three day growth of red stubble. Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria." "English?" gasped June. "We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass twice, but we couldn't attract its attention." June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not on the map." "We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We have been here three generations and yet no traders have come." Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D." "Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually. "Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos before." The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded steel. "What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked. He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked startlingly. "Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired. "Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the faces of the group. "So varied." They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled. "I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to insult them. "Joke?" Max asked, bewildered. June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us." She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What should a person look like, Mr. Mead?" He indicated her with a smile. "Like you." June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly humorous blue eyes. "In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and me?" Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin. "Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air is breathable." "For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague." Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers. "Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way people can look." Plague. "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked. "Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to do about it." "You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice. Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife and bow. "Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton. "No." "Any other diseases?" "Not a one." Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!" Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions. The polished silver and black column of the Explorer seemed to rise higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up. "Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming. "It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. Plenty good enough." The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos. "May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully. Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet of plants that covered the ground and began to open it. "Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be no good as a check for what the other Meads might have." Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and hypodermics. "Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest. "You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being smaller and frailer than Pat Mead. "Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the arm." Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine nerve surgeon on Earth. High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from their earphones: "What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat. Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew away over the odd-colored forest. "The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles without exposing them to air. "We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to wipe out a planet." "If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease." "Starting with me?" Pat asked. "Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on board." "More needles?" "Yes, and a few little extras thrown in." "Rough?" "It isn't easy." A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs. In the Explorer , stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name. But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient. Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions. Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes. All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him. June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall.... "I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully. Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally get something to eat?" "Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?" The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go jump in the lake?" "Are you hungry?" "No food since yesterday." "We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast. They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human blood cells, and fight back against them violently. One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human cells, and thus succumb more rapidly. "How ya doing, George?" Max asked. "Routine," George Barton grunted absently. On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green where there were fields. Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?" Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and began circling lazily. "Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it." "People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with excitement. "One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be out in twenty minutes." "May I go see him?" "Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets out. Tell him we sent you." "Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, the sound of unfamiliar voices. They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each table where people leisurely ate and talked. They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of conversation. "—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman." The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four different desserts, and assorted beverages. Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?" Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in." "Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away. A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward their table. "Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you really swim across a river to come here?" Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with us. Let me help choose your tray." Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting wild animals with a bow and arrow. "He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat." June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be claiming the hero of the hour. Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing. "When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and cocktail bars that used to be inside." "Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to the music, and tried to locate its source. "That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony. They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a day. Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth seeds with local ground, about mines and strata. There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center of interest. Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish. June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most chimingly of all. June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's end of the table. "That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness. "Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of guilt. Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of this. It sounds medical to me." Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy. "Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it." Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?" "Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry." "Why?" Len was aggrieved. "Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then you'd starve to death on a full stomach." Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn. "Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people had no doctors." "It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did it all right.'" "Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear. "Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—" She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, hunting, eating and reproducing alone. Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it. "Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he had taken them from." "What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward. "I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his neck at the age of eighty." "A character," Max said. Why was she afraid? "It worked then?" "Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were still eating out of hydroponics tanks." "It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank culture expert. There's a job for you." "Uh- uh !" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. Human cell control—right up your alley." "It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it just for the taste." Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they object?" "We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first." The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on the hour or run the risk of disease. Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters. Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the attack. June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was hairless and pink, like a still-born baby. "We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some temperature charts and graphs of blood counts. June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, then abruptly lightened. Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke. She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back. "Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they passed he lightly touched her arm. "Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, and knew that he had heard.

test

50566

Somewhere on the Time Ellipse Mike Kenscott became Adric; and the only way to return to his own identity was to find the Keep of the Dreamer, and loose the terrible FALCONS of NARABEDLA By Marion Zimmer Bradley [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Contents CHAPTER ONE Voltage—from Nowhere! Somewhere on the crags above us I heard a big bird scream. I turned to Andy, knee-deep in the icy stream beside me. "There's your eagle. Probably smells that cougar I shot yesterday." I started to reel in my line, knowing what my brother's next move would be. "Get the camera, and we'll try for a picture." We crouched together in the underbrush, watching, as the big bird of prey wheeled down in a slow spiral toward the dead cougar. Andy was trembling with excitement, the camera poised against his chest, his eyes glued in the image-finder. "Golly—" he whispered, almost prayerfully, "six foot wing spread—maybe more—" The bird screamed again, warily, head cocked into the wind. We were to leeward; the scent of the carrion masked our enemy smell from him. The eagle failed to scent or to see us, swooping down and dropping on the cougar's head. Andy's camera clicked twice. The eagle thrust in its beak— A red-hot wire flared in my brain. The bird—the bird—I leaped out of cover, running swiftly across the ten-foot clearing that separated us from the attacking eagle, my hand tugging automatically at the hunting knife in my belt. Andy's shout of surprised anger was a faraway noise in my ears as the eagle started away with flapping, angry wings—then, in fury, swept down at me, pinions beating around my head. I heard and felt the wicked beak dart in, and thrust blindly upward with the knife, ripped, slashing, hearing the bird's scream of pain and the flapping of wide wings. A red haze spun around me— Then the screaming eagle was gone and Andy's angry grip was on my shoulder, shaking me roughly. His voice, furious and frightened, was hardly recognizable. "Mike! Mike, you darned idiot, are you all right? You must be crazy!" I blinked, rubbing my hand across my eyes. The hand came away wet. I was standing in the clearing, the knife in my hand red with blood. Bird blood. I heard myself ask, stupidly, "What happened?" My brother's face came clear out of the thickness in my mind, scowling wrathfully. "You tell me what happened! Mike, what in the devil were you thinking about? You told me yourself that an eagle will attack a man if he's bothered. I had him square in the camera when you jumped out of there like a bat out of a belfry and went for the eagle with your knife! You must be clean crazy!" I let the knife drop out of my hand. "Yeah—" I said heavily, "Yeah, I guess I spoiled your picture, Andy. I'm sorry—I didn't—" my voice trailed off, helpless. The boy's hand was still on my shoulder; he let it drop and knelt in the grass, groping there for his camera. "That's all right, Mike," he said in a dead voice, "you scared the daylights out of me, that's all." He stood up swiftly, looking straight into my face. "Darn it, Mike, you've been acting crazy for a week! I don't mind the blamed camera, but when you start going for eagles with your bare hands—" abruptly he flung the camera away, turned and began to run down the slope in the direction of the cabin. I took a step to follow, then stopped, bending to retrieve the broken pieces of Andy's cherished camera. The kid must have hit the eagle with it. Lucky thing for me; an eagle can be a mean bird. But why, why in the living hell had I done a thing like that? I'd warned Andy time and time again to stay clear of the big birds. Now that the urgency of action had deserted me, I felt stupid and a little lightheaded. I didn't wonder Andy thought I was crazy. I thought so myself more than half the time. I stowed the broken camera in my tackle box, mentally promising Andy a better one; hunted up the abandoned lines and poles, carefully stowed them, cleaned our day's catch. It was dark before I started for the cabin; I could hear the hum of the electric dynamo I'd rigged up and see the electric light across the dusk of the Sierras. A smell of bacon greeted me as I crossed into the glare of the unshielded bulb. Andy was standing at the cookstove, his back stubbornly to me. He did not turn. "Andy—" I said. "It's okay, Mike. Sit down and eat your supper. I didn't wait for the fish." "Andy—I'll get you another camera—" "I said, it's okay. Now, damn it, eat." He didn't speak again for a long time; but as I stretched back for a second mug of coffee, he got up and began to walk around the room, restlessly. "Mike—" he said entreatingly, "you came here for a rest! Why can't you lay off your everlasting work for a while and relax?" He looked disgustedly over his shoulder at the work table where the light spilled over a confused litter of wires and magnets and coils. "You've turned this place into a branch office of General Electric!" "I can't stop now!" I said violently. "I'm on the track of something—and if I stop I'll never find it!" "Must be real important," Andy said sourly, "if it makes you act like bughouse bait." I shrugged without answering. We'd been over that before. I'd known it when they threw me out of the government lab, just after the big blowup. I thought, angrily. I'm heading for another one, but I don't care. "Sit down, Andy," I told him. "You don't know what happened down there. Now that the war's over, it's no military secret, and I'll tell you what happened." I paused, swallowing down the coffee, not knowing that it scalded my mouth. "That is—I will if I can." Six months before they settled the war in Korea, I was working in a government radio lab, on some new communications equipment. Since I never finished it, there's no point in going into details; it's enough to say it would have made radar as obsolete as the stagecoach. I'd built a special supersonic condenser, and had had trouble with a set of magnetic coils that wouldn't wind properly. When the thing blew up I hadn't had any sleep for three nights, but that wasn't the reason. I was normal then; just another communications man, intent on radio and this new equipment and without any of the crazy impractical notions that had lost me my job later. They called it overwork, but I knew they thought the explosion had disturbed my brain. I didn't blame them. I would have liked to think so. It started one day in the lab with a shadow on the sun and an elusive short circuit that gave me shock after shock until I was jittery. By the time I had it fixed, the oscillator had gone out of control. I got a series of low-frequency waves that were like nothing I'd ever seen before. Then there was something like a voice speaking out of a very old, jerry-built amateur radio set. Except that there wasn't a receiver in the lab, and no one else had heard it. I wasn't sure myself, because right then every instrument in the place went haywire and five minutes later, part of the ceiling hit the floor and the floor went up through the roof. They found me, they say, lying half-crushed under a beam, and I woke up eighteen hours later in a hospital with four cracked ribs, and a feeling as if I'd had a lot of voltage poured into me. It went in the report that I'd been struck by lightning. It took me a long time to get well. The ribs healed fast—faster than the doctor liked. I didn't mind the hospital part, except that I couldn't walk without shaking, or light a cigarette without burning myself, for months. The thing I minded was what I remembered before I woke up. Delirium; that was what they told me. But the kind and type of scars on my body didn't ring true. Electricity—even freak lightning—doesn't make that kind of burns. And my corner of the world doesn't make a habit of branding people. But before I could show the scars to anybody outside the hospital, they were gone. Not healed; just gone. I remembered the look on the medic's face when I showed him the place where the scars had been. He didn't think I was crazy; he thought he was. I knew the lab hadn't been struck by lightning. The Major knew it too; I found that out the day I reported back to work. All the time we talked, his big pen moved in stubby circles across the page of his log-book, and he talked without raising his head to look at me. "I know all that, Kenscott. No electrical storms reported in the vicinity; no radio disturbance within a thousand miles. But—" his jaw grew stubborn, "the lab was wrecked and you were hurt. We've got to have something for the record." I could understand all that. What I resented was the way they treated me after I went back to work. They transferred me to another division and another line of work. They turned down my request to follow up those nontypical waves. My private notes were ripped out of my notebook while I was at lunch and I never saw them again. And as soon as they could, they shipped me to Fairbanks, Alaska, and that was the end of that. The Major told me all I needed to know, the day before I took the plane to Alaska. His scowl said more than his words, and they said plenty. "I'd let it alone, Kenscott. No sense stirring up more trouble. We can't bother with side alleys, anyhow. Next time you monkey with it, you might get your head blown off, not just a dose of stray voltage out of the blue. We've done everything but stand on our heads trying to find out where that spare energy came from—and where it went. But we've marked that whole line of research closed , Kenscott. If I were you, I'd keep my mouth shut about it." "It wasn't a message from Mars," I suggested unsmiling, and he didn't think that was funny either. But there was relief on his face as I left the office and went to clean out my drawer. I got along all right in Alaska, for a while. But I wasn't the same. The armistice had hardly been signed when they sent me back to the States with a recommendation of overwork. I tried to explain it to Andy. "They said I needed a rest. Maybe so. The shock did something funny to me ... tore me open ... like the electric shock treatments they give catatonic patients. I know a lot of things I never learned. Ordinary radio work doesn't mean anything to me any more. It doesn't make sense. When people out west were talking about flying saucers or whatever they were—and when they talked about weather disturbances after the atomic tests, things did make sense for a while. And when we came down here—" I paused, trying to fit confused impressions together. He wasn't going to believe me, anyhow, but I wanted him to. A tree slapped against the cabin window; I jumped. "It started up again the day we came up in the mountains. Energy out of nowhere, following me around. It can't knock me out. Have you noticed I let you turn the lights on and off? The day we came up, I shorted my electric razor and blew out five fuses trying to change one." "Yeah, I remember, you had to drive to town for them—" My brother's eyes watched me, uneasy. "Mike, you're kidding—" "I wish I were," I said. "That energy just drains into me, and nothing happens. I'm immune." I shrugged, rose and walked across to the radio I'd put in here, so carefully, before the war. I picked up the disconnected plug; thrust it into the socket. I snapped the dial on. "I'll show you," I told him. The panel flashed and darkened; confused static came cracking from the speaker, erratic. I took my hand away. "Turn it up—" Andy said uneasily. My hand twiddled the dial. "It's already up." "Try another station;" the kid insisted stubbornly. I pushed all the buttons in succession; the static crackled and buzzed, the panel light flickered on and off in little cryptic flashes. I sighed. "And reception was perfect at noon," I told him, "You were listening to the news." I took my hand away again. "I don't want to blow the thing up." Andy came over and switched the button back on. The little panel light glowed steadily, and the mellow voice of Milton Cross filled the room ... "now conduct the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in the Fifth or 'Fate' symphony of Ludwig von Beethoven ..." the noise of mixed applause, and then the majestic chords of the symphony, thundering through the rooms of the cabin. "Ta-da-da-dumm——Ta-da-da-DUMM!" My brother stared at me as racing woodwinds caught up with the brasses. There was nothing wrong with the radio. "Mike. What did you do to it?" "I wish I knew," I told him. Reaching, I touched the volume button again. Beethoven died in a muttering static like a thousand drums. I swore and Andy sucked in his breath between his teeth, edging warily backward. He touched the dials again; once more the smoothness of the "Fate" symphony rolled out and swallowed us. I shivered. "You'd better let it alone!" Andy said shakily. The kid turned in early, but I stayed in the main room, smoking restlessly and wishing I could get a drink without driving eighty miles over bad mountain roads. Neither of us had thought to turn off the radio; it was moaning out some interminable throbbing jazz. I turned over my notes, restlessly, not really seeing them. Once Andy's voice came sleepily from the alcove. "Going to read all night, Mike?" "If I feel like it," I said tersely and began walking up and down again. "Michael! For the luvvagod stop it and let me get some sleep!" Andy exploded, and I sank down in the chair again. "Sorry, Andy." Where had the intangible part of me been, those eighteen hours when I first lay crushed under a fallen beam, then under morphine in the hospital? Where had those scars come from? More important, what had made a radio lab blow up in the first place? Electricity sets fires; it shocks men into insensibility or death. It doesn't explode. Radio waves are in themselves harmless. Most important of all, what maniac freak of lightning was I carrying in my body that made me immune to electrical current? I hadn't told Andy about the time I'd deliberately grounded the electric dynamo in the cellar and taken the whole voltage in my body. I was still alive. It would have been a hell of a way to commit suicide—but I hadn't. I swore, slamming down the window. I was going to bed. Andy was right. Either I was crazy or there was something wrong; in any case, sitting here wouldn't help. If it didn't let up, I'd take the first train home and see a good electrician—or a psychiatrist. But right now, I was going to hit the sack. My hand went out automatically and switched the light off. "Damn!" I thought incredulously. I'd shorted the dynamo again. The radio stopped as if the whole orchestra had dropped dead; every light in the cabin winked swiftly out, but my hand on the switch crackled with a phosphorescent glow as the entire house current poured into my body. I tingled with weird shock; I heard my own teeth chattering. And something snapped wide open in my brain. I heard, suddenly, an excited voice, shouting. "Rhys! Rhys! That is the man!" CHAPTER TWO Rainbow City " You are mad ," said the man with the tired voice. I was drifting. I was swaying, bodiless, over a huge abyss of caverned space; chasmed, immense, limitless. Vaguely, through a sleeping distance, I heard two voices. This one was old and very tired. "You are mad. They will know. Narayan will know." "Narayan is a fool," said the second voice. "Narayan is the Dreamer," the tired voice said. "He is the Dreamer, and where the Dreamer walks he will know. But have it your way. I am very old and it does not matter. I give you this power, freely—to spare you. But Gamine—" "Gamine—" the second voice stopped. After a long time, "You are old, and a fool, Rhys," it said. "What is Gamine to me?" Bodiless, blind, I drifted and swayed and swung in the sound of the voices. The humming, like a million high-tension wires, sang around me and I felt myself cradled in the pull of a great magnet that held me suspended surely on nothingness and drew me down into the field of some force beneath. Far below me the voices faded. I swung free—fell—plunged downward in sickening motion, head over heels, into the abyss.... My feet struck hard flooring. I wrenched back to consciousness with a jolt. Winds blew coldly in my face; the cabin walls had been flung back to the high-lying stars. I was standing at a barred window at the very pinnacle of a tall tower, in the lap of a weird blueness that arched flickeringly in the night. I caught a glimpse of a startled face, a lean tired old face beneath a peaked hood, in the moment before my knees gave way and I fell, striking my head against the bars of the window. I was lying on a narrow, high bed in a room filled with doors and bars. I could see the edge of a carved mirror set in a frame, and the top of a chest of some kind. On a bench at the edge of my field of vision there were two figures sitting. One was the old grey man, hunched wearily beneath his robe, wearing robes like a Tibetan Lama's, somber black, and a peaked hood of grey. The other was a slimmer younger figure, swathed in silken silvery veiling, with a thin opacity where the face should have been, and a sort of opalescent shine of flesh through the silvery-sapphire silks. The figure was that of a boy or a slim immature girl; it sat erect, motionless, and for a long time I studied it, curious, between half-opened lids. But when I blinked, it rose and passed through one of the multitudinous doors; at once a soft sibilance of draperies announced return. I sat up, getting my feet to the floor, or almost there; the bed was higher than a hospital bed. The blue-robe held a handled mug, like a baby's drinking-cup, at me. I took it in my hand hesitated— "Neither drug nor poison," said the blue-robe mockingly, and the voice was as noncommittal as the veiled body; a sexless voice, soft alto, a woman's or a boy's. "Drink and be glad it is none of Karamy's brewing." I tasted the liquid in the mug; it had an indeterminate greenish look and a faint pungent taste I could not identify, although it reminded me variously of anise and garlic. It seemed to remove the last traces of shock. I handed the cup back empty and looked sharply at the old man in the Lama costume. "You're—Rhys?" I said. "Where in hell have I gotten to?" At least, that's what I meant to say. Imagine my surprise when I found myself asking—in a language I'd never heard, but understood perfectly—"To which of the domains of Zandru have I been consigned now?" At the same moment I became conscious of what I was wearing. It seemed to be an old-fashioned nightshirt, chopped off at the loins, deep crimson in color. "Red flannels yet!" I thought with a gulp of dismay. I checked my impulse to get out of bed. Who could act sane in a red nightshirt? "You might have the decency to explain where I am," I said. "If you know." The tiredness seemed part of Rhys voice. "Adric," he said wearily. "Try to remember." He shrugged his lean shoulders. "You are in your own Tower. And you have been under restraint again. I am sorry." His voice sounded futile. I felt prickling shivers run down my backbone. In spite of the weird surroundings, the phrase "under restraint" had struck home. I was a lunatic in an asylum. The blue-robed one cut in in that smooth, sexless, faint-sarcastic voice. "While Karamy holds the amnesia-ray, Rhys, you will be explaining it to him a dozen times a cycle. He will never be of use to us again. This time Karamy won. Adric; try to remember. You are at home, in Narabedla." I shook my head. Nightshirt or no nightshirt, I'd face this on my feet. I walked to Rhys; put my clenched hands on his shoulders. "Explain this! Who am I supposed to be? You called me Adric. I'm no more Adric than you are!" "Adric, you are not amusing!" The blue-robe's voice was edged with anger. "Use what intelligence you have left! You have had enough sharig antidote to cure a tharl . Now. Who are you?" The words were meaningless. I stared, trapped. I clung to hold on to identity. "Adric—" I said, bewildered. That was my name. Was it? Wasn't it? No. I was Mike Kenscott. Hang on to that. Two and two are four. The circumference equals the radius squared times pi. Four rulls is the chemming of twilp— stop that! Mike Kenscott. Summer 1954. Army serial number 13-48746. Karamy. I cradled my bursting head in my hands. "I'm crazy. Or you are. Or we're both sane and this monkey-business is all real." "It is real," said Rhys, compassion in his tired face. "He has been very far on the Time Ellipse, Gamine. Adric, try to understand. This was Karamy's work. She sent you out on a time line, far, very far into the past. Into a time when the Earth was different—she hoped you would come back changed, or mad." His eyes brooded. "I think she succeeded. Gamine, I have long outstayed my leave. I must return to my own tower—or die. Will you explain?" "I will." A hint of emotion flickered in the voice of Gamine. "Go, Master." Rhys left the room, through one of the doors. Gamine turned impatiently to me again. "We waste time this way. Fool, look at yourself!" I strode to a mirror that lined one of the doors. Above the crimson nightshirt I saw a face—not my own. The sight rocked my mind. Out of the mirror a man's face looked anxiously; a face eagle-thin, darkly moustached, with sharp green eyes. The body belonging to the face that was not mine was lean and long and strongly muscled—and not quite human. I squeezed my eyes shut. This couldn't be—I opened my eyes. The man in the red nightshirt I was wearing was still reflected there. I turned my back on the mirror, walking to one of the barred windows to look down on the familiar outline of the Sierra Madre, about a hundred miles away. I couldn't have been mistaken. I knew that ridge of mountains. But between me and the mountains lay a thickly forested expanse of land which looked like no scenery I had ever seen in my life. I was standing near the pinnacle of a high tower; I dimly saw the curve of another, just out of my line of vision. The whole landscape was bathed in a curiously pinkish light; through an overcast sky I could just make out, dimly, the shadowy disk of a watery red sun. Then—no, I wasn't dreaming, I really did see it—beyond it, a second sun; blue-white, shining brilliantly, pallid through the clouds, but brighter than any sunlight I had ever seen. It was proof enough for me. I turned desperately to Gamine behind me. "Where have I gotten, to? Where— when am I? Two suns—those mountains—" The change in Gamine's voice was swift; the veiled face lifted questioningly to mine. What I had thought a veil was not that; it seemed to be more like a shimmering screen wrapped around the features so that Gamine was faceless, an invisible person with substance but no apprehensible characteristics. Yes, it was like that; as if there was an invisible person wearing the curious silken draperies. But the invisible flesh was solid enough. Hands like cold steel gripped my shoulders. "You have been back? Back to the days before the second sun? Adric, tell me; did Earth truly have but one sun?" "Wait—" I begged. "You mean I've travelled in time?" The exultation faded from Gamine's voice imperceptibly. "Never mind. It is improbable in any case. No, Adric; not really travelling. You were only sent out on the Time Ellipse, till you contacted some one in that other Time. Perhaps you stayed in contact with his mind so long that you think you are he?" "I'm not Adric—" I raged. "Adric sent me here—" I saw the blurring around Gamine's invisible features twitch in a headshake. "It's never been proven that two minds can be interchanged like that. Adric's body. Adric's brain. The brain convolutions, the memory centers, the habit patterns—you'd still be Adric. The idea that you are someone else is only an illusion of your conscious mind. It will wear off." I shook my head, puzzled. "I still don't believe it. Where am I?" Gamine moved impatiently. "Oh, very well. You are Adric of Narabedla; and if you are sane again, Lord of the Crimson Tower. I am Gamine." The swathed shoulders moved a little. "You don't remember? I am a spell-singer." I jerked my elbow toward the window. "Those are my own mountains out there," I said roughly. "I'm not Adric, whoever he is. My name's Mike Kenscott, and your hanky-panky doesn't impress me. Take off that veil and let me see your face." "I wish you meant that—" a mournfulness breathed in the soft contralto. A sudden fury blazed up in me from nowhere. "And what right have you to pry for that old fool Rhys? Get back to your own place, then, spell-singer—" I broke off, appalled. What was I saying? Worse, what did I mean by it? Gamine turned. The sexless voice was coldly amused. "Adric spoke then. Whoever sits in the seat of your soul, you are the same—and past redemption!" The robes whispered sibilantly on the floor as Gamine moved to the door. "Karamy is welcome to her slave!" The door slammed. Left alone, I flung myself down on the high bed, stubbornly concentrating on Mike Kenscott, shutting out the vague blurred mystery in my mind that was Adric impinging on consciousness. I was not Adric. I would not be. I dared not go to the window and look out at the terrifying two suns, even to see the reassurance of the familiar Sierra Madre skyline. A homesick terror was hurting in me. But persistently the Adric memories came, a guilty feeling of a shirked duty, and a frightened face—a real face, not a blurred nothingness—beneath Gamine's blue veils. Memories of strange hunts and a big bird on the pommel of a high saddle. A bird hooded like a falcon, in crimson. Consciousness of dress made me remember the—nightshirt—I still wore. Moving swiftly, without conscious thought, I went to a door and slid it open; pulled out some garments and dressed in them. Every garment in the closet was the same color; deep-hued crimson. I glanced in the mirror and a phrase Gamine had used broke the surface of my mind like a leaping fish. "Lord of the Crimson Tower." Well, I looked it. There had been knives and swords in the closet; I took out one to look at it, and before I realized what I was doing I had belted it across my hip. I stared, decided to let it remain. It looked all right with the rest of the costume. It felt right, too. Another door folded back noiselessly and a man stood looking at me. He was young and would have been handsome in an effeminate way if his face had not been so arrogant. Lean, somehow catlike, it was easy to determine that he was akin to Adric, or me, even before the automatic habit of memory fitted name and identity to him. "Evarin," I said, warily. He came forward, moving so softly that for an uneasy moment I wondered if he had pads like a cat's on his feet. He wore deep green from head to foot, similar to the crimson garments that clothed me. His face had a flickering, as if he could at a moment's notice raise a barrier of invisibility like Gamine's about himself. He didn't look as human as I. "I have seen Gamine," he said. "She says you are awake, and as sane as you ever were. We of Narabedla are not so strong that we can afford to waste even a broken tool like you." Wrath—Adric's wrath—boiled up in me; but Evarin moved lithely backward. "I am not Gamine," he warned. "And I will not be served like Gamine has been served. Take care." "Take care yourself," I muttered, knowing little else I could have said. Evarin drew back thin lips. "Why? You have been sent out on the Time Ellipse till you are only a shadow of yourself. But all this is beside the point. Karamy says you are to be freed, so the seals are off all the doors, and the Crimson Tower is no longer a prison to you. Come and go as you please. Karamy—" his lips formed a sneer. "If you call that freedom!" I said slowly, "You think I'm not crazy?" Evarin snorted. "Except where Karamy is concerned, you never were. What is that to me? I have everything I need. The Dreamer gives me good hunting and slaves enough to do my bidding. For the rest, I am the Toymaker. I need little. But you—" his voice leaped with contempt, "you ride time at Karamy's bidding—and your Dreamer walks—waiting the coming of his power that he may destroy us all one day!" I stared somberly at Evarin, standing still near the door. The words seemed to wake an almost personal shame in me. The boy watched and his face lost some of his bitterness. He said more quietly, "The falcon flown cannot be recalled. I came only to tell you that you are free." He turned, shrugging his thin shoulders, and walked to the window. "As I say, if you call that freedom."

test

50998

DELAY IN TRANSIT By F. L. WALLACE Illustrated by SIBLEY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] An unprovoked, meaningless night attack is terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse on a world across the Galaxy. But the horror is the offer of help that cannot be accepted! "Muscles tense," said Dimanche. "Neural index 1.76, unusually high. Adrenalin squirting through his system. In effect, he's stalking you. Intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon." "Not interested," said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible to anyone but Dimanche. "I'm not the victim type. He was standing on the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the habitat hotel and sit tight." "First you have to get there," Dimanche pointed out. "I mean, is it safe for a stranger to walk through the city?" "Now that you mention it, no," answered Cassal. He looked around apprehensively. "Where is he?" "Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise display." A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all travelers were crazy. Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk. It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he could walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea? A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was at a definite disadvantage. "Correction," said Dimanche. "Not simple assault. He has murder in mind." "It still doesn't appeal to me," said Cassal. Striving to look unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside, he might find safety for a time. Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would consider it dim. "Why did he choose me?" asked Cassal plaintively. "There must be something he hopes to gain." "I'm working on it," said Dimanche. "But remember, I have limitations. At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem over to the godawful police." "Godolph, not godawful," corrected Cassal absently. That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own, say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the proper approach, either. "Weapons?" "The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person." Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of protection himself. "Report," said Dimanche. "Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on tenuous evidence." "Let's have it anyway." "His motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. For some reason you can't get off this planet." That was startling information, though not strictly true. A thousand star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one. Of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. Godolph was a transfer point for stars nearer the center of the Galaxy. When he had left Earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here. He hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. Still, it wasn't unusual. Interstellar schedules over great distances were not as reliable as they might be. Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't? Denton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself. He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the company that employed him, and possibly not even to them. The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What did the thug want? Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for anyone this far away to have learned about it. And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't involve too much risk. "Better start moving." That was Dimanche. "He's getting suspicious." Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives like rain. He adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the rain. He widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it unhindered. He narrowed it around him until it approached visibility and the drops bounced away. He swore at the miserable climate and the near amphibians who created it. A few hundred feet away, a Godolphian girl waded out of the transport tide and climbed to the walkway. It was this sort of thing that made life dangerous for a human—Venice revised, brought up to date in a faster-than-light age. Water. It was a perfect engineering material. Simple, cheap, infinitely flexible. With a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout the city. The Godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly and noiselessly to his destination. Whereas a human—Cassal shivered. If he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. No investigation would be made. The thug who was trailing him had certainly picked the right place. The Godolphian girl passed. She wore a sleek brown fur, her own. Cassal was almost positive she muttered a polite "Arf?" as she sloshed by. What she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out. "Follow her," instructed Dimanche. "We've got to investigate our man at closer range." Obediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful out of her element, though. The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow, physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder. "Nothing," said Dimanche disgustedly. "His mind froze when we got close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed. Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans. That makes the knife definite." Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter. "Excellent thinking," commended Dimanche. "He won't attempt anything on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette." The lighter flared in his hand. "That's one way of finding out," said Cassal. "But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on getting back to the hotel?" "I'm curious. Turn here." "Go to hell," said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that intersection, he turned there. It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on the other. He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that. "Easy," warned Dimanche. "He's at the entrance to the alley, walking fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route." "I'm surprised, too," remarked Cassal. "But I wouldn't say I'm pleased. Not just now." "Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting." The mechanism concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued: "His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is critical." "That's no lie," agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand. He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness assumed an even more sinister quality. "Quiet," said Dimanche. "He's verbalizing about you." "He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask me for a light." "I don't think so," answered Dimanche. "He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'." "He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't there any clue?" "None at all," admitted Dimanche. "He's very close. You'd better turn around." Cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little. A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant shot by. "Hey!" shouted Cassal. Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling that no one was going to come to his assistance. "He wasn't expecting that reaction," explained Dimanche. "That's why he missed. He's turned around and is coming back." "I'm armed!" shouted Cassal. "That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you." Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto. "Twenty feet away," advised Dimanche. "He knows you can't see him, but he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare. What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep you posted below the level of his hearing." "Stay on him," growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against the wall. "To the right," whispered Dimanche. "Lunge forward. About five feet. Low." Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately, his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance, the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His opponent gasped and broke away. "Attack!" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "You've got him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's afraid." Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent fell to the ground, gasped and was silent. Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't move. "Heartbeat slow," said Dimanche solemnly. "Breathing barely perceptible." "Then he's not dead," said Cassal in relief. Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed from cuts on the face. "Respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated Dimanche. Horrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what could he do about it? Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney 21? Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want? "I don't know," replied Dimanche irritably. "I can interpret body data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat." Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all. Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of getting to Tunney 21. Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence. He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him. Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he was forced to the ground. He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping by way of water. Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in sight. "Interpret body data, do you?" muttered Cassal. "Liveliest dead man I've ever been strangled by." "It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the basic functions of their body," said Dimanche defensively. "When I checked him, he had no heartbeat." "Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't wanted to kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the police. He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away. Something, however, was missing—his wallet. The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle. Persistent fellow. Damned persistent. It really didn't matter. He fingered the clip he had taken from the supposedly dead body. He had intended to turn it over to the police. Now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. It contained more money than his wallet had. Except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it was more than a fair exchange. The identification, a rectangular piece of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he now had, he wouldn't need credit. If he did, he could always send for another tab. A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell. Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word, STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried. The old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed on the door. TRAVELERS AID BUREAU Murra Foray, First Counselor It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again. With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole. Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable. Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms. A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "Please answer everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be available for consultation." Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "Is this necessary?" he asked. "It's merely a matter of information." "We have certain regulations we abide by." The woman smiled frostily. "I can't give you any information until you comply with them." "Sometimes regulations are silly," said Cassal firmly. "Let me speak to the first counselor." "You are speaking to her," she said. Her face disappeared from the screen. Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression. Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him, Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney 21 was his own business. The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed, that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average, rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman. She glanced down at the data. "Denton Cassal, native of Earth. Destination, Tunney 21." She looked up at him. "Occupation, sales engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?" Her smile was quite superior. "Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of customer relations." "Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient." Her eyebrows arched. "I think so," he agreed blandly. "Anything else you'd like to know?" "Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you." He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't. "You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study under them." Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even less likely. There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21 that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag could set its own price, which could be control of all communications, transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of all that. His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher to come to Earth, if he could . Literally, he had to guess the Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition, the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as Dimanche was a key factor. Her voice broke through his thoughts. "Now, then, what's your problem?" "I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney 21." "Just a moment." She glanced at something below the angle of the screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. " Rickrock C arrived yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning." "Departed?" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "When will the next ship arrive?" "Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?" she asked. He didn't answer. "That's right," she said. "Billions. Tunney, according to the notation, is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly, Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on or near Godolph. Within the next five years—maybe." He blanched. "How long would it take to get there using local transportation, star-hopping?" "Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky." "I don't need that kind of luck." "I suppose not." She hesitated. "You're determined to go on?" At the emphatic nod, she sighed. "If that's your decision, we'll try to help you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification tab." "There's something funny about her," Dimanche decided. It was the usual speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear. Cassal ignored his private voice. "Identification tab? I don't have it with me. In fact, I may have lost it." She smiled in instant disbelief. "We're not trying to pry into any part of your past you may wish concealed. However, it's much easier for us to help you if you have your identification. Now if you can't remember your real name and where you put your identification—" She arose and left the screen. "Just a moment." He glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. His real name! "Relax," Dimanche suggested. "She didn't mean it as a personal insult." Presently she returned. "I have news for you, whoever you are." "Cassal," he said firmly. "Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you don't believe it, send back to—" He stopped. It had taken him four months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for anything. "I see you understand." She glanced at the card in her hand. "The spaceport records indicate that when Rickrock C took off this morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21." "It wasn't I," he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten it. "No doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "Outsiders don't seem to understand what galactic travel entails." Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably. She was still speaking: "Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years pass before he learns it's never coming. "If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time, credit established, lost identification replaced—" "I've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "I've never had any trouble." She seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. True, the center was more congested. Taking each star as the starting point for a limited number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide—why, no man would arrive at his predetermined destination. But that wasn't the way it worked. Manifestly, you couldn't compare galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a giant room. Or could you? For the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship, was the comparison too apt? It might be. "You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." She paused. "The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They don't encourage immigration." In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when his money was gone. Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring. "Next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification." "I won't," he promised grimly. The woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he. Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first counselor. "We're a philanthropic agency," said Murra Foray. "Your case is special, though—" "I understand," he said gruffly. "You accept contributions." She nodded. "If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that you'll have to compromise your standard of living." But she named a sum that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any appreciable time. He stared at her unhappily. "I suppose it's worth it. I can always work, if I have to." "As a salesman?" she asked. "I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do business with Godolphians." Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully. "Not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "I have special knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly—" He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large. From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he could get. Dimanche was his special advantage. "Anyway," he finished lamely, "I'm a first class engineer. I can always find something in that line." "A scientist, maybe," murmured Murra Foray. "But in this part of the Milky Way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't yet gained practical experience." She shook her head. "You'll do better as a salesman." He got up, glowering. "If that's all—" "It is. We'll keep you informed. Drop your contribution in the slot provided for that purpose as you leave." A door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle, swung open. The agency was efficient. "Remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is hard to work with. Don't accept a crude forgery." He didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. The agency was also eminently practical. The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the bureau. "I've got it," said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the first counselor had named. "Got what?" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle, attached his name, and dropped it into the chute. "The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner." "What's a Huntner?" "A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing about her home planet when I managed to locate her." "Any other information?" "None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached her. I got out as fast as I could." "I see." The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless, it sounded depressing. "What I want to know is," said Dimanche, "why such precautions as electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?" Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly inquisitive at times. Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him. He turned and peered. "You stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged. "Stuck?" repeated Cassal. "I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting for my ship." He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions. "Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency. Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency were new." The old man chuckled. "Re-organization. The previous first counselor resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed." She would do just that, thought Cassal. "What about this Murra Foray?" The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away. Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job, afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but he didn't intend to depend on that alone.

test

50802

A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS By BILL DOEDE Illustrated by WEST [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The city was sacred, but not to its gods. Michaelson was a god—but far from sacred! Crouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native. At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed. He chuckled to himself, wondering with amusement what a webfooted man was doing in an old dead city so far from his people. Some facts were known about the people of Alpha Centaurus II. They were not actually natives, he recalled. They were a colony from the fifth planet of the system. They were a curious people. Some were highly intelligent, though uneducated. He decided to ignore the man for the moment. He was far down the ancient street, a mere speck against the sand. There would be plenty of time to wonder about him. He gazed out from his position at the complex variety of buildings before him. Some were small, obviously homes. Others were huge with tall, frail spires standing against the pale blue sky. Square buildings, ellipsoid, spheroid. Beautiful, dream-stuff bridges connected tall, conical towers, bridges that still swung in the wind after half a million years. Late afternoon sunlight shone against ebony surfaces. The sands of many centuries had blown down the wide streets and filled the doorways. Desert plants grew from roofs of smaller buildings. Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact, marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog, under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun. Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs. The native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving his arms madly. "Mr. Earthgod," he cried. "It is sacred ground where you are trespassing!" The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short, even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man. "You never told us about this old dead city," Michaelson said, chidingly. "Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it beautiful?" "Yes, beautiful. You will leave now." "Leave?" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a child. "I just got here a few hours ago." "You must go." "Why? Who are you?" "I am keeper of the city." "You?" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was, said, "What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?" "The spirits may return." Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his trousers. He pointed. "See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say, some alloy impervious to rust and wear." "The spirits are angry." "Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons, and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it." "Leave!" The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly serious. "Look," he said. "No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half covered with sand and dirt." He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He glanced backward. The webfoot was following. "Mr. Earthgod!" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped. "You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now, or be killed." He turned and walked off, not looking back. Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide, hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him that. Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity. He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items, making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without tools. Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street. He stood there alone feeling the age of the place. Even the smell of age was in the air. Silver moonlight from the two moons filtered through clear air down upon the ruins. The city lay now in darkness, dead and still, waiting for morning so it could lie dead and still in the sun. There was no hurry to be going home, although he was alone, although this was Alpha Centaurus II with many unknowns, many dangers ... although home was a very great distance away. There was no one back there to worry about him. His wife had died many years ago back on Earth. No children. His friends in the settlement would not look for him for another day at least. Anyway, the tiny cylinder, buried in flesh behind his ear, a thing of mystery and immense power, could take him home instantly, without effort save a flicker of thought. "You did not leave, as I asked you." Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he relaxed. He said, "You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that." "You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill you, but if I must...." He made a clucking sound deep in the throat. "The spirits are angry." "Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like a clock but I'm certain it had some other function." "What rooms?" "Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were bedrooms." "I do not know." The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was sixty or seventy years old, at least. "You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some sort. What is it? What does it measure?" "I insist that you go." The webfoot held something in his hand. "No." Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been. "You are sensitive," the native said in his ear. "It takes a sensitive god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old streets." "Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian tombs—none can hold a candle to this." "Mr. Earthgod...." "Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it." The old man shrugged. "It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names you mention, are they the names of gods?" He chuckled. "In a way, yes. What is your name?" "Maota." "You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize...." Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like a waving palm frond and stamped his feet. "You will leave now." "Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They must be preserved. Future generations will thank us." "Do you mean," the old man asked, aghast, "that you want others to come here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!" "No." Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar. Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city. The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient street. When he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed a more practical place now. The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command, across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back. The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up. It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the writing. Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands. "God in heaven!" he exclaimed. He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he stooped and picked up the book again. "Good God!" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time. A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall, fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand. I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand lifetimes. And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those years! He started off toward the tall building he had examined upon discovery of the city. His left eyelid began to twitch and he laid his forefinger against the eye, pressing until it stopped. Then he stooped and entered the building. He laid the book down and tried to take the "clock" off the wall. It was dark in the building and his fingers felt along the wall, looking for it. Then he touched it. His fingers moved over its smooth surface. Then suddenly he jerked his hand back with an exclamation of amazement. Fear ran up his spine. The clock was warm. He felt like running, like flicking back to the settlement where there were people and familiar voices, for here was a thing that should not be. Half a million years—and here was warmth! He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling. Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason. He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for air, feeling the pain throb in his head. Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail of important discoveries he had no common sense. He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment. When he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east. Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair, familiar to Michaelson. Michaelson asked, "Did you sleep well?" "No." "I'm sorry to hear that." "How do you feel?" "Fine, but my head aches a little." "Sorry," Maota said. "For what?" "For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you." Michaelson relaxed somewhat. "What kind of man are you? First you try to break my skull, then you apologize." "I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright." He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon. It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its appearance. It was a deadly weapon. "Well," he said, "before you kill me, tell me about the book." He held it up for Maota to see. "What about the book?" "What kind of book is it?" "What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what kind of book? You have seen it. It is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it talks." "No, no. I mean, what's in it?" "Poetry." "Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history? Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a subject worthy of a book." Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must kill you now, so I can get some rest." The old man raised the gun. "Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than you can fire the gun." Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will kill you anyway." "I suggest we negotiate." "No." "Why not?" Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile, brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent. "Why not?" Michaelson repeated. "Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back. "Negotiate." "No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes. "All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that." Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun. "Wait!" "Now what?" "At least read some of the book to me before I die, then." The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said. Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book. "No, stay where you are. Throw it." "This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items around." "It won't break. Throw it." Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but his desire to hear the book was strong. Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley, Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations. The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages. "See?" he said. "The spirits read. They must have been great readers, these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk." Michaelson laughed. "You certainly have an imagination." "What difference does it make?" Maota cried, suddenly angry. "You want to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is, for spirits whose existence I cannot prove." The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved. Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man. He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers, hung on and was pulled to his feet. They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth, over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw impersonal shadows down where they fought. Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or hand—touched the firing stud. There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the total destruction they might have caused. "It only hit the ground," Michaelson said. A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how deep—stared at them. Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. "The book!" he cried. "The book is gone!" "No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought." Both men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or care. Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been. "We killed it," the old man moaned. "It was just a book. Not alive, you know." "How do you know?" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. "It talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it." "There are other books. We'll get another." Maota shook his head. "There are no more." "But I've seen them. Down there in the square building." "Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with songs." "I'm sorry." " You killed it!" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage. When he could talk again, Maota said, "I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've disgraced myself." "Don't be sorry." Michaelson helped him to his feet. "We fight for some reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either." "Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take them we lose forever." "I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never heard of negotiation?" "You are a god," Maota said. "One does not negotiate with gods. One either loves them, or kills them." "That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?" "Of course you are." Maota looked up, very sure. "Mortals cannot step from star to star like crossing a shallow brook." "No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that. Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than that." Maota laughed, then sobered quickly. "You lie." "No." "If I had this machine, could I travel as you?" "Yes." "Then I'll kill you and take yours." "It would not work for you." "Why?" "Each machine is tailored for each person." The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking half-heartedly again for the book. "Look," Michaelson said. "I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human. Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?" He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's face. Finally he shook his head sadly. "When we first met I hoped we could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We have finished, you and I." He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly. Michaelson caught up to him. "Are you leaving the city?" "No." "Where are you going?" "Away. Far away." Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant. "Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the city?" "There are many directions. You would not understand." "East. West. North. South. Up. Down." "No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see." Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading to a particular building. Michaelson said, "This is where you live?" "Yes." Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around. The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above the bed a "clock" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be. Maota pointed to it. "You asked about this machine," he said. "Now I will tell you." He laid his hand against it. "Here is power to follow another direction." Michaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight, then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he forced a short laugh. "Maota, you are complex. Why not stop all this mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I." "Of course." Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. "What do you suppose happened to this race?" "You tell me." "They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not die out, as a species becomes extinct." Michaelson was amused, but interested. "Something like a fourth dimension?" "I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death. I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science, who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the face of the instrument? Press the button, and...." "And what?" "I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now I will do so." Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly. The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more carefully. No question about it. The old man was dead. Feeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the knoll. Here he buried him. But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense more complete than death. In the days that followed he gave much thought to the "clock." He came to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination. Then he searched the books for information about the instrument. Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He had to know if the machine would work for him. And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the button. The high-pitched whine started. Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes; nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere. "Look!" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no direction. "Think of the city and you will see it." Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body. Maota's chuckle again. "The city will remain as it is. You did not win after all." "Neither did you." "But this existence has compensations," Maota said. "You can be anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth." Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread stretching from the reality of his body to his present state? "I don't like your thoughts," Maota said. "No one can go back. I tried. I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication with you. No one can go back." Michaelson decided he try. "No!" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger. Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and gave his most violent command. At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then it struck him. He was standing up! The cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind, leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the "clock" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place. To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence. "You devil!" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger, irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable. "I said you were a god. I said you were a god. I said you were a god...! "

test

51321

PRIME DIFFERENCE By ALAN E. NOURSE Illustrated by SCHOENHEER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Being two men rolled out of one would solve my problems—but which one would I be? I suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife. Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman like Marge— It's so permanent . Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968, and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved. You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime. So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long. Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where the dream stopped. She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband, which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a "beastly headache" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case. Maybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a while with one of the stenographers and get away with it. I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab Center in a week. But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found out when Jeree came along. Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any work—just to sit there. Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive. That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my mouth, and then she said, "I hear you got a new secretary today." I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear. Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. "I also hear that she's five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome." Marge had quite a spy system. "She couldn't be much of a secretary," she added. "She's a perfectly good secretary," I blurted, and kicked myself mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then. Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned. Harry Folsom administered the coup de grace at coffee next morning. "What you need is an Ego Prime," he said with a grin. "Solve all your problems. I hear they work like a charm." I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. "Don't be ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a thing. It's—it's indecent." Harry shrugged. "Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a friend who knows a guy—" Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie. As I said, a guy gets fed up. And maybe opportunity would only knock once. And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me. It was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime, Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was. From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how, why, and under what circumstances. The law didn't leave a man much leeway. But everybody knew that if you really wanted a personal Prime with all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be done. Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse off lower Broadway. "Ah, yes," the little man said. "Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting you." I didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the place. "I've been told you can supply me with a—" He coughed. "Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible." He fingered his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. "Busy executives often come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements. Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the merchandise ourselves—" He wiped his hands on his trousers. "Now were you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?" I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door for Utility models. "Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work, you know. Social engagements, conferences—" I was shaking my head. "I want a Super Deluxe model," I told him. He grinned and winked. "Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication. Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very awkward—" I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom. "We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You'll go to our laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I can assure you you'll be delighted, simply delighted." The blanks weren't very impressive—clay and putty and steel, faceless, brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all sorts. He was thorough—embarrassingly thorough, in fact—but finally he was finished. I went on to the laboratory. And that was all there was to it. Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it once he'd invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design, artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with the modern Ego Primes we have today. I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a tired look on his face. "Meet George Faircloth Prime," the technician said, grinning at me like a nursing mother. I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly. Nothing flabby about it. I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. "Come on, Brother," I said. "You've got a job to do." But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night. George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime did. If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders, he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my signature. It would hold up in court. And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time I chose, he'd do that, too. George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop George Prime dead in his tracks. He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a pile of gears. I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course. Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough, and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate him for it, but he'll win. With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage. At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn't want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but I would clean up the workshop. After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it. I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun. So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable. She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more. As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win. Eventually. If you're really persistent. Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night, there he was, just waiting to be put to work. After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and switched on the free-behavior circuits. "Go to it, Brother," I said. George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the house. Five minutes later, I heard them fighting. It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on the corner and headed uptown. We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car, business suit on, briefcase under his arm. I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him off and then drove away in the car. Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me! Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle with George Prime on hand to cover the home front. For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same whenever I took him out of his closet. "She's really a sweet girl underneath it all," I'd say. "You'll learn to like her after a bit." "Of course I like her," George Prime said. "You told me to, didn't you? Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all." He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. "You're sure you understand the exchange mechanism?" I asked. I didn't want any foul-ups there, as you can imagine. "Perfectly," said George Prime. "When you buzz the recall, I wait for the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop, and you take over." "But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off." George Prime looked pained. "Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model, remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous. I'll take care of everything. Relax." So I did. Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is. As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was wonderful. And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid. I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a reputation for myself around the office. Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable program. Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally "out" while formally "in." Sometimes I took Sunday nights "out" if things got too sticky around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is. There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had. But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model. Marge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it. I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to mellow sometime. But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too much. One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly because I liked it. We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old times. Very old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge again—really looking at her, watching the light catch in her hair, almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not glint. As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night, she was practically ravishing. "What are you doing to her?" I asked George Prime later, out in the workshop. "Why, nothing," said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent. "There must be something ." George Prime shrugged. "Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can give you page references." I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell when an odd bit of information will come in useful. "Well, you must be doing quite a job," I said. I'd never managed to warm Marge up much. "I try," said George Prime. "Oh, I'm not complaining," I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it was in character. "I was just curious." "Of course, George." "I'm really delighted that you're doing so well." "Thank you, George." But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand. The next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. " What are you doing out on the street? " He gave me my martyred look. "Just buying some bourbon. You were out." "But you're not supposed to be off the premises—" "Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her husband wouldn't let me, could I?" "Well, certainly not—" "You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get suspicious." "No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—" "I'm sorry," George Prime said contritely. "It seemed the right thing to do. You would have done it. At least that's what my judgment center maintained. We had quite an argument." "Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense," I snapped. "I don't want it to happen again." The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice job. Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss, despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by the fire. I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite perfume. "Georgie?" she said. "Uh?" "Do you still love me?" I set the paper down and stared at her. "How's that? Of course I still—" "Well, sometimes you don't act much like it." "Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight." Damn that perfume! "Oh," said Marge. "In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—" "Sleep," said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand. The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage. Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living room windows. George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little, the lights went off. George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right. I dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I punched the button again, viciously, and waited. George Prime didn't come out. It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a four-day hangover. Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly what he'd done. I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the laboratory could take him. But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that check of mine that had just bounced. "What check?" I asked. "The one you wrote to cash yesterday—five hundred dollars—against your regular account, Mr. Faircloth." The last I'd looked, I'd had about three thousand dollars in that account. I told the man so rather bluntly. "Oh, no, sir. That is, you did until last week. But all these checks you've been cashing have emptied the account." He flashed the checks on the desk screen. My signature was on every one of them. "What about my special account?" I'd learned long before that an account Marge didn't know about was sound rear-guard strategy. "That's been closed out for two weeks." I hadn't written a check against that account for over a year! I glared at the ceiling and tried to think things through. I came up with a horrible thought. Marge had always had her heart set on a trip to Bermuda. Just to get away from it all, she'd say. A second honeymoon. I got a list of travel agencies from the business directory and started down them. The third one I tried had a pleasant tenor voice. "No, sir, not Mrs. Faircloth. You bought two tickets. One way. Champagne flight to Bermuda." "When?" I choked out. "Why, today, as a matter of fact. It leaves Idlewild at eleven o'clock—" I let him worry about my amnesia and started home fast. I didn't know what they'd given that Prime for circuits, but there was no question now that he was out of control— way out of control. And poor Marge, all worked up for a second honeymoon— Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known all about George Prime. For how long? When I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his closet. And Marge wasn't in the house. They were gone. I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with an android. Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime wandering around. I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink. My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings. It was indecent. Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of grocery bundles. "Why, darling! You're home early!" I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, "You're still here!" "Of course. Where did you think I'd be?" "But I thought—I mean the ticket office—" She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes, almost smiling, half reproachful. "You didn't really think I'd go running off with something out of a lab, did you?" "Then—you knew?" "Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to run off with him to Hawaii or someplace." "Bermuda," I said. And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek against my chest. "Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be," she said. "He was like you, but he wasn't you , darling. And all I ever want is you. I just never appreciated you before...." I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. "But what did you do with him?" "I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more. We've got more interesting things to discuss." Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully porous, the old Marge was never like this— I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really happened. That Marge always had been a sly one. I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda. Marge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the laugh was on her, after all. As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty sad by comparison. She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers. As they say, there's nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated. A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow. One of these days, we'll take that second honeymoon. But I think we'll go to Hawaii.

test

49838

Jack of No Trades By EVELYN E. SMITH Illustrated by CAVAT [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I was psick of Psi powers, not having any. Or didn't I? Maybe they'd psee otherwise psomeday! I walked into the dining room and collided with a floating mass of fabric, which promptly draped itself over me like a sentient shroud. "Oh, for God's sake, Kevin!" my middle brother's voice came muffled through the folds. "If you can't help, at least don't hinder!" I managed to struggle out of the tablecloth, even though it seemed to be trying to wrap itself around me. When Danny got excited, he lost his mental grip. "I could help," I yelled as soon as I got my head free, "if anybody would let me and, what's more, I could set the table a damn sight faster by hand than you do with 'kinesis." Just then Father appeared at the head of the table. He could as easily have walked downstairs as teleported, but I belonged to a family of exhibitionists. And Father tended to show off as if he were still a kid. Not that he looked his age—he was big and blond, like Danny and Tim and me, and could have passed for our older brother. "Boys, boys!" he reproved us. "Danny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—picking on poor Kev." Even if it hadn't been Danny's fault, he would still have been blamed. Nobody was ever supposed to raise a voice or a hand or a thought to poor afflicted Kev, because nature had picked on me enough. And the nicer everybody was to me, the nastier I became, since only when they lost their tempers could I get—or so I believed—their true attitude toward me. How else could I tell? "Sorry, fella," Dan apologized to me. The tablecloth spread itself out on the table. "Wrinkles," he grumbled to himself. "Wrinkles. And I had it so nice and smooth before. Mother will be furious." "If she were going to be furious, she'd be furious already," Father reminded him sadly. It must be tough to be married to a deep-probe telepath, I thought, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for him. It was so seldom I got the chance to feel sorry for anyone except myself. "But I think you'll find she understands." "She knows, all right," Danny remarked as he went on into the kitchen, "but I'm not sure she always understands." I was surprised to find him so perceptive on the abstract level, because he wasn't what you might call an understanding person, either. "There are tensions in this room," my sister announced as she slouched in, not quite awake yet, "and hatred. I could feel them all the way upstairs. And today I'm working on the Sleepsweet Mattress copy, so I must feel absolutely tranquil. Everyone will think beautiful thoughts, please." She sat down just as a glass of orange juice was arriving at her place; Danny apparently didn't know she'd come in already. The glass bumped into the back of her neck, tilted and poured its contents over her shoulder and down her very considerable decolletage. Being a mere primitive, I couldn't help laughing. "Danny, you fumbler!" she screamed. Danny erupted from the kitchen. "How many times have I asked all of you not to sit down until I've got everything on the table? Always a lot of interfering busybodies getting in the way." "I don't see why you have to set the table at all," she retorted. "A robot could do it better and faster than you. Even Kev could." She turned quickly toward me. "Oh, I am sorry, Kevin." I didn't say anything; I was too busy pressing my hands down on the back of the chair to make my knuckles turn white. Sylvia's face turned even whiter. "Father, stop him— stop him! He's hating again! I can't stand it!" Father looked at me, then at her. "I don't think he can help it, Sylvia." I grinned. "That's right—I'm just a poor atavism with no control over myself a-tall." Finally my mother came in from the kitchen; she was an old-fashioned woman and didn't hold with robocooks. One quick glance at me gave her the complete details, even though I quickly protested, "It's illegal to probe anyone without permission." "I used to probe you to find out when you needed your diapers changed," she said tartly, "and I'll probe you now. You should watch yourself, Sylvia—poor Kevin isn't responsible." She didn't need to probe to get the blast of naked emotion that spurted out from me. My sister screamed and even Father looked uncomfortable. Danny stomped back into the kitchen, muttering to himself. Mother's lips tightened. "Sylvia, go upstairs and change your dress. Kevin, do I have to make an appointment for you at the clinic again?" A psychiatrist never diagnosed members of his own family—that is, not officially; they couldn't help offering thumbnail diagnoses any more than they could help having thumbnails. "No use," I said, deciding it was safe to drop into my chair. "Who can adjust me to an environment to which I'm fundamentally unsuited?" "Maybe there is something physically wrong with him, Amy," my father suggested hopefully. "Maybe you should make an appointment for him at the cure-all?" Mother shook her neatly coiffed head. "He's been to it dozens of times and he always checks out in splendid shape. None of us can spare the time to go with him again, just on an off-chance, and he could hardly be allowed to make such a long trip all by himself. Pity there isn't a machine in every community, but, then, we don't really need them." Now that the virus diseases had been licked, people hardly ever got sick any more and, when they did, it was mostly psychosomatic. Life was so well organized that there weren't even many accidents these days. It was a safe, orderly existence for those who fitted into it—which accounted for more than ninety-five per cent of the population. The only ones who didn't adjust were those who couldn't, like me—psi-deficients, throwbacks to an earlier era. There were no physical cripples, because anybody could have a new arm or a new leg grafted on, but you couldn't graft psi powers onto an atavism or, if you could, the technique hadn't been developed yet. "I feel a sense of impending doom brooding over this household," my youngest brother remarked cheerfully as he vaulted into his chair. "You always do, Timothy," my mother said, unfolding her napkin. "And I must say it's not in good taste, especially at breakfast." He reached for his juice. "Guess this is a doomed household. And what was all that emotional uproar about?" "The usual," Sylvia said from the doorway before anyone else could answer. She slid warily into her chair. "Hey, Dan, I'm here!" she called. "If anything else comes in, it comes in manually, understand?" "Oh, all right." Dan emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food floating ahead of him. "The usual? Trouble with Kev?" Tim looked at me narrowly. "Somehow my sense of ominousness is connected with him." "Well, that's perfectly natural—" Sylvia began, then stopped as Mother caught her eye. "I didn't mean that," Tim said. "I still say Kev's got something we can't figure out." "You've been saying that for years," Danny protested, "and he's been tested for every faculty under the Sun. He can't telepath or teleport or telekinesthesize or even teletype. He can't precognize or prefix or prepossess. He can't—" "Strictly a bundle of no-talent, that's me," I interrupted, trying to keep my animal feelings from getting the better of me. That was how my family thought of me, I knew—as an animal, and not a very lovable one, either. "No," Tim said, "he's just got something we haven't developed a test for. It'll come out some day, you'll see." He smiled at me. I smiled at him gratefully; he was the only member of my family who really seemed to like me in spite of my handicap. "It won't work, Tim. I know you're trying to be kind, but—" "He's not saying it just to be kind," my mother put in. "He means it. Not that I want to arouse false hopes, Kevin," she added with grim scrupulousness. "Tim's awfully young yet and I wouldn't trust his extracurricular prognostications too far." Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling a feeble renewal of old hopes. After all, young or not, Tim was a hell of a good prognosticator; he wouldn't have risen so rapidly to the position he held in the Weather Bureau if he hadn't been pretty near tops in foreboding. Mother smiled sadly at my thoughts, but I didn't let that discourage me. As Danny had said, she knew but she didn't really understand . Nobody, for all of his or her psi power, really understood me. Breakfast was finally over and the rest of my family dispersed to their various jobs. Father simply took his briefcase and disappeared—he was a traveling salesman and he had a morning appointment clear across the continent. The others, not having his particular gift, had to take the helibus to their different destinations. Mother, as I said, was a psychiatrist. Sylvia wrote advertising copy. Tim was a meteorologist. Dan was a junior executive in a furniture moving company and expected a promotion to senior rank as soon as he achieved a better mental grip on pianos. Only I had no job, no profession, no place in life. Of course there were certain menial tasks a psi-negative could perform, but my parents would have none of them—partly for my sake, but mostly for the sake of their own community standing. "We don't need what little money Kev could bring in," my father always said. "I can afford to support my family. He can stay home and take care of the house." And that's what I did. Not that there was much to do except call a techno whenever one of the servomechanisms missed a beat. True enough, those things had to be watched mighty carefully because, if they broke down, it sometimes took days before the repair and/or replacement robots could come. There never were enough of them because ours was a constructive society. Still, being a machine-sitter isn't very much of a career. And every function that wasn't the prerogative of a machine could be done ten times more quickly and efficiently by some member of my family than I could do it. If I went ahead and did something anyway, they would just do it all over again when they got home. So I had nothing to do all day. I had a special dispensation to take books out of the local Archives, because I was a deficient and couldn't receive the tellie programs. Almost everybody on Earth was telepathic to some degree and could get the amplified projections even if he couldn't transmit or receive with his natural powers. But I got nothing. I had to derive all my recreation from reading, and you can get awfully tired of books, especially when they're all at least a hundred years old and written by primitives. I could borrow sound tapes, but they also bored me after a while. I thought maybe I could develop a talent for composing or painting, which would classify me as a telesensitive—artistic ability being considered as the oldest, if least important, psi power—but I couldn't even do anything like that. About all there was left for me was to take long walks. Athletics were out of the question; I couldn't compete with psi-boys and they didn't want to compete with me. All the people in the neighborhood knew me and were nice to me, but I didn't need to be a 'path to tell what they were saying to one another when I hove into sight. "There's that oldest Faraday boy. Pity, such a talented family, to have a defective." I didn't have a girl, either. Although some of them were sort of attracted to me—I could see that—they could hardly go out with me without exposing themselves to ridicule. In their sandals, I would have done the same thing, but that didn't stop me from hating them. I wished I had been born a couple of hundred years ago—before people started playing around with nuclear energy and filling the air with radiations that they were afraid would turn human beings into hideous monsters. Instead, they developed the psi powers that had always been latent in the species until we developed into a race of supermen. I don't know why I say we —in 1960 or so, I might have been considered superior, but in 2102 I was just the Faradays' idiot boy. Exploring space should have been my hope. If there had been anything useful or interesting on any of the other planets, I might have found a niche for myself there. In totally new surroundings, the psi powers geared to another environment might not be an advantage. But by the time I was ten, it was discovered that the other planets were just barren hunks of rock, with pressures and climates and atmospheres drastically unsuited to human life. A year or so before, the hyperdrive had been developed on Earth and ships had been sent out to explore the stars, but I had no hope left in that direction any more. I was an atavism in a world of peace and plenty. Peace, because people couldn't indulge in war or even crime with so many telepaths running around—not because, I told myself, the capacity for primitive behavior wasn't just as latent in everybody else as the psi talent seemed latent in me. Tim must be right, I thought—I must have some undreamed-of power that only the right circumstances would bring out. But what was that power? For years I had speculated on what my potential talent might be, explored every wild possibility I could conceive of and found none productive of even an ambiguous result with which I could fool myself. As I approached adulthood, I began to concede that I was probably nothing more than what I seemed to be—a simple psi-negative. Yet, from time to time, hope surged up again, as it had today, in spite of my knowledge that my hope was an impossibility. Who ever heard of latent psi powers showing themselves in an individual as old as twenty-six? I was almost alone in the parks where I used to walk, because people liked to commune with one another those days rather than with nature. Even gardening had very little popularity. But I found myself most at home in those woodland—or, rather, pseudo-woodland—surroundings, able to identify more readily with the trees and flowers than I could with my own kind. A fallen tree or a broken blossom would excite more sympathy from me than the minor catastrophes that will beset any household, no matter how gifted, and I would shy away from bloody noses or cut fingers, thus giving myself a reputation for callousness as well as extrasensory imbecility. However, I was no more callous in steering clear of human breakdowns than I was in not shedding tears over the household machines when they broke down, for I felt no more closely akin to my parents and siblings than I did to the mechanisms that served and, sometimes, failed us. On that day, I walked farther than I had intended and, by the time I got back home, I found the rest of my family had returned before me. They seemed to be excited about something and were surprised to see me so calm. "Aren't you even interested in anything outside your own immediate concerns, Kev?" Sylvia demanded, despite Father's efforts to shush her. "Can't you remember that Kev isn't able to receive the tellies?" Tim shot back at her. "He probably doesn't even know what's happened." "Well, what did happen?" I asked, trying not to snap. "One starship got back from Alpha Centauri," Danny said excitedly. "There are two inhabited Earth-type planets there!" This was for me; this was it at last! I tried not to show my enthusiasm, though I knew that was futile. My relatives could keep their thoughts and emotions from me; I couldn't keep mine from them. "What kind of life inhabits them? Humanoid?" "Uh-uh." Danny shook his head. "And hostile. The crew of the starship says they were attacked immediately on landing. When they turned and left, they were followed here by one of the alien ships. Must be a pretty advanced race to have spaceships. Anyhow, the extraterrestrial ship headed back as soon as it got a fix on where ours was going." "But if they're hostile," I said thoughtfully, "it might mean war." "Of course. That's why everybody's so wrought up. We hope it's peace, but we'll have to prepare for war just in case." There hadn't been a war on Earth for well over a hundred years, but we hadn't been so foolish as to obliterate all knowledge of military techniques and weapons. The alien ship wouldn't be able to come back with reinforcements—if such were its intention—in less than six months. This meant time to get together a stockpile of weapons, though we had no idea of how effective our defenses would be against the aliens' armament. They might have strange and terrible weapons against which we would be powerless. On the other hand, our side would have the benefits of telekinetically guided missiles, teleported saboteurs, telepaths to pick up the alien strategy, and prognosticators to determine the outcome of each battle and see whether it was worth fighting in the first place. Everybody on Earth hoped for peace. Everybody, that is, except me. I had been unable to achieve any sense of identity with the world in which I lived, and it was almost worth the loss of personal survival to know that my own smug species could look silly against a still more talented race. "It isn't so much our defense that worries me," my mother muttered, "as lack of adequate medical machinery. War is bound to mean casualties and there aren't enough cure-alls on the planet to take care of them. It's useless to expect the government to build more right now; they'll be too busy producing weapons. Sylvia, you'd better take a leave of absence from your job and come down to Psycho Center to learn first-aid techniques. And you too, Kevin," she added, obviously a little surprised herself at what she was saying. "Probably you'd be even better at it than Sylvia since you aren't sensitive to other people's pain." I looked at her. "It is an ill wind," she agreed, smiling wryly, "but don't let me catch you thinking that way, Kevin. Can't you see it would be better that there should be no war and you should remain useless?" I couldn't see it, of course, and she knew that, with her wretched talent for stripping away my feeble attempts at privacy. Psi-powers usually included some ability to form a mental shield; being without one, I was necessarily devoid of the other. My attitude didn't matter, though, because it was definitely war. The aliens came back with a fleet clearly bent on our annihilation—even the 'paths couldn't figure out their motives, for the thought pattern was entirely different from ours—and the war was on. I had enjoyed learning first-aid; it was the first time I had ever worked with people as an equal. And I was good at it because psi-powers aren't much of an advantage there. Telekinesis maybe a little, but I was big enough to lift anybody without needing any superhuman abilities—normal human abilities, rather. "Gee, Mr. Faraday," one of the other students breathed, "you're so strong. And without 'kinesis or anything." I looked at her and liked what I saw. She was blonde and pretty. "My name's not Mr. Faraday," I said. "It's Kevin." "My name's Lucy," she giggled. No girl had ever giggled at me in that way before. Immediately I started to envision a beautiful future for the two of us, then flushed when I realized that she might be a telepath. But she was winding a tourniquet around the arm of another member of the class with apparent unconcern. "Hey, quit that!" the windee yelled. "You're making it too tight! I'll be mortified!" So Lucy was obviously not a telepath. Later I found out she was only a low-grade telesensitive—just a poetess—so I had nothing to worry about as far as having my thoughts read went. I was a little afraid of Sylvia's kidding me about my first romance, but, as it happened, she got interested in one of the guys who was taking the class with us, and she was not only too busy to be bothered with me, but in too vulnerable a position herself. However, when the actual bombs—or their alien equivalent—struck near our town, I wasn't nearly so happy, especially after they started carrying the wounded into the Psycho Center, which had been turned into a hospital for the duration. I took one look at the gory scene—I had never seen anybody really injured before; few people had, as a matter of fact—and started for the door. But Mother was already blocking the way. It was easy to see from which side of the family Tim had got his talent for prognostication. "If the telepaths who can pick up all the pain can stand this, Kevin," she said, " you certainly can." And there was no kindness at all in the you . She gave me a shove toward the nearest stretcher. "Go on—now's your chance to show you're of some use in this world." Gritting my teeth, I turned to the man on the stretcher. Something had pretty near torn half his face away. It was all there, but not in the right place, and it wasn't pretty. I turned away, caught my mother's eye, and then I didn't even dare to throw up. I looked at that smashed face again and all the first-aid lessons I'd had flew out of my head as if some super-psi had plucked them from me. The man was bleeding terribly. I had never seen blood pouring out like that before. The first thing to do, I figured sickly, was mop it up. I wet a sponge and dabbed gingerly at the face, but my hands were shaking so hard that the sponge slipped and my fingers were on the raw gaping wound. I could feel the warm viscosity of the blood and nothing, not even my mother, could keep my meal down this time, I thought. Mother had uttered a sound of exasperation as I dropped the sponge. I could hear her coming toward me. Then I heard her gasp. I looked at my patient and my mouth dropped open. For suddenly there was no wound, no wound at all—just a little blood and the fellow's face was whole again. Not even a scar. "Wha—wha happened?" he asked. "It doesn't hurt any more!" He touched his cheek and looked up at me with frightened eyes. And I was frightened, too—too frightened to be sick, too frightened to do anything but stare witlessly at him. "Touch some of the others, quick!" my mother commanded, pushing astounded attendants away from stretchers. I touched broken limbs and torn bodies and shattered heads, and they were whole again right away. Everybody in the room was looking at me in the way I had always dreamed of being looked at. Lucy was opening and shutting her beautiful mouth like a beautiful fish. In fact, the whole thing was just like a dream, except that I was awake. I couldn't have imagined all those horrors. But the horrors soon weren't horrors any more. I began to find them almost pleasing; the worse a wound was, the more I appreciated it. There was so much more satisfaction, virtually an esthetic thrill, in seeing a horrible jagged tear smooth away, heal, not in days, as it would have done under the cure-all, but in seconds. "Timothy was right," my mother said, her eyes filled with tears, "and I was wrong ever to have doubted. You have a gift, son—" and she said the word son loud and clear so that everybody could hear it—"the greatest gift of all, that of healing." She looked at me proudly. And Lucy and the others looked at me as if I were a god or something. I felt ... well, good. "I wonder why we never thought of healing as a potential psi-power," my mother said to me later, when I was catching a snatch of rest and she was lighting cigarettes and offering me cups of coffee in an attempt to make up twenty-six years of indifference, perhaps dislike, all at once. "The ability to heal is recorded in history, only we never paid much attention to it." "Recorded?" I asked, a little jealously. "Of course," she smiled. "Remember the King's Evil?" I should have known without her reminding me, after all the old books I had read. "Scrofula, wasn't it? They called it that because the touch of certain kings was supposed to cure it ... and other diseases, too, I guess." She nodded. "Certain people must have had the healing power and that's probably why they originally got to be the rulers." In a very short time, I became a pretty important person. All the other deficients in the world were tested for the healing power and all of them turned out negative. I proved to be the only human healer alive, and not only that, I could work a thousand times more efficiently and effectively than any of the machines. The government built a hospital just for my work! Wounded people were ferried there from all over the world and I cured them. I could do practically everything except raise the dead and sometimes I wondered whether, with a little practice, I wouldn't be able to do even that. When I came to my new office, whom did I find waiting there for me but Lucy, her trim figure enhanced by a snug blue and white uniform. "I'm your assistant, Kev," she said shyly. I looked at her. "You are?" "I—I hope you want me," she went on, coyness now mixing with apprehension. I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I do want you, Lucy. More than I can tell you now. After all this is over, there's something more I want to say. But right now—" I clapped her arm—"there's a job to be done." "Yes, Kevin," she said, glaring at me for some reason I didn't have time to investigate or interpret at the moment. My patients were waiting for me. They gave me everything else I could possibly need, except enough sleep, and I myself didn't want that. I wanted to heal. I wanted to show my fellow human beings that, though I couldn't receive or transmit thoughts or foretell the future or move things with my mind, all those powers were useless without life, and that was what I could give. I took pride in my work. It was good to stop pain and ugliness, to know that, if it weren't for me, these people would be dead or permanently disfigured. In a sense, they were—well, my children; I felt a warm glow of affection toward them. They felt the same way toward me. I knew because the secret of the hospital soon leaked out—during all those years of peace, the government had lost whatever facility it had for keeping secrets—and people used to come in droves, hoping for a glimpse of me. The government pointed out that such crowds outside the building might attract the enemy's attention. I was the most important individual on Earth, they told my followers, and my safety couldn't be risked. The human race at this stage was pretty docile. The crowds went away. And it was right that they should; I didn't want to be risked any more than they wanted to risk me. Plenty of people did come to see me officially—the President, generals, all kinds of big wheels, bringing citations, medals and other obsolete honors they'd revived primarily for me. It was wonderful. I began to love everybody. "Don't you think you're putting too much of yourself into this, Kev?" Lucy asked me one day. I gave her an incredulous glance. "You mean I shouldn't help people?" "Of course you should help them. I didn't mean anything like that. Just ... well, you're getting too bound up in your work." "Why shouldn't I be?" Then the truth, as I thought, dawned on me. "Are you jealous, Lucy?" She lowered her eyes. "Not only that, but the war's bound to come to an end, you know, and—" It was the first part of her sentence that interested me. "Why, do you mean—" And just then a fresh batch of casualties arrived and I had to tend to them. For the next few days, I was so busy, I didn't get the chance to have the long talk with Lucy I'd wanted.... Then, after only four months, the war suddenly stopped. It seemed that the aliens' weapons, despite their undeniable mysteriousness, were not equal to ours. And they had the added disadvantage of being light-years away from home base. So the remnant of their fleet took off and blew itself up just outside of Mars, which we understood to be the equivalent of unconditional surrender. And it was; we never heard from the Centaurians again. Peace once more. I had a little mopping up to do at the hospital; then I collected my possessions and went back home after a dignitary—only the Vice President this time—had thanked me on behalf of a grateful country. I wasn't needed any more.

test

20060

The Unexamined Game Is Not Worth Watching As an achiever, I constantly look for new techniques of achievement and seek to minimize behaviors with low achievement yield. Thus it is only natural that I have begun to worry about the amount of time I spend watching sports on television--an activity that does not measurably advance any of my personal or professional agendas. Most alarmingly, sports have become a steel curtain between me and my family. My wife and three daughters shun me when I turn on a ballgame. Occasionally I try to "relate" to the kids by asking them to fetch Daddy a beer, but I sense that they are drifting away--that I have become, for them, every bit as useless, burdensome, and low-yielding in immediate practical utility as they are for me. I realized that something had to change. I needed to take firm, decisive action. And so I made a solemn vow: I would teach my wife and kids to watch sports with me. Yes, I would! And something more: I would become a better, more sophisticated, more deeply engaged viewer of TV sports. I would become a man for whom sports viewership is not just a bad habit, but a skill. I have sought counsel from experts and engaged in rigorous tests in my own home. What follows are some simple precepts for Next Level sports viewership. The very first thing you must do, before we get into any actual viewing techniques, is ask yourself why sports are an important part of your life. Why do sports matter? Do you like sports because they show that effort, practice, and innovation lead to positive results? Because sports are an outlet for our primitive barbarian hostilities? Because in sports we discover a dramatic metaphor for our desire to move into new terrain and reach goals that can be statistically measured? The answer to all these questions is: Don't be stupid. You watch sports for the simple reason that sports don't matter a jot. You like sports precisely because of their utter insignificance. You find this relaxing. Always remember the pre-eminent rule of the sports junkie: 1. Don't start thinking like George Will. Next, you must configure your viewing area. For help in this regard I called Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films Inc., the company that produces Inside the NFL for HBO. Sabol, I knew, watches a heroic amount of football, from which he gleans the highlights for his films. NFL Films has a signature style: Sweaty, grunting, muddy men move in super slow motion while the baritone narrator describes the events as though the fate of nations hung in the balance. Sabol, a former college football player, says, "That's the way I wanted to show the game, with the snot spraying, the sweat flying. Football is a very visceral sport. Before we started it was always filmed from the top, and it looked like a little chess set." His viewing procedures are quite advanced. Every Sunday he watches three games at once. "I have a little cockpit that's built in my den. There's one set, the predominant game, that's on a 30-inch TV, and I have two 19-inch TVs that are slanted inward. So it's like a cockpit. You have to have good peripheral vision and you have to really concentrate." So that's the next tip: 2. Get more, and bigger, televisions. If you have only a single 19-inch television and you can't afford to upgrade, just sit a lot closer. If you get close enough to the set, it's almost as good as going out and buying a multi-thousand-dollar "home theater." Sabol said he has to take the occasional pit stop, but even that is conveniently arranged. "The bathroom's right by the set. If I have to take a piss I can still see the screen." 3. Keep your eye on the screen at all times, even when you are trying to trim a child's toenails. Sabol said he sits in a "Relax-a-back" chair, a kind of recliner, but cautions that this is not for the novice. The worst-case scenario for the sports viewer is the unplanned nap. "Those are dangerous. I only recommend those for the more experienced viewers. You need stamina to do this. You need a good night's sleep. You have to be careful about having too big a breakfast, because that will put you to sleep. The trick is to have a series of small snacks for a 10-hour period." 4. Come to the television rested. Don't eat meals--graze. (Sabol reckons that on a given Sunday he starts watching at 11 a.m. and doesn't stop until 11 p.m., at the end of the cable-TV broadcast. Before his divorce, his wife didn't quite understand that this was work, he says.) Now comes the harder stuff, the actual watching--the seeing, if you will--of the actions on the screen. You must keep in mind that you are not directly watching an event, but rather are watching a produced and directed telecast of an event, manipulated by talented but not infallible professionals. To better understand how a sports program is put together, I called Rudy Martzke, the TV sports columnist for USA Today , who watches between 40 and 60 hours of TV sports a week on the 60-inch Pioneer screen in his family room. Martzke is full of facts and well-educated opinions: The typical Monday Night Football broadcast uses about 13 cameras, compared with only about eight for Fox's primary game Sunday afternoon; Goodyear's Steadycam allows sharp-focus blimp shots even when the blimp is being blown all over the sky; the glowing puck used on Fox hockey games is officially called Fox Trax; Bob Costas at NBC is the best host in the business; and Al Michaels at ABC is the best play-by-play guy. Unseen to viewers, but extremely important, are the producers and directors. "The director is the guy who calls the shots you see on the screen. He's the one who inserts the graphics," says Martzke. "Got a guy sitting next to him who's called the technical director. The director, when he yells out the instructions, 'cut to this picture, that picture, this camera, that camera,' the guy who follows him up, physically, is the technical director. The producer sits to the left of the director. The producer is the one who gets in the replays, the one who's in charge of the format of the show. He makes sure all those commercial breaks get in, so they're paid." Obviously only Rudy Martzke ever thinks twice about these people, but this creates a chance for you to sound authoritative when someone challenges you on your sports-viewership expertise. Let other people talk about who caught what pass or made what tackle; you can say things like, "Sandy Grossman uses down-and-yardage graphics better than any director in the game." The point of all this is: 5. Never let anyone know that you've forgotten the name of the "announcer." The hardest part of all is knowing what to look for when you watch television. In basketball, for example, the referee will often blow the whistle and call "illegal defense," which few viewers ever see in advance. This is because they are only watching the ball. Illegal defense occurs when a defender plays zone rather than man-to-man. Thus you should always look for someone who's just guarding a patch of the court, standing around looking suspicious. When you detect an illegal defense before the referee makes the call, you have completely arrived as a TV sports viewer. In baseball, don't just watch the flight of the ball from the pitcher's hand toward the batter. Look directly at the pitcher's hand and see if you can see what kind of grip he's using--that will tell you whether it's a curve, slider, fastball, splitter, knuckleball, or whatever. In golf, look at the wrists and elbows of the golfer as he or she putts. The great ones have almost no movement in their arms, wrists, and hands other than the gentlest of pendulum swings. In hockey, change channels. You will never see the puck. When Sabol watches a football game, he scrutinizes an area in front of the runner and including the runner. "It's a semicircle with a radius of about 3 yards," he estimates. 6. Expand your zone of attention. In preliminary tests with my own family, I determined that they have a long, long, long way to go before they are major-league sports fans. One Sunday I plunked my two oldest daughters in chairs directly in front of the set and channel-surfed from baseball to basketball to women's golf to figure skating. During the basketball game, my medium-sized daughter, who is not quite 4, said of Joe Dumars: "Is that a girl?" So the first thing we will do, with this particular daughter, is work on gender identification. Both daughters, meanwhile, have decided to become figure skaters when they grow up. You can see that this is drifting into a scary area: I might teach them to watch sports on television, but they might decide that "sports" includes massive doses of Brian Boitano and Oksana Baiul. My natural inclination is to watch figure skating quadrennially. Mary, my wife, is simply a lost cause. She is an extremely discerning person who can detect the most subtle spice in a bowl of soup or a whisper of colored thread in a suit jacket, but for some reason she can stare at a basketball game on television and miss the important details, such as the ball going into the hoop. "What just happened?" I demanded to know after Michael Jordan made a jump shot during a Chicago Bulls game. "I don't know. I was still thinking about the last commercial," she said. 7. Don't pay attention to the commercials, the squeakiness of the basketball court, the spitting in the dugout, the sweating, or fluids of any kind. Once the techniques of viewing are mastered, there remains a major step: analysis. There is no point in watching if one is not really "seeing" anything. Sabol gave me a final tip that I will carry with me the rest of my years: 8. Prepare. "You have to come into the game prepared. You have to come into watching the game with your own game plan," Sabol said. "What are you going to look for? What are the keys to the game?" It's a rule from scouting: Be prepared. Think ahead. Anticipate problems and possible solutions. If you pick up the book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People , you will see that one of the habits is "be pro-active." Do not wait for the ballgame on television to come to you. You can go to the ballgame, mentally, emotionally, pro-actively. You can be a better sports viewer than anyone on your block, anyone with your ZIP code. Life is a competition. Be a champion.

test

20035

The Masked and the Unmasked Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia takes place on a dark night of the soul in the City of Angels. A patriarch is dying. No, hold on, this is a three-hour movie: Two patriarchs are dying. Rich geezer Jason Robards is slipping in and out of a coma on a bed with an oxygen tube up his nose while his minky young wife (Julianne Moore) acts out her despair at losing an old man she thought she'd married for his money. The geezer's nurse (Philip Seymour Hoffman) listens to his semi-coherent monologues then decides to get in touch with the dying man's estranged son (Tom Cruise), who gives inspirational lectures in which men are exhorted to "turn women into sperm receptacles" and to leave behind their "unmanly" pasts. The son gets a double dose of his unmanly past this night, since a female TV journalist (April Grace) has uncovered the history he has determinedly concealed and is eating through his mask of machismo on camera. "We may be through with the past," says someone, "but the past isn't through with us." The second dying paterfamilias is Philip Baker Hall as the host of a quiz show for bright kids. He bursts in on his estranged daughter (Melora Walters) with news of his imminent demise, but the addled girl for some reason (three guesses) won't have anything to do with him. His visit sends her into a cocaine-snorting frenzy, which is interrupted by a policeman (John C. Reilly) checking out her deafening stereo: "You've been doing some drugs today?" After 10 minutes, it isn't clear whether this dweebish flatfoot is interrogating her or trying to ask for a date--or whether he even knows. Meanwhile ( Magnolia could have been titled Meanwhile ), an aging ex-quiz-kid celebrity (William H. Macy) gets fired from his job and goes looking for the love he never had, while a contemporary quiz-kid celebrity (Jeremy Blackman) tries to make his father (Michael Bowen) understand that he wants to be loved for himself and not his TV achievements--even if that means peeing in his pants on-camera. What's the connection among these people? Some of the links are familial, others merely circumstantial. But everyone and their dad are having a really lousy day. At the peak of their collective loneliness, the cokehead daughter puts on a plaintive Aimee Mann song, the chorus of which goes: "It's not going to stop/ It's not going to stop/ It's not going to stop/ Till you wise up." She moves her lips and the director cuts to all the characters in all the movie's other strands as they all move their lips to the same universal refrain: "It's not going to stop …" The wife in the car sings. The aging quiz kid on the barstool sings. The cop searching for his lost gun sings. I thought, "Please don't make the guy in the coma sing, or I'm going to be hysterical"--but yup, the guy in the coma sings, too. At that point, I had an interesting reaction to Magnolia : I laughed at it and forgave it almost everything. OK, you could spend three hours snickering at Anderson's "What the World Needs Now Is Aimee Mann" metaphysic. But his vision cuts deeper than a lot of folky bathos. His characters have been screwed up by their families, so when he turns around and makes a case for family as the ultimate salvation, he doesn't seem simple-minded. He's saying the diaspora is understandable--but that it's also killing people. At the point where these people could actually start dying of aloneness, he goes metaphorical. He goes biblical. He goes nuts. He has sort of prepared us with weather reports and the recurrence of numerals suggesting an Old Testament chapter and verse. But nothing could prepare us for the full-scale, surreal, gross-out deluge that's the picture's splattery climax. For the second time, he dynamites his own movie. And for the second time I forgave him almost everything. What clinches Anderson's case for family is how beautifully he works with his surrogate clan. Many of the actors show up from his Hard Eight (1997) and Boogie Nights (1997), and he's so eager to get Luis Guzman into the film, despite the lack of a role, that he makes him a game-show contestant named "Luis Guzman." He's like a parent who can't stop adopting kids. Anderson knows what actors live to do: fall apart. He puts their characters' backs against the wall, then gives them speeches full of free associations and Freudian slips, so that they're suddenly exposed--and terrified by their nakedness. By the end of the first hour of Magnolia , the whole cast is unraveling. By the end of the second, they've unraveled so much that they've burst into song. Anderson must have needed that bonkers third-hour climax because there was nowhere to go short of spontaneous combustion. The actors are great--all of them. It seems unfair to single anyone out, but I loved Reilly's unsettling combination of sweetness and prudery--unsettling because he's just the kind of earnest, by-the-book cop whose wheels move too slowly in a crisis. Between tantrums, Julianne Moore opens and closes her mouth like a fish that's slowly suffocating at the bottom of a boat. And who would have expected a real performance from Tom Cruise? Anderson takes everything fake in Cruise's acting--the face-pulling, the too-quick smile--and turns it into the character's own shtick, so that when the mask is pulled off you get a startling glimpse of the rage and fear under the pose. Elsewhere, Anderson uses Mamet actors and Mamety diction, but he's the Anti-Mamet. He makes his actors feel so safe--so loved--that they seem to be competing to see who can shed the most skin. The title card of The Talented Mr. Ripley is a stroke of genius. Adjectives flash before the words Mr. Ripley , with "talented" an imperfect substitute for about 30 other possibilities, including "confused." Actually, I think confused (or vulnerable or desperate) would have been a more appropriate choice. As played by Matt Damon, this Ripley's chief talent is for licking his lips and looking clammily out of place. Dispatched to the south of Italy by a magnate named Greenleaf seeking the return of his wastrel son Dickie (Jude Law), the working-class Ripley has to pretend he's an old Princeton classmate. But nothing in Damon's demeanor remotely suggests the Ivy League. Beside the smooth, caramel-colored Law, even his pale little muscles seem like poseurs. Anthony Minghella ( The English Patient , 1996) has adapted The Talented Mr. Ripley from a thriller by Patricia Highsmith, and it's a gorgeously creepy piece of movie-making. The Old World luxury--even the Old World rot--is double-edged, subtly mocking its bantamweight New World protagonist. The light that bronzes everyone else burns poor, pasty Ripley. We watch him having the time of his life, but there's no question of his ever fitting in with Dickie, his willowy girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), or even their fat, to-the-manner-born pal Freddie Miles (a hilarious Philip Seymour Hoffman)--he's too tense, too hungry, too incomplete. When Ripley is by himself onscreen, there's nothing going on. Minghella is a thoughtful man and a snazzy craftsman, but by the end of Ripley , I wasn't sure what had attracted him to this material. What does a vaguely masochistic humanist see in Patricia Highsmith? The novel's Ripley (and the Ripley of René Clément's 1960 Purple Noon , Alain Delon) isn't so palpably out of his depth. With a bit of polish he can pass for a playboy, and the bad fun is watching him do anything to keep from accepting the swinish Dickie's view of him as an eternal loser. Damon's Ripley is an eternal loser, an anti-chameleon, and so conscientiously dreary that he lets Jude Law act him off the screen. He isn't allowed to feel a moment's glee at seizing what these rich boobs have denied him. Minghella comes up with a bleakly sincere ending that's the opposite of what this ironic little melodrama needs. He's trying to inflate it into tragedy, where Highsmith's setups are too cold and shallow to be tragic. The old biddy herself would have thought this ending stinks. Along with many Americans, I first caught Andy Kaufman on the Tonight Show in the mid-'70s. He sat next to Johnny Carson and in his helium-pitched "foreign man" voice told jokes without punch lines ("Her cooking ees so bad--ees terrible") and did non-impressionistic impressions; then he got up and launched into the most electrifying Elvis Presley takeoff I've ever seen. Without that final flourish of virtuosity, the shtick would have been just weird. With it, Kaufman signaled that his comedy was about more than untranscendent ineptitude: It was about wondrously fucking with your head. That whole act is reproduced in the funny, frustrating Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon , but not on the Tonight Show . Kaufman (Jim Carrey) does it onstage at a tiny club. We don't know where it came from or what the thinking was behind it. He brings down the house (lots of shots of people smiling and laughing), then goes out for a drink with a potential manager (Danny DeVito), who tells him, "You're insane--but you might also be brilliant." That's about as close to analysis as the picture gets. As in their Ed Wood (1994) and The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski take marginal or plain cruddy characters and stick them in the middle of breezily wide-eyed biopics. Their Horatio Alger tone is the joke, but it's not a joke that director Milos Forman seems to be in on. Forman tells one, deadly serious story: A reckless individualist is slowly crushed by society. It meshed with McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) but seemed odd with Mozart ( Amadeus , 1984) and disastrous with Valmont ( Valmont , 1989). With Andy Kaufman, it seems not so much wrong as beside the point. Where did the rage in Kaufman come from, and at what point did it kill the comedy? More important: Did Kaufman himself consider some of his experiments failures, or had his aesthetic finally become so punk/pro-wrestling that he thought driving people crazy was enough? As Jared Hohlt in Slate , the comedian got sick at the point where he needed to reinvent himself to keep from sinking into obscurity. The filmmakers reverse the trajectory (and the actual chronology of Kaufman's career), so that he seems to achieve a magical synthesis of warmth and aggression--and then gets cut down at his prime. That's not just bogus; it's false to the conflicts that ate Kaufman alive. The reason to see Man on the Moon is Jim Carrey. It's not just that he does the Kaufman routines with the kind of hungry gleam that makes you think he's "channeling" the dead comedian. It's that he knows what it's like to walk the high wire and bomb. He knows what it's like to lose control of his aggression: It happened to him in The Cable Guy (1996), maybe his real Andy Kaufman film. I bet that what Carrey saw from inside Kaufman's head would be more illuminating than anything in the movie. He's not just a man in the moon: He generates his own light. Anyone who reads Angela's Ashes is torn down the middle--appalled by the misery and deaths of small children and yet exhilarated, even turned on, by the cadences of Frank McCourt. His alcoholic father starved him of real food but filled his head with the kind of stories that nourished his poet's instincts. I worried that the movie, directed by Alan Parker, would miss McCourt's voice and dwell too much on the tragic details. But what happens is the opposite: McCourt narrates the film, and it turns into a lifeless slide show. There's no flow, no connective tissue between episodes. After the 80 th teensy scene goes by, you realize the movie isn't just botched: It doesn't even exist. Emily Watson suffers prettily, but whatever she's thinking stays in her head, and Robert Carlyle is so mopily present that you don't have a clue why such an earnest fellow would drink so many lives away. (The horror of the father McCourt describes is that he's not at home on planet Earth.) The narrator says his dad was a helluva storyteller, but the man on screen doesn't say so much as "Once upon a time …" Has anyone involved in this disaster ever heard a real story?

test

20049

If At First You Don't Secede Forget the Alamo! This sounds crass, but I can't deny it: I desperately wanted the standoff at the Republic of Texas trailer-trash compound to last longer than it did--for selfish reasons. Not weeks longer, mind you. Just a few hours. Just long enough for me to get there . Having missed all the famous government vs. fringe standoffs--Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Montana Freemen--I was determined to go and bear witness this time. I would find out at last if mysterious U.N.-dispatched "black helicopters" really buzz around at these things like giant hell-spawned bumblebees. I would document the local movements of guts-and-glory militia reinforcements. (A militia offensive of some sort was widely rumored on the Net, where one rabid militia man wrote: "WE HAVE HAD A BELLY FULL OF THE FBI, BATF, DEA, ETC. ETC. ... Lock and Load, prepare to Rock and Roll.") It sounds silly now, but militia trouble did seem plausible at Fort Davis. Wednesday, April 30, three days after the siege began, several heavily armed Republic of Texas members were apprehended at a truck stop near Pecos, Texas, about 90 miles from the action. Alas, none of it was to be. I took off from Newark, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3. After landing in El Paso, I called a militia contact who had agreed to ask around about possible right-wing bivouacs. (I even brought camping gear!) Things looked "hot" when I left--from inside his "embassy," ROT leader Richard McLaren was busily faxing out apocalyptic maydays--but his hot blood turned to pink Jell-O. "Hey!" said my contact. "Guess you heard. It's over." "What? No! McLaren was talking so tough." "Well, he came out." While I groaned, he described the final hours. McLaren had swallowed the old negotiator's bait of surrender "with honor." The lawmen treated him like the head of a brave conquered nation. He would be allowed to press in court his claim that the Republic of Texas had been illegally annexed by the United States in 1845. Then he would go to jail for many years. Not the best of deals, but he obviously preferred it to Plan B: getting shot. Irented a car and putted around morosely, listening to the radio and mulling over my options. Texas lawmen were boasting, justifiably, about the happy outcome. Yes, there was one tiny glitch--two ROT activists had somehow slipped away--but that was no problem. A drawling official said these fugitives were not experienced in the back country, so they would be easy pickings. For my part, I knew there would be little left to see. The militia would "stand down." Even the trailer compound--which had been tricked out with Swiss Family Robinson-style self-defense gizmos--was still off-limits to the media. There was, however, one notable event left: Sunday, members of the other factions of the Republic of Texas were holding a big rally in Kilgore, to make clear that the movement would live on. (The republic, as you probably know, contains three competing clans.) I unfolded my map. Hmmm. Kilgore was way over by Louisiana. Even at 75 miles per hour, I could count on driving at least 12 hours, making it just in time for the opening gavel at 1 p.m. Was it worth it? No, but what else could I do--go see the Carlsbad Caverns? I buckled up and hit the road. My Countries, Right or Wrong The trip was worth it, at least in terms of understanding what motivates Republic of Texas believers. What motivates them is: They're nuts. All of them. That word is somewhat loaded, so I should be more precise. ROT members are nuts like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels were nuts. They don't drool or wear their shirts backward, but they do expend insane amounts of energy on ridiculous "politics," dissipating most of it through meaningless infighting and petty posturing. Are they evil, hateful nuts? No. I kind of liked most of them. They would be fun people to go fishing with. Unfortunately, they have this other hobby: seceding from the union. And, being Texans, they have enough guns and ammo to potentially make matters not so cute. Most non-McLarian ROT members publicly disavow violence, but the possibility always lurks. Groups like the Republic of Texas exist in a murky gray zone where relatively harmless right-wing bigmouths meet the frightening shriekers of renegade militias, raising the question: At what point does nutty end and scary begin? You can never tell, but Richard Keyes III is a good example of how quickly A can become Z. Keyes is the 21-year-old McLaren follower who actually carried out the kidnapping and shooting that started the whole Fort Davis mess. He's originally from Kansas--so, to find out more about him, I called a county police detective there who tracks the far right. He'd heard of him only once, in a nutty-but-funny context. Keyes filed papers earlier this year demanding that Kansas return portions of the state to the rightful ownership of the Republic of Texas. Tee-hee. Next thing you know, however, he emerged as a serious shoot-'em-up guy. As for the meeting, it was simply funny-nutty, but it became all too clear that the republic's separatist fantasies will live on. A few hundred boisterous Texans--mostly men, middle-aged or above, with a fair number of angry young rednecks and dotty old women--filled the cramped banquet room of a run-down motor lodge in "downtown" Kilgore. Crowding one side of a long dais were frowning representatives of the two non-McLarian Republics of Texas. One is headed by David Johnson of Odessa, Texas. He didn't show up, but some of his "council" members did--they were gray, natty, and grumpy, like Baptist deacons. The other faction is under the sway of Archie Lowe, a long-haired guy who looks like an amiable Harley rider and whose followers are a tiny bit more young and with-it. The Archies' current agenda includes a quest for "international recognition" and the convening of a "Constitutional Convention" this July. The meeting itself was extremely hard to follow. After generic introblab, the floor was opened to "the people," a platoon of Brave New World Epsilons who lined up behind a floor microphone and took turns huffing and ranting. Among the highlights: A very pale young man stood up and said that Judgment Day was coming unless the Republic of Texas succeeded. Then he started crying. A stocky guy in a red shirt and a Republic of Texas cap stood and dramatically announced that he was the driver of one of the two vehicles detained by authorities in Pecos. It was all a gross injustice, of course. Yes, he and four ROT colleagues were traveling with full packs, semiautomatic weapons, pistols, radios, and plenty of ammo, but he said they were merely going to Kermit, Texas, to "hunt wild hogs." But Pecos is not on the way if you're going to Kermit from Garland. I asked him later: Why was he there? "I was curious about what was going on," he said. "On a personal level." A gap-toothed old woman yelped that the federal government is "getting boxcars prepared with some kind of leg irons in 'em to fasten you into place to ship you to concentration camps." OK, perhaps quoting the old woman is a cheap shot. Then again, I heard similar effusions from a high official--Jim Warmke, a wiry, sun-burnished old guy in a mustard-colored Western suit who serves as "secretary of commerce and trade" for the Branch McLarian remnant. I liked Jim, and I just hope his nuttiness stays "funny," but I have to wonder. When we met he extended a huge sandpapery hand and said: "Howdy! Jim Warmke. W-A-R-M-K-E. Hot lock, warm key." We talked about McLaren--"The man is a genius; he has a 160 IQ"--and I raised the question of violence. Given that the federal government and the state are always and forever going to kick ass in U.S. vs. Republic confrontations, when would a patriot like Jim feel justified in picking up a gun and charging? And with such overwhelming odds, why would he do that? "You'll not know how close some came," he said eerily. "I can tell you that the militias have but one methodology in mind. They do not intend to assemble 10-, 20-, 50,000 armed men in one spot and allow napalm to destroy them! There is a tactic called 'targets of availability.' What that means is ... Your interpretation would be terrorism. There is no one that can control that. There is no government could control that." Bomb talk! Did he hear about specific targeted sites? "I have suspicions, but I'll not answer that based on suspicions." After Jim left, two Archie-faction ROT men scurried over and nervously assured me that Jim was a kook. Great. Why didn't I feel reassured? The Joke Stops Here Monday, I finally visited Fort Davis on the way back to El Paso, just to get a feel for the place. Things sounded quite sparky on the radio. Early that morning, reports said that someone fired at the bloodhounds, and that lawmen were closing in. I arrived about 2 p.m. and roosted for a while by the police roadblock at the entrance to the Davis Mountain Resort subdivision. In the distance rose the stark, rocky, mesquite-covered peaks that define this area. A couple of dozen sunburned, siege-weary reporters were hanging around in cars, and one explained that the resort itself was miles and miles away. Whatever was happening, we wouldn't be able to see it or hear it. I took off and stopped for gas in the nearby town of Valentine. Inside I met an old codger named Clifford Beare, who had recently retired from the Jeff Davis County sheriff's department. I asked him if it would be hard for runaways to hide in treeless mountains. "Well, I guess, but you could hide. There's a lot of caves and stuff." Did he think these guys would get caught? "I think they will," he said. "Yes I do." He was half right. About that time one fugitive, believed to be Mike Matson, was getting shot to death in a gun battle. The other, Keyes, appears to have got away, and Tuesday, the authorities scaled back the search for him, making vague noises about the terrain and wild animals finishing him off. "He can ... only have a finite amount of food and water," said Mike Cox, who has been the state's spokesman throughout the siege. What? Of all these people, Keyes is the only survivor who demands to be taken seriously. He started the violence; he never gave up; and he went out ready to blast away and die. They better hope something gets him, because if he does stagger out of those mountains alive, he's going to be biblically, nuttily, and unfunnily pissed.

test

20057

Big-Bang Theology Did God cause the big bang? That is what half a dozen new books about science and religion--whose authors range from a Reagan-administration official to an Israeli physicist to an elementary-particle-theorist-turned-Anglican-priest--are saying. The fact that the universe abruptly exploded into existence out of apparent nothingness some 15 billion years ago, they submit, means it must have had a supernatural creator. A couple of months ago the same claim was enthusiastically aired at a Washington conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center under the rubric "Beyond the Death of God," with eminent thinkers such as Fred Barnes, Mona Charen, and Elliott Abrams in attendance. And the idea received a sympathetic hearing on William F. Buckley's show Firing Line a few weeks ago . The idea that only God could have caused the big bang is scarcely new. In fact, the big bang is probably the only idea in the history of science that was ever resisted because of its pro-God import. For much of the modern era, scientists followed Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton in believing the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. But in 1917, when Albert Einstein applied his theory of relativity to space-time as a whole, his equations implied that the universe could not be static; it must be either expanding or contracting. This struck Einstein as grotesque, so he added to his theory a fiddle factor called the "cosmological constant" that eliminated the implication and held the universe still. It was an ordained priest who took relativity to its logical conclusion. In 1927, Georges Lemaître of the University of Louvain in Belgium worked out an expanding model of the universe. Reasoning backward, he proposed that at some definite point in the past it must have originated from a primeval atom of infinitely concentrated energy. Two years later, Lemaître's model was confirmed by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had observed that the galaxies everywhere around us were receding. Both theory and empirical evidence pointed to the same verdict: The universe had an abrupt beginning in time. Churchmen rejoiced. Proof of the biblical account of creation had dropped into their laps. Pope Pius XII, opening a conference at the Vatican in 1951, declared that this scientific theory of cosmic origins bore witness "to that primordial 'Fiat lux ' uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore there is a creator, therefore God exists!" Marxists, meanwhile, gnashed their teeth. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter--one of the axioms of Lenin's dialectical materialism--and was accordingly dismissed as "idealistic." The Marxist physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as "scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church." Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. "Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological source," commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote, "The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me ... I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang. ... The expanding Universe is preposterous ... incredible ... it leaves me cold ." Even some believing scientists were troubled. The cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle simply felt that an explosion was an undignified way for the world to begin, rather like "a party girl jumping out of a cake." In a BBC interview in the 1950s, Hoyle sardonically referred to the hypothesized origin as "the big bang." The term stuck. Einstein overcame his metaphysical scruples about the big bang not long before his death in 1955, referring to his earlier attempt to dodge it by an ad hoc theoretical device as "the greatest blunder of my career." As for Hoyle and the rest of the skeptics, they were finally won over in 1965, when two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey accidentally detected a pervasive microwave hiss that turned out to be the echo of the big bang (at first they thought it was caused by pigeon droppings on their antenna). If you turn on your television and tune it between stations, about 10 percent of that black-and-white-speckled static you see is caused by photons left over from the cosmogonic event. What greater proof of the reality of the big bang--you can watch it on television! Since the '60s, scientists have been busy working out, and feuding over, the details of the big-bang cosmology. But God is not in the details--his existence is deducible from the mere fact that there is a world at all. So goes the cosmological argument , one of the three traditional arguments toward a Supreme Being. (Click to read the ontological argument and the teleological argument .) The reasoning starts off like this: 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. 2) The universe began to exist. 3) Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence. (Click to learn more about the surprising Islamic origins of this argument and what Ludwig Wittgenstein had to say about it.) There are many options for attacking the logic of this cosmological argument, and contemporary opponents of theism have tried them all. If everything needs a cause for its existence, then so does God. (More frequently heard in the form "But Mummy, who made God?") This objection fails because it gets Premise 1 wrong. The premise does not say that everything needs a cause but that everything that begins to exist does. God never began to exist--he is eternal. So he does not need a cause for his existence. Maybe the universe had a natural cause. But the big bang could not have been caused by prior physical processes. That is because it began with pointlike singularity , which, according to relativity theory, is not a "thing" but a boundary or an edge in time. Since no causal lines can be extended through it, the cause of the big bang must transcend the physical world. Well, then, perhaps it had no cause at all. It is hard to think of a principle more amply confirmed by our experience than that things do not just pop into existence uncaused. No one can really pull a rabbit out of a hat. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Yet something of the sort does seem to happen in the quantum world, where, owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, tiny "virtual particles" spontaneously appear and disappear all the time. An entire universe could do the same, claim some cosmologists. Calling themselves "nothing theorists," they have produced models showing how the cosmos could have burst into being all by itself out of a patch of "false vacuum," or a 3-D geometry of zero volume, or--in the case of Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University--literally nothing at all (this took Vilenkin four pages of math). So the universe is summoned out of the void by the laws of physics. But this can't be right. The laws of physics are just a set of equations, a mathematical pattern. They cannot cause the world to exist. As Stephen Hawking has written, "A scientific theory ... exists only in our minds and does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean)." Just because the universe is temporally finite does not mean it had a beginning. Speaking of Hawking, this is his famous "no boundary" proposal. "So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator," Hawking wrote in A Brief History of Time . "But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning or end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?" In Hawking's quantum cosmology, the pointlike singularity of the big bang is replaced by a smooth hemisphere in which space and time are commingled. "Time zero" becomes an arbitrary point, not a true beginning; it is no more a boundary than the North Pole is. Hawking's proposal is extremely popular with laymen who are hostile to the cosmological argument, judging from the mail I get. Apparently they enjoy being baffled by "imaginary time," a theoretical fiction Hawking uses to redescribe the big bang so that there is no beginning. In real time there still is a beginning. Sometimes Hawking says that imaginary time is "earlier" than real time, which is a logical contradiction; sometimes he suggests it might be more real than real time, which is an absurdity. OK, so the universe had a beginning, and hence a First Cause, which is, moreover, transcendent. How does it follow that this cause is God, or even God-like? Now there is an acute question. Philosopher Thomas Nagel has suggested that something humanly inconceivable lies behind the big bang. What, if anything, can really be inferred about the First Cause? Well, suppose that it were something mechanical. An ideal machine produces its effect either always or never; it does not just suddenly start to operate at some moment, unless someone gives it a kick. If a mechanical cause produced the universe at time T, there is no reason it should not have done so at time T minus 1. The argument can be repeated to T minus infinity: A mechanical cause would have either produced the universe from eternity or not at all. But the universe was created at one moment out of an infinity of other indistinguishable moments. This implies that the moment was freely chosen, and hence that the creator had a will, and to that extent a personal nature. And power. Yet the big-bang cosmology has one unwelcome consequence for theists. It seems to suggest that the Creator was a bungler. A singularity is inherently lawless. Anything at all can come out of one. It is exceedingly unlikely that a big-bang singularity should give rise to a universe whose conditions are precisely suitable for life, let alone the best of all possible worlds. As the American philosopher Quentin Smith has pointed out, "If God created the universe with the aim of making it animate, it is illogical that he would have created as its first state something whose natural evolution would lead with high probability only to inanimate states ." The only way God could have ensured the appearance of creatures in his own image was by repeatedly intervening and making adjustments to steer the evolution of the world away from lifeless disaster. But "a competent Creator does not create things he immediately or subsequently needs to set aright," observes Smith. (Remember, we are talking about the universe's physical infrastructure, not sinners with free will.) So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible . Turning to Genesis I read: "In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it."

test

20062

Eyes on the Prize These days, studios are inordinately attentive to my viewing habits. As a member of the National Society of Film Critics, which votes a slate of year-end prizes, I'm fielding calls from eager publicists who want to make sure I've seen all those award-worthy movies featuring all those award-worthy performances. I've tried to stay mum, so as to keep my voting options open, but it's hard for a guy brimming with opinions to be circumspect. Beloved ? A worthy effort. Oprah? Worthiness incarnate; I feel unworthy even to sit in judgment. Meryl Streep in Dancing at Lughnasa ? Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters ? Leonardo DiCaprio in Celebrity ? Damn worthy actors. (I enthused about DiCaprio when the sour Celebrity opened the New York Film Festival in September; since it shows up in theaters this week, you might want to click here so that I don't have to quote myself.) Streep should be awarded a rubber chicken for irradiating us with her yokel devotion in One True Thing (1998), but in Dancing at Lughnasa she goes a long way toward winning back her good (well, pretty good) name. As Kate Mundy, the stick-in-the-mud schoolteacher who presides over four younger, unmarried sisters in 1936 Donegal, Ireland, she holds her facial muscles tense and signals with her eyes her exhaustion from keeping them so fiercely in place. It is a terrible responsibility, upholding her society's values and preventing her siblings and Michael, the illegitimate son of her youngest sister, Christina (Catherine McCormack), from descending into chaos and impoverishment. Not to mention the fact that she's regarded by all as a stupid goose--or, as they call her in town, mocking her sexlessness, "the gander." Streep's performance is layered and compelling, but the film doesn't click. Closely based on Brian Friel's play, it wilts in translation the way Friel's potent but static dramas always do. On stage, every character, every prop, every interjection has a precise symbolic function; on film, those elements no longer stand out in relief. In Dancing at Lughnasa (it's pronounced LOO-nassa), the sisters reside in a sterile and repressive Ireland--but one in which the pagan past continues to bubble up, most visibly in the harvest feast of Lughnasa, when peasants take to the hills to build fires, drink to even greater excess than usual, and dance orgiastically. The rite is liberating but also frightening: Remove a cork from a bottle so pressurized, and the contents are apt to explode. The story, narrated by the now-grown Michael in the shopworn manner of The Glass Menagerie , is set in motion by the return of the boy's Uncle Jack (Michael Gambon) from Africa, where he has toiled as a missionary priest. Delusional, barely remembering his English, Jack becomes a rambling (and, to the local priest, horrific) spokesman for paganism, encouraging all his sisters to emulate Christina and have "children of love." There isn't much else in the way of a plot. Kate's position at the school, which is overseen by the local priest, is imperiled by the subversive presence of her brother. Michael's handsome dad (Rhys Ifans) roars back on a motorcycle to flirt with marriage to Christina: Will he stay or go fight the Fascists in Spain? Each sister chafes in her own way under Kate's oppressive rule--especially Rose (Sophie Thompson), the "simple" one, who might or might not be having an affair with a man whose wife and children have abandoned him for London. A weaving factory is opening nearby and threatens the household income. In venerable Chekhovian fashion, what happens on the surface only hints at the titanic plates that shift beneath, but the actresses--especially Streep, Thompson, Kathy Burke, and Brid Brennan--are supreme at conveying what's at stake. They create an indelibly glowering ensemble. So why isn't Dancing at Lughnasa more involving? It's probably because the director, Pat O'Connor, can't tell the difference between images that express Friel's themes and Hibernian wallpaper, and because his idea of expansive, pictorial beauty proves no substitute for Friel's powerfully compressed stage pictures. In the theater, the radio that crackles on and off signals a world elsewhere; and when it's repaired and the stage is flooded with music and the sisters--beaten down, confronted with only the grimmest of economic and social prospects--begin to dance and then lose themselves in the freedom of the dance, the moment is truly cathartic. On-screen it means the movie's almost over. People think I'm kidding when I say that my favorite film is The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but I can't imagine how I'd have survived an especially grisly puberty without the comfort of watching Boris Karloff express his anguish to an uncomprehending world through a misshapen body and halting language. Few films have ever offered so inspired a blend of sentimentality, Grand Guignol horror, and sophisticated camp, or such deliriously inventive laboratory bric-a-brac. The film's director, James Whale, has long been venerated for this and other droll '30s entertainments, among them The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933). Lately, he has also been scrutinized for being openly homosexual in an era when gay directors, such as George Cukor, kept that part of their lives rigidly compartmentalized. But not even David Ehrenstein in his trenchantly gossipy new book on the Hollywood closet, Open Secret , wants to make the case that Whale was penalized for his sexual preferences. If anything, the director seems to have suffered from a surfeit of dignity, proving too proud to overcome the loss of a powerful patron and a couple of ambitious flops. Comfortably rich, he took to painting and traveling before a series of strokes drove him to drown himself in his swimming pool--a suicide, though that fact was concealed from the public for 25 years. Gods and Monsters , based on Father of Frankenstein , a novel by Christopher Bram, explores the last days of the director (Ian McKellen) through the prism of a (fictional) friendship with a handsome, muscular, and heterosexual groundskeeper, Boone (Brendan Fraser). Critics have been unanimous in predicting statuettes in McKellen's future. Why? The movie is psychologically thin, artistically flabby, and symbolically opaque. Whale's Frankenstein films weren't personal testaments, but in Gods and Monsters they're raided for murky fantasy sequences. In one, the groundskeeper is the monster staggering around with Whale in his arms; in another, Whale is laid out on a laboratory slab being operated on by the groundskeeper. What's the metaphor? The script, meanwhile, is the stuff of bad two character plays, with spurious excuses for conflict (Boone storms out when Whale speaks tenderly of the naked, young men who once populated his pool) and a long, climactic monologue about a (fictional) wartime trauma that ostensibly shocked Whale into keeping his past under wraps. In Bram's novel, Boone is vaguely dangerous, a plausible suspect in Whale's death, but Fraser plays him (ingratiatingly) as a lovable lunk, and the conception removes whatever tension the material might have had. As Whale, McKellen wears his elegance lightly. His face is fascinatingly two tiered: lean in long shot, in close-up its features distend to the point of acromegaly, the mouth going slack with lust. But Whale's plangent ruminations are slack as well: "I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over," he tells Boone, in what is surely the most generic line for a "memory play" ever written. "Something about your face makes me want to tell the truth." All this mawkishness would likely have annoyed the real Whale, who exited the world on his own terms and steered clear, in his art, of banality. W>aking Ned Devine is this year's stab at The Full Monty (1997), which made more than $100 million and even snagged an Oscar nomination. Set in a quaint olde Irish seacoast village, it tells the story of an elderly lottery player, Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen), who learns that one of his fifty-odd neighbors holds the winning ticket to a 7 million pound drawing. By a process of elimination, he and his buddy Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) end up at the remote stone house of Ned Devine--whom they find dead in his armchair with the ticket between his fingers, the shock of his windfall having felled him. As Devine has no living relations, it makes sense for the impoverished old men to cook up a scheme by which Michael will assume the dead fisherman's identity, and the pair will divide the money between themselves. It was no surprise to read that Kirk Jones, the film's writer and director, doesn't hail from a small town in the Irish Republic or anywhere close. He makes TV commercials in London. Deciding he'd like to make an eccentric regional comedy with universal themes, he journeyed to a village in Ireland, set himself up in the pub, and took notes on what he saw and heard. Then he wrote a script that's one part Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), one part Preston Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), and about five parts synthetic whimsy. The movie is a passable entertainment--call it The Half Monty . It has standard issue (but funny) farcical sight gags and a score of panpipes to provide the requisite undercurrent of Celtic melancholy. There's a witchy Margaret Hamilton type (Eileen Dromey) who rides some sort of electric wheelchair and attempts to spoil the whole caper. There's also a stock ingénue (Susan Lynch) who loves the town's endearing pig farmer (James Nesbitt) but won't marry him because he smells so bad--and I'm not oversimplifying. Waking Ned Devine might have been a snooze if Jones hadn't stocked it with a slew of old actors with magically lived-in visages. The owlish Bannen can twinkle without looking dear--there's something saturnine in that face. As his Ed Norton-ish sidekick, Kelly walks off--or, rather, rides off--with the picture, his skeletal frame planted buck naked on a motorcycle as he rushes to reach Devine's house before the man from the lottery. I see a future for elderly male actors willing to shed their clothes for laughs, but I don't see myself in the audience. The term "slice of life" has come to mean dreary naturalism, but for the superb Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed Living Out Loud , that slice includes fantasy, fairy tale connections, sultry musical interludes, bridges that lead out, and bridges that lead nowhere. The movie, one of the year's most pleasant surprises, is the antithesis of Todd Solondz's Happiness , a humanist's answer to Solondz's evident conviction that life is all dead ends. When her cardiologist husband (Martin Donovan) leaves her, Judith Nelson (Holly Hunter) goes out into the world, her pain making her receptive to everything and everyone--from the elevator man (Danny DeVito) who returns her friendship with uninvited amorousness to the torch singer (Queen Latifah) who takes her to after-hours clubs, where she dances ecstatically with young women. Living Out Loud becomes an ode to openness, to letting in everything that the world throws at you. The movie made me remember why I like Holly Hunter. (I don't always remember.) Her delivery isn't moist--it's prickly and blunt, and she can jabber convincingly, so that the jabbering takes on a life of its own and leaves her (sometimes horrified) in the dust. I might even vote for her.

test

20063

Kosovo Con Games For weeks, critics of the war in Yugoslavia have pronounced it unwinnable. The atrocities continue unabated , they say. Air power alone will never get the job done. It's another Vietnam. President Clinton has blown it. Everything we do makes the situation worse. Whether Clinton and his allies can win the war remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: They can't win the debate over the war as long as critics are allowed to rig it with the following hidden premises: A. Selective Scrutiny 1. Policies. Critics observe that many things have gone badly since the air war began: Ethnic Albanians have been killed and expelled from Kosovo and anti-American nationalism has grown in Russia. It's easy to associate bad outcomes with the current policy. But critics seldom apply the same kind of scrutiny to alternative policies. If NATO had forsworn the use of force against the Serbs, what would the Serbs ultimately have done to the Kosovar Albanians? If NATO had launched a ground war, what would Russia be doing now? If, as critics observe, the Serbs have managed to cleanse Kosovo in less than four weeks, what difference could NATO have made by beginning a ground force buildup (which takes considerable time) a month ago? 2. Policy-makers. American reporters think their job is to examine U.S. policy-makers not foreign policy-makers. So they discount Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's behavior as an objective consequence of Clinton's subjective decisions. When Serbian ethnic cleansing follows NATO bombing, reporters treat the Serbian action not as the product of free will but as a reaction determined by NATO's action. So while journalists on the ground report on Serbian atrocities, journalists in the studios and the newsrooms in effect pass the blame to NATO and Clinton. This bias has produced a bizarre blame-America-first spin on the right. "We have ignited the very human rights catastrophe the war was started to avoid," declared Pat Buchanan on Face the Nation . Columnist Arianna Huffington compared Kosovo to Waco, arguing that just as Clinton's actions six years ago "precipitated" the murder-suicides by the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, his intervention in Kosovo "has unwittingly produced one of the great humanitarian catastrophes of the 20 th century." While some conservatives allege that Clinton's unnecessary belligerence provoked the Serbs to ethnic cleansing, others say his timidity about using ground troops "emboldened" the Serbs to the same effect. Clinton even gets the blame for Russian hostility. On Meet the Press , Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., accused Clinton of "pushing Russia into a corner and putting them in a position where they're no longer able to do anything but to react in an aggressive way towards our action." 3. Moral actors. When the Serbs butcher another 50 Kosovar Albanians or drive another 100,000 out of Kosovo, it's a dog-bites-man story. When NATO bombs what it thought was a military convoy and instead hits a caravan of civilian refugees, killing scores, it's a man-bites-dog story. For several days, the media treated the casualties caused by NATO as the lead story from Kosovo, overshadowing far greater casualties caused during that time by the Serbs. "This may have cost NATO the moral high ground," declared John McLaughlin, invoking the moral-equivalence formula usually despised by conservatives. Meanwhile, the Serbs' role in pushing the refugees onto the road in the middle of a war zone was scarcely mentioned. B. Sleight-of-Hand Inferences 4. Unachieved to unachievable. Today's media report news instantaneously and expect it to be made instantaneously as well. In less than two weeks, their verdict on the bombing of Yugoslavia leapt from unfulfilled objectives to failure to impossibility. Since air power hasn't brought the Serbs to their knees in four weeks, the media conclude that it never will. Congressional Republicans have decided it's "doomed to failure," according to Fred Barnes. Never mind that under NATO's plan, the bombing will become more severe each week. 5. Vietnam to Kosovo. Critics constantly compare Kosovo to Vietnam. They infer two lessons from Vietnam: that "gradual escalation" never works and that "bombing" can't break an enemy's will. The trick in invoking such analogies is to ignore the differences: that the war in Kosovo is being waged by 19 countries against one; that no superpower is willing to prop up the targeted country; and that today's air power and surveillance are vastly more precise than the "bombing" technology used in Vietnam. 6. Sinner to sin. Critics on the right argue that because Clinton is untrustworthy, so is the war. As George Will put it last week, the contempt of court citation against Clinton for falsely denying his affair with Monica Lewinsky is "a timely reminder of the mendacity that drenches his presidency, including his Balkan policy." Meanwhile, critics on the left argue that because the United States failed to intervene in Rwanda, its intervention in Kosovo is morally suspect and probably racist. C. Hidden Dichotomies 7. Empirical/moral. Centuries ago, scientific philosophers invented a strict separation between talking about the way the world is and talking about the way it ought to be. Today's media, following this premise, separate "editorial" from "news" judgments. The only standard by which "news" organizations feel comfortable evaluating a policy is success or failure, not right or wrong. So the media's consensus about Kosovo is that NATO's policy is "not working." As Tim Russert put it to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott on Meet the Press , "The atrocities continue. What success can you point to that any of your strategy has worked?" The alternative perspective goes overlooked: that the question is what NATO must do, that atrocities are a challenge rather than a verdict, and that NATO should persevere precisely because they continue. 8. Political/military. Critics say Clinton should have destroyed Serbian TV networks by now and never should have sworn off ground troops. They deride these as "political decisions" and mock NATO for refusing to bomb Milosevic's palace because it contains cultural treasures, including a Rembrandt. "The idea that Italy and Greece object to ground troops and therefore we shouldn't do what is necessary to win this war, is, in my view, ridiculous," protested Bill Kristol on This Week . But what's the definition of winning? Clinton and other NATO leaders say they're not just seeking a one-time victory over Milosevic. They're trying to develop what is essentially an international policing consortium. This is a political as well as military project. It entails compromising with allies who are more cautious about applying force and authorizing targets. Otherwise, the United States would have to police the world alone, which is unsustainable politically (thanks in part to vociferous opposition from many of these same critics), not to mention militarily. 9. Harm/help. Skeptics maintain that the bombing isn't helping the Kosovars. "I don't care about dropping any more bridges into the Danube River," Buchanan fumed on Face the Nation . "I don't know how that helps those people" in Kosovo. The question, he argued, should be "What is the best way to help these people and save these lives? Not how we can bomb another oil plant or oil refinery." Minutes later, host Bob Schieffer ended the show by noting that the Kosovars were still being purged and asking "whether what we are doing is doing any good." This dichotomy rules out the fallback strategy that NATO and U.S. officials have articulated from the outset: to make the cost of Milosevic's "victory" outweigh the rewards. Conservatives used to defend this concept (which they called "deterrence") when it was preached and practiced by President Reagan. If the punishment you administer to the current troublemaker fails to stop him, the theory goes, at least it will make the next troublemaker think twice. D. Self-Fulfilling Doubts 10. Practical futility. The pundits' verdict is in: The war is "doomed" and "already lost." On Late Edition , Wolf Blitzer observed that Milosevic "doesn't give, after a month of this, any impression that he is backing down." Quoting a report that U.S. military leaders see no sign "that Milosevic is changing his strategy or about to break," Russert asked Talbott, "Are we losing this war?" Other talking heads asserted that NATO is "not united" and won't be able to "stand up" as the conflict wears on. "Time is not on our side," warned former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft on Late Edition . "It is going to be very difficult to keep the alliance together." Of course, the best way to assure that Milosevic doesn't break, that NATO comes apart, and that the United States loses the war is to predict that Milosevic won't break, that NATO will come apart, and that the United States will lose the war. These predictions bolster the Serbs' morale while undermining NATO's. As Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., observed on Face the Nation , "Patience and resolve are as important a weapon today as actually the airstrikes are." 11. Moral authority. Rather than call Clinton a liar, many pundits pass this off as a widespread perception by others. They call it a "moral authority" and "public relations" problem, asking how it will "impact" his "ability to lead" Americans and NATO in war. "There is a common drum beat on the airwaves," a reporter asked Clinton on April 15, "that you, personally, lack the moral authority to be commander in chief." New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd warned that Clinton "does not inspire" great "loyalty," adding, "He may have a conflict of interest if he sends in ground troops. It would be hard to save his skin and their skin at the same time." By questioning Clinton's moral authority in this pseudo-objective way, journalists destroy what's left of his moral authority. 12. NATO credibility. Self-styled hawks fret that NATO will lose the war and thereby expose its impotence. This "lumbering and clumsy" alliance, incapable of "managing such brush fires as Kosovo," could "lose the Kosovo war in a month against the ruin of a rump state," warned columnist Charles Krauthammer. "If the perception is that for 26 days tiny little Yugoslavia ... has withstood NATO and the United States," asked Russert, will NATO and the United States be exposed as "a paper tiger"? Russert's guest, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., grimly intoned, "Many are predicting that this will be the funeral of NATO." And all because, in Krauthammer's words, Clinton "staked the survival of the most successful alliance in history on bright new academic ideas cooked up far from the battlefields on which they now flounder." Having defined anything less than the total recapture of Kosovo and the restoration of its refugees as a failure, Clinton's critics are ensuring that such failure will be interpreted as catastrophically as possible. As for their suggestion that NATO's credibility is too precious to be risked in war, you can understand their reluctance. Even tough guys have their Rembrandt.

test

20030

You Don't Tug on the Avenger's Cape Greetings, oh frustrated and bone-weary consumer! It is I, the great Shopping Avenger, who has pledged himself to the betterment of all humankind, or at least to that portion of humankind that shops at Circuit City and rents trucks from U-Haul. The Shopping Avenger has much to discuss today: You will hear the tale of a Hasidic rabbi who suffered greatly at the hands of TWA, but who, due to his mystical and gentle nature, sought not the help of lawyers but instead the help of Shopping Avenger, who is a part-time kabalist and runs special discounts for clergy every Tuesday, and you will also learn the winning answer to the recent contest question "How much Turtle Wax constitutes a year's supply of Turtle Wax?" But first, the Shopping Avenger would like to tell his own tale of consumer woe. Many of you might find this a shocking statement, but even the Shopping Avenger sometimes gets smacked upside the head by the evil forces of rampant capitalism. Granted, this seldom happens when the Shopping Avenger is wearing his cape and codpiece and special decals, but the Shopping Avenger seldom ventures outside the Great Hall of Consumer Justice in his cape and codpiece and special decals, on account of the fact that he doesn't want to get arrested. What you should know is that by day the Shopping Avenger is a mild-mannered reporter for a major metropolitan magazine, and it is in this guise that the Shopping Avenger sometimes finds himself holding the short end of the consumer stick. Whatever that means. Take the following incident, which occurred at Heathrow airport, which, I am told, is somewhere in Europe. The Shopping Avenger, who was scheduled to transit home from the Middle East through Heathrow, was feeling ill and generally fed up at the end of his trip and so decided to upgrade himself, using his own money, to business class. The total cost of the ticket: $1,732. Remember that exorbitant sum. The first flight, out of the Middle East, left late and arrived even later at Heathrow, though not too late to make the connection. However, the Shopping Avenger and several other passengers were met at the gate by a British Airways agent, who said that there was no time to make the connection, which was leaving from a different terminal. Technically, he admitted, there was enough time, but since British Airways was committed to "on-time departures," the plane's doors would be closing early. The Shopping Avenger argued in his mild-mannered manner that British Airways did not, in fact, have a commitment to "on-time departures" because the originating flight did not depart on time. The Shopping Avenger received no answer to this statement. Instead, the Shopping Avenger was booked onto a later flight and so asked the agent if he could use a British Airways telephone to call Mrs. Shopping Avenger, who would be waiting for him at the other end. The agent directed the Shopping Avenger to the British Airways business-class lounge, where a telephone would be made available to him. You, of course, know what happened next. The Shopping Avenger was told by a very nasty airline employee that only first-class passengers would be allowed to use the telephone. When the Shopping Avenger argued, in an increasingly less mild-mannered manner, that the call was necessitated by a British Airways screw up and, therefore, British Airways should pay for the call, he was told that pay phones could be found outside the lounge. This was when Shopping Avenger stated very loudly that for $1,732, he should be allowed to make a two-minute phone call. And it was the weekend! Weekend calling rates, for Pete's sake! But British Airways is an insufferably greedy little company, and so the Shopping Avenger was given no recourse but to invoke the power of his high office. The Shopping Avenger asked this nasty lady if she had ever heard of the Shopping Avenger. To the Shopping Avenger's dismay, this was her answer: "No." What about Slate magazine? "No." Well, whatever. The Shopping Avenger, while not identifying himself as the Shopping Avenger--this would have meant changing into his codpiece and cape in the business-class lounge--informed this poorly informed British Airways employee that the Shopping Avenger was America's foremost consumer advocate (this is a lie, but she's English, so what does she know?) and that the Shopping Avenger would hear about this treatment and seek vengeance. Well, did her tune ever change. Not exactly her tune--she remained as mean as a ferret, but she did let Shopping Avenger use her telephone. The moral of this story for the world's airlines: Penny-pinching might make you rich, but it also gets you blasted in Slate magazine. The other moral: Superheroes should never travel without their codpiece under their pants. There is only one airline the Shopping Avenger believes understands the fundamentals of customer service, and that is Southwest Airlines. But more on that in the next episode. First, this month's U-Haul outrage. The following letter contains perhaps the funniest story the Shopping Avenger has heard about U-Haul, and by now the Shopping Avenger has received upward of 6.7 million complaints about U-Haul. The story comes from one Susan Hwang: "A year ago, I, too, reserved a truck at U-Haul and get this--they said someone with my SAME NAME--Susan Hwang is really common--and going to the SAME SUBURB of Chicago, picked up my truck. Amazing!! They had to rent a bigger truck to me, which, of course cost more and at that point, they have you by the balls." At least the anatomically confused Susan Hwang got her truck. Most of the Shopping Avenger's correspondents wind up having to rent from Ryder and Budget, who seem to keep extra trucks on hand in order to benefit from U-Haul's nefarious practice of overbooking. On a semi-positive note, the Shopping Avenger did finally hear from Johna Burke, the U-Haul spokeswoman, who apologized for the inconvenience caused K., the . (For other U-Haul horror stories, click .) K., you'll recall, was left standing in the U-Haul parking lot when a credit-card reservation he'd made was dishonored by U-Haul. "Mr. K.'s two day rental reservation should have been honored so long as he provided us with his credit card number, which we will assume was the case. This is what we at U-Haul call a 'confirmed reservation.' " Burke's letter, though, is filled with what we at Shopping Avenger call "bullshit." "Once we have a confirmed reservation we should have moved heaven and earth to see that Mr. K.'s two day reservation was filled," Burke wrote. Yes, of course they should have--but they never do. This is not Burke's fault. She is simply paid to explain the inexplicable. The Shopping Avenger has received 164--no exaggeration for effect in this instance--letters so far from people who say they had confirmed reservations with U-Haul, only to show up and find no truck waiting for them. The Shopping Avenger would like to hear from more--to show Burke and the bossmen at U-Haul the hollowness of their concept of "confirmed reservations." One more thing before we get to our tale of rabbinical woe: the winning answer to the recent contest question "How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax?" Fifty-eight of you wrote in, 48 with the correct answer, which is, of course: "Depends upon how many Turtles you wanna wax," in the words of one of our winners, Samir Raiyani. Or, as another of our winners, Karen Bitterman, wrote, it "depends on the size of the turtle--and whether or not you park it in a covered space." Unfortunately, because so many of you wrote in with the more or less correct answer, the Shopping Avenger is unable to award the contest prize, which was to be a year's supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat. Now to our hapless rabbi, Rabbi S., who wrote the Shopping Avenger seeking worldly justice in his case against TWA. The story of Rabbi S. is entirely typical of the airline industry--a minor problem made enormous by the cruelty and ignorance of employees who are, in theory, hired by the greedheads who run the airlines to take care of passengers. Rabbi S., his wife, and kids arrived at Kennedy airport in time for his flight to Detroit, parked curbside, unloaded their luggage, and proceeded to the check-in counter. There the rabbi asked a TWA representative if he could leave his luggage by the counter for his wife to check in while he parked the car, to which he received a positive response and left to go park. No one told him, though, that he must first show his driver's license to the ticket agent. The ticket agent refused to check the rabbi's bags once he left, telling the wife that "security reasons" forbade him from checking the luggage of ticket holders who were not present. But then she told Rabbi S.'s wife: "If you want, you can pay an extra $100 for the extra bags"--i.e., charge his luggage to her ticket. "How could it be a security issue," Rabbi S. wrote the Shopping Avenger, "if they're ready to take money for the bags?" Rabbi S. was running late (Kennedy airport is not a parking-friendly place), and his wife refused to check her bags without his bags. She was then told that she would miss the flight, and then her children began crying, and then she began crying. Rabbi S. finally made it back to Terminal 25 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart. His wife handed him one baby and took the other to the gate. "The woman at the counter treated me like a piece of dirt," he wrote. "First she said she's not sure whether the flight is still open. Then she took more than five minutes to look around and find someone who said, 'Yeah, I think we just closed it a minute ago.' ... In the meantime, my wife went to the gate and the people at the gate told her there's plenty of time for me--and let her wait outside the gate for me for another 15 minutes. Alas, my wife didn't realize that [I] could not come because of the luggage issue and the haughtiness of the people downstairs." At the ticket counter, Rabbi S. was told that he wouldn't make this flight and that he should book himself on another. His wife and one of his children, meanwhile, got on the flight to Detroit. Rabbi S. had TWA book him on another flight, a Delta flight, and he schlepped--that's the only word for it--to the Delta terminal, only to be told that his was a "voluntary" transfer--he was late for his TWA flight--and so therefore he would have to pay an additional $300. "My fault!?!? I'm thinking to myself, 'If your people would have been competent enough to tell me that I should show my license and courteous enough to put the luggage on for my wife, then I would be on a flight now with my family to Detroit, not roaming an airport with a starving baby being sent on a wild goose chase." Here the story becomes as confusing as the Book of Leviticus, but suffice it to say that TWA continued to torture Rabbi S. for another day--finally forcing him to buy a new $400 ticket. "I have never in my life been treated so horribly," Rabbi S. wrote. The Shopping Avenger contacted Jim Brown, a TWA spokesman, to discuss Rabbi S.'s case. To his surprise--the Shopping Avenger has not had very good experiences on TWA--Brown investigated the complaint and wrote: "TWA has issued a credit for the value of Rabbi S.'s ticket for $244. In addition, a Customer Relations representative has been communicating with the rabbi on this incident and is sending him the difference between that ticket and the cost of a new ticket, $219, plus a letter of apology for the behavior of our representatives at Kennedy Airport. She is also enclosing four travel coupons valued at $75 each." Brown, however, had no explanation for the behavior at the Kennedy ticket counter--entirely typical behavior that often makes the already unpleasant air travel experience completely unbearable. In the next episode, the Shopping Avenger will tell the story of Southwest Airlines, the only airline that seems to actually care about customer service. But the Shopping Avenger needs your help! Keep those airline stories coming--and all those other stories, too--except computer stories. Let me say again, the Shopping Avenger does not fix computers. One final request: The Shopping Avenger would like to hear from anyone who has actually eaten Rice-a-Roni and from anyone who could explain why it is known as "the San Francisco treat." Onward, shoppers!

test

20040

Eastern Europe Eight years after the Berlin Wall's collapse, how meaningful are the political and economic differences that once divided Eastern and Western Europe? Herewith, a primer on the transition to democracy and capitalism in the old Soviet bloc and former Soviet Republics. Statistics gauging economic change since communism's collapse are deceptive. All countries initially foundered. Only since 1993, with the onset of widespread privatization of economic activity, have most of them grown. However, even post-1993 averages (compiled by the U.S. Agency for International Development from international lending-agency data) may be misleading in evaluating economic success. Take Albania, which averaged 8.4 percent growth during this period--and attribute much (perhaps all) of its measured growth to a massive Ponzi scheme, which collapsed this winter, bringing down the entire Albanian economy. Central Europe Czech Republic ( 2.7 percent growth--measured for all countries as average annual GDP change since 1993--75 percent private-sector share of GDP in 1996. Democracy strong: free elections; successful transfer of power; free media.) Despite economic growth and the lowest unemployment in Eastern Europe , the Czech economy has suffered a recent setback. In the last six months, several of the nation's biggest banks collapsed because of loose lending and fraud. To reassure foreign investors, last week conservative Prime Minister Václav Klaus announced a 5 percent cut in government spending. Opposition Social Democrats may use Klaus' austerity program to mobilize growing discontent. Chain-smoking President Václav Havel's failing health is another concern. Though Havel's position is largely ceremonial, he helps give credibility to the widely mistrusted bureaucracy and police. Hungary (1.25 percent growth; 73 percent private. Democracy strong: free elections; successful transfer of power; constitutional protection for the media and minorities.) Because it privatized early and aggressively, Hungary has attracted $15 billion in foreign investment since 1989 --more than any other Eastern European nation. To curry favor with NATO and the European Union, for the last two years its centrist government (led by Gyula Horn, also an ex-Communist) has battled popular nationalist parties. It installed Western-style legal protections for minorities and gave up long-standing claims to Transylvania, the Hungarian-populated section of Romania. Poland (5.25 percent growth; 60 percent private. Democracy strong: free elections; successful transfer of power; no state-run media.) It is considered Eastern Europe's greatest economic success . Poland's government privatized more cautiously than Hungary's or the Czech Republic's. Western fears about the 1995 election of ex-party apparatchik Aleksander Kwasniewski as president (displacing Lech Walesa, who calls him the "red spider") have been allayed by Kwasniewski's support for further privatization and his enthusiasm for NATO expansion. (This summer Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic will probably be invited to join the alliance.) Amid much protest from the right wing, Kwasniewski's government restored the legal rights to abortion and divorce removed by the Walesa government. Romania (4.7 percent growth; 50 percent private. Democracy relatively weak: free and fair elections; state-controlled media.) Communist Party boss (ostensibly a social democrat) Ion Iliescu ruled between a mob's execution of longtime strongman Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 and his own loss of an election last year. His successor, a geology professor named Emil Constantinescu, promised rapid privatization and protection for an independent media. Romania is jockeying to be included in NATO expansion , but nobody takes its candidacy seriously. Slovakia (3.65 percent growth; 70 percent private. Democracy relatively weak: free elections; strong state security force; state-pressured media.) Inheriting the most depressed regions of former Czechoslovakia and a massive, outmoded arms-manufacturing industry, it fared badly after its 1992-1993 split with the Czech Republic. Slovakia has had less success than other Central European countries at ousting corrupt Communist bosses from its bureaucracy. Prime Minister Vladimír Meciar is accused of having orchestrated the kidnapping of the Slovakian president's son, among other charges. The Balkans Albania (8.4 percent growth; 75 percent private. Democracy weak: widespread police killings and beatings; no free elections; state-controlled media.) Between 50 percent and 90 percent of the country invested nearly $3 billion in a Ponzi scheme that collapsed this winter. When the government failed to fulfill promises to compensate investors, rioters pillaged the capital, Tirana, and battled government-organized militias. So far the staunchly anti-Communist government has relied on repression to survive the crisis. Bosnia (No economic data. Democracy weak: elections held last September amid accusations of fraud.) Thoroughly destroyed by war , it is economically devastated and ethnically divided. The Dayton Accord separates the country into two provinces: the Muslim-dominated Bosnian Federation and the Serbian Republika Srpska. Serbian and Croatian minorities complain they will not get a fair shake in the Muslim-majority state. The U.S. military will leave Bosnia at the end of this year. Bulgaria (-2 percent growth; 45 percent private. Democracy weak: no elections until this month.) Bulgaria's economy remains socialist . Price controls are drastic: McDonald's restaurants in Bulgaria sell the cheapest Big Macs in the world, and oil costs the same as in Saudi Arabia. Shortages and slipping wages sparked street protests this winter that forced the ruling socialists to hand power over to a caretaker government. A centrist coalition won elections this month. Emigration to Western Europe has been significant : Five hundred thousand people have left Bulgaria (total population, 9 million) since 1989. Croatia (0.15 percent growth; 50 percent private. Democracy questionable: allegations of electoral fraud; authoritarian but popular government; little repression of media.) Since Yugoslavia's disintegration, Franjo Tudjman, a right-wing dictator, has exploited Croatian nationalist sentiments. Demonstrations this winter against Tudjman quickly dissipated (at the time, he was being treated in the United States for cancer--he may not live much longer). Despite rampant war profiteering and a large state presence in the economy, growth has been steady, and Tudjman remains popular . Macedonia ( -3.2 percent growth; 50 percent private. Democracy relatively strong: free elections, though minority groups claim oppression. ) Though Macedonia avoided the Balkan War, ethnic tensions and instability are a problem. Last year, the country's liberal, pro-West president was seriously injured in a car-bomb attack. A Greek minority demands that Macedonia, with its ethnically Albanian majority, be absorbed into Greece. Serbia (No economic data. Democracy weak: corruption during elections; state-controlled media.) Slobodan Milosevic, an old party boss, has retained power since 1989, appealing to Serbian chauvinism to elude liberal reforms. War, hyperinflation, and unemployment , however, have recently undermined his popularity. Two months of street protests this winter were said to presage his ouster. His concession of the opposition's demands (recognition of local election results and reopening of nonstate-run media), however, ultimately solidified Milosevic's control. Slovenia (3.5 percent growth; 45 percent private. Democracy relatively strong: free elections; constitutional protection for the media and minorities.) The most Western, liberal, and independent of the former Yugoslav republics, Slovenia escaped the Balkan War unscathed . Unlike the other agriculture-dependent Balkan economies, Slovenia has a significant manufacturing sector, much of it high-tech. Its per capita income is already higher than those of Portugal and Greece, members of the EU. However, because of its reluctance to privatize, foreign investment is scant, and growth has been lower than predicted. The Baltics Estonia (-1.25 percent growth; 75 percent private. Democracy relatively strong: safeguards against police abuse and state interference in the media.) Thanks to Finnish and Swedish investment, Estonia is the most prosperous Baltic state , though its recovery did not begin until 1995. Russia still maintains military bases near its border, and Estonia relies on Russian oil and gas. But Estonia has been increasingly defiant: It switched official allegiance from the Russian to the Greek Orthodox Church, criticized Russia's war in Chechnya, and imposed requirements that make it difficult for its Russian-speaking minority to become citizens. Latvia (-3.1 percent growth; 60 percent private. Democracy relatively strong: free elections; successful transfer of power.) Economists predict the country will soon benefit from its tight controls on inflation , which have stymied short-term growth. For the last two years, Latvia has been governed by a six-party "rainbow coalition." Lithuania (-4.2 percent growth; 65 percent private. Democracy strong: free elections; successful transfer of power.) After flirting with a return to communism, party bosses retook power in 1992. The conservative Vytautas Landsbergis--musicologist, former chess champion, and post-Communist Lithuania's first prime minister (between 1991 and 1992)--was re-elected last year. The economy has foundered since the Soviet Union's collapse. Western Soviet Republics Belarus (-7.8 percent growth; 15 percent private. Democracy nonexistent: no independent judiciary; repressive state security apparatus; state-controlled media.) The most Soviet of the former Soviet republics, it is ruled by Alexander Lukashenko , a dictator who recently consolidated his personal control over the country's media and secret police. He has enhanced the country's ties to Russia, vociferously opposes NATO expansion, and alleges that fledgling opposition movements are CIA plants (there is no evidence of this). Moldova (-8.6 percent growth; 40 percent private. Democracy relatively weak: free elections; hostility toward minorities; government interference with press.) Initially touted as a model of reform, Moldova is now in a shambles. A rebellion by Ukrainian and Russian-speaking minorities ended in 1992, with the Romanian-speaking majority government retaining control over only half of the country. It was the center of a recently shut-down Internet porn scam that charged unwitting customers, mainly Americans, the cost of a long-distance call to Moldova when they downloaded dirty pictures. Ukraine (-14.8 percent growth; 40 percent private. Democracy weak: widespread corruption and organized crime.) Fifty percent of the economy is invested in the black market to avoid taxes (as high as 89 percent) and corrupt government officials--largely former Communists who require under-the-table payments. Consequently, foreigners have only reluctantly invested $700 million--the same amount as in Estonia, which is only a fraction of the size of Ukraine. The government disbanded its nuclear arsenal in 1994 after a U.S. payment of $400 million. Despite nationalist hostility toward Russia, Ukraine remains too dependent to do anything more than grumble about the Russian military's continued use of its ports. Transcaucasian Republics Armenia (1.03 percent growth; 50 percent private. Democracy weak: allegations of election fraud; arbitrary arrests; restrictions on freedom of press.) Alienated by its Muslim neighbors--Turkey to the west, Iran to the south, and Azerbaijan to the east--Armenia aligns itself with Georgia and Russia (which keeps 12,000 troops on Armenia's border). An influential Armenian-American diaspora helps the country get more U.S. aid per capita than any country except Israel . Since 1994, it has been ruled by an autocratic intellectual, who has banned opposition parties and controls the media. Azerbaijan (-13.5 percent growth; 25 percent private. Democracy nonexistent: widespread corruption; no free elections; repression of minorities.) A recent cease-fire ended the Muslim government's six-year war with Armenia over control of a Christian enclave in the northeast part of the country. Afterward, oil companies scrambled to tap its prodigious reserves. Before the Soviets took over, Azerbaijan was a boom country that attracted hundreds of European speculators. The government has been unstable--done in by a series of coups and the continued rule of Communist bosses. Georgia (-15.75 percent growth; 50 percent private. Democracy fairly strong: free elections but continued human-rights abuses, including torture and forced confessions.) Western expectations for Georgia--the highly regarded former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze is the president--have been disappointed. The government battles rebels from Abkhazia, a Muslim province in the country's northwest. Russia still maintains thousands of troops in Georgia. Only last year did the country begin to emerge from a severe depression, but it still lacks consistent electricity in Tbilisi, its capital.

test

20054

The Other L-Word What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation By Charles Murray Broadway Books; 192 pages; $20 Libertarianism: A Primer By David Boaz The Free Press; 336 pages; $23 Are libertarians on a roll? If you begin with the recent election to Congress of Ron Paul, a former Libertarian presidential candidate; note the emergence of cyberlibertarians as a political constituency; factor in the collapse of communism; and quote Bill Clinton's admission that "the era of big government is over," you have what sounds like a compelling case. There are other signs as well: the rise of the Cato Institute as one of the leading Washington think tanks; and the general accrual of credibility to what, 20 years ago, was a fringe-y movement of Ayn Rand devotees and risqué Republicans. Yet, there is an equally strong argument to be made that the United States is only moving toward libertarian-style minimalist government in the same way that you get closer to Paris when you drive east to the supermarket. Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne got less than 500,000 votes in 1996. This was an increase over 1992 but only a slight improvement upon the Libertarian vote in 1988, and a far weaker performance than in 1980. Meanwhile, leaders of the Christian right, whose aims are antithetical to those of libertarians, make the plausible claim that it is they who are winning converts and influence by the day. And if Clinton now knows to eschew "big government," members of the Republican Congress elected in 1994 have also learned their lesson about attempting to make government truly smaller. The appearance of these two books counts as an entry in the plus side of the ledger. Each attempts to make libertarianism more respectable and popular. They are pitched, however, at different audiences. Charles Murray is a conservative trying to persuade other conservatives that the absence of restraint will in fact make people more moral. He rather reluctantly defends the legalization of drugs, prostitution, and pornography, and concedes that government has to play some more-than-minimal role. David Boaz, an official at the Cato Institute, sees libertarianism as neither conservative nor liberal, and aims to convert everyone. But while he is more ecumenical, Boaz is far more extreme. If you insist on keeping national parks or old-age pensions, he has some advice on the least bad way to run these things--but, given his druthers, he wouldn't run them at all. Murray's more laconic account is based upon a classical liberal argument: Force is bad; cooperation is good; government is force; ergo, the only legitimate functions of government are to enforce voluntary agreements, and to prevent force and fraud. Murray accepts, though, that there also exist limited "public goods." The two he names are environmental protection and education. These exceptions to the rule of the minimal state are probably necessary to make libertarianism palatable to mainstream conservatives. The problem is that they require an admission--which Murray never makes directly--that decisions made by a democratic government within the boundaries of a constitution are not merely "force" but also "cooperation," albeit with a certain degree of legitimate coercion. In an attempt to distinguish those public purposes that are tolerable from those that aren't, Murray posits that, to be valid, public goods either have to be "nonexclusive"--interventions from which everyone benefits--or else must arise to counter "externalities," costs passed on to others that, in practical terms, cannot be compensated, as in the case of the chemical incinerator that pollutes the air. What this scheme leaves unclear is why education and the environment are valid public goods while other efforts he opposes--insuring elderly people against poverty, say, or providing national health insurance--are not. Education and the environment are not purely nonexclusive goods. Some people who either don't have children or who don't like to visit national parks--or both--will be taxed to pay for them. And if the standard of nonexclusivity is not absolute, then programs Murray rejects, such as welfare and Medicare, can reasonably qualify. Anyone may fall upon hard times, and most people anticipate being around long enough to benefit from nationalized health care for the elderly. Murray's next strategy is to try a series of more pragmatic arguments against government action. To show how little sense regulations make, he proposes a thought experiment. Why not give consumers a choice, he asks, about whether to use regulated or unregulated products (unregulated products, he stipulates, would have to be labeled as such). This merely demonstrates that Murray has failed to understand his own argument about externalities as a basis for public goods. The point of regulation is not merely to protect consumers, but to protect innocent third parties. Of course consumers would be better off if the government gave them the right to buy appliances built by polluting factories and low-cost child labor. (In fact, consumers already can, so long as the pollution and child labor are foreign and not domestic.) These regulations exist for the benefit of those who live downstream from the factory and the children who would otherwise be working inside it. Or, to take an example of regulation employed by Murray, consider the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit. Murray says there is no reason to keep people from harming themselves. But speed limits don't just prevent people who willingly take the risk of driving faster and more dangerously from hurting themselves. They improve the odds for the children in the back seat, and for the safe driver in the opposite lane, whom the reckless driver might plow into. With this example, Murray undercuts himself in another way. He says regulation only gets more onerous over time. But the national speed limit is an example of precisely the opposite point. In most states you can now drive 65 or 70 on freeways. Like many conservatives, Murray high-dudgeons himself into the Jeane Kirkpatrick position of ascribing historical inevitability to a trend that is actually in the midst of reversal. Murray involves himself in more serious contradictions by drawing in arguments from his earlier books, each of which presents a different case against public action to fight poverty. In Losing Ground (1984), the work that made him famous, he contended that government anti-poverty programs had done much to create the underclass. In The Bell Curve (1994), he said that some people--namely blacks--were genetically inferior, a condition that government could do nothing about. In What It Means to Be a Libertarian , he says government intervention is morally wrong. He means these arguments to be mutually reinforcing: Government social programs don't work; they can't work on account of human nature; and if by chance they do work, they're morally unjustified anyhow. But this triple argument in the triple alternative actually obliterates itself. In The Bell Curve , Murray contends that government can't really help people. In the version of that argument given in What It Means , he asserts that "most government interventions are ineffectual" because "modern society has the inertia of a ponderous freight train." But if government can't reroute the freight train in a better direction, it's hard to see how it can derail it. The metaphor undermines the Losing Ground Murray, the guy who writes that "[u]ntil the government began masking the social costs created by large numbers of fatherless children, civilized communities everywhere stigmatized illegitimacy." The "futility" thesis--government can't help--and the "perversity" thesis--government makes problems worse instead of better--are at odds. If government can't do anything, how can it do so strongly the opposite of what it intends? Dimly aware of this problem, Murray brings in a more sweeping illegitimacy thesis--government is unjustified--to trump all the others. But this exposes his underlying bias, which casts doubt on the critiques of government in both Losing Ground and The Bell Curve . The three Murrays play a kind of fugue throughout this book. In fact, there seems to be a fourth Murray struggling to get out. This is the Charles Murray who says late in the book that he half-supports the idea of a negative income tax--a guaranteed income for everyone. This would seem to violate all the aforementioned principles. It would create a powerful incentive (of the kind attacked in Losing Ground ) for people not to work; it would be an attempt to help people who The Bell Curve says can't be helped anyway; and it would certainly violate What It Means to Be a Libertarian 's admonition against forcing people to pay for dubious public goods. What Murray likes about the idea is that it would finally discharge society's obligation to members of the underclass. They might not be better off, but they would have to quit bellyaching. Combined with a new, heartfelt attack on civil-rights laws (Murray says bad, prejudicial discrimination is inseparable from good, economically sensible discrimination), this passage leaves one with the sense that in declaring himself a libertarian, Murray has not yet removed the final veil. David Boaz has written a more stimulating, more consistent, and more dogmatic book. After a long history of libertarian ideas, he proposes a version of Murray's basic argument, which he calls the "nonagression axiom"--no one can use force against anyone else. That's it. Unlike Murray, Boaz draws no exception for public goods. He does not pander to political reality by accepting large expenditures for national defense, environmental regulation, or publicly funded education. He does not believe in national parks ("private stewards" will exercise "proper stewardship"). Nor does he believe in military conscription in wartime ("[t]he libertarian believes that people will voluntarily defend a country worth defending"). Though this version of libertarianism seems to flirt with anarchism, Boaz isn't worried about disarray. In the absence of malign government intervention, there will emerge what he calls "spontaneous order." Boaz's model for this is the Internet. He neglects, of course, the fact that the Internet began life as a federal defense project. But the real question Boaz begs is why the laws he thinks are necessary for society to function, including fair chunks of the U.S. Constitution, count as "spontaneous" and good while everything else is defined as coercion. Capitalism may arise spontaneously, but the Bill of Rights is as much a man-made construct as the food-stamp program. In the end, it is futile to argue with this view. Boaz has worked out every possible detail of his libertarian heaven in an utterly comprehensive and slightly mad way. He takes pains to say he is not offering a plan for a perfect society, merely a "framework for utopia" (the phrase is Robert Nozick's). But his heart is clearly with the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, who wrote: "Without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony." Murray, too, is afflicted with millenarianism. "That America is not the land of universal plenty it should have become is for many libertarians, including me, the source of our deepest anger about what big government has done to this country," he writes at one point. He offers instead "a society that is prosperous and virtuous, but one that is exciting and fun as well." I was reminded of the famous passage where Marx writes that in the Communist future, every worker will spend part of his day fishing, part writing poetry, and only part working at his lathe. Marx believed that the state would wither away. Libertarians believe men must wither it. But really, their utopias are not so different. They share a wishful vision of human perfectibility dressed up as an idea of justice.

test

20033

Martin Scorsese The first reviews of Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead are the latest evidence of the director's status as a critical favorite. This is not because the notices have been uniformly glowing--it's been some time since a Scorsese picture won unanimous praise from reviewers--but because Scorsese remains, almost uniquely among American directors, an embodiment of the beleaguered idea that filmmaking, and therefore film criticism, can be a serious, important, life-and-death matter. Here, for instance, is Roger Ebert, all thumbs: To look at Bringing Out the Dead --to look, indeed, at almost any Scorsese film--is to be reminded that film can touch us urgently and deeply. Scorsese is never on autopilot, never panders, never sells out, always goes for broke; to watch his films is to see a man risking his talent, not simply exercising it. He makes movies as well as they can be made. Never? Always? This is pure ideology--which is not to say that it isn't, to some extent, true. Even Scorsese's weaker films bristle with energy and intelligence. But look closely at what Ebert says: To be reminded of the power of film as a medium is not quite the same as being moved by a particular film, and Bringing Out the Dead is, for all its hectic pacing and breakneck intensity, an oddly unmoving experience. Yes, you think, movies can touch us urgently and deeply. Why doesn't this one? If Scorsese makes movies as well as they can be made, why does one so often feel that his movies--especially over the last decade or so--could have been better? Above all, to look at Bringing Out the Dead is to be reminded of a lot of other Scorsese films. Critics have noted its similarities with Taxi Driver , Scorsese's first collaboration with screenwriter Paul Schrader (who also wrote The Last Temptation of Christ and the later drafts of Raging Bull ). Both movies feature a disturbed outsider cruising the nightmarish, as-yet-ungentrified streets of Manhattan in search of redemption. In place of Sport, Harvey Keitel's suave, vicious pimp in the earlier film, Bringing Out the Dead features Cy, a suave, vicious drug dealer played by Cliff Curtis. The mood here is a good deal softer: The scabrous nihilism of Taxi Driver is no longer as palatable--or, perhaps, as accurate in its response to the flavor of the times or the mood of its creators--as it was in 1976. Nicolas Cage's Frank Pierce saves Cy from a death as gruesome as the one De Niro's Travis Bickle visited on Sport, and when Frank does take a life (in the movie's best, most understated scene), it's an act of mercy. Aside from these parallels and variations, there's plenty in Bringing Out the Dead to remind you that you're watching a Scorsese picture. There's voice-over narration. There's an eclectic, relentless rock 'n' roll score and a directorial cameo--this time Scorsese provides the disembodied voice of an ambulance dispatcher. There are jarring, anti-realist effects embedded in an overall mise en scène of harsh verisimilitude. And, of course, there is the obligatory religious imagery--the final frames present a classic Pietà, with Patricia Arquette (whose character is named Mary) cradling Cage, the man of sorrows, in her arms. To survey Scorsese's oeuvre is to find such echoings and prefigurations in abundance. Look at Boxcar Bertha , a throwaway piece of apprentice-work he made for schlock impresario Roger Corman in the early '70s (if you've never seen it, imagine Bonnie and Clyde remade as an episode of Kung Fu ), and then look at The Last Temptation of Christ , the controversial, deeply personal rendering of Nikos Kazantzakis' novel which infuriated some Christians a decade and a half later. Different as they are, both films prominently feature 1) a crucifixion and 2) Barbara Hershey naked. Well, that may be a coincidence. But it's hard to think of an active director who has produced such an emphatically cross-referenced body of work who seems not so much to repeat himself (though he does some of that) as to make movies by recombining a recognizable and fairly stable set of narrative, thematic, and stylistic elements. In other words, Scorsese is the last living incarnation of la politique des auteurs. That old politique --the auteur theory, in plain English--was first articulated in the 1950s by a group of French critics, many of whom went on to become, as directors, fixtures of the Nouvelle Vague . In a nutshell, the theory--brought to these shores in 1962 by Village Voice film critic Andrew Sarris--held that, like any work of art, a film represents the vision of an individual artist, almost always the director. The artists who populated the auterist canon--Howard Hawks and John Ford, pre-eminently--had labored within the constraints of the studio system. But even their lesser films, according to auterist critics, could be distinguished from mere studio hackwork by the reiteration of a unique cinematic vocabulary and by an implicit but unmistakable sense of solitary genius in conflict with bureaucratic philistinism. The auteur theory was quickly challenged, most notably by Pauline Kael, who shredded Sarris in the pages of Film Quarterly . But the "new Hollywood" of the '70s--with Kael as its champion, scold, and Cassandra--was dominated by young directors who attained, thanks to the collapse of the old studios, an unprecedented degree of creative autonomy, and who thought of themselves as artists. What resulted, as Peter Biskind shows in his New Hollywood dish bible Easy Riders, Raging Bulls , was an epidemic of megalomania, sexual libertinism, money-wasting, and drug abuse--as well as a few dozen classics of American cinema. The avatars of the New Hollywood were mostly "movie brats"--socially maladroit, nerdy young men (and they were, to a man, men) who shared a fervid, almost religious devotion to cinema. Scorsese, a runty, asthmatic altar boy from New York City's Little Italy who traded Catholic seminary for New York University film school, was arguably the purest in his faith. Unlike Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, or Steven Spielberg, "St. Martin" (as Biskind calls him) did not see directing as a route to world domination but as a priestly avocation, a set of spiritual exercises embedded in technical problems. Scorsese's technical proficiency won him some early breaks. While making Who's That Knocking at My Door , his earnest, autobiographical first feature, independently, Scorsese was hired to edit Woodstock into a coherent film. His success (more or less) led to more rock 'n' roll editing assignments--a traveling sub-Woodstock "festival" called Medicine Ball Caravan ; Elvis on Tour --and then to Boxcar Bertha , which allowed him to join the Directors Guild and gave him the chance to make Mean Streets . That movie helped launch the careers of Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro, and taught generations of would-be tough guys the meaning of the word "mook." Kael called Mean Streets "a triumph of personal film-making," and even though it may be the single most imitated movie of the past 30 years--cf The Pope of Greenwich Village, State of Grace, Federal Hill, Boyz N the Hood , etc.--it has lost remarkably little of its freshness and power. Watching it, you feel that you are seeing real life on the screen, but real life heightened and shaped by absolute artistic self-assurance. Or, to quote Kael again, "Mean Streets never loses touch with the ordinary look of things or with common experience. Rather, it puts us in closer touch with the ordinary, the common, by turning a different light on them." This kind of realism marks Scorsese's next two films, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore --his best piece of directing-for-hire, and one of the half-forgotten gems of the period--and Taxi Driver , both of which were critically and commercially successful. But the medium-budget, artisanal, personal filmmaking of the early '70s soon gave way to grander visions. To be a New Hollywood director was to flirt with hubris. Biskind's book, accordingly, concludes with a litany of spectacular flameouts: Coppola's Apocalypse Now and One From the Heart, Spielberg's 1941 , William Friedkin's Sorcerer, and, of course, Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate . According to Mardik Martin, Scorsese's erstwhile writing partner (as quoted by Biskind): "The auteur theory killed all these people. One or two films, the magazines told them they were geniuses, that they could do anything. They went completely bananas. They thought they were God." Scorsese's own Götterdämmerung came with New York, New York , a hugely ambitious jazz epic starring De Niro and Liza Minelli (Scorsese's mistress at the time), and the first of a series of flops that continued with Raging Bull and The King of Comedy . Of these three, Raging Bull has been singled out for vindication. It's the highest-ranking of the three Scorsese films on the American Film Institute's Top 100 list, and it's widely considered to be his masterpiece. But it remains exceedingly hard to watch, not so much because of the repulsiveness of De Niro's Jake La Motta as because of its overall sense of aesthetic claustrophobia. It's a movie lacquered by its own self-importance, so bloated with the ambition to achieve greatness that it can barely move. If it convinces you it's a masterpiece, it does so by sheer brute force. Raging Bull is undone by its own perfectionism. New York, New York and The King of Comedy stand up rather better, in my opinion, in spite of their obvious flaws. (So does The Last Waltz , a documentary of the Band's last concert done simultaneously with New York, New York , thanks to the magic of cocaine.) For one thing, New York, New York is virtually the only Scorsese movie (aside from "Life Lessons," his crackerjack contribution to the Coppola-produced anthology film New York Stories ) to have at its center the relationship between a man and a woman. For another, it ends with Liza Minelli parading through a series of phantasmagoric stage sets singing a pointedly ironic song called "Happy Endings"--a sequence every bit as dazzling (and as mystifying) as the ballet from An American in Paris . Just as Mean Streets is an unparalleled demonstration of the power of film to convey reality, "Happy Endings" is a celebration of film's magical ability to create it. A moviegoer's dream, but good luck seeing it on the big screen. For its part, The King of Comedy , a creepy reprise of Taxi Driver --played, this time, for laughs--is a movie made before its time, back when celebrity-stalking was a piquant metaphor for our cultural ills, rather than the focus of our cultural life. De Niro and Sandra Bernhard kidnap Jerry Lewis (playing, brilliantly, a famous late-night talk show host), Bernhard steals the movie, and the ending is guaranteed to provoke long, excruciating arguments about the difference between fantasy and reality. In Biskind's account of the tragedy of the New Hollywood, Spielberg is the villain, Hal Ashby the martyr, and Scorsese the scarred survivor. After the failures of the early '80s, he picked himself up and made some more movies: the quirky, proto-Indie downtown comedy After Hours , The Color of Money (a respectable sequel to The Hustler ), and his long dreamed of The Last Temptation of Christ . His fortunes revived with GoodFellas , which was hailed as a return to form, and floundered again with The Age of Innocence , one of his periodic attempts--like The Last Waltz , Temptation and, most recently, Kundun --to defy expectation. Next came Casino, one of his periodic attempts to defy the expectation that he would defy expectations. Casino blends Raging Bull with GoodFellas and can be interpreted as a wry allegory of Hollywood in the '70s--a time when "guys like us" (i.e., the free-lancing gangsters played by De Niro and Joe Pesci) were allowed to run things without interference. Of course, they got too greedy, screwed everything up, and the big corporations turned their playground into Disneyland. At the end, De Niro's character, the scarred survivor, picks himself up and goes back to work. Scorsese keeps working too--upcoming projects include Gangs of New York , with Leonardo DiCaprio, and a Dean Martin biopic starring Tom Hanks. His extracurricular good works--overseeing the re-release of classics such as El Cid and Belle de Jour , campaigning for film preservation, narrating a BBC documentary on his favorite movies--are testament to his abiding faith. But his movies more often than not feel cold and mechanical. They substitute intensity for emotion and give us bombast when we want passion. Why do we go to the movies? Pauline Kael used to say it was to be caught up, swept away, surfeited by sensation, and confronted by reality. Some of us keep going to Scorsese's movies because we still want to believe in that, and we leave wondering whether he still does.

test

51072

SHAMAR'S WAR BY KRIS NEVILLE ILLUSTRATED BY GUINTA [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1964. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He was Earth's secret weapon, as deadly as a sword—and two-edged! I The year was 2346, and Earth, at the time, was a political democracy. The population was ruled by the Over-Council and, in order of decreasing importance, by Councils, and Local Councils. Each was composed of representatives duly apportioned by popular vote between the two contending parties. Executive direction was provided by a variety of Secretaries, selected by vote of the appropriate Councils. An independent Judiciary upheld the laws. A unified Earth sent colonists to the stars. Back came strange tales and improbable animals. Back, too, came word of a burgeoning technological civilization on the planet Itra, peopled by entirely humanoid aliens. Earth felt it would be wise for Itra to join in a Galactic Federation and accordingly, submitted the terms of such a mutually advantageous agreement. The Itraians declined.... Space Captain Merle S. Shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most naive pilot for Trans-Universe Transport, was called unexpectedly to the New York office of the company. When Capt. Shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, Old Tom Twilmaker, the President of TUT, greeted him. With an arm around his shoulder, Old Tom led Capt. Shaeffer to an immense inner office and introduced him to a General Reuter, identified as the Chairman of the Interscience Committee of the Over-Council. No one else was present. With the door closed, they were isolated in Olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. Here judgments were final and impartial. Capt. Shaeffer, in the presence of two of the men highest in the ruling councils of Earth, was reduced to incoherent awe. General Reuter moved about restlessly. Old Tom was serene and beatific. When they were seated, Old Tom swiveled around and gazed long in silence across the spires of the City. Capt. Shaeffer waited respectfully. General Reuter fidgetted. "Some day," Old Tom said at last, "I'm going to take my leave of this. Yes, gentle Jesus! Oh, when I think of all the souls still refusing to admit our precious Savior, what bitterness, oh, what sorrow is my wealth to me! Look down upon the teeming millions below us. How many know not the Lord? Yes, some morning, I will forsake all this and go out into the streets to spend my last days bringing the words of hope to the weary and oppressed. Are you a Christian, Merle?" General Reuter cracked his knuckles nervously while Capt. Shaeffer muttered an embarrassed affirmative. "I am a deeply religious man," Old Tom continued. "I guess you've heard that, Merle?" "Yes sir," Capt. Shaeffer said. "But did you know that the Lord has summoned you here today?" Old Tom asked. "No, sir," Capt. Shaeffer said. "General Reuter, here, is a dear friend. We've known each other, oh, many years. Distantly related through our dear wives, in fact. And we serve on the same Board of Directors and the same Charity Committees.... A few weeks ago, when he asked me for a man, I called for your file, Merle. I made discreet inquiries. Then I got down on my knees and talked it over with God for, oh, it must have been all of an hour. I asked, 'Is this the man?' And I was given a sign. Yes! At that moment, a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds!" General Reuter had continued his nervous movements throughout the speech. For the first time, he spoke. "Good God, Tom, serve us a drink." He turned to Capt. Shaeffer. "A little drink now and then helps a man relax. I'll just have mine straight, Tom." Old Tom studied Capt. Shaeffer. "I do not feel the gentle Master approves of liquor." "Don't try to influence him," General Reuter said. "You're embarrassing the boy." "I—" Capt. Shaeffer began. "Give him the drink. If he doesn't want to drink it, he won't have to drink it." Sighing, Old Tom poured two bourbons from the bar in back of his desk and passed them over. Martyrdom sat heavily upon his brow. After a quick twist of the wrist and an expert toss of the head, General Reuter returned an empty glass. "Don't mind if I do have another," he said. He was already less restless. "How's your ability to pick up languages?" General Reuter asked. "I learned Spanish and Russian at TUT PS," Capt. Shaeffer said apologetically. "I'm supposed to have a real high aptitude in languages, according to some tests I took. In case we should meet intelligent aliens, TUT gives them." "You got no association with crackpot organizations, anything like that?" General Reuter asked. "You're either a good Liberal-Conservative or Radical-Progressive, aren't you? I don't care which. I don't believe in prying into a man's politics." "I never belonged to anything," Capt. Shaeffer said. "Oh, I can assure you, that's been checked out very, very thoroughly," Old Tom said. The General signaled for another drink. With a sigh of exasperation, Old Tom complied. "Bob," Old Tom said, "I really think you've had enough. Please, now. Our Master counsels moderation." "Damn it, Tom," the General said and turned back to the space pilot. "May have a little job for you." Old Tom shook his head at the General, cautioning him. "Actually," the General said, ignoring the executive, "we'll be sort of renting you from TUT. In a way you'll still be working for them. I can get a million dollars out of the—" "Bob!" "—unmarked appropriation if it goes in in TUT's name. No questions asked. National Defense. I couldn't get anywhere near that much for an individual for a year. It gives us a pie to slice. We were talking about it before you came in. How does a quarter of a million dollars a year sound to you?" "When it comes to such matters," Old Tom interjected hastily, "I think first of the opportunities they bring to do good." The General continued, "Now you know, Merle. And this is serious. I want you to listen to me. Because this comes under World Security laws, and I'm going to bind you to them. You know what that means? You'll be held responsible." "Yes, sir," Merle said, swallowing stiffly. "I understand." "Good. Let's have a drink on that." "Please be quiet, General," Old Tom said. "Let me explain. You see, Merle, the Interscience Committee was recently directed to consider methods for creating a climate of opinion on Itra—of which I'm sure you've heard—which would be favorable to the proposed Galactic Federation." "Excuse me," General Reuter said. "They don't have a democracy, like we do. They don't have any freedom like we do. I have no doubt the average whateveryoucallem—Itraians, I guess—the average gooks—would be glad to see us come in and just kick the hell out of whoever is in charge of them." "Now, General," Old Tom said more sharply. "But that's not the whole thing," the General continued. "Even fit were right thing to do, an' I'm not saying isn't—right thing to do—there's log-lo-lo-gistics. I don't want to convey the impresh, impression that our Defense Force people have been wasting money. Never had as much as needed, fact. No, it's like this. "We have this broad base to buil' from. Backbone. But we live in a democracy. Now, Old Tom's Liberal-Conservative. And me, I'm Radical-Progresshive. But we agree on one thing: importance of strong defense. A lot of people don' understan' this. Feel we're already spendin' more than we can afford. But I want to ask them, what's more important than the defense of our planet?" "General, I'm afraid this is not entirely germane," Old Tom said stiffly. "Never mind that right now. Point is, it will take us long time to get the serious nature of the menace of Itra across to the voters. Then, maybe fifteen, twenty years.... Let's just take one thing. We don't have anywhere near enough troop transports to carry out the occupation of Itra. You know how long it takes to build them? My point is, we may not have that long. Suppose Itra should get secret of interstellar drive tomorrow, then where would we be?" Old Tom slammed his fist on the desk. "General, please! The boy isn't interested in all that." The General surged angrily to his feet. "By God, that's what's wrong with this world today!" he cried. "Nobody's interested in Defense. Spend only a measly twenty per cent of the Gross World Product on Defense, and expect to keep strong! Good God, Tom, give me a drink!" Apparently heresy had shocked him sober. Old Tom explained, "The General is a patriot. We all respect him for it." "I understand," Capt. Shaeffer said. General Reuter hammered his knuckles in rhythm on the table. "The drink, the drink, the drink! You got more in the bottle. I saw it!" Old Tom rolled his eyes Heavenward and passed the bottle across. "This is all you get. This is all I've got." The General held the bottle up to the light. "Should have brought my own. Let's hurry up and get this over with." Old Tom smiled the smile of the sorely beset and persecuted and said, "You see, Merle, there's massive discontent among the population of Itra. We feel we should send a man to the planet to, well, foment change and, uh, hasten the already inevitable overthrow of the despotic government. That man will be strictly on his own. The Government will not be able to back him in any way whatsoever once he lands on Itra." The General had quickly finished the bottle. "You she," he interrupted, "there's one thing they can't fight, an' that's an idea. Jus' one man goes to Itra with the idea of Freedom, that's all it'll take. How many men did it take to start the 'Merican Revolution? Jefferson. The Russian Revolution? Marx!" "Yes," Old Tom said. "One dedicated man on Itra, preaching the ideas of Liberty—liberty with responsibility and property rights under one God. That man can change a world." Exhausted by the purity of his emotions, Old Tom sat back gasping to await the answer. "A quarter of a million dollars a year?" Capt. Shaeffer asked at length. II The Itraians spoke a common language. It was somewhat guttural and highly inflected. Fortunately, the spelling appeared to be phonetic, with only forty-three characters being required. As near as anyone could tell, centuries of worldwide communication had eliminated regional peculiarities. The speech from one part of Itra was not distinguishable from that of another part. Most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television programs. A dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific task force of the Over-Council. The overall program was directed and administered by Intercontinental Iron, Steel, Gas, Electricity, Automobiles and Synthetics, Incorporated. It took Shaeffer just short of three years to speak Itraian sufficiently well to convince non-Itraians that he spoke without accent. The remainder of his training program was administered by a variety of other large industrial concerns. The training was conducted at a Defense Facility. At the end of his training, Shaeffer was taken by special bus to the New Mexican space port. A ship waited. The car moved smoothly from the Defense Force Base, down the broad sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into Grants. Sight of the slums gave Shaeffer mixed emotions. It was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had always regarded with a circumspect indifference. The slums were there. He supposed they always would be there. But now, for the first time in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent threat once and for all. He felt relief and guilt. During the last three years, he had earned $750,000. As a civilian stationed on a Defense Force Base, he had, of course, to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. But the charge was nominal. Since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000. Which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from Itra. Shaeffer's ship stood off Itra while he prepared to disembark. In his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in Itraian-style clothing. Capt. Merle S. Shaeffer became Shamar the Worker. In addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit Itraian currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various denominations. Earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a technologically advanced civilization. His plan was as follows: 1. He was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses. 2. He was to procure transportation to Xxla, a major city, equivalent to London or Tokyo. It was the headquarters for the Party. 3. He was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the University of Xxla. 4. Working through student contacts, he was to ingratiate himself with such rebel intellectuals as could be found. 5. Once his contacts were secure, he was to assist in the preparation of propaganda and establish a clandestine press for its production. 6. As quickly as the operation was self-sufficient, he was to move on to another major city ... and begin all over. The ship descended into the atmosphere. The bell rang. Shamar the Worker seated himself, put on his oxygen mask and signaled his readiness. He breathed oxygen. The ship quivered, the door fell away beneath him and he was battered unconscious by the slipstream. Five minutes later, pinwheeling lazily in free fall, he opened his eyes. For an instant's panic he could not read the altimeter. Then seeing that he was safe, he noted his physical sensations. He was extremely cold. Gyrating wildly, he beat his chest to restore circulation. He stabilized his fall by stretching out his hands. He floated with no sensation of movement. Itra was overhead, falling up at him slowly. He turned his back to the planet and checked the time. Twelve minutes yet to go. He spent, in all, seventeen minutes in free fall. At 2000 feet, he opened his parachute. The sound was like an explosion. He floated quietly, recovering from the shock. He removed his oxygen mask and tasted the alien air. He sniffed several times. It was not unpleasant. Below was darkness. Then suddenly the ground came floating up and hit him. The terrain was irregular. He fought the chute to collapse it, tripped, and twisted his ankle painfully. The chute lay quiet and he sat on the ground and cursed in English. At length he bundled up the chute and removed all of the packages of money but the one disguised as a field pack. He used the shovel to dig a shallow grave at the base of a tree. He interred the chute, the oxygen cylinder, the mask, the shovel and scooped dirt over them with his hands. He sat down and unlaced his shoe and found his ankle badly swollen. Distant, unfamiliar odors filled him with apprehension and he started at the slightest sound. Dawn was breaking. III Noting his bearings carefully, he hobbled painfully westward, with thirty pounds of money on his back. He would intersect the major North-South Intercontinental highway by at least noon. Two hours later, he came to a small plastic cabin in a clearing at the edge of a forest. Wincing now with each step, he made his way to the door. He knocked. There was a long wait. The door opened. A girl stood before him in a dressing gown. She frowned and asked, " Itsil obwatly jer gekompilp? " Hearing Itraian spoken by a native in the flesh had a powerful emotional impact on Shamar the Worker. Stumblingly, he introduced himself and explained that he was camping out. During the previous night he had become lost and injured his ankle. If she could spare him food and directions, he would gladly pay. With a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in Itraian, "Come in, Chom the Worker." He felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. Apparently he had horribly mispronounced his own name. It was as though, in English he had said Barchestershire for Barset. He cursed whatever Professor had picked that name for whatever obscure reason. "Sit down," she invited. "I'm about to have breakfast. Eggs and bacon—" the Itraian equivalent—"if that's all right with you. I'm Garfling Germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me Ge-Ge." The food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. He was able to choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, the hot drink that was the equivalent of Earth coffee at the end of the meal, was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach. "Good coffee," he said. "Thank you. Care for a cigarette?" "I sure would." He had no matches, so she lit it for him, hovering above him a moment, leaving with him the fresh odor of her hair. The taste of the cigarette was mild. Rather surprisingly, it substituted for nicotine and allayed the sharp longing that had come with the coffee. "Let's look at your ankle," she said. She knelt at his feet and began to unlace the right shoe. "My, it's swollen," she said sympathetically. He winced as she touched it and then he reddened with embarrassment. He had been walking across dusty country. He drew back the foot and bent to restrain her. Playfully she slapped his hand away. "You sit back! I'll get it. I've seen dirty feet before." She pulled off the shoe and peeled off the sock. "Oh, God, it is swollen," she said. "You think it's broken, Shamar?" "Just sprained." "I'll get some hot water with some MedAid in it, and that'll take the swelling out." When he had his foot in the water, she sat across from him and arranged her dressing gown with a coquettish gesture. She caught him staring at the earring, and one hand went to it caressingly. She smiled that universal feminine smile of security and recklessness, of invitation and rejection. "You're engaged," he noted. She opened her eyes wide and studied him above a thumbnail which she tasted with her teeth. "I'm engaged to Von Stutsman—" as the name might be translated—"perhaps you've heard of him? He's important in the Party. You know him?" "No." "You in the Party?" she said. She was teasing him now. Then, suddenly: "Neither am I, but I guess I'll have to join if I become Mrs. Von Stutsman." They were silent for a moment. Then she spoke, and he was frozen in terror, all thoughts but of self-preservation washed from his mind. "Your accent is unbelieveably bad," she said. "I'm from Zuleb," he said lamely, at last. "Meta—Gelwhops—or even Karkeqwol, that makes no difference. Nobody on Itra speaks like you do. So you must be from that planet that had the Party in a flap several years ago—Earth, isn't it?" He said nothing. "Do you know what they'll do when they catch you?" she asked. "No," he said hollowly. "They'll behead you." She laughed, not unkindly. "If you could see yourself! How ridiculous you look, Shamar. I wonder what your real name is, by the way? Sitting with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. Here, let me fix more coffee and we can talk." She called cheerily over her shoulder, "You're safe here. No one will be by. I'm not due back until Tuesday." She brought him a steaming mug. "Drink this while I dress." She disappeared into the bedroom. He heard the shower running. He sat waiting, numb and desperate, and drank the coffee because it was there. His thoughts scampered in the cage of his skull like mice on a treadmill. When Ge-Ge came back, he had still not resolved the conflict within him. She stood barefoot upon the rug and looked down at him, hunched miserably over the pan of water, now lukewarm. "How's the foot?" "All right." "Want to take it out?" "I guess." "I'll get a towel." She waited until he had dried the foot and restored the sock and shoe. The swelling was gone. He stood up and put his weight on it. He smiled wanly. "It's okay now. It's not broken, I guess." She gestured him to the sofa. He complied. "What's in the field pack?" she asked. "Money? How much?" She moved toward it. He half rose to stop her, but by then she had it partly open. "My," she said, bringing out a thick sheaf of bills. She rippled them sensuously. "Pretty. Very, very pretty." She examined them for texture and appearance. "They look good, Shamar. I'll bet it would cost ten million dollars in research on paper and ink and presses to do this kind of a job. Only another government has got that kind of money to throw around." She tossed the currency carelessly beside him and came to sit at his side. She took his hand. Her hand was warm and gentle. "Tell me, Shamar," she said. "Tell me all about it." So this is how easily spies are trapped in real life, Shamar told himself with numb disbelief. The story came out slowly and hesitantly at first. She said nothing until he had finished. "And that's all? You really believe that, don't you? And I guess your government does, too. That all we need is just some little idea or something." She turned away from him. "But of course, that's neither here nor there, is it? I never imagined an adventurer type would look like you. You have such a soft, honest voice. As a little girl, I pictured myself being carried off by a tanned desert sheik on a camel; and oh, he was lean and handsome! With dark flashing eyes and murderously heavy lips and hands like iron! Well, that's life, I guess." She stood and paced the room. "Let me think. We'll pick up a flyer in Zelonip when we catch the bus next Tuesday. How much does the money weigh?" "Eighty pounds." "I can carry about 10 pounds in my bag. You can take your field pack. How much is in it? Thirty pounds? That'll leave about forty which we can ship through on extra charges. Then, when we get to Xxla, I can hide you out in an apartment over on the East side." "Why would you run a risk like that for me?" he asked. She brushed the hair from her face. "Let's say—what? I don't really think you can make it, because it's so hopeless. But maybe, just maybe, you might be one of the rare ones who, if he plays his cards right, can beat the system. I love to see them licked! "Well, I'm a clerk. That's all. Just a lowly clerk in one of the Party offices. I met Von Stutsman a year ago. This is his cabin. He lets me use it. "He's older than I am; but there's worse husband material. But then again, he's about to be transferred to one of the big agricultural combines way out in the boondocks where there's no excitement at all. Just little old ladies and little old men and peasants having children. "I'm a city girl. I like Xxla. And if I marry him, all that goes up the flue. I'll be marooned with him, God knows where, for years. Stuck, just stuck. "Still—he is Von Stutsman, and he's on his way up. Everyone says that. Ten, twenty years, he'll be back to Xxla, and he'll come back on top. "Oh ... I don't know what I want to do! If I marry him, I can get all the things I've always wanted. Position, security. He's older than I am, but he's really a nice guy. It's just that he's dull. He can't talk about anything but Party, Party, Party. "That's what I came out to this cabin for. To think things over, to try to get things straightened out. And then you came along. Maybe it gives me a chance for something exciting before I ship off to the boondocks. Does that make sense to you? "I'll get married and sit out there, and I'll turn the pages of the Party magazine and smile sweetly to myself. Because, you see, I'll always be able to lean forward and say, 'Dear? Once upon a time, I helped hide an Earth spy in Xxla.' And that'll knock that silly and self-satisfied look off his face for once.... Oh, I don't know! Let me alone!" With that, she fled to the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. He could hear her sobbing helplessly. In the afternoon, she came out. He had fallen asleep. She shook him gently to waken him. "Eh? Oh! Huh?" He smiled foolishly. "Wash up in there," she told him. "I'm sorry I blew up on you this morning. I'll cook something." When he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming platters. "Look, Ge-Ge," he said over coffee. "You don't like your government. We'll help you out. There's this Galactic Federation idea." He explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures. "Shamar, my friend," she said, "did you see Earth's proposal? There was nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. We were required to give Earth all transportation franchises. The organization you used to work for was to be given, as I remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine year right to carry all Earth-Itra commerce. It was all covered in the newspapers, didn't you see it?" Shamar said, "Well, now, I'm not familiar with the details. I wasn't keeping up with them. But I'm sure these things could be, you know, worked out. Maybe, for Security reasons, we didn't want to give you the interstellar drive right off, but you can appreciate our logic there. Once we saw you were, well, like us, a peace-loving planet, once you'd changed your government to a democracy, you would see it our way and you'd have no complaints on that score." "Let's not talk politics," she said wearily. "Maybe it's what you say, and I'm just naturally suspicious. I don't want to talk about it." "Well, I was just trying to help—" The sentence was interrupted by a monstrous explosion. "Good God!" Shamar cried. "What was that?" "Oh, that," Ge-Ge said, shaking off the effects. "They were probably testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was explosion proof and it wasn't." IV During the week alone in the cabin, Ge-Ge fell in love with Shamar. "Oh, my God!" she cried. "What will I do when they catch you? I'll die, Shamar! I couldn't bear it. We'll go to Xxla, we'll hide away as quietly as two mice, somewhere. We won't go out. The two of us, alone but together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. Nobody will ever know about us. We'll be the invisible people." Shamar protested. "I don't see how we can ever be secure until something's done about your government. As long as you don't reach some kind of agreement with Earth, I'll be an outlaw. I'll be afraid any minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. I don't think we could hold up under that. We'd be at each other in no time." She wept quietly. The last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the money. The trip to Xxla took place without incident. Ge-Ge rented an apartment for him, and he safely checked in. She went shopping for food and clothing. Thereafter she came nearly every evening. They would eat and she would reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she was daily exposed. After dinner, they would sit in the living room and practice Itraian and neck a little. Then she would go home. One day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his arms and sobbed, "I gave Von Stutsman back his earring today. It was the only fair thing to do. I'm afraid he knows about us. He's had me watched. I know he has. I admitted it was another man." Shamar held her tensely. She broke away. "You were born in Zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke up in a ditch one morning without papers. You've been an itinerant worker since. Things like that happen all the time. You hit a big lottery ticket a few months ago. I told him that. How can he check it?" "You told him I didn't have any papers?" "Millions of people don't have any papers—the drifters, people that do casual labor, the people that don't work at all. The thing is, without papers he doesn't have any way to check on you. Oh, you should have seen his face when I gave him back his earring. He was absolutely livid. I didn't think he had it in him. I suppose I'll have to quit my job now. Oh, if you only had papers so we could be married!" Ge-Ge's mood, that evening, alternated between despair and optimism. In the end, she was morose and restless. She repeated several times, "I just don't know what's going to happen to us." "Ge-Ge," he said, "I can't spend my life in this apartment I've got to get out." "You're mad." She faced him from across the room. She stood with her legs apart, firmly set. "Well, I don't care what happens any more. I can't stand things to go on like they are. I'll introduce you to some people I know, since you won't be happy until I do. But God help us!"

test

51445

SORDMAN THE PROTECTOR BY TOM PURDOM Illustrated by WOOD [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine August 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He was the most powerful man in the world. He could make anybody do anything—and yet he was the slave of a mad criminal's mind! In a beer hall on the eighty-first floor of the Hotel Mark Twain fourteen men held an adolescent girl prisoner. "I'll go up there by myself," Sordman said. He was a big young man with sloppy black hair and a red beard. His fashionably ornate clothes covered the body of a first class Talent. Disciplined training, plus drugs and his natural gift, had made him one of the four truly developed psionic adepts in the world. With drugs and preparation, he could command the entire range of psi powers. Without drugs, he could sense the emotions and sometimes the general thought patterns of the people near him. "We'd better go with you," Lee Shawn said. "There's an awful lot of fear up there. They'll kill you as soon as they learn you're a Talent." She was a lean, handsome woman in her early forties. A lawyer-politician, she was the Guggenheim Foundation's lobbyist. For years she had fought against laws to outlaw the development of Talent. "Thanks, Mama, but I think I'd better go alone." Sordman, though he didn't tell her, knew that symbolically Lee saw him as the tree and herself as the rain and the earth. "Go ahead and laugh," George Aaron said. "But you'll need big medicine to fight that fear. Lee's symbolic place in your psyche is important." "I've thought it over," Sordman said. "I'll depend on God and nothing else." He felt George's mind squirm. As a psychologist, George accepted Sordman's Zen-Christian faith because Sordman needed it to control the powers of his Talent. But George himself was a confirmed skeptic. The men up there were scared. Sordman knew he would die if he lost control. But Lee and George were scared, too. Even now, standing in the park in early morning, their fear battered at his mind. He thought about swimming in the ocean. He made his skin remember salted wind. The real Atlantic, a mile away, helped the illusion. It was the right symbol. He felt his friends calm. "Let him go," George said. "He's manipulating us," Lee said. "I know. But let him go." Sordman laughed. Lee bent and tore a clump of grass from the earth. "Take this, Andy." "Thank you." It was wet with dew. He held it to his nose and smelled the dirt and grass. Two things kept him from destruction by his own Talent. He loved the physical world and he believed in God. "I'll call you if I need you," he said. "Be careful," George said. "Many people need you." "You've got status," Lee said. "Use it. You're dealing with the kind of people it impresses." The hotel stood three hundred stories tall. Surrounded by a five-mile-square park, connected to the major coastal cities by high speed vacuum tubes, the building was a small town. Eighty-five thousand people lived within its walls. Sordman rode an empty elevator. Through the glass sides he studied the deserted halls and shops. They were frightened here. Murder had been done. A Talent had destroyed two men. Lord, protect us from the malice of a witch. The eighty-first was a commercial floor. He got off the vator and walked down the main corridor. A man watched him through the door of a bar. A girl in a blue kimono froze behind the counter of a pastry shop. He stopped before the doors of the beer hall. He dropped to his knees and prayed. Once the brave leader walked into a panicky group and it was enough to look calm. Now he had to be calm. It was not enough to square the shoulders, walk erect, speak in a confident tone. Sordman's true emotions radiated from him every moment. Those within range felt them as their own. He drove thoughts like knives into the deepest corners of his mind. He begged release from fear. He prayed his God to grant him love for the frightened men within. He stood erect and squared his shoulders. His bulb-shouldered morning coat was grey as dawn. He thought a well loved formula, a Buddhist prayer from the Book of Universal Worship. All life is transitory. All people must suffer and die. Let us forgive one another. He roared his name and titles at the door. "I am Talent Andrew Sordman, Fellow for Life of the Guggenheim Foundation, by Senate Act Protector of the People! By the laws of our country, I ask the right to enter." Silence. "I am Talent Andrew Sordman, Fellow—" " Go away, witch! " Without drugs and preparation, Sordman needed visual contact to sense emotions. But he didn't need Talent to sense the hatred in that voice. He pictured a rough block of stone. Using a basic skill, he kept the picture in his mind as he opened the door and planned his words. "I have taken no drugs and made no preparation. You have nothing to fear. I'm your Protector and I've come to talk." The beer hall was large and gloomy. The butts and ashes of the night's smoking filled its trays. Fourteen men watched him come. Half a dozen had hunting rifles. Hunched over, weeping, a thin, dark-haired girl sat beneath an unshaded light. A shiver of anger crossed his brain. "Kill the witch!" a young man shouted. Lord, grant me love.... His eyes focused on the rifle bearers. One of them half-raised his gun. Then the butt clumped on the floor. "You're bewitched!" the young man said. "I told you not to let him in." "I've come to talk," Sordman said. "Who's the leader of your group?" The young man said, "We don't have a leader. Here we're all equals." Sordman studied the young man's emotions. He was frightened, but only a little more than the others. There was something else there, too. Something very strong. Sex frustration! The young man had an athletic body and a handsome, chiselled face. On his yellow vest he wore the emblem of a Second Class Technician. But even a young man with adequate finances could be frustrated. Keeping the stone in his mind, he undressed a certain actress. He loved women and engaged in sex with lusty, triumphant joy. To him it was a celebration of the sacred mystery of life. He hoped some of this emotion reached its target. He started talking without asking for a parley. "Two men died yesterday. I've come to hunt out the murderer and put him away. What's the evidence against this girl?" "We found drugs and a divining rod in her room." "She's had a reputation for a long time." "The school kids say she's a daydreamer." Sordman understood their fear. Psi was a new and dangerous force. Its use demanded moral and intellectual discipline. Only a rare and carefully developed personality could encounter the anger, hostility and fear in other minds and still retain compassion and reasonable respect for human beings. An undisciplined person panicked and went into a mental state approaching paranoia. Sordman fought panic every day. He fought it with a total acceptance of human motivations, cultivated tenderness and compassion, and a healthy ego which could accept and enjoy its own self-love. Those things, Sordman would have said, and also the necessary grace of God. But the most undisciplined personality could practice psi destructively. Hostile minds roamed the world. Death could strike you in a clear field beneath an open sky while your murderer lay home in his bed. No wonder they dragged a girl from her parents and bullied her till dawn. They talked. Sordman picked his way through fourteen minds. As always, he found what he wanted. A fat, redheaded man sat a little apart from the group. He radiated a special kind of concern. He was concerned for the girl and for his own children. He believed the actions of the night had been necessary, but he felt the girl's pain and he wasn't sure he was doing the right thing. Above all, he was a man who wanted to do the right thing—the really right thing. "You all have children," Sordman said. "Would you like to see them dragged out at night and treated the way you've treated this girl?" "We've got to protect ourselves!" the young man said. "Let him talk!" the fat man growled. He stared at the thick hands he spread on the table. "The girl has said all night she's innocent. Maybe she is. Maybe the Protector can do what we haven't done and find the real killer." "I'm a master Talent," Sordman said. "If the killer is in the hotel, I can track him down before midnight. Will you give me that long?" "How do we know you'll bring in the right man?" "If he's the right man, he'll make it plain enough." "You'll make him confess," the young man said. "You'll manipulate him like a puppet." "What good will that do?" Sordman said. "Do you think I could control a man all the time he's in prison and on trial? If I use my Talent more than a few hours, I collapse." "Can we hold the girl here?" asked the redheaded fat man. "Feed her and treat her right," Sordman said. "What's your name?" "John Dyer. My friends were about to use their belts on her." A rifleman shuffled uneasily. "It's the only way. Mind killers use their Talent to tie their tongues and confuse us. Only pain can break their control." "That's a fairy tale," Sordman said. "Without drugs a Talent is helpless." "We've got the girl," John Dyer said. "She can't hurt us while we're waiting." " He can! " the young man screamed. "Are you a plain fool? He can go outside and kill us all." Sordman laughed. "Sure I could. And tomorrow I'd have to fight off an army. That I couldn't do if I was fool enough to try. You're frightened, boy. Use your head." "You are excited, Leonard," said an armed man. He wore a blue morning coat with Manager's stars and the emblem of a transportation company. "We can wait a day. If we've got the killer, then we're safe. If we don't, then we've failed and the Protector should try." "I'm not frightened. I just don't like Talent." Most of the men frowned. They didn't share the prejudice. A few nodded and mumbled and shot dark glances at Sordman. He let them talk. He stood there and thought apple pies and the brotherhood of man and the time he and his second wife spent three days in bed. And the big block of stone. He was a high-powered transmitter broadcasting joy, good will toward men and tranquility. In the end they listened to Dyer. "But don't think you'll get a minute past midnight," said the young man. "Technician, your Protector will remember." Clarke Esponito had been a hard, quick little man in his early fifties. On the day of his death, the hotel newspaper had published his picture and announced his promotion to Director of Vocational Testing for the entire Atlantic Region. He had lived with his wife and his nineteen-year-old son, and his wife had been a lifetime wife. Esponito had been a Catholic, and that faith still called short-term marriages a mortal sin. For a moment Sordman wondered what it would be like to know only one woman your entire life. He loved the infinite variety of God's creation and wanted to sample as much of it as he could. "Mylady Widow, our apologies." Lee bowed, hands before her chest, and Sordman and George Aaron bowed with her. "We intrude on you," Lee said, "only because we have to find the real killer. Other people may be in danger." The Widow Esponito bowed in return. "I understand, Politician Shawn." Even with her face scarred by tears she looked lovely. From the earliest years of their marriage, her husband had been high in the Civil Service and able to buy her beauty treatments. "Mylady," Sordman said, "I need your help for two things. We want to know who you think wanted to kill your husband. And we need your want." "Our want?" her son asked. He stood rigidly beside his mother's chair. His clothes were rich and formal tweed. "Do you want to find the killer?" The boy nodded soberly. "The moment I heard of his murder, I promised to avenge him." "John!" His mother trembled. "You were raised to be a Christian!" Sordman said, "I want to locate the image I think was used to kill him. For that I want to hook your strong desires into my thoughts. You won't know I'm doing it. But if you're near me, I'll use your emotions." "Your husband was a very important man," Lee said. "Would anyone gain by his death?" "Everyone liked my husband. He was always laughing, he—" The old-young woman started crying. Her son put his arm around her shoulders. Sordman felt her pain and winced. Death and pain were part of Creation, but he hated them and often cursed them. At times like these, he understood George's skepticism. The boy said, "Manager Kurt didn't like him." Mylady stifled her sobs and sat up. "Manager Kurt has been our guest every month. Protector, John's upset. He's talking wildly." "Father told me. He said Manager Kurt didn't like him." "Your father and the Manager were good friends." He felt a sudden resentment in the woman. Why? The boy didn't feel as if he was lying. Maybe Esponito had been the kind of man who didn't talk about his job with his wife. But his son—who would some day be a member of his father's class—would have received a certain amount of practical advice. Perhaps Mylady resented being left out of her husband's professional life. That was a common family pattern, after all. George felt impatient. Sordman shot him a questioning glance. "Where does Manager Kurt live?" "In Baltimore," the boy said. "Mylady, may we use your phone?" "You don't take John seriously?" Mylady said. "We'll have to ask the Baltimore police to check on the Manager. It may not mean anything, but we have to follow every lead." "Use the phone, Protector." Sordman and George stepped into the dining room. "We're wasting time," George said. "They're both upset and there seems to be a family quarrel." "I know. But Esponito's murder gives us more leads than Bedler's. Bedler didn't even have a one-month wife when he died. Lots of people knew the Administrator and might have had a grudge against him." George clasped his hands behind his back. "We've unraveled twenty-three murders in the last four years. Judging by that experience, I'd say there are three possibilities: both victims were picked at random; both victims are in some way related; or one victim was killed to confuse the police." "Unless we have something entirely new." "That's been the pattern so far." "I think we're both coming to the same conclusion." "Find out if the murderer used the picture from the paper?" "Mmm. If he did, Administrator Esponito was probably attacked on the spur of the moment. And we should be seeing who wanted to kill Bedler." "What about Manager Kurt?" "Have Lee call the Baltimore police while I try to locate the murder weapon. At least they can search his home for drugs." George went back to the parlor and Sordman stripped to his yellow vest. From the pockets of his morning coat he removed a leather case and a tiny plastic package. Unfolded, the plastic became a thin red robe with a yellow bomb-burst on the back. He called it his battle robe. Habit played a big part in the development of Talent. The same clothing, the same ritualized movements, helped put his mind in the proper state. He filled a hypodermic with a pink liquid and jabbed the needle into his wrist. As the drug took effect, he knelt to pray. "Grant me, God, the strength to bind the demons in my mind." He stood up. At this point many Talents danced. Sordman loved to use his body, but ritual dancing made him feel ridiculous. It had been proven, however, that the Power flowed at its freest when the body was occupied, so he took three colored balls from the case and started juggling. The balls soared higher and faster. He mumbled a hymn. His voice grew stronger. He roared his love of life at the world. The wall between his conscious and unconscious mind collapsed. Lightning flashed in his eyes. Colors sang in his brain. Walls, floor, table, chairs became extensions of his mind. They danced with the balls between his hands. The Universe and he flowed together like a sea of molten iron. His hands, miles from his mind, fumbled in the case. The balls danced and bobbed in the air. He laughed and unfolded his divining rod. The furniture bounced. Mylady Esponito screamed. All Creation is a flow. Dance, you parts of me, you living things, you atoms of my dust! He had torn Esponito's photo from a newspaper. Now he let the colored balls drop and stuck the picture on the end of the rod. "This and that are one in kind. Servant rod, find me that!" He stretched out the rod and turned on his heels. He sang and blanked his mind and listened to the tremors in his hands. Stop. Back right. Now the left. Too far. Down. Correct left.... Here! He pressed a button on the rod. A tripod sprang out. A pair of sights flipped up. Carefully he sighted down the rod, out through the window-wall beside the table, to a grove of trees in the park. Creation roaring in his open head, divining rod in hand, he stormed out the door and down the hall. Lee and George hurried after him. The presence of their well known minds pleased him. There was George's unexpressed belief that he had "mastered" and guided the Power he feared. There was Lee's worry for him and her keen awareness of human realities. And there, too, were self-discipline, intelligence, affection, and a richness of experience and thought he expected to draw on for another forty years. And filling the world, pounding on the walls of existence, the Power. His power. He, the master of the world! He who could uproot the trees, spin the earth, make the ground shake and change the colors of the sky. He felt George's clear-eyed, good-humored tolerance. A hypnotic command triggered in his mind. He saw a Roman Caesar ride in triumph and the slave behind him said, "Caesar, remember you are mortal." My power? It is a gift from the Fountain of Creation. Mine to use with the wisdom and restraint implanted by my teachers. Or else I'll be destroyed by my power. He laughed and rolled into a cannon ball and hurled his body through the wood. "Andy! Andy, you're losing us!" He picked them up and towed them with him. The girl in the beer hall cried in his heart. The fox is many hills away and the hound grows impatient. They landed in a heap. George said, "Andy, what the hell are you doing?" "I brought you down in a soft spot." "You felt like an elephant running amok! Boy, you've got to be careful. Since you were a little boy I've taught you to watch every move. For a moment I don't think you knew how you felt." "You're right," Sordman mumbled. "That was close." "Let's find the picture," Lee said. "Has the drug worn off?" "Just about. The picture's over by that tree. It feels like it's rumpled up." After a minute's hunt, they found it. It had been rolled into a ball and tossed away. "We're dealing with an amateur," Lee said. "A Talent who was even half-developed would have burned this." Unrolled, the picture fell in half. It had been sliced with a blade. "Let's walk back," Sordman said. "Let's talk." They crossed a log bridge. He ran his hands along the rough bark and smelled the cool water of the stream. Most of the big park was wilderness, but here and there were pavilions, an outdoor theatre, open playing fields and beautifully planned gardens. A man could have a home surrounded by the shops and pleasures of civilized living and yet only be a ten-minute elevator ride from God's bounty. "The fact the killer used the newspaper picture doesn't prove Bedler was the real victim," George said. "But it indicates it." "Let's assume it's true," Sordman said, "and see where it leads us." "Bedler was married," Lee said. "I remember that from our briefing." Sordman rabbit-punched a tree as he passed it. "It was a one-year contract, and it ended two weeks ago." "I smell jealousy," Lee said. "The world is filled with it," George said. "I favor short-term marriages. They're the only way a person can practice a difficult art and make mistakes without committing himself for life. But about half the mental breakdowns I used to get were due to the insecurities caused by a temporary contract. One party almost always hopes the marriage will somehow become permanent." "Let's talk to Bedler's ex-wife," Sordman said. Her name was Jackie Baker. She was just over five feet tall and blonde. She wore glasses with green frames. Sordman liked big women but he had to admit this little creature made him feel like swatting and rubbing. She wore a sea-green kimono and bowed gracefully at the door. "Citizen Baker, I'm Protector Andrew Sordman. May we talk to you?" "Certainly, Protector. Welcome." They entered and he introduced Lee and George. After they exchanged bows, the girl offered them some wine. She took a bottle of clear Rhine wine from the cooler and asked George to open it. There were several journals on a throw table. "Are you a doctor, Citizen?" Lee asked. "No, Politician. A medical technician." They drank the first glass of wine. "Technician," George said, "we have to ask you some questions. We'll try not to upset you." The girl closed her eyes. "I'll try not to be upset. I hope you find whoever killed him. I'd like to find her." The girl felt lonely. She ached with unsatisfied needs. I'd like to lie with you and comfort you, Sordman thought. I'd like to hold you in my arms and drain all the tears you're holding back. But he couldn't. His contract with his wife had six months to run and no one committed adultery any more. "When the rules are carefully tailored to human needs," Lee often said, "there's no excuse for breaking them." "Why 'her'?" Lee asked. "Why 'her' instead of 'him'?" The girl looked at Sordman. "Can't you just probe my mind? Do I have to answer questions?" "I'm afraid so," Sordman said. "My Talent has its limits. I can't deep-probe everybody's mind, any more than a baseball pitcher can pitch all day." Lee said, "Even if he could, our warrant says we can't probe more than four suspects." "Now can you tell us why you think the killer is a woman?" George asked. The girl held out her glass and George filled it. "Because he was the kind of man who made you want to kill him. He was understanding and loving. He made me feel like a princess all the time I lived with him. But he can't keep to one girl." She gulped down the whole glass. "He told me so himself. He was so wonderful to live with I went insane every time he looked at another girl. I knew he was shopping for his next wife." She wiggled in her chair. "Is that what you want to know?" "I'm sorry," Sordman said. "Do you know who he was interested in before he died?" The girl had big, myopic eyes. "Our contract ended sixteen days ago." She took a cigarette from inside her kimono. "Protector Sordman, could I just talk to you?" "Certainly," Sordman said. Lee and George went to a coffee house on the next floor down. "I want to talk to just you," the girl said. "I feel safe with you. You make me feel right." "It goes with being a Talent," Sordman said. "Either we like people and let them know it or we crack." "I know it's all right to tell you things. I love Joe. I broke the rules for him. I didn't avoid him for three months the way you're supposed to. I went everywhere I knew he'd be. I had to see him." Sordman stroked his beard. Mentally, he cuddled her in his arms and murmured comfort to her. She hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around her body. "Just before our marriage ended, I found out he was seeing Raven English as much as he could. He didn't break the rules. But when we went to dances he always danced with her once or twice. And she and her husband used to meet us in bars. After the contract expired, he couldn't see her much because she and her husband have another six months to go. But there was a dance last week and I saw the two of them disappear into the park. Raven's husband hunted all over for her. He looked horrible. I pitied him." "Who's Raven English?" "She's a sadist. I know she is. She's just the type to do this. She likes to play with men and hurt them. Her poor husband is a nervous wreck. I know she killed Joe, Protector. She hates us!" He stood up. The girl watched him with big eyes. He put his hand on her head. "Sleep is a joy," he said. Unprepared, he couldn't have done that to many people. But she was a woman, which added to his influence, and totally exhausted. He got off the vator and looked around for the coffee house. Dozens of people wandered the halls and the shops. As he walked down the hall, some of them looked away or got as far from him as they could. Others ignored him or found his presence reassuring or studied him curiously. A fat woman in a black kimono walked toward him. She had one hand on her hip and her eyes were narrowed and hard. Sordman smiled. He felt her fear and distrust, and her determination not to let such emotions conquer her. "Good afternoon, Protector." "Good afternoon, Citizen Mother." He felt her triumph and her pleasure with herself. His fellow humans often made him gawk in wonder. Some people say we're psychic cripples, he thought. And maybe we are. But we do our work and we enjoy ourselves. And we do dangerous things like putting bases on Venus and falling in love. Surrounded by death and danger, crippled though we are, we go on. He swelled with feeling. People smiled and glanced at each other or hid shyly from the organ chords of his emotion. An old man stepped in front of him. "Monster! Freak!" He was thin and perfectly dressed. Sordman stopped. God of Infinite Compassion, this is my brother.... "They ought to lock you up," the man said. "They ought to keep you away from decent people. Get out of my head! Leave me alone!" People stared at them. A small crowd gathered. Lee appeared in the door of the coffee house. "It's all right," Sordman told the people. "It's all right." He started to go on. The man stepped in front of him. "Leave me alone, freak. Let me think my own thoughts!" "Citizen, I haven't touched your mind." "I felt it just then!" "It was no more than I could help. I'm sorry if I've hurt you." "Go away!" "I'm trying to." "Murderer! Mind witch!" He was faced with a strong mind that valued its independence. Anything he did would be detected and resented. "Citizens," he said, "this man deserves your respect. No matter what a man does, he's bound to offend someone. This Citizen values his privacy—which is good—and therefore I make him angry. I hope the good my Talent lets me do outweighs the bad. Forgive me, brother." He stepped to one side. "Leave him alone," someone said. "Let the Protector work." "Leave him alone, old man." " I'm not an old man. " "No, you're not," Sordman said. "I admire your courage." He walked on. Behind him the old man shouted curses. "Are you all right?" Lee said. "Sure. Let's go in and sit down." There were just a few people in the coffee house. Sordman ordered and told them what he had learned. "I wish you could probe everyone in the building," George said. "All we get is gossip." "The husband of this Raven English has a motive," Lee said. "Why don't we visit her?" "I think we should." Sordman drank his coffee. "Citizen English herself might have killed them." "I doubt it," George said. "It all sounds like a lot of talk," Sordman said. "But we have to follow it up. This business is nothing but wearing out your legs running after every lead. If your legs are strong, you can run anybody down." They finished their coffee and cigarettes and trudged out. Raven English, one-year wife of Leonard Smith, did not meet them at the door with gracious bows. Instead, a wall panel by the door shot back. They stared at a square of one way glass. "Who are you?" a girl's voice said. "I'm Andrew Sordman, your Protector. I come on lawful business. May we enter?" "No." "Why not?" Lee asked. "Because I don't like witches. Keep out." "We're hunting the killer," Sordman said. "We're on your side. I've taken no drugs and made no preparations. You don't have to be afraid." "I'm not afraid. I just don't want you in my home." "You have to let us in," Lee said. "Our warrant gives us entry into every room in this hotel. If we have to break the door down, we can." "I hope we don't have to break the door down." "You're getting fat," George said. "You need the exercise." "You won't break in," the girl said. Sordman crossed the hall to get a good start. "I'm about to, Mylady." His shoulder filled the doorway behind him. This looks like fun, he thought. He liked to feel his body working. The door opened. A dark-haired, slender girl stood in the doorway. Her skin was brown and her lips were pink, unpainted flesh. She wore a red kimono. "All right. Come in." "Gladly," Sordman said. It was a three-room apartment, with the kitchen tucked into one wall of the parlor. A painting stood on an easel by the window. The window was a shoulder-high slit and from it, here on the hundred and forty-first floor, he could see across the park to the beach and the rolling Atlantic. God grant me self-control, he thought. If this is the killer, grant me self-control. He made his savage thoughts lie down and purred at the world. "I'm sorry we have to force our way in," he said. "And I'm sorry you don't approve of Talent. But please remember two men have died and a little girl may die, too. There are lots of panicky people in the Mark Twain. We've got to find the killer soon and you can help us." "Why bother me?" the girl said. "This is awkward," Lee said. She stood erect but looked past the girl. She felt embarrassed. "Someone told us you and Bedler were seeing each other." "Oh, quit being prudish," George said. "These things happen all the time." He turned to the girl. "We were told you and Joe Bedler were making plans to get married when your present contract ends." "That's a lie!" Sordman laughed in his belly. No matter what the rules were, few women publicly admitted they had broken them. By the standards of the period from 1800 to 1990, the whole marriage system of the Twenty-First Century was immoral; but there were still prudes. And women still preserved the conventions. "Who told you that?" Raven English said. She frowned. "Was it that Jackie Baker?" "Why her?" George asked. "Because she's a logical person for you to talk to and because it's the kind of thing she'd say." "Yes," Sordman said. "She ought to see a psycher! And that's why you came?" "We're not accusing you," Sordman said. "But we've got to follow every lead."

test

51268

THE GIRLS FROM EARTH By FRANK M. ROBINSON Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Problem: How can you arrange marriages with men in one solar system, women in another—and neither willing to leave his own world? I "The beasts aren't much help, are they?" Karl Allen snatched a breath of air and gave another heave on the line tied to the raft of parampa logs bobbing in the middle of the river. "No," he grunted, "they're not. They always balk at a time like this, when they can see it'll be hard work." Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope's slack around his thick waist. "Together now, Karl. One! Two! " They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer. "If we're late for ship's landing, Joe, we'll get crossed off the list." Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope. "That's what I've been thinking about," he said, worried. They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn't matter. They'd be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free. "How much time have we got, Karl?" The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City. "Two hours, maybe a little more," he stated hastily when Hill looked more worried. "Time enough to get to Landing City and put in for our numbers on the list." He turned back to the raft, untied the leather and horn saddles, and threw them over the backs of their reluctant mounts. He cinched his saddle and tied on some robes and furs behind it. Hill watched him curiously. "What are you taking the furs for? This isn't the trading rocket." "I know. I thought that when we come back tonight, it might be cold and maybe she'll appreciate the coverings then." "You never would have thought of it yourself," Hill grunted. "Grundy must have told you to do it, the old fool. If you ask me, the less you give them, the less they'll come to expect. Once you spoil them, they'll expect you to do all the trapping and the farming and the family-raising yourself." "You didn't have to sign up," Karl pointed out. "You could have applied for a wife from some different planet." "One's probably just as good as another. They'll all have to work the farms and raise families." Karl laughed and aimed a friendly blow at Hill. They finished saddling up and headed into the thick forest. It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals. And it was time, he thought soberly, that he started to raise a family. He was mid-twenty now, old enough to want a wife and children. "You going to raise a litter, Joe?" Hill started. Karl realized that he had probably been thinking of the same thing. "One of these days I'll need help around the sawmill," Hill answered defensively. "Need some kids to cut the trees, a couple more to pole them down the river, some to run the mill itself and maybe one to sell the lumber in Landing City. Can't do it all myself." He paused a moment, thinking over something that had just occurred to him. "I've been thinking of your plans for a garden, Karl. Maybe I ought to have one for my wife to take care of, too." Karl chuckled. "I don't think she'll have the time!" They left the leafy expanse of the forest and entered the grasslands that sloped toward Landing City. He could even see Landing City itself on the horizon, a smudge of rusting, corrugated steel shacks, muddy streets, and the small rocket port—a scorched thirty acres or so fenced off with barbed wire. Karl looked out of the corner of his eye at Hill and felt a vague wave of uneasiness. Hill was a big, thick man wearing the soiled clothes and bristly stubble of a man who was used to living alone and who liked it. But once he took a wife, he would probably have to keep himself in clean clothes and shave every few days. It was even possible that the woman might object to Hill letting his yllumph share the hut. The path was getting crowded, more of the colonists coming onto the main path from the small side trails. Hill broke the silence first. "I wonder what they'll be like." Karl looked wise and nodded knowingly. "They're Earthwomen, Joe. Earth! " It was easy to act as though he had some inside information, but Karl had to admit to himself that he actually knew very little about it. He was a Second System colonist and had never even seen an Earthwoman. He had heard tales, though, and even discounting a large percentage of them, some of them must have been true. Old Grundy at the rocket office, who should know about these things if anybody did, seemed disturbingly lacking on definite information, though he had hinted broadly enough. He'd whistle softly and wink an eye and repeat the stories that Karl had already heard; but he had nothing definite to offer, no real facts at all. Some of the other colonists whom they hadn't seen for the last few months shouted greetings, and Karl began to feel some of the carnival spirit. There was Jenkins, who had another trapping line fifty miles farther up the Karazoo; Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember. "They say they're good workers," Hill said. Karl nodded. "Pretty, too." They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more. "Joe," Karl said suddenly, "what's supposed to make women from Earth better than women from any other world?" Hill located a faint itch and frowned. "I don't know, Karl. It's hard to say. They're—well, sophisticated, glamorous." Karl absorbed this in silence. Those particular qualities were, he thought, rather hard to define. The battered shack that served as rocket port office and headquarters for the colonial office on Midplanet loomed up in front of them. There was a crowd gathered in front of the building and they forced their way through to see what had caused it. "We saw this the last time we were here," Hill said. "I know," Karl agreed, "but I want to take another look." He was anxious to glean all the information that he could. It was a poster of a beautiful woman leaning toward the viewer. The edges of the poster were curling and the colors had faded during the last six months, but the girl's smile seemed just as inviting as ever. She held a long-stemmed goblet in one hand and was blowing a kiss to her audience with the other. Her green eyes sparkled, her smile was provocative. A quoted sentence read: "I'm from Earth !" There was nothing more except a printed list of the different solar systems to which the colonial office was sending the women. She was real pretty, Karl thought. A little on the thin side, maybe, and the dress she was wearing would hardly be practical on Midplanet, but she had a certain something. Glamour, maybe? A loudspeaker blared. "All colonists waiting for the wife draft assemble for your numbers! All colonists...." There was a jostling for places and then they were in the rapidly moving line. Grundy, fat and important-looking, was handing out little blue slips with numbers on them, pausing every now and then to tell them some entertaining bit of information about the women. He had a great imagination, nothing else. Karl drew the number 53 and hurried to the grassy lot beside the landing field that had been decorated with bunting and huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table was loaded with government pamphlets meant to be helpful to newly married colonists. Karl went over and stuffed a few in his pockets. Other tables had been set out and were loaded with luncheon food, fixed by the few colonial women in the community. Karl caught himself eyeing the women closely, wondering how the girls from Earth would compare with them. He fingered the ticket in his pocket. What would the woman be like who had drawn the companion number 53 aboard the rocket? For when it landed, they would pair up by numbers. The method had its drawbacks, of course, but time was much too short to allow even a few days of getting acquainted. He'd have to get back to his trapping lines and he imagined that Hill would have to get back to his sawmill and the others to their farms. What the hell, you never knew what you were getting either way, till it was too late. "Sandwich, mister? Pop?" Karl flipped the boy a coin, picked up some food and a drink, and wandered over to the landing field with Hill. There were still ten minutes or so to go before the rocket landed, but he caught himself straining his sight at the blue sky, trying to see a telltale flicker of exhaust flame. The field was crowded and he caught some of the buzzing conversation. "... never knew one myself, but let me tell you...." "... knew a fellow once who married one, never had a moment's rest afterward...." "... no comparison with colonial women. They got culture...." "... I'd give a lot to know the girl who's got number twenty-five...." "Let's meet back here with the girls who have picked our numbers," Hill said. "Maybe we could trade." Karl nodded, though privately he felt that the number system was just as good as depending on first impressions. There was a murmur from the crowd and he found his gaze riveted overhead. High above, in the misty blue sky, was a sudden twinkle of fire. He reached up and wiped his sweaty face with a muddy hand and brushed aside a straggly lock of tangled hair. It wouldn't hurt to try to look his best. The twinkling fire came nearer. II "A Mr. Macdonald to see you, Mr. Escher." Claude Escher flipped the intercom switch. "Please send him right in." That was entirely superfluous, he thought, because MacDonald would come in whether Escher wanted him to or not. The door opened and shut with a slightly harder bang than usual and Escher mentally braced himself. He had a good hunch what the problem was going to be and why it was being thrown in their laps. MacDonald made himself comfortable and sat there for a few minutes, just looking grim and not saying anything. Escher knew the psychology by heart. A short preliminary silence is always more effective in browbeating subordinates than an initial furious bluster. He lit a cigarette and tried to outwait MacDonald. It wasn't easy—MacDonald had great staying powers, which was probably why he was the head of the department. Escher gave in first. "Okay, Mac, what's the trouble? What do we have tossed in our laps now?" "You know the one—colonization problem. You know that when we first started to colonize, quite a large percentage of the male population took to the stars, as the saying goes. The adventuresome, the gamblers, the frontier type all decided they wanted to head for other worlds, to get away from it all. The male of the species is far more adventuresome than the female; the men left—but the women didn't. At least, not in nearly the same large numbers. "Well, you see the problem. The ratio of women to men here on Earth is now something like five to three. If you don't know what that means, ask any man with a daughter. Or any psychiatrist. Husband-hunting isn't just a pleasant pastime on Earth. It's an earnest cutthroat business and I'm not just using a literary phrase." He threw a paper on Escher's desk. "You'll find most of the statistics about it in that, Claude. Notice the increase in crimes peculiar to women. Shoplifting, badger games, poisonings, that kind of thing. It's quite a list. You'll also notice the huge increase in petty crimes, a lot of which wouldn't have bothered the courts before. In fact, they wouldn't even have been considered crimes. You know why they are now?" Escher shook his head blankly. "Most of the girls in the past who didn't catch a husband," MacDonald continued, "grew up to be the type of old maid who's dedicated to improving the morals and what-not of the rest of the population. We've got more puritanical societies now than we ever had, and we have more silly little laws on the books as a result. You can be thrown in the pokey for things like violating a woman's privacy—whatever that means—and she's the one who decides whether what you say or do is a violation or not." Escher looked bored. "Not to mention the new prohibition which forbids the use of alcohol in everything from cough medicines to hair tonics. Or the cleaned up moral code that reeks—if you'll pardon the expression—of purity. Sure, I know what you mean. And you know the solution. All we have to do is get the women to colonize." MacDonald ran his fingers nervously through his hair. "But it won't be easy, and that's why it's been given to us. It's your baby, Claude. Give it a lot of thought. Nothing's impossible, you know." "Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?" "What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. "Go back to the Board and tell them the problem is not solvable, that we can't think of anything?" Escher looked hurt. "Did I say that? I just said it wouldn't be easy." "The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not necessarily the spirit." "When do they have to have a solution?" "As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will happen then won't be good." "All right, by then we'll have the answer." MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for emigration to the colony planets is falling off." "How come?" MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?" When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it didn't work, you took the lumps, too. He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly. You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation, anyway. He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal chute. That would have to be the first to go. There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing, as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize. Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next. He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was still enough. Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to colonize who didn't want to colonize. The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not. No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all—provided you held your nose, silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was such a thing as a moral code. III Phyllis Hanson put the cover over her typewriter and locked the correspondence drawer. Another day was done, another evening about to begin. She filed into the washroom with the other girls and carefully redid her face. It was getting hard to disguise the worry lines, to paint away the faint crow's-feet around her eyes. She wasn't, she admitted to herself for the thousandth time, what you would call beautiful. She inspected herself carefully in her compact mirror. In a sudden flash of honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't even what you would call pretty. Her face was too broad, her nose a fraction too long, and her hair was dull. Not homely, exactly—but not pretty, either. Conversation hummed around her, most of it from the little group in the corner, where the extreme few who were married sat as practically a race apart. Their advice was sought, their suggestions avidly followed. "Going out tonight, Phyl?" She hesitated a moment, then slowly painted on the rest of her mouth. The question was technically a privacy violator, but she thought she would sidestep it this time, instead of refusing to answer point-blank. "I thought I'd stay home tonight. Have a few things I want to rinse out." The black-haired girl next to her nodded sympathetically. "Sure, Phyl, I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us—waiting for the phone to ring." Phyllis finished washing up and then left the office, carefully noting the girl who was waiting for the boss. The girl was beautiful in a hard sort of way, a platinum blonde with an entertainer's busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre. At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn't know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go. She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody's interest. It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor. What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn't rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about. Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman's life. But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn't take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again. She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn't had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn't worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta.... Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide. She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence. It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately! Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: "Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!" Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on.... The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren't nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications. She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist's conception, but even so.... And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages. It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn't think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn't tell her even if they had. But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities! She took another look at the poster. The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in. IV The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it. But she didn't intend to buy it. She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn't be back for five minutes. Time enough, at any rate. The dress was lying loose, so she didn't have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag. She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw. "Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice. "Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take." She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She'd get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she'd be out again. They couldn't do anything to her that mattered. She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor. "Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights. "I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer." She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill. And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture. "Name?" he asked in a tired voice. She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file." The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages. The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting. A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said: "... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration." "In view of some complicating factors, we're going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus." She thought for a minute that she hadn't heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it. "I wouldn't call that a choice," she said sourly. "I'll ship out." V Suzanne was proud of the apartment. It had all the modern conveniences, like the needle shower with the perfume dispenser, the built-in soft-drink bar in the library, the all-communications set, and the electrical massager. It was a nice, comfortable setup, an illusion of security in an ever-changing world. She lit a cigarette and chuckled. Mrs. Burger, the fat old landlady, thought she kept up the apartment by working as a buyer for one of the downtown stores. Well, maybe some day she would. But not today. And not tonight. The phone rang and she answered in a casual tone. She talked for a minute, then let a trace of sultriness creep into her voice. The conversation wasn't long. She let the receiver fall back on the base and went into the bedroom to get a hat box. She wouldn't need much; she'd probably be back that same night. It was a nice night and since the address was only a few blocks away, she decided to walk it. She blithely ignored the curious stares from other pedestrians, attracted by the sharp, clicking sound of her heels on the sidewalk. The address was a brownstone that looked more like an office building than anything else, but then you could never tell. She pressed the buzzer and waited a moment for the sound to echo back and forth on the inside. She pressed it again and a moment later a suave young man appeared in the doorway. "Miss Carstens?" She smiled pertly. "We've been expecting you." She wondered a little at the "we," but dutifully smiled and followed him in. The glare of the lights inside the office blinded her for a moment. When she could focus them again, her smile became slightly blurry at the edges and then disappeared entirely. She wasn't alone. There was a battery of chairs against one side of the room. She recognized most of the girls sitting in them. She forced a smile to her lips and tried to laugh. "I'm sure there's been some mistake! Why, I never...." The young man coughed politely. "I'm afraid there's been no mistake. Full name, please." "Suzanne Carstens," she said grimly, and gave the other statistics he wanted. She idly wondered what stoolie had peddled the phone numbers. "Suzanne Carstens," the young man noted, and slowly shook his head. "A very pretty name, but no doubt not your own. It actually doesn't matter, though. Take a seat over there." She did as he asked and he faced the entire group. "I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security." He stressed the word slightly. "Now, of course, if you don't prefer the colony planets, you can stay behind and face the penalties of ten years in jail and a fine of ten thousand dollars." Suzanne felt that her lower jaw needed support. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! And in either case she'd lose the apartment she had worked so hard for, her symbol of security. "Well, what do you say?" There was a dead silence. The young man from the Colonization Board turned to Suzanne. "How about you, Miss Carstens?" She smiled sickly and nodded her head. "I love to travel!" she said. It didn't sound at all witty even to herself.

test

43041

DOUBLE or NOTHING By JACK SHARKEY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Stories of Imagination May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The mind quails before certain contemplations? The existence of infinity, for instance. Or finity, for that matter. Or 50,000 batches of cornflakes dumped from the sky. I don't know why I listen to Artie Lindstrom. Maybe it's because at times (though certainly not—I hope—on as permanent a basis as Artie) I'm as screwy as he is. At least, I keep letting myself get sucked into his plans, every time he's discovered the "invention that will change the world". He discovers it quite a bit; something new every time. And, Artie having a natural mechanical aptitude that would probably rate as point-nine-nine-ad-infinitum on a scale where one-point-oh was perfection, all his inventions work. Except— Well, take the last thing we worked on. (He usually includes me in his plans because, while he's the better cooker-upper of these gadgets, I've got the knack for building them. Artie can't seem to slip a radio tube into its socket without shattering the glass, twist a screwdriver without gouging pieces out of his thumb, nor even solder an electrical connection without needing skin-grafts for the hole he usually burns in his hand.) So we're a team, Artie and me. He does the planning, I do the constructing. Like, as I mentioned, the last thing we worked on. He invented it; I built it. A cap-remover (like for jars and ketchup bottles). But not just a clamp-plus-handle, like most of the same gadgets. Nope, this was electronic, worked on a tight-beam radio-wave, plus something to do with the expansion coefficients of the metals making up the caps, so that, from anyplace in line-of-sight of her home, the housewife could shove a stud, and come home to find all the caps unscrewed on her kitchen shelves, and the contents ready for getting at. It did, I'll admit, have a nice name: The Teletwist. Except, where's the point in unscrewing caps unless you're physically present to make use of the contents of the jars? I mentioned this to Artie when I was building the thing, but he said, "Wait and see. It'll be a novelty, like hula hoops a couple of decades back. Novelties always catch on." Well, he was wrong. When we finally found a manufacturer softheaded enough to mass-produce a few thousand of the gadgets, total sales for the entire country amounted to seventeen. Of course, the price was kind of prohibitive: Thirteen-fifty per Teletwist. Why would a housewife lay that kind of money on the line when she'd already, for a two-buck license, gotten a husband who could be relied upon (well, most of the time) to do the same thing for her? Not, of course, that we didn't finally make money on the thing. It was just about that time, you'll remember, that the Imperial Martian Fleet decided that the third planet from Sol was getting a bit too powerful, and they started orbiting our planet with ultimatums. And while they were waiting for our answer, our government quietly purchased Artie's patent, made a few little adjustments on his cap-twister, and the next thing the Martians knew, all their airlocks were busily unscrewing themselves with nothing outside them except hungry vacuum. It was also the last thing the Martians knew. So Artie's ideas seem to have their uses, all right. Only, for some reason, Artie never thinks of the proper application for his latest newfound principle. That neat little disintegrator pistol carried by the footsoldiers in the Three Day War (with Venus; remember Venus?) was a variation on a cute little battery-powered device of Artie's, of which the original function had been to rid one's house of roaches. At any rate—at a damned good rate, in fact—the government always ended up paying Artie (and me, as his partner-confederate-cohort) an anything-but-modest fee for his patents. We weren't in the millionaire class, yet, but neither were we very far out of it. And we were much better off than any millionaires, since Artie had persuaded the government to let us, in lieu of payment for another patent of his (for his Nixsal; the thing that was supposed to convert sea-water into something drinkable, and did: Gin.), be tax-free for the rest of our lives. (It was quite a concession for the government to make. But then, the government-produced "George Washington Gin" is quite a concession in itself.) So I guess you could say I keep listening to Artie Lindstrom because of the financial rewards. I must admit they're nice. And it's kind of adventurous, when I'm working on Artie's latest brainstorm, to let myself wonder what—since I generally scrap Artie's prognosis for the gadget's future—the damned thing will actually be used for. Or, at least, it was kind of adventurous, until Artie started in on his scheme of three weeks ago: a workable anti-gravity machine. And now, I'm feeling my first tremors of regret that I ever hooked up with the guy. Because—Well, it happened like this: "It looks great," I said, lifting my face from the blueprint, and nodding across the workbench at Artie. "But what the hell does it do?" Artie shoved a shock of dust-colored hair back off his broad, dull pink forehead, and jabbed excitedly with a grimy forefinger at the diagram. "Can't you tell , Burt? What does this look like!" My eyes returned to the conglomeration of sketchy cones beneath his flailing finger, and I said, as truthfully as possible, "A pine forest on a lumpy hill." "Those," he said, his tone hurt as it always was when I inadvertently belittled his draftmanship, "are flywheels." "Cone-shaped flywheels?" I said. "Why, for pete's sake?" "Only," he said, with specious casualness, "in order to develop a centrifugal thrust that runs in a straight line !" "A centr—" I said, then sat back from the drawings, blinking. "That's impossible, Artie." "And why should it be?" he persisted. "Picture an umbrella, with the fabric removed. Now twirl the handle on its axis. What do the ribs do?" "I suppose they splay out into a circle?" "Right," he exulted. "And if they impeded from splaying out? If, instead of separate ribs, we have a hollow, bottomless cone of metal? Where does the force go?" I thought it over, then said, with deliberation, "In all directions, Artie. One part shoving up-to-the-right, one part up-to-the-left, like that." "Sure," he said, his face failing to fight a mischievous grin. "And since none of them move, where does the resultant force go?" I shrugged, "Straight up, I guess—" Then my ears tuned in belatedly on what I'd said, and a moment later I squeaked, "Artie! Straight up !" He nodded eagerly. "Or, of course, straight east, straight west, or whichever way the ferrule of this here theoretical umbrella was pointed at the time the twirling began. The point is, we can generate pure force in any direction. What do you think? Can you build it?" "It'd be child's play. In fact, Artie, it's too damned simple to be believed! What's the hitch? Why hasn't anyone tried it before now ?" "Who knows?" he said, his blue eyes dancing. "Maybe no one ever thought of it before. You could sit down and twist a paper clip out of a hunk of soft wire, couldn't you? Easy as pie. But someone had to invent the thing, first. All the great inventions have been simple. Look at the wheel." "Okay, okay," I said, since I'd been sold on his gadget the moment I pictured that umbrella moving ferruleward like a whirling arrow. "Still, it looks like you're getting something for nothing. A kind of by-your-own-bootstraps maneuver...." "An inventor," said Artie, quoting his favorite self-coined aphorism, "must never think like a scientist!" "But"—I said, more to stem the tide I expected than to really make a coherent objection. "An inventor," he went dreamily onward, "is essentially a dreamer; a scientist is an observer. An inventor tries to make a result he wants happen; a scientist tries to tell the inventor that the result cannot be achieved." "Please. Artie. Don't tell me about the bee again." But Artie told me about the bumblebee, and how there were still some scientists who insisted, according to the principles of aerodynamics, that it was not constructed properly to enable it to fly. And about how men of this short-sighted ilk were still scoffing at the ancient alchemist's talk of the Philosopher's Stone for transmuting metals, even though transmutation of metals was being done every day in atomic piles. And how he'd theorized that there was once a genuine Philosopher's Stone, probably a hunk of pure U-235, that someone had managed to make, which might explain why so many alchemists (lacking, unfortunately, any knowledge of heavy radiations or Geiger counters) sort of died off in their quest for the stone. It was nearly lunchtime when he finished his spiel, and I was kicking myself in my short-memoried brain for having let him get onto the subject, when abruptly the joyous glow behind his eyes damped its sparkle a bit. "There is one little hitch—" "I thought it looked too easy," I sighed, waiting for the clinker. "Don't tell me it has to be made out of pure Gallium, which has the regrettable tendency to liquiefy at about thirty degrees centigrade? Or perhaps of the most elusive of its eleven isotopes?" "No, no, nothing like that," he murmured almost distractedly. "It's the force-per-gram part that's weak." "Don't tell me," I said unhappily, "that this thing'll only generate enough force to lift itself?" A feeble ghost of his erstwhile grin rode briefly across his lips. "That's the way it works out on paper," he said. "Which means," I realized aloud, "that it's commercially useless, because what's the good of an anti-gravity machine that can't lift anything except itself ! It falls into the class of lifeboats that float up to the gunwales in the water while still empty . Fun to watch, but impossible to use. Hell, Artie, if that's the setup, then this thing wouldn't be any more help to a space-aiming government than an aborigine's boomerang; it flies beautifully, but not if the aborigine tries to go with it." "However," he said, a bit more brightly, "I've been wrong on paper before. Remember the bumblebee, Burt! That theory still holds up on paper. But the bee still flies." He had me, there. "So you want I should build it anyhow, just on the off-chance that it won't follow the rules of physical logic, and will decide to generate a force above and beyond its own gravitic drag?" "That's it," he said happily. "And even if it only manages to negate its own weight, we'll have an easier time ironing the bugs out of a model than we would out of a diagram. After all, who'd have figured that beyond Mach I , all the lift-surfaces on a plane work in reverse ?" It wasn't, I had to admit, anything that an inventor could have reasonably theorized at the outset.... So I locked myself in the lab for a week, and built his gadget, while he spent his time pacing through his fourteen-room mansion across the way from the lab building (the "way" being the flat grassy region on Artie's estate that housed his swimming pool, private heliport, and movie theatre), trying to coin a nifty name for the thing. We both finished in a dead heat. I unlocked the door of the lab, blinked hard against the sting of warm yellow sunlight after a week of cool blue fluorescents, and just as I wheezed, "Got it," Artie was counterpointing with, "We'll call it The Uuaa !" (He made four syllables out of it.) "The Oo-oo- ah -ah?" I glottaled. "In honor of the fiftieth state, or what? I know 'aa' is a type of lava, but what the hell's 'uu', besides the noise a man makes getting into an overheated bath?" Artie pouted. "'Uuaa' is initials. For 'Up, up, and away!' I thought it was pretty good." I shook my head. "Why feed free fodder to the telecomics? I can hear them now, doing monologues about people getting beri-beri flying from Walla Walla to Pago Pago on their Uuaas...." "So what would you call it!" he grunted. "A bust," I sighed, left-thumbing over my shoulder at the lab. "It sits and twirls and whistles a little, but that's about the size of it, Artie." He spanieled with his eyes, basset-hounded with his mouth, and orangutaned with his cheeks, then said, with dim hope, "Did you weigh it? Maybe if you weighed it—" "Oh, it lost, all right," I admitted. "When I connected the batteries, the needle on the scale dropped down to zero, and stopped there. And I found that I could lift the machine into the air, and it'd stay where it was put, just whistling and whirling its cones. But then it started to settle." I beckoned him back inside. "Settle? Why?" Artie asked. "Dust," I said. "There's always a little dust settling out of the air. It doesn't weigh much , but it made the machine weigh at least what the dust-weight equalled, and down it went. Slow and easy, but down." Artie looked at the gadget, sitting and whistling on the floor of the lab, then turned a bleak-but-still-hopeful glance my way. "Maybe—If we could make a guy take on a cone-shape, and whirled him—" "Sure," I muttered. "Bend over, grab his ankles, and fly anywhere in the world, with his torso and legs pivoting wildly around his peaked behind." I shook my head. "Besides the manifestly undignified posturing involved, we have to consider the other effects; like having his eyeballs fly out." "If—If we had a bunch of men lie in a circle around a kind of Maypole-thing, each guy clutching the ankles of the next one...." "Maybe they'd be weightless, but they still wouldn't go up ," I said. "Unless they could be towed, somehow. And by the time they landed, they'd be too nauseous to be of any use for at least three days. Always assuming, of course, that the weak-wristed member of the sick circlet didn't lose his grip, and have them end up playing mid-air crack-the-whip before they fell." "So all right, it's got a couple of bugs!" said Artie. "But the principle's sound, right?" "Well—Yeah, there you got me, Artie. The thing cancels weight, anyhow...." "Swell. So we work from there," He rubbed his hands together joyously. "And who knows what we'll come up with." " We never do, that's for sure," I mumbled. But Artie just shrugged. "I like surprises," he said. The end of the day—me working, Artie inventing—found us with some new embellishments for the machine. Where it was originally a sort of humped metal box (the engine went inside the hump) studded with toothbrush-bristle rows of counter-revolving cones (lest elementary torque send the machine swinging the other way, and thus destroy the thrust-effect of the cones), it now had an additional feature: A helical flange around each cone. "You see," Artie explained, while I was torching them to order from plate metal, "the helices will provide lift as the cones revolve." "Only in the atmosphere of the planet," I said. "Sure, I know. But by the time the outer limits of the air are reached, the machine, with the same mass-thrust, will have less gravity-drag to fight, being that much farther from the Earth. The effect will be cumulative. The higher it gets, the more outward thrust it'll generate. Then nothing'll stop it!" "You could be right," I admitted, hammering out helix after helix on an electric anvil (another gadget of Artie's; the self-heating anvil—The Thermovil—had begun life as a small inspiration in Artie's mind for a portable toaster). It was just after sunset when we figured the welds were cool enough so we could test it. Onto the scale it went again, I flicked the toggle, and we stood back to watch the needle as the cones picked up speed. Along with the original whistling sound made by the cones we began to detect a shriller noise, one which abruptly became a genuine pain in the ear. As Artie and I became somewhat busy with screaming (the only thing we could think of on the spur of the moment to counteract the terrible waves of noise assaulting our tympana), it was all at once much easier to see the needle of the scale dropping toward zero, as the glass disc facing the dial dissolved into gritty powder, along with the glass panes in every window in the lab, the house, the heliport, and the movie theatre. (Not to mention those of a few farmhouses a couple of miles down the highway, but we didn't find that out till their lawyers showed up with bills for damages.) Sure enough, though, the thing lifted. Up it bobbed, like a metal dirigible with agonizing gas pains, shrieking louder by the second. When the plaster started to trickle and flake from the walls, and the fillings in my teeth rose to a temperature just short of incandescence, I decided it was time to cancel this phase of the experiment, and, with very little regret, I flung a blanket-like canvas tarpaulin up and over the ascending machine before it started using its helices to screw into the ceiling. The cones bit into the tarpaulin, tangled, jammed, and the machine—mercifully noiseless, now—crashed back onto the scale, and lost a lot of symmetry and a couple of rivets. "What's Plan C?" I said to Artie. " Quiet! " he said, either because I'd interrupted his thinking or because that was our next goal. The next four days were spent in the arduous and quite tricky business of reaming acoustically spaced holes along the flanges. Artie's theory was that if we simply ("simply" was his word, not mine) fixed it so that the sound made by each flange (anything whirly with a hole or two in it is bound to make a calculated noise) was of the proper number of vibrations to intermesh with the compression/rarefaction phases of the sounds made by the other flanges, a veritable sphere of silence would be thereby created, since there'd be no room for any sound waves to pass through the already crowded atmosphere about the machine. "It'll make less noise than a mouse in sneakers drooling on a blotter!" enthused Artie, when I had it rigged again, and ready to go. "Still," I said uncertainly, "whether we hear it or not, all that soundwave-energy has to do something , Artie. If it turns ultrasonic, we may suddenly find ourselves in a showerbath of free electrons and even worse subatomic particles from disrupted air molecules. Or the lab might turn molten on us. Or—" "Oh, turn it on , Burt!" said Artie. "That's just a chance we have to take." "Don't see why we have to take it...." I groused, but I'm as curious as the next man, so I turned it on. (I could have arranged to do it by remote control, except for two pressing deterrents: One—At a remote point of control, I wouldn't be able to watch what, if anything, the machine did, and Two—Who knows where the safe spot is where soundwaves are concerned? With some sonic forces, you're safer the nearer you get to the source.) So, like I said, I turned it on. Silence. Beautiful, blissful, silence. There before us twirled the rows of shiny cones, lifting slowly into the air, and there was nothing to hear at all. Beside me, Artie's lips moved, but I couldn't catch a syllable. This time around, we'd looped a rope through a few metal grommets in the base of the machine, and as it rose, Artie slipped the trailing ends under his arms from behind, and proceeded to lash it across his chest, to test the thing's lift-power. As he fumbled with the knot, I shouted at him, "Use a firm hitch!" Nothing came out, but Artie wasn't a bad lip-reader. He scowled, and his lips made a " What?! " motion, so I repeated my caution. Next thing I knew, he was taking a poke at me, and I, to fend him off, ended up wrestling on the floor with him, while the untended machine burred its way into the ceiling, until the engine overheated and burned away the electrical insulation on the wires, and the machine, plus a good two feet square of lab-ceiling, once more descended to demolish the scale. "—your language!" Artie was snarling, as sound returned. "All I said was 'Use a firm hitch!'" I pleaded, trying to shove his shins off my floor-pinned biceps. Artie stared at me, then rocked off my prostrate body, convulsed in a fit of laughter. "Say it silently in front of a mirror, sometime," he choked out. Before I had time to see what he was talking about, I smelled smoke, above and beyond that engendered by the scorched insulation. I ran to the door, and opened it to observe the last glowing, crackling timbers of the house, the theatre, and the heliport vanish into hot orange sparks, in the grip of a dandy ring of fire that—in a seventy-yard path—had burned up everything in a sixty-five to hundred-thirty-five yard radius of the lab. "I told you those soundwaves had to do something," I said. "Ready to give up?" But Artie was already staring at the debris around the scale and making swift notes on a memo pad.... "It looks awfully damned complex—" I hedged, eight days later, looking at the repaired, refurbished, and amended gadget on the table. "Remember, Artie, the more parts to an invention, the more things can go wrong with it. In geometric progression...." "Unh-uh," he shook his head. "Not the more parts, Burt. The more moving parts. All we've done is added a parabolic sound-reflector, to force all the waves the cones make down through a tube in the middle of the machine. And we've insulated the tube to keep extraneous vibration from shattering it with super-induced metal fatigue." "Yeah," I said, "but about that insulation , Artie—" "You got a better idea?" he snapped. "We tried rubber; it charred and flaked away. We tried plastics; they bubbled, melted, extruded, or burned. We tried metal and mineral honeycombs; they distorted, incandesced, fused or vaporized. Ceramic materials shattered. Fabrics tore, or petrified and cracked. All the regular things failed us. So what's wrong with trying something new?" "Nothing, Artie, nothing. But— Cornflakes ?" "Well, we sogged 'em down good with water, right? And they've still got enough interstices between the particles to act as sound-baffles, right? And by the time they get good and hot and dry, they'll cook onto the metal, right? (Ask anyone who ever tried to clean a pot after scorching cereal just how hard they'll stick!) And even when most of them flake away, the random distribution of char will circumvent any chance the soundwaves have of setting up the regular pulse-beat necessary to fatigue the metal in the tube, okay?" "Yeah, sure, Artie, it's okay, but— Cornflakes ?" "I take it your objections are less scientific than they are esthetic?" he inquired. "Well, something like that," I admitted. "I mean, aw—For pete's sake, Artie! The patent office'll laugh at us. They'll start referring us to the copyright people, as inventors of cookbooks!" "Maybe not," he said philosophically. "The thing still may not work , you know." "Well, there's one bright spot, anyhow!" I agreed, fiddling with the starting switch. "So okay, I'm game if you are." "Let 'er rip," he pontificated, and I flicked the switch. It worked beautifully. Not even a faint hum. The only way we could tell it was working was from the needle on the—rebuilt again—scale, as it dropped lazily down to the zero mark. Our ears didn't sting, no glass went dusting into crystalline powder, and a quick peek through the door showed no ring of fire surrounding the lab. "We may just have done it!" I said, hopefully, as the silver-nosed machine began to float upward (We hadn't had to mount the parabolic reflector in the position of a nose-cone, but it made the thing look neater, somehow.) It seemed a little torpid in its ascent, but that could be credited to the extra weight of the reflector and cornflakes, not to mention the fact that the helices had to suck all their air in under the lip of the silvery nose-cone before they could thrust properly. But its rise was steady. Six inches, ten inches— Then, at precisely one foot in height, something unexpected happened. Under the base of the machine, where the sound-heated air was at its most torrid, a shimmering disc-like thing began to materialize, and warp, and hollow out slightly, and beside it, a glinting metal rod-thing flattened at one end, then the flat end went concave in the center and kind of oval about the perimeter, and something brownish and shreddy plopped and hissed into the now-very-concave disc-like thing. "Artie—!" I said, uneasily, but by then, he, too, had recognized the objects for what they were. "Burt—" he said excitedly. "Do you realize what we've done? We've invented a syntheticizer !" Even as he was saying it, the objects completed their mid-air materialization (time: five seconds, start to finish), and clattered and clinked onto the scale. We stood and looked down at them: A bowl of cornflakes and a silver spoon. "How—?" I said, but Artie was already figuring it out, aloud. "It's the soundwaves," he said. "At ultrasonic, molecule-disrupting vibrations, they're doing just what that Philosopher's Stone was supposed to: Transmuting. Somehow, we didn't clean out the reflector sufficiently, and some of the traces of our other trial insulations remained inside. The ceramics formed the bowl, the metals formed the spoon, the cornflakes formed the cornflakes!" "But," I said logically (or as logically as could be expected under the circumstances), "what about the rubber, or the fabrics?" Artie's face lit up, and he nodded toward the machine, still hovering at one foot above the scale. In its wake, amid the distorting turbulence of the sound-tortured air, two more objects were materializing: a neatly folded damask napkin, and a small rubber toothpick. As they dropped down to join their predecessors, the machine gave a satisfied shake, and rose steadily to the two-foot level. I was scribbling frantically in my notebook: Bowl + cereal + spoon: 5 seconds. Lag: 10 seconds. Napkin + toothpick: 3 seconds. Total synthesizing time: 18 seconds. Allowance for rise of machine per foot: 2 seconds. "Burt—!" Artie yelled joyously, just as I completed the last item, "Look at that, will you?!" I looked, and had my first presentiment of disaster. At two feet, the machine was busily fabricating—out of the air molecules themselves, for all I knew— two bowls, two spoons, and two bowlfuls of cereal. "Hey, Artie—" I began, but he was too busy figuring out this latest development. "It's the altimeter," he said. "We had it gauged by the foot, but it's taking the numerical calibrations as a kind of output-quota, instead!" "Look, Artie," I interrupted, as twin napkins and toothpicks dropped down beside the new bowls on the table where the scale lay. "We're going to have a little problem—" "You're telling me !" he sighed, unhappily. "All those damned random factors! How many times did the machine have to be repaired after each faulty test! What thickness of ceramics, or fabric, or rubber, or metal remained! What was the precise distribution and dampness of each of those soggy cornflakes! Hell, Burt, we may be forever trying to make a duplicate of this!" "Artie—" I said, as three toothpick-napkin combinations joined the shattered remains of triple bowl-cereal-spoon disasters from the one-yard mark over the scale, "that is not the problem I had in mind." "Oh?" he said, as four shimmering discs began to coalesce and shape themselves. "What, then?" "It's not that I don't appreciate the side-effect benefits of free cornflake dinners," I said, speaking carefully and somberly, to hold his attention. "But isn't it going to put a crimp in our anti-gravity machine sales? Even at a mere mile in height, it means that the spot beneath it is due for a deluge of five-thousand-two-hundred-eighty bowls of cornflakes. Not to mention all those toothpicks, napkins and spoons!" Artie's face went grave. "Not to mention the five-thousand-two-hundred-seventy-nine of the same that the spot beneath would get from the gadget when it was just one foot short of the mile!" "Of course," I said, calculating rapidly as the five-foot mark produced a neat quintet of everything, a quintet which crashed noisily onto the ten lookalikes below it as the machine bobbed silently to the six-foot mark, "we have one interesting thing in our favor: the time element." "How so?" said Artie, craning over my shoulder to try and read my lousy calligraphics on the pad. "Well," I said, pointing to each notation in turn, "the first batch, bowl-to-toothpick, took twenty seconds, if we include the time-lapse while the machine was ascending to the one-foot mark." "Uh-huh," he nodded. "I see. So?" "So the second batch took double. Forty seconds. Not only did it require thirty-six seconds for the formation of the stuff, it took the machine twice as many seconds to reach the two-foot mark." "I get it," he said. "So I suppose it took three times the base number for the third batch?" "Right. A full minute. And the materialization of the objects is—Boy, that's noisy!" I interrupted myself as batch number six came smashing down. "—always at a point where the objects fit into a theoretical conical section below the machine." "How's that again?" said Artie. "Well, bowl number one formed just below the exhaust vent of the central cylinder. Bowls two and three, or—if you prefer—bowl-batch two, formed about six inches lower, edge to edge, at the cross-section of an imaginary cone (whose rather truncated apex is the exhaust vent) that seems to form a vertical angle of thirty degrees." "In other words," said Artie, "each new formation comes in a spot beneath this cone where it's possible for the new formations to materialize side-by-side, right?" When I nodded, he said, "Fine. But so what?" "It means that each new materialization occurs at a steadily increasing height, but one which—" I calculated briefly on the pad "—is never greater than two-thirds the height of the machine itself." Artie looked blank. "Thank you very kindly for the math lesson," he said finally, "but I still don't see what you are driving at, Burt. How does this present a problem?" I pointed toward the un-repaired hole in the lab ceiling, where the machine, after dutifully disgorging the number-seven load, was slowly heading. "It means that unless we grab that thing before it gets too much higher, the whole damn planet'll be up to its ears in cornflakes. And the one-third machine-height gap between artifacts and machine means that we can't even use the mounding products to climb on and get it. We'd always be too low, and an increasing too-low at that!" "Are you trying to say, in your roundabout mathematical way, let's grab that thing, fast?" "Right," I said, glad I had gotten through to him. "I would've said as much sooner, only you never listen until somebody supplies you with all the pertinent data on a crisis first."

test

50928

HOT PLANET By HAL CLEMENT Illustrated by FINLAY [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine August 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Mercury had no atmosphere—everyone knew that. Why was it developing one now? I The wind which had nearly turned the Albireo's landing into a disaster instead of a mathematical exercise was still playing tunes about the fins and landing legs as Schlossberg made his way down to Deck Five. The noise didn't bother him particularly, though the endless seismic tremors made him dislike the ladders. But just now he was able to ignore both. He was curious—though not hopeful. "Is there anything at all obvious on the last sets of tapes, Joe?" Mardikian, the geophysicist, shrugged. "Just what you'd expect ... on a planet which has at least one quake in each fifty-mile-square area every five minutes. You know yourself we had a nice seismic program set up, but when we touched down we found we couldn't carry it out. We've done our best with the natural tremors—incidentally stealing most of the record tapes the other projects would have used. We have a lot of nice information for the computers back home; but it will take all of them to make any sense out of it." Schlossberg nodded; the words had not been necessary. His astronomical program had been one of those sabotaged by the transfer of tapes to the seismic survey. "I just hoped," he said. "We each have an idea why Mercury developed an atmosphere during the last few decades, but I guess the high school kids on Earth will know whether it's right before we do. I'm resigned to living in a chess-type universe—few and simple rules, but infinite combinations of them. But it would be nice to know an answer sometime." "So it would. As a matter of fact, I need to know a couple right now. From you. How close to finished are the other programs—or what's left of them?" "I'm all set," replied Schlossberg. "I have a couple of instruments still monitoring the sun just in case, but everything in the revised program is on tape." "Good. Tom, any use asking you?" The biologist grimaced. "I've been shown two hundred and sixteen different samples of rock and dust. I have examined in detail twelve crystal growths which looked vaguely like vegetation. Nothing was alive or contained living things by any standards I could conscientiously set." Mardikian's gesture might have meant sympathy. "Camille?" "I may as well stop now as any time. I'll never be through. Tape didn't make much difference to me, but I wish I knew what weight of specimens I could take home." "Eileen?" Mardikian's glance at the stratigrapher took the place of the actual question. "Cam speaks for me, except that I could have used any more tape you could have spared. What I have is gone." "All right, that leaves me, the tape-thief. The last spools are in the seismographs now, and will start running out in seventeen hours. The tractors will start out on their last rounds in sixteen, and should be back in roughly a week. Will, does that give you enough to figure the weights we rockhounds can have on the return trip?" The Albireo's captain nodded. "Close enough. There really hasn't been much question since it became evident we'd find nothing for the mass tanks here. I'll have a really precise check in an hour, but I can tell right now that you have about one and a half metric tons to split up among the three of you. "Ideal departure time is three hundred ten hours away, as you all know. We can stay here until then, or go into a parking-and-survey orbit at almost any time before then. You have all the survey you need, I should think, from the other time. But suit yourselves." "I'd just as soon be space-sick as seasick," remarked Camille Burkett. "I still hate to think that the entire planet is as shivery as the spot we picked." Willard Rowson smiled. "You researchers told me where to land after ten days in orbit mapping this rockball. I set you just where you asked. If you'd found even five tons of juice we could use in the reaction tanks I could still take you to another one—if you could agree which one. I hate to say 'Don't blame me,' but I can't think of anything else that fits." "So we sit until the last of the tractors is back with the precious seismo tapes, playing battleship while our back teeth are being shaken out by earthquakes—excuse the word. What a thrill! Glorious adventure!" Zaino, the communications specialist who had been out of a job almost constantly since the landing, spoke sourly. The captain was the only one who saw fit to answer. "If you want adventure, you made a mistake exploring space. The only space adventures I've heard of are second-hand stories built on guesswork; the people who really had them weren't around to tell about it. Unless Dr. Marini discovers a set of Mercurian monsters at the last minute and they invade the ship or cut off one of the tractors, I'm afraid you'll have to do without adventures." Zaino grimaced. "That sounds funny coming from a spaceman, Captain. I didn't really mean adventure, though; all I want is something to do besides betting whether the next quake will come in one minute or five. I haven't even had to fix a suit-radio since we touched down. How about my going out with one of the tractors on this last trip, at least?" "It's all right with me," replied Rowson, "but Dr. Mardikian runs the professional part of this operation. I require that Spurr, Trackman, Hargedon and Aiello go as drivers, since without them even a minor mechanical problem would be more than an adventure. As I recall it, Dr. Harmon, Dr. Schlossberg, Dr. Marini and Dr. Mardikian are scheduled to go; but if any one of them is willing to let you take his or her place, I certainly don't mind." The radioman looked around hopefully. The geologists and the biologist shook their heads negatively, firmly and unanimously; but the astronomer pondered for a moment. Zaino watched tensely. "It may be all right," Schlossberg said at last. "What I want to get is a set of wind, gas pressure, gas temperature and gas composition measures around the route. I didn't expect to be more meteorologist than astronomer when we left Earth, and didn't have exactly the right equipment. Hargedon and Aiello helped me improvise some, and this is the first chance to use it on Darkside. If you can learn what has to be done with it before starting time, though, you are welcome to my place." The communicator got to his feet fast enough to leave the deck in Mercury's feeble gravity. "Lead me to it, Doc. I guess I can learn to read a home-made weathervane!" "Is that merely bragging, or a challenge?" drawled a voice which had not previously joined the discussion. Zaino flushed a bit. "Sorry, Luigi," he said hastily. "I didn't mean it just that way. But I still think I can run the stuff." "Likely enough," Aiello replied. "Remember though, it wasn't made just for talking into." Schlossberg, now on his feet, cut in quickly. "Come on, Arnie. We'll have to suit up to see the equipment; it's outside." He shepherded the radioman to the hatch at one side of the deck and shooed him down toward the engine and air lock levels. Both were silent for some moments; but safely out of earshot of Deck Five the younger man looked up and spoke. "You needn't push, Doc. I wasn't going to make anything of it. Luigi was right, and I asked for it." The astronomer slowed a bit in his descent. "I wasn't really worried," he replied, "but we have several months yet before we can get away from each other, and I don't like talk that could set up grudges. Matter of fact, I'm even a little uneasy about having the girls along, though I'm no misogynist." "Girls? They're not—" "There goes your foot again. Even Harmon is about ten years older than you, I suppose. But they're girls to me. What's more important, they no doubt think of themselves as girls." "Even Dr. Burkett? That is—I mean—" "Even Dr. Burkett. Here, get into your suit. And maybe you'd better take out the mike. It'll be enough if you can listen for the next hour or two." Zaino made no answer, suspecting with some justice that anything he said would be wrong. Each made final checks on the other's suit; then they descended one more level to the airlock. This occupied part of the same deck as the fusion plants, below the wings and reaction mass tanks but above the main engine. Its outer door was just barely big enough to admit a spacesuited person. Even with the low air pressure carried by spaceships, a large door area meant large total force on jamb, hinges and locks. It opened onto a small balcony from which a ladder led to the ground. The two men paused on the balcony to look over the landscape. This hadn't changed noticeably since the last time either had been out, though there might have been some small difference in the volcanic cones a couple of miles away to the northeast. The furrows down the sides of these, which looked as though they had been cut by water but were actually bone-dry ash slides, were always undergoing alteration as gas from below kept blowing fresh scoria fragments out of the craters. The spines—steep, jagged fragments of rock which thrust upward from the plain beyond and to both sides of the cones—seemed dead as ever. The level surface between the Albireo and the cones was more interesting. Mardikian and Schlossberg believed it to be a lava sheet dating from early in Mercury's history, when more volatile substances still existed in the surface rocks to cut down their viscosity when molten. They supposed that much—perhaps most—of the surface around the "twilight" belt had been flooded by this very liquid lava, which had cooled to a smoother surface than most Earthly lava flows. How long it had stayed cool they didn't guess. But both men felt sure that Mercury must have periodic upheavals as heat accumulated inside it—heat coming not from radioactivity but from tidal energy. Mercury's orbit is highly eccentric. At perihelion, tidal force tries to pull it apart along the planet-to-sun line, while at aphelion the tidal force is less and the little world's own gravity tries to bring it back to a spherical shape. The real change in form is not great, but a large force working through even a small amount of distance can mean a good deal of energy. If the energy can't leak out—and Mercury's rocks conduct heat no better than those of Earth—the temperature must rise. Sooner or later, the men argued, deeply buried rock must fuse to magma. Its liquefaction would let the bulk of the planet give farther under tidal stress, so heat would be generated even faster. Eventually a girdle of magma would have to form far below the crust all around the twilight strip, where the tidal strain would be greatest. Sooner or later this would melt its way to the surface, giving the zone a period of intense volcanic activity and, incidentally, giving the planet a temporary atmosphere. The idea was reasonable. It had, the astronomer admitted, been suggested long before to account for supposed vulcanism on the moon. It justified the careful examination that Schlossberg and Zaino gave the plain before they descended the ladder; for it made reasonable the occasional changes which were observed to occur in the pattern of cracks weaving over its surface. No one was certain just how permanent the local surface was—though no one could really justify feeling safer on board the Albireo than outside on the lava. If anything really drastic happened, the ship would be no protection. The sun, hanging just above the horizon slightly to the watcher's right, cast long shadows which made the cracks stand out clearly; as far as either man could see, nothing had changed recently. They descended the ladder carefully—even the best designed spacesuits are somewhat vulnerable—and made their way to the spot where the tractors were parked. A sheet-metal fence a dozen feet high and four times as long provided shade, which was more than a luxury this close to the sun. The tractors were parked in this shadow, and beside and between them were piles of equipment and specimens. The apparatus Schlossberg had devised was beside the tractor at the north end of the line, just inside the shaded area. It was still just inside the shade when they finished, four hours later. Hargedon had joined them during the final hour and helped pack the equipment in the tractor he was to drive. Zaino had had no trouble in learning to make the observations Schlossberg wanted, and the youngster was almost unbearably cocky. Schlossberg hoped, as they returned to the Albireo , that no one would murder the communications expert in the next twelve hours. There would be nothing to worry about after the trip started; Hargedon was quite able to keep anyone in his place without being nasty about it. If Zaino had been going with Aiello or Harmon—but he wasn't, and it was pointless to dream up trouble. And no trouble developed all by itself. II Zaino was not only still alive but still reasonably popular when the first of the tractors set out, carrying Eileen Harmon and Eric Trackman, the Albireo's nuclear engineer. It started more than an hour before the others, since the stratigrapher's drilling program, "done" or not, took extra time. The tractor hummed off to the south, since both Darkside routes required a long detour to pass the chasm to the west. Routes had been worked out from the stereo-photos taken during the orbital survey. Even Darkside had been covered fairly well with Uniquantum film under Venus light. The Harmon-Trackman vehicle was well out of sight when Mardikian and Aiello started out on one of the Brightside routes, and a few minutes later Marini set out on the other with the spacesuit technician, Mary Spurr, driving. Both vehicles disappeared quickly into a valley to the northeast, between the ash cones and a thousand-foot spine which rose just south of them. All the tractors were in good radio contact; Zaino made sure of that before he abandoned the radio watch to Rowson, suited up and joined Hargedon at the remaining one. They climbed in, and Hargedon set it in motion. At about the same time, the first tractor came into view again, now traveling north on the farther side of the chasm. Hargedon took this as evidence that the route thus far was unchanged, and kicked in highest speed. The cabin was pretty cramped, even though some of the equipment had been attached outside. The men could not expect much comfort for the next week. Hargedon was used to the trips, however. He disapproved on principle of people who complained about minor inconveniences such as having to sleep in spacesuits; fortunately, Zaino's interest and excitement overrode any thought he might have had about discomfort. This lasted through the time they spent doubling the vast crack in Mercury's crust, driving on a little to the north of the ship on the other side and then turning west toward the dark hemisphere. The route was identical to that of Harmon's machine for some time, though no trace of its passage showed on the hard surface. Then Hargedon angled off toward the southwest. He had driven this run often enough to know it well even without the markers which had been set out with the seismographs. The photographic maps were also aboard. With them, even Zaino had no trouble keeping track of their progress while they remained in sunlight. However, the sun sank as they traveled west. In two hours its lower rim would have been on the horizon, had they been able to see the horizon; as it was, more of the "sea level" lava plain was in shadow than not even near the ship, and their route now lay in semi-darkness. The light came from peaks projecting into the sunlight, from scattered sky-light which was growing rapidly fainter and from the brighter celestial objects such as Earth. Even with the tractor's lights it was getting harder to spot crevasses and seismometer markers. Zaino quickly found the fun wearing off ... though his pride made him cover this fact as best he could. If Hargedon saw this, he said nothing. He set Zaino to picking up every other instrument, as any partner would have, making no allowance for the work the youngster was doing for Schlossberg. This might, of course, have had the purpose of keeping the radioman too busy to think about discomfort. Or it might merely have been Hargedon's idea of normal procedure. Whatever the cause, Zaino got little chance to use the radio once they had driven into the darkness. He managed only one or two brief talks with those left at the ship. The talks might have helped his morale, since they certainly must have given the impression that nothing was going on in the ship while at least he had something to do in the tractor. However, this state of affairs did not last. Before the vehicle was four hours out of sight of the Albireo , a broadcast by Camille Burkett reached them. The mineralogist's voice contained at least as much professional enthusiasm as alarm, but everyone listening must have thought promptly of the dubious stability of Mercury's crust. The call was intended for her fellow geologists Mardikian and Harmon. But it interested Zaino at least as much. "Joe! Eileen! There's a column of what looks like black smoke rising over Northeast Spur. It can't be a real fire, of course; I can't see its point of origin, but if it's the convection current it seems to be the source must be pretty hot. It's the closest thing to a genuine volcano I've seen since we arrived; it's certainly not another of those ash mounds. I should think you'd still be close enough to make it out, Joe. Can you see anything?" The reply from Mardikian's tractor was inaudible to Zaino and Hargedon, but Burkett's answer made its general tenor plain. "I hadn't thought of that. Yes, I'd say it was pretty close to the Brightside route. It wouldn't be practical for you to stop your run now to come back to see. You couldn't do much about it anyway. I could go out to have a look and then report to you. If the way back is blocked there'll be plenty of time to work out another." Hargedon and Zaino passed questioning glances at each other during the shorter pause that followed. "I know there aren't," the voice then went on, responding to the words they could not hear, "but it's only two or three miles, I'd say. Two to the spur and not much farther to where I could see the other side. Enough of the way is in shade so I could make it in a suit easily enough. I can't see calling back either of the dark-side tractors. Their work is just as important as the rest—anyway, Eileen is probably out of range. She hasn't answered yet." Another pause. "That's true. Still, it would mean sacrificing that set of seismic records—no, wait. We could go out later for those. And Mel could take his own weather measures on the later trip. There's plenty of time!" Pause, longer this time. "You're right, of course. I just wanted to get an early look at this volcano, if it is one. We'll let the others finish their runs, and when you get back you can check the thing from the other side yourself. If it is blocking your way there's time to find an alternate route. We could be doing that from the maps in the meantime, just in case." Zaino looked again at his companion. "Isn't that just my luck!" he exclaimed. "I jump at the first chance to get away from being bored to death. The minute I'm safely away, the only interesting thing of the whole operation happens—back at the ship!" "Who asked to come on this trip?" "Oh, I'm not blaming anyone but myself. If I'd stayed back there the volcano would have popped out here somewhere, or else waited until we were gone." "If it is a volcano. Dr. Burkett didn't seem quite sure." "No, and I'll bet a nickel she's suiting up right now to go out and see. I hope she comes back with something while we're still near enough to hear about it." Hargedon shrugged. "I suppose it was also just your luck that sent you on a Darkside trip? You know the radio stuff. You knew we couldn't reach as far this way with the radios. Didn't you think of that in advance?" "I didn't think of it, any more than you would have. It was bad luck, but I'm not grousing about it. Let's get on with this job." Hargedon nodded with approval, and possibly with some surprise, and the tractor hummed on its way. The darkness deepened around the patches of lava shown by the driving lights; the sky darkened toward a midnight hue, with stars showing ever brighter through it; and radio reception from the Albireo began to get spotty. Gas density at the ion layer was high enough so that recombination of molecules with their radiation-freed electrons was rapid. Only occasional streamers of ionized gas reached far over Darkside. As these thinned out, so did radio reception. Camille Burkett's next broadcast came through very poorly. There was enough in it, however, to seize the attention of the two men in the tractor. She was saying: "—real all right, and dangerous. It's the ... thing I ever saw ... kinds of lava from what looks like ... same vent. There's high viscosity stuff building a spatter cone to end all spatter cones, and some very thin fluid from somewhere at the bottom. The flow has already blocked the valley used by the Brightside routes and is coming along it. A new return route will have to be found for the tractors that ... was spreading fast when I saw it. I can't tell how much will come. But unless it stops there's nothing at all to keep the flow away from the ship. It isn't coming fast, but it's coming. I'd advise all tractors to turn back. Captain Rowson reminds me that only one takeoff is possible. If we leave this site, we're committed to leaving Mercury. Arnie and Ren, do you hear me?" Zaino responded at once. "We got most of it, Doctor. Do you really think the ship is in danger?" "I don't know. I can only say that if this flow continues the ship will have to leave, because this area will sooner or later be covered. I can't guess how likely ... check further to get some sort of estimate. It's different from any Earthly lava source—maybe you heard—should try to get Eileen and Eric back, too. I can't raise them. I suppose they're well out from under the ion layer by now. Maybe you're close enough to them to catch them with diffracted waves. Try, anyway. Whether you can raise them or not you'd better start back yourself." Hargedon cut in at this point. "What does Dr. Mardikian say about that? We still have most of the seismometers on this route to visit." "I think Captain Rowson has the deciding word here, but if it helps your decision Dr. Mardikian has already started back. He hasn't finished his route, either. So hop back here, Ren. And Arnie, put that technical skill you haven't had to use yet to work raising Eileen and Eric." "What I can do, I will," replied Zaino, "but you'd better tape a recall message and keep it going out on. Let's see—band F." "All right. I'll be ready to check the volcano as soon as you get back. How long?" "Seven hours—maybe six and a half," replied Hargedon. "We have to be careful." "Very well. Stay outside when you arrive; I'll want to go right out in the tractor to get a closer look." She cut off. "And that came through clearly enough!" remarked Hargedon as he swung the tractor around. "I've been awake for fourteen hours, driving off and on for ten of them; I'm about to drive for another six; and then I'm to stand by for more." "Would you like me to do some of the driving?" asked Zaino. "I guess you'll have to, whether I like it or not," was the rather lukewarm reply. "I'll keep on for awhile, though—until we're back in better light. You get at your radio job." III Zaino tried. Hour after hour he juggled from one band to another. Once he had Hargedon stop while he went out to attach a makeshift antenna which, he hoped, would change his output from broadcast to some sort of beam; after this he kept probing the sky with the "beam," first listening to the Albireo's broadcast in an effort to find projecting wisps of ionosphere and then, whenever he thought he had one, switching on his transmitter and driving his own message at it. Not once did he complain about lack of equipment or remark how much better he could do once he was back at the ship. Hargedon's silence began to carry an undercurrent of approval not usual in people who spent much time with Zaino. The technician made no further reference to the suggestion of switching drivers. They came in sight of the Albireo and doubled the chasm with Hargedon still at the wheel, Zaino still at his radio and both of them still uncertain whether any of the calls had gotten through. Both had to admit, even before they could see the ship, that Burkett had had a right to be impressed. The smoke column showed starkly against the sky, blowing back over the tractor and blocking the sunlight which would otherwise have glared into the driver's eyes. Fine particles fell from it in a steady shower; looking back, the men could see tracks left by their vehicle in the deposit which had already fallen. As they approached the ship the dark pillar grew denser and narrower, while the particles raining from it became coarser. In some places the ash was drifting into fairly deep piles, giving Hargedon some anxiety about possible concealed cracks. The last part of the trip, along the edge of the great chasm and around its end, was really dangerous; cracks running from its sides were definitely spreading. The two men reached the Albireo later than Hargedon had promised, and found Burkett waiting impatiently with a pile of apparatus beside her. She didn't wait for them to get out before starting to organize. "There isn't much here. We'll take off just enough of what you're carrying to make room for this. No—wait. I'll have to check some of your equipment; I'm going to need one of Milt Schlossberg's gadget's, I think, so leave that on. We'll take—" "Excuse me, Doctor," cut in Hargedon. "Our suits need servicing, or at least mine will if you want me to drive you. Perhaps Arnie can help you load for a while, if you don't think it's too important for him to get at the radio—" "Of course. Excuse me. I should have had someone out here to help me with this. You two go on in. Ren, please get back as soon as you can. I can do the work here; none of this stuff is very heavy." Zaino hesitated as he swung out of the cab. True, there wasn't too much to be moved, and it wasn't very heavy in Mercury's gravity, and he really should be at the radio; but the thirty-nine-year-old mineralogist was a middle-aged lady by his standards, and shouldn't be allowed to carry heavy packages.... "Get along, Arnie!" the middle-aged lady interrupted this train of thought. "Eric and Eileen are getting farther away and harder to reach every second you dawdle!" He got, though he couldn't help looking northeast as he went rather than where he was going. The towering menace in that direction would have claimed anyone's attention. The pillar of sable ash was rising straighter, as though the wind were having less effect on it. An equally black cone had risen into sight beyond Northeast Spur—a cone that must have grown to some two thousand feet in roughly ten hours. It had far steeper sides than the cinder mounds near it; it couldn't be made of the same loose ash. Perhaps it consisted of half-melted particles which were fusing together as they fell—that might be what Burkett had meant by "spatter-cone." Still, if that were the case, the material fountaining from the cone's top should be lighting the plain with its incandescence rather than casting an inky shadow for its entire height. Well, that was a problem for the geologists; Zaino climbed aboard and settled to his task. The trouble was that he could do very little more here than he could in the tractor. He could have improvised longer-wave transmitting coils whose radiations would have diffracted a little more effectively beyond the horizon, but the receiver on the missing vehicle would not have detected them. He had more power at his disposal, but could only beam it into empty space with his better antennae. He had better equipment for locating any projecting wisps of charged gas which might reflect his waves, but he was already located under a solid roof of the stuff—the Albireo was technically on Brightside. Bouncing his beam from this layer still didn't give him the range he needed, as he had found both by calculation and trial. What he really needed was a relay satellite. The target was simply too far around Mercury's sharp curve by now for anything less. Zaino's final gesture was to set his transmission beam on the lowest frequency the tractor would pick up, aim it as close to the vehicle's direction as he could calculate from map and itinerary and set the recorded return message going. He told Rowson as much. "Can't think of anything else?" the captain asked. "Well, neither can I, but of course it's not my field. I'd give a year's pay if I could. How long before they should be back in range?" "About four days. A hundred hours, give or take a few. They'll be heading back anyway by that time." "Of course. Well, keep trying." "I am—or rather, the equipment is. I don't see what else I can do unless a really bright idea should suddenly sprout. Is there anywhere else I could be useful? I'm as likely to have ideas working as just sitting." "We can keep you busy, all right. But how about taking a transmitter up one of those mountains? That would get your wave farther." "Not as far as it's going already. I'm bouncing it off the ion layer, which is higher than any mountain we've seen on Mercury even if it's nowhere near as high as Earth's." "Hmph. All right." "I could help Ren and Dr. Burkett. I could hang on outside the tractor—" "They've already gone. You'd better call them, though, and keep a log of what they do." "All right." Zaino turned back to his board and with no trouble raised the tractor carrying Hargedon and the mineralogist. The latter had been trying to call the Albireo and had some acid comments about radio operators who slept on the job.

test

51210

I, the Unspeakable By WALT SHELDON Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem! I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep. " Do it! " she said. " Please do it! For me! " It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning. I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard. I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way. I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces. I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor. Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds. I'd go out again today. The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last. As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag. Everything came back in a rush— My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion. Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk? You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition. The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform. If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night. There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem. The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat. We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa." Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned. Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word. A four letter word. Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be. Mine was. It was unspeakable. The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories. I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself. I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important—magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars—and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons. Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer. The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard. "Er—old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work." "Nutrition kits? Me? On nutrition kits?" "Well, I—er—know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies." Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract—deliberately infract—it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning. "I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract." He looked vastly relieved. "Uh—fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would." It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve. But I didn't know what I was in for. I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department—any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up.... A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed. And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive. But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package—and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again. "Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later." You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages. Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I couldn't get a post. Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior. That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone. Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice—to her —in a moment. I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication—not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal. But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate. Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted. He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse." "Yes, I understand that." "M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod. I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him. The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes. I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost.... About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong. The next night I heard the woman's voice again. " Try it ," she said. " Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please—for me. " She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me. And I heard the voice nearly every night. It hammered away. " What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now! " One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be. She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, " Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way. " Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy—desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself. I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office. I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care. II Like most important places, the Govpub Office in Center Four was underground. I could have taken a tunnelcar more quickly, but it seemed pleasanter to travel topside. Or maybe I just wanted to put this off a bit. Think about it. Compose myself. At the entrance to the Govpub warren there was a big director cyb, a plate with a speaker and switch. The sign on it said to switch it on and get close to the speaker and I did. The cyb's mechanical voice—they never seem to get the "th" sounds right—said, "This is Branch Four of the Office of Government Publications. Say, 'Publications,' and/or, 'Information desired,' as thoroughly and concisely as possible. Use approved voice and standard phraseology." Well, simple enough so far. I had always rather prided myself on my knack for approved voice, those flat, emotionless tones that indicate efficiency. And I would never forget how to speak Statese. I said, "Applicant desires all pertinent information relative assignment, change or amendment of State Serial designations, otherwise generally referred to as nomenclature." There was a second's delay while the audio patterns tripped relays and brought the memory tubes in. Then the cyb said, "Proceed to Numbering and Identity section. Consult alphabetical list and diagram on your left for location of same." "Thanks," I said absent-mindedly. I started to turn away and the cyb said, "Information on tanks is military information and classified. State authorization for—" I switched it off. Numbering and Identity wasn't hard to find. I took the shaft to the proper level and then it was only a walk of a few hundred yards through the glowlit corridors. N. & I. turned out to be a big room, somewhat circular, very high-ceilinged, with banks of cyb controls covering the upper walls. Narrow passageways, like spokes, led off in several directions. There was an information desk in the center of the room. I looked that way and my heart went into free fall. There was a girl at the information desk. An exceptionally attractive girl. She was well within the limits of acceptable standard, and her features were even enough, and her hair a middle blonde—but she had something else. Hard to describe. It was a warmth, a buoyancy, a sense of life and intense animation. It didn't exactly show; it radiated. It seemed to sing out from her clear complexion, from her figure, which even a tunic could not hide, from everything about her. And if I were to state my business, I would have to tell her my name. I almost backed out right then. I stopped momentarily. And then common sense took hold and I realized that if I were to go through with this thing, here would be only the first of a long series of embarrassments and discomforts. It had to be done. I walked up to the desk and the girl turned to face me, and I could have sworn that a faint smile crossed her lips. It was swift, like the shadow of a bird across one of the lawns in one of the great parks topside. Very non-standard. Yet I wasn't offended; if anything, I felt suddenly and disturbingly pleased. "What information is desired?" she asked. Her voice was standard—or was it? Again I had the feeling of restrained warmth. I used colloquial. "I want to get the dope on State Serial designations, how they're assigned and so forth. Especially how they might be changed." She put a handsteno on the desk top and said, "Name? Address? Post?" I froze. I stood there and stared at her. She looked up and said, "Well?" "I—er—no post at present. N/P status." Her fingers moved on the steno. I gave her my address and she recorded that. Then I paused again. She said, "And your name?" I took a deep breath and told her. I didn't want to look into her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't find a decent excuse to. I saw her eyes become wide and noticed for the first time that they were a warm gray, almost a mouse color. I felt like laughing at that irrelevant observation, but more than that I felt like turning and running. I felt like climbing and dashing all over the walls like a frustrated cat and yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt like anything but standing there and looking stupid, meeting her stare— She looked down quickly and recorded my name. It took her a little longer than necessary. In that time she recovered. Somewhat. "All right," she said finally, "I'll make a search." She turned to a row of buttons on a console in the center of the desk and began to press them in various combinations. A typer clicked away. She tore off a slip of paper, consulted it, and said, "Information desired is in Bank 29. Please follow me." Well, following her was a pleasure, anyway. I could watch the movement of her hips and torso as she walked. She was not tall, but long-legged and extremely lithe. Graceful and rhythmic. Very, very feminine, almost beyond standard in that respect. I felt blood throb in my temples and was heartily ashamed of myself. I would like to be in a mating booth with her, I thought, the full authorized twenty minutes. And I knew I was unconformist and the realization hardly scared me at all. She led me down one of the long passageways. A few moments later I said, "Don't you sometimes get—well, pretty lonely working here?" Personal talk at a time like this wasn't approved behavior, but I couldn't help it. She answered hesitantly, but at least she answered. She said, "Not terribly. The cybs are company enough most of the time." "You don't get many visitors, then." "Not right here. N. & I. isn't a very popular section. Most people who come to Govpub spend their time researching in the ancient manuscript room. The—er—social habits of the pre-atomic civilization." I laughed. I knew what she meant, all right. Pre-atomics and their ideas about free mating always fascinated people. I moved up beside her. "What's your name, by the way?" "L-A-R-A 339/827." I pronounced it. "Lara. Lah-rah. That's beautiful. Fits you, too." She didn't answer; she kept her eyes straight ahead and I saw the faint spot of color on her cheek. I had a sudden impulse to ask her to meet me after hours at one of the rec centers. If it had been my danger alone, I might have, but I couldn't very well ask her to risk discovery of a haphazard, unauthorized arrangement like that and the possibility of going to the psycho-scan. We came to a turn in the corridor and something happened; I'm not sure just how it happened. I keep telling myself that my movements were not actually deliberate. I was to the right of her. The turn was to the left. She turned quickly, and I didn't, so that I bumped into her, knocking her off balance. I grabbed her to keep her from falling. For a moment we stood there, face to face, touching each other lightly. I held her by the arms. I felt the primitive warmth of her breath. Our eyes held together ... proton ... electron ... I felt her tremble. She broke from my grip suddenly and started off again. After that she was very business-like. We came finally to the controls of Bank 29 and she stood before them and began to press button combinations. I watched her work; I watched her move. I had almost forgotten why I'd come here. The lights blinked on and off and the typers clacked softly as the machine sorted out information. She had a long printed sheet from the roll presently. She frowned at it and turned to me. "You can take this along and study it," she said, "but I'm afraid what you have in mind may be—a little difficult." She must have guessed what I had in mind. I said, "I didn't think it would be easy." "It seems that the only agency authorized to change a State Serial under any circumstances is Opsych." "Opsych?" You can't keep up with all these departments. "The Office of Psychological Adjustment. They can change you if you go from a lower to higher E.A.C." "I don't get it, exactly." As she spoke I had the idea that there was sympathy in her voice. Just an overtone. "Well," she said, "as you know, the post a person is qualified to hold often depends largely on his Emotional Adjustment Category. Now if he improves and passes from, let us say, Grade 3 to Grade 4, he will probably change his place of work. In order to protect him from any associative maladjustments developed under the old E.A.C, he is permitted a new number." I groaned. "But I'm already in the highest E.A.C.!" "It looks very uncertain then." "Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the mines, or on Marscol—or—in the hell of the pre-atomics!" She looked amused. "What did you say your E.A.C. was?" "Oh, all right. Sorry." I controlled myself and grinned. "I guess this whole thing has been just a little too much for me. Maybe my E.A.C.'s even gone down." "That might be your chance then." "How do you mean?" "If you could get to the top man in Opsych and demonstrate that your number has inadvertently changed your E.A.C., he might be able to justify a change." "By the State, he might!" I punched my palm. "Only how do I get to him?" "I can find his location on the cyb here. Center One, the capital, for a guess. You'll have to get a travel permit to go there, of course. Just a moment." She worked at the machine again, trying it on general data. The printed slip came out a moment later and she read it to me. Chief, Opsych, was in the capital all right. It didn't give the exact location of his office, but it did tell how to find the underground bay in Center One containing the Opsych offices. We headed back through the passageway then and she kept well ahead of me. I couldn't keep my eyes from her walk, from the way she walked with everything below her shoulders. My blood was pounding at my temples again. I tried to keep the conversation going. "Do you think it'll be hard to get a travel permit?" "Not impossible. My guess is that you'll be at Travbur all day tomorrow, maybe even the next day. But you ought to be able to swing it if you hold out long enough." I sighed. "I know. It's that way everywhere in Northem. Our motto ought to be, 'Why make it difficult when with just a little more effort you can make it impossible?'" She started to laugh, and then, as she emerged from the passageway into the big circular room, she cut her laugh short. A second later, as I came along, I saw why. There were two Deacons by the central desk. They were burly and had that hard, pinched-face look and wore the usual black belts. Electric clubs hung from the belts. Spidery looking pistols were at their sides. I didn't know whether these two had heard my crack or not. I know they kept looking at me. Lara and I crossed the room silently, she back to her desk, I to the exit door. The Deacons' remote, disapproving eyes swung in azimuth, tracking us. I walked out and wanted to turn and smile at Lara, and get into my smile something of the hope that someday, somewhere, I'd see her again—but of course I didn't dare. III I had the usual difficulties at Travbur the next day. I won't go into them, except to say that I was batted from office to office like a ping pong ball, and that, when I finally got my travel permit, I was made to feel that I had stolen an original Picasso from the State Museum. I made it in a day. Just. I got my permit thirty seconds before closing time. I was to take the jetcopter to Center One at 0700 hours the following morning. In my living machine that evening, I was much too excited to work at theoretical research as I usually did after a hard day of tramping around. I bathed, I paced a while, I sat and hummed nervously and got up and paced again. I turned on the telepuppets. There was a drama about the space pilots who fly the nonconformist prisoners to the forests and pulp-acetate plants on Mars. Seemed that the Southem political prisoners who are confined to the southern hemisphere of Mars, wanted to attack and conquer the north. The nonconformists, led by our pilot, came through for the State in the end. Corn is thicker than water. Standard. There were, however, some good stereofilm shots of the limitless forests of Mars, and I wondered what it would be like to live there, in a green, fresh-smelling land. Pleasant, I supposed, if you could put up with the no doubt revolting morality of a prison planet. And the drama seemed to point out that there was no more security for the nonconformists out there than for us here on Earth. Maybe somewhere in the universe, I thought, there would be peace for men. Somewhere beyond the solar system, perhaps, someday when we had the means to go there.... Yet instinct told me that wasn't the answer, either. I thought of a verse by an ancient pre-atomic poet named Hoffenstein. (People had unwieldy, random combinations of letters for names in those days.) The poem went: Wherever I go, I go too, And spoil everything. That was it. The story of mankind. I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time. Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious. " You have taken the first step ," she said. " You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer.... " I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm.... " The woman, Lara, attracts you ," said the voice. I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it. " Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way. " The idea at once thrilled and frightened me. I woke writhing and in a sweat again. It was morning. I dressed and headed for the jetcopter stage and the ship for Center One. The ship was comfortable and departed on time, a transport with seats for about twenty passengers. I sat near the tail and moodily busied myself watching the gaunt brown earth far below. Between Centers there was mostly desert, only occasional patches of green. Before the atomic decade, I had heard, nearly all the earth was green and teemed with life ... birds, insects, animals, people, too. It was hard rock and sand now, with a few scrubs hanging on for life. The pre-atomics, who hadn't mastered synthesization, would have a hard time scratching existence from the earth today. I tried to break the sad mood, and started to look around at some of the other passengers. That was when I first noticed the prisoners in the forward seats. Man and woman, they were, a youngish, rather non-descript couple, thin, very quiet. They were manacled and two Deacons sat across from them. The Deacons' backs were turned to me and I could see the prisoners' faces. They had curious faces. Their eyes were indescribably sad, and yet their lips seemed to be ready to smile at any moment. They were holding hands, not seeming to care about this vulgar emotional display. I had the sudden crazy idea that Lara and I were sitting there, holding hands like that, nonconforming in the highest, and that we were wonderfully happy. Our eyes were sad too, but we were really happy, quietly happy, and that was why our lips stayed upon the brink of a smile.

test

51398

Well, naturally Kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! He was— GROWING UP ON BIG MUDDY By CHARLES V. DE VET Illustrated by TURPIN [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. How long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? And why hadn't he noticed it before? Why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it? He went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should. OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW. SS II Kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. Overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground. "Damn this climate!" Kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "Doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?" His attention returned to the matter at hand. Why the baby talk? And why was his memory so hazy? How long had he been here? What had he been doing during that time? Listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. The air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. He'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. He remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone—or without better equipment, at least. Yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here. Calmly, deliberately, Kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them: The mother ship, Soscites II , had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. It had dropped Kaiser in the one remaining scout ship—the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds—and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that Kaiser had named Big Muddy. The Soscites II had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. Its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, Earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. And now its fuel was low. Kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever. That was all he could remember. Nothing of what he had been doing recently. A small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. Baby talk.... One thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. He turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. It held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages—both those sent and those received. He pulled it out impatiently and began reading. The first was from himself: YOUR SUGGESTIONS NO HELP. HOW AM I GOING TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO SCOUT WITHOUT PROPER EQUIPMENT? AND WHERE DO I GET IT? DO YOU THINK I FOUND A TOOL SHOP DOWN HERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER. VISITED SEAL-PEOPLE AGAIN TODAY. STILL HAVE THEIR STINK IN MY NOSE. FOUND HUTS ALONG RIVER BANK, SO I GUESS THEY DON'T LIVE IN WATER. BUT THEY DO SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME THERE. NO, I HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THEIR INTELLIGENCE. I WOULD JUDGE IT AVERAGES NO HIGHER THAN SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HUMAN. THEY DEFINITELY DO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. WILL TRY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, BUT YOU GET TO WORK FAST ON HOW I REPAIR SCOUT. SWELLING IN ARM WORSE AND AM DEVELOPING A FEVER. TEMPERATURE 102.7 AN HOUR AGO. SMOKY The ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange. DOING OUR BEST, SMOKY. YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM, AS WE SEE IT, IS TO KEEP WELL. WE FED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU GAVE US INTO SAM, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE MUCH EXCEPT THE STING IN YOUR ARM. AS EXPECTED, ALL THAT CAME OUT WAS "DATA INSUFFICIENT." TRY TO GIVE US MORE. ALSO DETAIL ALL SYMPTOMS SINCE YOUR LAST REPORT. IN THE MEANTIME, WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN AT THIS END. GOOD LUCK. SS II Sam, Kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. His report followed: ARM SWOLLEN. UNABLE TO KEEP DOWN FOOD LAST TWELVE HOURS. ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO, ENTIRE BODY TURNED LIVID RED. BRIEF PERIODS OF BLANKNESS. THINGS KEEP COMING AND GOING. SICK AS HELL. HURRY. SMOKY The ship's next message read: INFECTION QUITE DEFINITE. BUT SOMETHING STRANGE THERE. GIVE US ANYTHING MORE YOU HAVE. SS II His own reply perplexed Kaiser: LAST LETTER FUNNY. I NOT UNDERSTAND. WHY IS OO SENDING GARBLE TALK? DID USNS MAKE UP SECRET MESSAGES? SMOKY The expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he: WHAT'S THE MATTER, SMOKY? THAT LAST MESSAGE WAS IN PLAIN TERRAN. NO REASON WHY YOU COULDN'T READ IT. AND WHY THE BABY TALK? IF YOU'RE SPOOFING, STOP. GIVE US MORE SYMPTOMS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW? SS II The baby talk was worse on Kaiser's next: TWAZY. WHAT FOR OO TENDING TWAZY LETTERS? FINK UM CAN WEAD TWAZY LETTERS? SKIN ALL YELLOW NOW. COLD. COLD. CO The ship's following communication was three hours late. It was the last on the tape—the one Kaiser had read earlier. Apparently they decided to humor him. OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW. SS II That was not much help. All it told him was that he had been sick. He felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Cool. No fever anyway. He glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. Twenty hours. He hadn't been out of his head too long. He began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit. SEEM TO BE FULLY RECOVERED. FEELING FINE. ANYTHING NEW FROM SAM? AND HOW ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO SCOUT? GIVE ME ANYTHING YOU HAVE ON EITHER OR BOTH. SMOKY Kaiser felt suddenly weary. He lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. Soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness—he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream. It was the same dream he had had many times before. In it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. He had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, Helene, did not love him. She had married him for the security his pay check provided. And though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. Instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way. Her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. His mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment Kaiser. Kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. The clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. Still five more long hours to wait. He rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout. After a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of Big Muddy. The rain seemed to have eased off some. Not much more than a heavy drizzle now. Kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. He opened the door. The scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and Kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground. The weather outside was normal for Big Muddy: wet, humid, and warm. Kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. He half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. Beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. Tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. The octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study. Kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. Once there, he headed upstream. He could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. As usual, most were swimming in the river. One old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. Perhaps a lookout. He pulled himself to his feet as he spied Kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting—or a warning to the others that a stranger approached. The native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. Membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. The arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. His legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. They gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. About him hung a rank-fish smell that made Kaiser's stomach squirm. The old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as Kaiser came near. Feeling slightly ineffectual, Kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. The other chirped again and Kaiser went on toward the main group. They had stopped their play and eating as Kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. They varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. Some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths. They had mammalian characteristics, Kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. The proportion was roughly fifty-fifty. Several of the bolder males climbed up beside Kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. Kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. One native smeared Kaiser's face with an exploring paw and Kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. He was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this. A young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. The entire group seemed to lose interest in Kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. Kaiser's inspectors followed. They were a mindless lot, Kaiser observed. The river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies. Kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. He took time to study their construction more closely this time. They were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. How they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, Kaiser did not know. He had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. They then had to have sunlight. Maybe it rained less during certain seasons. The domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. When the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. Each tier thus furnished support for the next above. No other framework was needed. The final tier formed the roof. They made sound shelters, but Kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank—and as smelly as the natives themselves. The few loungers in the village paid little attention to Kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout. The Soscites II sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and Kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout. The job appeared maddeningly simply. As the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. The bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing. Opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. Kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar—the best leverage he had on hand—but it resisted his best efforts. He still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day. That evening, Kaiser received information from the Soscites II that was at least definite: SET YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, SMOKY. SAM FINALLY CAME THROUGH. YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. AT LEAST NOT AT FIRST. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED BY A SYMBIOTE—SIMILAR TO THE TYPE FOUND ON THE SAND WORLD, BARTEL-BLEETHERS. GIVE US A FEW MORE HOURS TO WORK WITH SAM AND WE'LL GET YOU ALL THE PARTICULARS HE CAN GIVE US. HANG ON NOW! SOSCITES II Kaiser's reply was short and succinct: WHAT THE HELL? SMOKY Soscites II's next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor: JUST A FEW WORDS, SMOKY, IN CASE YOU'RE WORRIED. I THOUGHT I'D GET THIS OFF WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM SAM. REMEMBER THAT A SYMBIOTE IS NOT A PARASITE. IT WILL NOT HARM YOU, EXCEPT INADVERTENTLY. YOUR WELFARE IS AS ESSENTIAL TO IT AS TO YOU. ALMOST CERTAINLY, IF YOU DIE, IT WILL DIE WITH YOU. ANY TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD SO FAR WAS PROBABLY CAUSED BY THE SYMBIOTE'S DIFFICULTY IN ADJUSTING ITSELF TO ITS NEW ENVIRONMENT. IN A WAY, I ENVY YOU. MORE LATER, WHEN WE FINISH WITH SAM. J. G. ZARWELL Kaiser did not answer. The news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. He lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours—until the next communication came in: WELL, THIS IS WHAT SAM HAS TO SAY, SMOKY. SYMBIOTE AMICABLE AND APPARENTLY SWIFTLY ADAPTABLE. YOUR CHANGING COLOR, DIFFICULTY IN EATING AND EVEN BABY TALK WERE THE RESULT OF ITS EFFORTS TO GIVE YOU WHAT IT BELIEVED YOU NEEDED OR WANTED. CHANGING COLOR: PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE. TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD DOWN: IT KEPT YOUR STOMACH EMPTY BECAUSE IT SENSED YOU WERE IN TROUBLE AND MIGHT HAVE NEED FOR SHARP REFLEXES, WITH NO EXCESS WEIGHT TO CARRY. THE BABY TALK WE AREN'T TOO CERTAIN ABOUT, BUT OUR BEST CONCLUSION IS THAT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, YOU WERE MOST HAPPY. IT WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU BACK THAT HAPPY STATE OF MIND. OBVIOUSLY IT QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THE MISTAKES IT MADE AND CORRECTED THEM. SAM CAME UP WITH A FEW MORE IDEAS, BUT WE WANT TO WORK ON THEM A BIT BEFORE WE SEND THEM THROUGH. SLEEP ON THIS. SS II Kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. He was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. He had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. True, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city. His naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. He did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. They would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. He was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. And he returned the dislike. The suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. He hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, Kaiser realized—and fell instantly asleep. The communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke: SAM COULDN'T HELP US MUCH ON THIS PART, BUT AFTER RESEARCH AND MUCH DISCUSSION, WE ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING TWO CONCLUSIONS. FIRST, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF SYMBIOTE IS EITHER THAT OF A VERY THIN LIQUID OR, MORE PROBABLY, A VIRUS FORM WITH SWIFT PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTIC. IT UNDOUBTEDLY LIVES IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM AND PERMEATES YOUR SYSTEM. SECOND, IT SEEMED TO US, AS IT MUST HAVE TO YOU, THAT THE SYMBIOTE COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED BY READING YOUR MIND. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY NOW. WE THINK THAT IT HAS SUCH CLOSE CONTACT WITH YOUR GLANDS AND THEIR SECRETIONS, WHICH STIMULATE EMOTION, THAT IT CAN GAUGE YOUR FEELINGS EVEN MORE ACCURATELY THAN YOU YOURSELF CAN. THUS IT CAN JUDGE YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES QUITE ACCURATELY. WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU TEST OUR THEORY. THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS. IF YOU ARE STUMPED AND NEED SUGGESTIONS, JUST LET US KNOW. WE AWAIT WORD FROM YOU WITH GREAT INTEREST. SS II By now, Kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. His distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. With eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. After a few minutes, an idea occurred to him. Taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. He knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. The cut bled a few slow drops—and as Kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped. That checked pretty well with the ship's theory. Perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. He tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. It seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. Walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. Each letter stood out sharp and clear! Kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. Concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. The result surprised and pleased him. The temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here. As a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. Temperature 102, humidity 113—just about the same as it had been on earlier readings. During the next twenty-four hours, Kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. In between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. He had no more success than before. He tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. Each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately—and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. At first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. His one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged. At last Kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. He sent out a terse message to the Soscites II : TAKING SHORT TRIP TO ANOTHER LOCATION ON RIVER. HOPE TO FIND MORE INTELLIGENT NATIVES. COULD BE THAT THE SETTLEMENT I FOUND HERE IS ANALOGOUS TO TRIBE OF MONKEYS ON EARTH. I KNOW THE CHANCE IS SMALL, BUT WHAT HAVE I TO LOSE? I CAN'T FIX SCOUT WITHOUT BETTER TOOLS, AND IF MY GUESS IS RIGHT, I MAY BE ABLE TO GET EQUIPMENT. EXPECT TO RETURN IN TEN OR TWELVE HOURS. PLEASE KEEP CONTACT WITH SCOUT. SMOKY Kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. He had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. He intended to find out. Wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, Kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. He hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey—in the opposite direction from the first native settlement. He walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. And a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. He received a further pleasant surprise. This group was decidedly more advanced than the first! They were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. And their odor was more subdued, less repugnant. By signs, Kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. A thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. The first male took the weed and brought it to Kaiser. This was obviously a gesture of friendship. The weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. Kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it. The weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. He swallowed the mouthful and tried another. He ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction. As dusk fell, Kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. All apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. Apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. Lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world. Once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. However, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and Kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went. The next morning, Kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. The seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly. That friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. The natives crowded around as he swam—they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency—and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. He had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. As he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under. Kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. They sank deeper. When his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, Kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. He reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom. As he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. He stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. He shrugged helplessly. There was no longer anything to be gained by staying here—if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them—and he packed and started back to the scout. Kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. He had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. Above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel. When he reached the scout, Kaiser began to unload the sled. The tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. To his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground. Perplexed, Kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. They felt exceptionally light. He paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened. Moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. He did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there. Inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. Nothing happened. He rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. The metal beneath yielded slightly—but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever. Only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. His hands ached and tingled. His strength must have been increased tremendously. With his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. The metal of the scout bottom gave slowly—until the fuel pump hung free! Kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. He let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act. He transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him. The first was quite routine: REPORTS FROM THE OCTOPUS INDICATE THAT BIG MUDDY UNDERGOES RADICAL WEATHER-CYCLE CHANGES DURING SPRING AND FALL SEASONS, FROM EXTREME MOISTURE TO EXTREME ARIDITY. AT HEIGHT OF DRY SEASON, PLANET MUST BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SURFACE LIQUID. TO SURVIVE THESE UNUSUAL EXTREMES, SEAL-PEOPLE WOULD NEED EXTREME ADAPTABILITY. THIS VERIFIES OUR EARLIER GUESS THAT NATIVES HAVE SYMBIOSIS WITH THE SAME VIRUS FORM THAT INVADED YOU. WITH SYMBIOTES' AID, SUCH RADICAL PHYSICAL CHANGE COULD BE POSSIBLE. WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED. GIVE US ANY NEW INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE ON NATIVES. SS II The second report was not so routine. Kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it. SUGGEST YOU DEVOTE ALL TIME AND EFFORT TO REPAIR OF SCOUT. INFORMATION ON SEAL-PEOPLE ADEQUATE FOR OUR PURPOSES. SS II Kaiser did not answer either communication. His earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. He lay on his cot and went to sleep. In the morning, another message was waiting: VERY PLEASED TO HEAR OF PROGRESS ON REPAIR OF SCOUT. COMPLETE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND RETURN HERE IMMEDIATELY. SS II Kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. Could the Soscites II be experiencing some difficulty? He shrugged the thought aside. If they were, they would have told him. The last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency—there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information. Strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod Kaiser. He knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. And the Soscites II would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet. Without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, Kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. When he became hungry, he went back inside. Another message came in as he finished eating. This one was from the captain himself: WHY HAVE WE RECEIVED NO VERIFICATION OF LAST INSTRUCTIONS? REPAIR SCOUT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY. THIS IS AN ORDER! H. A. HESSE, CAPT. Kaiser pushed the last of his meal—which he had been eating with his fingers—into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor. He pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. For some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. He placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. It was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip. The tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when Kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. However, there were other seal-people here. And they were almost human! The resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup—that was little changed from the first he had found—as in their obviously greater intelligence. This was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. Kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. Where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. Also, these had no odor—only a mild, rather pleasing scent. When they came to meet him, Kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings. Most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as Kaiser set up his tent. One was a female. They made small noises while he went about his work. After a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. He tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. Kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. He was fairly successful. He was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation. The male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until Kaiser finished. She motioned to him then to follow. When they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water. Before he had time to decide, Kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. He stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape: STILL ANXIOUSLY AWAITING WORD FROM YOU. IN MEANTIME, GIVE VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO FOLLOWING. WE KNOW THAT THE SYMBIOTES MUST BE ABLE TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEAL-PEOPLE. THERE IS EVERY PROBABILITY THAT YOURS WILL ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME TO YOU—TO BETTER FIT YOUR BODY TO ITS PRESENT ENVIRONMENT. THE DANGER, WHICH WE HESITATED TO MENTION UNTIL NOW—WHEN YOU HAVE FORCED US BY YOUR OBSTINATE SILENCE—IS THAT IT CAN ALTER YOUR MIND ALSO. YOUR REPORT ON SECOND TRIBE OF SEAL-PEOPLE STRONGLY INDICATES THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. THEY WERE PROBABLY NOT MORE INTELLIGENT AND HUMANLIKE THAN THE OTHERS. ON THE CONTRARY, YOU ARE BECOMING MORE LIKE THEM. DANGER ACUTE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: IMMEDIATELY! SS II Kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts. When he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. She pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. Kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. They ran, still laughing, into the water. Already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots.

test

50827

Orphans of the Void By MICHAEL SHAARA Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick—the Universe is full of them. Finding one worth living for is the genuine problem! In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any significance in the number. He had no idea. "What do you make of it?" he asked. Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit. "Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways, maybe?" Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him. "No inscriptions," he pointed out. "They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it much of a civilization." "You don't think these are native?" Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded. Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old— too old. He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks. Ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "Want to set up shop, Skipper?" Steffens paused. "All right, if you think it will do any good." "You never can tell. Excavation probably won't be much use. These things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. And you can see that the rock itself is native—" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet—"and was cut out a long while back." "How long?" Ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "I wouldn't like to say off-hand." "Make a rough estimate." Ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. He smiled wryly and said: "Five thousand years? Ten thousand? I don't know." Steffens whistled. Ball pointed again at the wall. "Look at the striations. You can tell from that alone. It would take even a brisk Earth wind at least several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force." The two men stood for a long moment in silence. Man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. It was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history. Man had been in space for only three hundred years. Whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years. Which ought to give them , thought Steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start. While the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, Steffens remained alone among the buildings. Ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls. "Well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since." "No? How can you be sure?" Steffens grunted. "A space-borne race was roaming this part of the Galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, that long ago. And this planet is only a parsec from Varius II, a civilization as old as Earth's. Did whoever built these get to Varius? Or did they get to Earth? How can you know?" He kicked at the sand distractedly. "And most important, where are they now? A race with several thousand years...." "Fifteen thousand," Ball said. When Steffens looked up, he added: "That's what the geology boys say. Fifteen thousand, at the least." Steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. When he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him. "But why buildings? Why did they have to build in stone, to last? There's something wrong with that. They shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. And castaways would have left something behind. The only reason they would need a camp would be—" "If the ship left and some of them stayed." Steffens nodded. "But then the ship must have come back. Where did it go?" He ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "We'll never know." "How about the other planets?" Ball asked. "The report was negative. Inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. The third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but it has a CO 2 atmosphere." "How about moons?" Steffens shrugged. "We could try them and find out." The third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. The ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. They came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone. The moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. The third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. Steffens expected nothing, but he had to try. At a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the Mapping Command. Faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below. Steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently. After a while he saw a city. The main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. Someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and Steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead. He looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. Near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. In all the piled rubble, nothing moved. Steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. The rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities—all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing. No one on the ship had anything to say. None had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on Earth or near it for more than three hundred years. The ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. When they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. It became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive. After a while Ball said: "Well, which do you figure? Did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?" Steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. They were coming around to the daylight side. "We'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "Break out the radiation suits." He paused, thinking. If the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. They had starships and were warlike. Then, thousands of years ago. He began to realize how important it really was that Ball's question be answered. When the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, Steffens was still by the screen. It was Steffens, then, who saw the thing move. Down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. Steffens froze. And he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot. Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past. Quickly Steffens called for height. The ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. Steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. And he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms. Nothing alive but robots, he thought, robots . He adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. Behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement. A band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen. The ship leveled off. Steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. He had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. Now he had nothing to do. He tried to concentrate on what the League Law would have him do. The Law was no help. Contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. But could a bunch of robots be called a race? The Law said nothing about robots because Earthmen had none. The building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. But at any rate, Steffens thought, he had made contact already. While Steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, Lieutenant Ball came up, hobbling slightly. From the bright new bruise on his cheek, Steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. The exec was pale with surprise. "What were they?" he said blankly. "Lord, they looked like robots!" "They were." Ball stared confoundedly at the screen. The things were now a confusion of dots in the mist. "Almost humanoid," Steffens said, "but not quite." Ball was slowly absorbing the situation. He turned to gaze inquiringly at Steffens. "Well, what do we do now?" Steffens shrugged. "They saw us. We could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on Tyban IV." " Can we go down?" "Legally? I don't know. If they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. But there's another possibility." He tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "They don't have to be robots at all. They could be the natives." Ball gulped. "I don't follow you." "They could be the original inhabitants of this planet—the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. Anyway," he added, "they're the most perfect mechanicals I've ever seen." Ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. Steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the Main Deck, thinking. The Mapping Command, they called it. Theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. Make a check and nothing else. But he knew very clearly that if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty. And there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone. He stopped in the center of the deck. A whole new line of thought opened up. If the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost? An outpost! He turned and raced for the bridge. If he went in and landed and was lost, then the League might never know in time. If he went in and stirred up trouble.... The thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. A voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say: " Greetings. Do not be alarmed. We do not wish you to be alarmed. Our desire is only to serve.... " "Greetings, it said! Greetings!" Ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips. Everyone on the ship had heard the voice. When it spoke again, Steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices. "We await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "Our desire is only to serve." And then the robots sent a picture . As perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in Steffens' mind. On the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. With slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its right side, and extended it toward Steffens, a graciously offered hand. Steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. The robot mind had helped. When the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. He waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. He had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. So when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear. While the crew watched in fascination, Steffens tried to talk back. He concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands. "Greetings," he said, because it was what they had said, and explained: "We have come from the stars." It was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. He wondered baffledly if he should have let the Alien Contact crew handle it. Order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and think a message? No, it was his responsibility; he had to go on: "We request—we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet." Steffens had not realized that there were so many. They had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. Others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that Steffens felt a momentary anxiety. Most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. Others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for Steffens when he came out. One of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as Steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. The black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. Steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit. "Welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now Steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. It was less friendly now, less—Steffens could not understand—somehow less interested , as if the robot had been—expecting someone else. "Thank you," Steffens said. "We are deeply grateful for your permission to land." "Our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve." Suddenly, Steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. He tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they should seem inhuman. But.... "Will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically. Steffens felt his embarrassment. The ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently. "They must remain with the ship," Steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. Although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask. For a long while, neither spoke, long enough for Steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. He could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the Aliencon men to come on out of the skiff. They came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. Steffens heard the one robot speak again. The voice was now much more friendly. "We hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. It is our—custom—not to communicate unless we are called upon. But when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real—nature—and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data." Steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action. "We perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be—dismayed—to learn that we have been gathering information from you. We must—apologize. Our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. Only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and—understanding. We will enter your minds henceforth only at your request." Steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. Nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the Aliencon men went to work. The robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. Since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, Steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the Earthmen would feel more at home. The picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of Earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. The one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. Steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail. It was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the Earthmen. The most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. Symbols in row upon row—numbers, perhaps—were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. If they were numbers, Steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. But he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. He was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical. It wasn't until he was on his way home that Steffens remembered the symbols again. And only then did he realized what they were. After a while, convinced that there was no danger, Steffens had the ship brought down. When the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. There were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. The mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat. The robots had obviously been built to serve. Steffens began to feel their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. They were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. Whoever had built them, Steffens thought in wonder, had built them well. Ball came to join Steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. A robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. The first to speak had remained with Steffens. Realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, Ball was for a while apprehensive. But the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. It was impossible not to like the things. There was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing. Their builders, Steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too. "There's no harm in them," said Ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "They seem actually glad we're here. My God, whoever heard of a robot being glad?" Steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "I hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but—yours is a remarkable race. We have never before made contact with a race like yours." It was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do. The robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head. "I perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. Your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' I am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey—I would have to examine your thought more fully—but I believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures." The robot paused. Steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted. "I must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are—curious." It stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. Steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. It said at length: "We know of only two types of living structure. Ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the Makers , which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. I am not a—doctor—and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the Makers' composition, but if you are interested I will have a doctor brought forward. It will be glad to be of assistance." It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers. The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush: "Can you tell us where the Makers are?" Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty. "The Makers—are not here." Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on: "The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time." Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind. War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed. He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing , nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide brought him up sharp. If there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. If the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere—good God, how old were the robots? Steffens looked at Ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. The black wheat. Steffens felt a deep chill. Were they immortal? "Would you like to see a doctor?" Steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring. "No, not yet," he said, "thank you." He swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently. "Could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? Individually?" "By your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "I am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive." Steffens tried to understand that. "It would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. Using the first—letters—of my designation, my name would translate as Elb." "Glad to meet you," Steffens mumbled. "You are called 'Stef,'" said the robot obligingly. Then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near Ball: "The age of—Peb—is seventeen years, one month and four days. Peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years." Steffens was trying to keep up. Then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. But the cities, and the carbon dioxide? The robot, Elb, had said that the Makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. Unless— He remembered the buildings on Tyban IV. Unless the Makers had not come from this planet at all. His mind helplessly began to revolve. It was Ball who restored order. "Do you build yourselves?" the exec asked. Peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering. "No, we do not build ourselves. We are made by the—" another pause for a word—"by the Factory ." "The Factory?" "Yes. It was built by the Makers. Would you care to see it?" Both of the Earthmen nodded dumbly. "Would you prefer to use your—skiff? It is quite a long way from here." It was indeed a long way, even by skiff. Some of the Aliencon crew went along with them. And near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the Factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. A huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. Steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. Robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance—moving around their birthplace. The Earthmen remained for several weeks. During that time, Steffens was usually with Elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the Aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. There was still the mystery of those buildings on Tyban IV; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave. Surprisingly, Steffens did not think about the future. Whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking. Something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. It came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. Not a bug, a worm, a leaf. They did not know what flesh was. Only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." It had taken them some time to recognize that the Earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed. But when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing. At first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the Earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. And one morning, when Steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area. It was at this point that Steffens asked how many robots there were. He learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. The great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive. Steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed Elb to probe into his mind. The robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that Steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. Steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life. He had a vague idea of the robot's history—more, perhaps, then they knew themselves—but he refrained from forming an opinion until Aliencon made its report. What fascinated him was Elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had. "What do you do ?" Steffens asked. Elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "We can do very little. A certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the Makers. We spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. We have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. Our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the Makers. Any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the Makers return." "When they return?" It had not occurred to Steffens until now that the robots expected the Makers to do so. Elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "I see you had surmised that the Makers were not coming back." If the robot could have laughed, Steffens thought it would have, then. But it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic. "It has always been our belief that the Makers would return. Why else would we have been built?" Steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. The question, to Elb, was no question at all. Although Steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known—that the Makers were gone and would never come back—he was a long time understanding. What he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from Elb. He had no desire to destroy a faith. But it created a problem in him. He had begun to picture for Elb the structure of human society, and the robot—a machine which did not eat or sleep—listened gravely and tried to understand. One day Steffens mentioned God. "God?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "What is God?" Steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered: "It is a matter which has troubled us. We thought at first that you were the Makers returning—" Steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed—"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the Makers or ourselves. You were not even—" Elb caught himself—"you did not happen to be telepaths. Therefore we troubled over who made you. We did detect the word 'Maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar—" Elb paused for a long while—"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you." Steffens understood. He nodded. The Makers were the robots' God, were all the God they needed. The Makers had built them, the planet, the universe. If he were to ask them who made the Makers, it would be like their asking him who made God. It was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself. But on that planet, it was the last time he smiled.

test

51167

Butterfly 9 By DONALD KEITH Illustrated by GAUGHAN [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Jeff needed a job and this man had a job to offer—one where giant economy-size trouble had labels like fakemake, bumsy and peekage! I At first, Jeff scarcely noticed the bold-looking man at the next table. Nor did Ann. Their minds were busy with Jeff's troubles. "You're still the smartest color engineer in television," Ann told Jeff as they dallied with their food. "You'll bounce back. Now eat your supper." "This beanery is too noisy and hot," he grumbled. "I can't eat. Can't talk. Can't think." He took a silver pillbox from his pocket and fumbled for a black one. Those were vitamin pills; the big red and yellow ones were sleeping capsules. He gulped the pill. Ann looked disapproving in a wifely way. "Lately you chew pills like popcorn," she said. "Do you really need so many?" "I need something. I'm sure losing my grip." Ann stared at him. "Baby! How silly! Nothing happened, except you lost your lease. You'll build up a better company in a new spot. We're young yet." Jeff sighed and glanced around the crowded little restaurant. He wished he could fly away somewhere. At that moment, he met the gaze of the mustachioed man at the next table. The fellow seemed to be watching him and Ann. Something in his confident gaze made Jeff uneasy. Had they met before? Ann whispered, "So you noticed him, too. Maybe he's following us. I think I saw him on the parking lot where we left the car." Jeff shrugged his big shoulders. "If he's following us, he's nuts. We've got no secrets and no money." "It must be my maddening beauty," said Ann. "I'll kick him cross-eyed if he starts anything," Jeff said. "I'm just in the mood." Ann giggled. "Honey, what big veins you have! Forget him. Let's talk about the engineering lab you're going to start. And let's eat." He groaned. "I lose my appetite every time I think about the building being sold. It isn't worth the twelve grand. I wouldn't buy it for that if I could. What burns me is that, five years ago, I could have bought it for two thousand." "If only we could go back five years." She shrugged fatalistically. "But since we can't—" The character at the next table leaned over and spoke to them, grinning. "You like to get away? You wish to go back?" Jeff glanced across in annoyance. The man was evidently a salesman, with extra gall. "Not now, thanks," Jeff said. "Haven't time." The man waved his thick hand at the clock, as if to abolish time. "Time? That is nothing. Your little lady. She spoke of go back five years. Maybe I help you." He spoke in an odd clipped way, obviously a foreigner. His shirt was yellow. His suit had a silky sheen. Its peculiar tailoring emphasized the bulges in his stubby, muscular torso. Ann smiled back at him. "You talk as if you could take us back to 1952. Is that what you really mean?" "Why not? You think this silly. But I can show you." Jeff rose to go. "Mister, you better get to a doctor. Ann, it's time we started home." Ann laid a hand on his sleeve. "I haven't finished eating. Let's chat with the gent." She added in an undertone to Jeff, "Must be a psycho—but sort of an inspired one." The man said to Ann, "You are kind lady, I think. Good to crazy people. I join you." He did not wait for consent, but slid into a seat at their table with an easy grace that was almost arrogant. "You are unhappy in 1957," he went on. "Discouraged. Restless. Why not take trip to another time?" "Why not?" Ann said gaily. "How much does it cost?" "Free trial trip. Cost nothing. See whether you like. Then maybe we talk money." He handed Jeff a card made of a stiff plastic substance. Jeff glanced at it, then handed it to Ann with a half-smile. It read: 4-D TRAVEL BEURO Greet Snader, Traffic Ajent "Mr. Snader's bureau is different," Jeff said to his wife. "He even spells it different." Snader chuckled. "I come from other time. We spell otherwise." "You mean you come from the future?" "Just different time. I show you. You come with me?" "Come where?" Jeff asked, studying Snader's mocking eyes. The man didn't seem a mere eccentric. He had a peculiar suggestion of humor and force. "Come on little trip to different time," invited Snader. He added persuasively, "Could be back here in hour." "It would be painless, I suppose?" Jeff gave it a touch of derision. "Maybe not. That is risk you take. But look at me. I make trips every day. I look damaged?" As a matter of fact, he did. His thick-fleshed face bore a scar and his nose was broad and flat, as if it had been broken. But Jeff politely agreed that he did not look damaged. Ann was enjoying this. "Tell me more, Mr. Snader. How does your time travel work?" "Cannot explain. Same if you are asked how subway train works. Too complicated." He flashed his white teeth. "You think time travel not possible. Just like television not possible to your grandfather." Ann said, "Why invite us? We're not rich enough for expensive trips." "Invite many people," Snader said quickly. "Not expensive. You know Missing Persons lists, from police? Dozens people disappear. They go with me to other time. Many stay." "Oh, sure," Jeff said. "But how do you select the ones to invite?" "Find ones like you, Mr. Elliott. Ones who want change, escape." Jeff was slightly startled. How did this fellow know his name was Elliott? Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?" "They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them." "Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff. "You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here." Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything." Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness—a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car." Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body. "This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick." "First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said. "Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way." II Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful. Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back. "'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den." "No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said. "There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect." They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau." The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key. The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them. The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens—or were they giant television screens?—occupying a whole wall at either end of the room. The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante , and to the right with the word Post . Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction. "Somebody worked hard on this layout," he said to Snader. "What's it for?" "Time travel," said Snader. "You like?" "Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?" Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back. Ann gasped. "It was just as if they saw us." "They did," Snader said. "No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat." "What's he supposed to be?" Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past. Snader showed his teeth. "That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work." "What kind of work?" Jeff asked. "Building the groove further back." "Sounds like interesting work." Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. "Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip." Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, "Where do you propose to go? And how?" Snader said, "Watch me. Then look at other wall." He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water. Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader—and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again. "Simple," Snader said. "I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here." "Brother, that's the best trick I've seen in years," Jeff said. "How did you do it? Can I do it, too?" "I show you." Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. "Now," he said. "Step in." Jeff submitted to Snader's pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room. In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance. The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again. Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass." "You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered. "Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet." Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another. "Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long—how many years back are you taking us?" Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop." For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again." "We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would—" Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724. "Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions." He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it. Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream. "The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere." Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door. In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging." He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house. "Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street. The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine. "Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine. Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous. "Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us." Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now." "When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957." "You are? Look around." Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house. "Get in," Snader said curtly. Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car. Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!" Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going." Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?" "What about it?" "It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows." "Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street—" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner. "The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that." III They were headed back toward what should have been the boulevard. The car zoomed through a cloverleaf turn and up onto a broad freeway. Jeff knew for certain there was no freeway there in 1957—nor in any earlier year. But on the horizon, he could see the familiar dark bulk of the mountains. The whole line of moonlit ridges was the same as always. "Ann," he said slowly, "I think this is for real. Somehow I guess we escaped from 1957. We've been transported in time." She squeezed his arm. "If I'm dreaming, don't wake me! I was scared a minute ago. But now, oh, boy!" "Likewise. But I still wonder what Snader's angle is." He leaned forward and tapped the driver on his meaty shoulder. "You brought us into the future instead of the past, didn't you?" It was hard to know whether Snader was sleepy or just bored, but he shrugged briefly to show there was no reply coming. Then he yawned. Jeff smiled tightly. "I guess we'll find out in good time. Let's sit back and enjoy the strangest ride of our lives." As the limousine swept along through the traffic, there were plenty of big signs for turn-offs, but none gave any hint where they were. The names were unfamiliar. Even the language seemed grotesque. "Rite Channel for Creepers," he read. "Yaw for Torrey Rushway" flared at him from a fork in the freeway. "This can't be the future," Ann said. "This limousine is almost new, but it doesn't even have an automatic gear shift—" She broke off as the car shot down a ramp off the freeway and pulled up in front of an apartment house. Just beyond was a big shopping center, ablaze with lights and swarming with shoppers. Jeff did not recognize it, in spite of his familiarity with the city. Snader bounded out, pulled open the rear door and jerked his head in a commanding gesture. But Jeff did not get out. He told Snader, "Let's have some answers before we go any further." Snader gave him a hard grin. "You hear everything upstairs." The building appeared harmless enough. Jeff looked thoughtfully at Ann. She said, "It's just an apartment house. We've come this far. Might as well go in and see what's there." Snader led them in, up to the sixth floor in an elevator and along a corridor with heavy carpets and soft gold lights. He knocked on a door. A tall, silver-haired, important-looking man opened it and greeted them heartily. "Solid man, Greet!" he exclaimed. "You're a real scratcher! And is this our sharp?" He gave Jeff a friendly but appraising look. "Just what you order," Snader said proudly. "His name—Jeff Elliott. Fine sharp. Best in his circuit. He brings his lifemate, too. Ann Elliott." The old man rubbed his smooth hands together. "Prime! I wish joy," he said to Ann and Jeff. "I'm Septo Kersey. Come in. Bullen's waiting." He led them into a spacious drawing room with great windows looking out on the lights of the city. There was a leather chair in a corner, and in it sat a heavy man with a grim mouth. He made no move, but grunted a perfunctory "Wish joy" when Kersey introduced them. His cold eyes studied Jeff while Kersey seated them in big chairs. Snader did not sit down, however. "No need for me now," he said, and moved toward the door with a mocking wave at Ann. Bullen nodded. "You get the rest of your pay when Elliott proves out." "Here, wait a minute!" Jeff called. But Snader was gone. "Sit still," Bullen growled to Jeff. "You understand radioptics?" The blood went to Jeff's head. "My business is television, if that's what you mean. What's this about?" "Tell him, Kersey," the big man said, and stared out the window. Kersey began, "You understand, I think, that you have come back in time. About six years back." "That's a matter of opinion, but go on." "I am general manager of Continental Radioptic Combine, owned by Mr. Dumont Bullen." He nodded toward the big man. "Chromatics have not yet been developed here in connection with radioptics. They are well understood in your time, are they not?" "What's chromatics? Color television?" "Exactly. You are an expert in—ah—colored television, I think." Jeff nodded. "So what?" The old man beamed at him. "You are here to work for our company. You will enable us to be first with chromatics in this time wave." Jeff stood up. "Don't tell me who I'll work for." Bullen slapped a big fist on the arm of his chair. "No fog about this! You're bought and paid for, Elliott! You'll get a fair labor contract, but you do what I say!" "Why, the man thinks he owns you." Ann laughed shakily. "You'll find my barmen know their law," Bullen said. "This isn't the way I like to recruit. But it was only way to get a man with your knowledge." Kersey said politely, "You are here illegally, with no immigrate permit or citizen file. Therefore you cannot get work. But Mr. Bullen has taken an interest in your trouble. Through his influence, you can make a living. We even set aside an apartment in this building for you to live in. You are really very luxe, do you see?" Jeff's legs felt weak. These highbinders seemed brutally confident. He wondered how he and Ann would find their way home through the strange streets. But he put on a bold front. "I don't believe your line about time travel and I don't plan to work for you," he said. "My wife and I are walking out right now. Try and stop us, legally or any other way." Kersey's smooth old face turned hard. But, unexpectedly, Bullen chuckled deep in his throat. "Good pop and bang. Like to see it. Go on, walk out. You hang in trouble, call up here—Butterfly 9, ask for Bullen. Whole exchange us. I'll meet you here about eleven tomorrow pre-noon." "Don't hold your breath. Let's go, Ann." When they were on the sidewalk, Ann took a deep breath. "We made it. For a minute, I thought there'd be a brawl. Why did they let us go?" "No telling. Maybe they're harmless lunatics—or practical jokers." He looked over his shoulder as they walked down the street, but there was no sign of pursuit. "It's a long time since supper." Her hand was cold in his and her face was white. To take her mind off their problem, he ambled toward the lighted shop windows. "Look at that sign," he said, pointing to a poster over a display of neckties. "'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!' How do they expect to sell stuff with that crazy lingo?" "It's jive talk. They must cater to the high-school crowd." Ann glanced nervously at the strolling people around them. "Jeff, where are we? This isn't any part of the city I've ever seen. It doesn't even look much like America." Her voice rose. "The way the women are dressed—it's not old-fashioned, just different." "Baby, don't be scared. This is an adventure. Let's have fun." He pressed her hand soothingly and pulled her toward a lunch counter. If the haberdasher's sign was jive, the restaurant spoke the same jargon. The signs on the wall and the bill of fare were baffling. Jeff pondered the list of beef shingles, scorchers, smack sticks and fruit chills, until he noticed that a couple at the counter were eating what clearly were hamburgers—though the "buns" looked more like tortillas. Jeff jerked his thumb at them and told the waitress, "Two, please." When the sandwiches arrived, they were ordinary enough. He and Ann ate in silence. A feeling of foreboding hung over them. When they finished, the clerk gave him a check marked 1/20. Jeff looked at it thoughtfully, shrugged and handed it to the cashier with two dollar bills. The man at the desk glanced at them and laughed. "Stage money, eh?" "No, that's good money," Jeff assured him with a rather hollow smile. "They're just new bills, that's all." The cashier picked one up and looked at it curiously. "I'm afraid it's no good here," he said, and pushed it back. The bottom dropped out of Jeff's stomach. "What kind of money do you want? This is all I have." The cashier's smile faded. He caught the eye of a man in uniform on one of the stools. The uniform was dark green, but the man acted like a policeman. He loomed up beside Jeff. "What's the rasper?" he demanded. Other customers, waiting to pay their checks, eyed Jeff curiously. "I guess I'm in trouble," Jeff told him. "I'm a stranger here and I got something to eat under the impression that my money was legal tender. Do you know where I can exchange it?" The officer picked up the dollar bill and fingered it with evident interest. He turned it over and studied the printing. "United States of America," he read aloud. "What are those?" "It's the name of the country I come from," Jeff said carefully. "I—uh—got on the wrong train, apparently, and must have come further than I thought. What's the name of this place?" "This is Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. Say, you must come from an umpty remote part of the world if you don't know about this country." His eyes narrowed. "Where'd you learn to speak Federal, if you come from so far?" Jeff said helplessly, "I can't explain, if you don't know about the United States. Listen, can you take me to a bank, or some place where they know about foreign exchange?" The policeman scowled. "How'd you get into this country, anyway? You got immigrate clearance?" An angry muttering started among the bystanders. The policeman made up his mind. "You come with me." At the police station, Jeff put his elbows dejectedly on the high counter while the policeman talked to an officer in charge. Some men whom Jeff took for reporters got up from a table and eased over to listen. "I don't know whether to charge them with fakemake, bumsy, peekage or lunate," the policeman said as he finished. His superior gave Jeff a long puzzled stare. Jeff sighed. "I know it sounds impossible, but a man brought me in something he claimed was a time traveler. You speak the same language I do—more or less—but everything else is kind of unfamiliar. I belong in the United States, a country in North America. I can't believe I'm so far in the future that the United States has been forgotten." There ensued a long, confused, inconclusive interrogation. The man behind the desk asked questions which seemed stupid to Jeff and got answers which probably seemed stupid to him. The reporters quizzed Jeff gleefully. "Come out, what are you advertising?" they kept asking. "Who got you up to this?" The police puzzled over his driver's license and the other cards in his wallet. They asked repeatedly about the lack of a "Work License," which Jeff took to be some sort of union card. Evidently there was grave doubt that he had any legal right to be in the country. In the end, Jeff and Ann were locked in separate cells for the night. Jeff groaned and pounded the bars as he thought of his wife, imprisoned and alone in a smelly jail. After hours of pacing the cell, he lay down in the cot and reached automatically for his silver pillbox. Then he hesitated. In past weeks, his insomnia had grown worse and worse, so that lately he had begun taking stronger pills. After a longing glance at the big red and yellow capsules, he put the box away. Whatever tomorrow brought, it wouldn't find him slow and drowsy. IV He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a little man with a briefcase at his cell door. "Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release, if you are ready to be reasonable." Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?" "No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew." "All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here." The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?" "You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?" "If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war." Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?" The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?" "Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?" "Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?" "So far. Keep talking."

test

51184

INSIDE EARTH By POUL ANDERSON Illustrated by DAVID STONE [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Obviously, no conqueror wants his subjects to revolt against his rule. Obviously? This one would go to any lengths to start a rebellion! I The biotechnicians had been very thorough. I was already a little undersized, which meant that my height and build were suitable—I could pass for a big Earthling. And of course my face and hands and so on were all right, the Earthlings being a remarkably humanoid race. But the technicians had had to remodel my ears, blunting the tips and grafting on lobes and cutting the muscles that move them. My crest had to go and a scalp covered with revolting hair was now on the top of my skull. Finally, and most difficult, there had been the matter of skin color. It just wasn't possible to eliminate my natural coppery pigmentation. So they had injected a substance akin to melanin, together with a virus which would manufacture it in my body, the result being a leathery brown. I could pass for a member of the so-called "white" subspecies, one who had spent most of his life in the open. The mimicry was perfect. I hardly recognized the creature that looked out of the mirror. My lean, square, blunt-nosed face, gray eyes, and big hands were the same or nearly so. But my black crest had been replaced with a shock of blond hair, my ears were small and immobile, my skin a dull bronze, and several of Earth's languages were hypnotically implanted in my brain—together with a set of habits and reflexes making up a pseudo-personality which should be immune to any tests that the rebels could think of. I was Earthling! And the disguise was self-perpetuating: the hair grew and the skin color was kept permanent by the artificial "disease." The biotechnicians had told me that if I kept the disguise long enough, till I began to age—say, in a century or so—the hair would actually thin and turn white as it did with the natives. It was reassuring to think that once my job was over, I could be restored to normal. It would need another series of operations and as much time as the original transformation, but it would be as complete and scarless. I'd be human again. I put on the clothes they had furnished me, typical Earthly garments—rough trousers and shirt of bleached plant fibers, jacket and heavy shoes of animal skin, a battered old hat of matted fur known as felt. There were objects in my pockets, the usual money and papers, a claspknife, the pipe and tobacco I had trained myself to smoke and even to like. It all fitted into my character of a wandering, outdoors sort of man, an educated atavist. I went out of the hospital with the long swinging stride of one accustomed to walking great distances. The Center was busy around me. Behind me, the hospital and laboratories occupied a fairly small building, some eighty stories of stone and steel and plastic. On either side loomed the great warehouses, military barracks, officers' apartments, civilian concessions, filled with the vigorous life of the starways. Behind the monstrous wall, a mile to my right, was the spaceport, and I knew that a troopship had just lately dropped gravs from Valgolia herself. The Center swarmed with young recruits off duty, gaping at the sights, swaggering in their new uniforms. Their skins shone like polished copper in the blistering sunlight, and their crests were beginning to wilt a little. All Earth is not the tropical jungle most Valgolians think it is—northern Europe is very pleasant, and Greenland is even a little on the cold side—but it gets hot enough at North America Center in midsummer to fry a shilast. A cosmopolitan throng filled the walkways. Soldiers predominated—huge, shy Dacors, little slant-eyed Yangtusans, brawling Gorrads, all the manhood of Valgolia. Then there were other races, blue-skinned Vegans, furry Proximans, completely non-humanoid Sirians and Antarians. They were here as traders, observers, tourists, whatever else of a non-military nature one can imagine. I made an absent-minded way through the crowds. A sudden crack on the side of my head, nearly bowling me over, brought me to awareness. I looked up into the arrogant face of one of the new recruits and heard him rasp, "Watch where you're going, Terrie!" The young blood in the Valgolian military is deliberately trained to harshness, even brutality, for our militarism must impress such backward colonies as Earth. It goes against our grain, but it is necessary. At another time this might have annoyed me. I could have pulled rank on him. Not only was I an officer, but such treatment must be used with intellectual deliberation. The occasional young garrison trooper who comes here with the idea that the natives are an inferior breed to be kicked around misses the whole point of Empire. If, indeed, Earth's millions were an inferior breed, I wouldn't have been here at all. Valgol needs an economic empire, but if all we had in mind was serfdom we'd be perfectly content with the plodding animal life of Deneb VII or a hundred other worlds. I cringed appropriately, as if I didn't understand Valgolian Universal, and slunk past him. But it griped me to be taken for a Terrie. If I was to become an Earthling, I would at least be a self-respecting one. There were plenty of Terries—Terrestrials—around, of course, moving with their odd combination of slavish deference toward Valgolians and arrogant superiority toward mere Earthlings. They have adopted the habits and customs of civilization, entered the Imperial service, speak Valgolian even with their families. Many of them shave their heads save for a scalp lock, in imitation of the crest, and wear white robes suggesting those of civil functionaries at home. I've always felt a little sorry for the class. They work, and study, and toady to us, and try so hard to be like us. It's frustrating, because that's exactly what we don't want. Valgolians are Valgolians and Earthlings are men of Earth. Well, Terries are important to the ultimate aims of the Empire, but not in the way they think they are. They serve as another symbol of Valgolian conquest for Earth to hate. I entered the Administration Building. They expected me there and took me at once to the office of General Vorka, who's a general only as far as this solar system is concerned. Had there been any Earthlings around, I would have saluted to conform to the show of militarism, but General Vorka sat alone behind his desk, and I merely said, "Hello, Coordinator." The sleeves of his tunic rolled up, the heat of North America beading his forehead with sweat, the big man looked up at me. "Ah, yes. I'm glad you're finally prepared. The sooner we get this thing started—" He extended a silver galla-dust box. "Sniff? Have a seat, Conru." I inhaled gratefully and relaxed. The Coordinator picked up a sheaf of papers on his desk and leafed through them. "Umm-mm, only fifty-two years old and a captain already. Remarkably able, a young man like you. And your work hitherto has been outstanding. That Vegan business...." I said yes, I knew, but could he please get down to business. You couldn't blame me for being a bit anxious to begin. Disguised as I was as an Earthman, I felt uncomfortable, embarrassed, almost, at being with my ex-countrymen. The Coordinator shrugged. "Well, if you can carry this business off—fine. If you fail, you may die quite unpleasantly. That's their trouble, Conru: you wouldn't be regarded as an individual, but as a Valgolian. Did you know that they even make such distinctions among themselves? I mean races and sub-races and social castes and the like; it's keeping them divided and impotent, Conru. It's also keeping them out of the Empire. A shame." I knew all that, of course, but I merely nodded. Coordinator Vorka was a wonderful man in his field, and if he tended to be on the garrulous side, what could I do? I said, "I know that, sir. I also know I was picked for a dangerous job because you thought I could fill the role. But I still don't know exactly what the job is." Coordinator Vorka smiled. "I'm afraid I can't tell you much more than you must already have guessed," he said. "The anarch movement here—the rebels, that is—is getting no place, primarily because of internal difficulties. When members of the same group spit epithets at each other referring to what they consider racial or national distinctions which determine superiority or inferiority, the group is bound to be an insecure one. Such insecurity just does not make for a strong rebellion, Conru. They try, and we goad them—but dissention splits them constantly and their revolutions fizzle out. "They just can't unite against us, can't unite at all. Conru, you know how we've tried to educate them. It's worked, too, to some extent. But you can't educate three billion people who have a whole cultural pattern behind them." I winced. "Three billion?" "Certainly. Earth is a rich planet, Conru, and a fairly crowded one at the same time. Bickering is inevitable. It's a part of their culture, as much as cooperation has been a part of ours." I nodded. "We learned the hard way. The old Valgol was a poor planet and we had to unite to conquer space or we could not have survived." The Coordinator sniffed again at his silver box. "Of course. And we're trying to help these people unite. They don't have to make the same mistakes we did, long ago. They don't have to at all. Get them to hate us enough, get them to hate us until all their own clannish hatreds don't count at all.... Well, you know what happened on Samtrak." I knew. The Samtraks are now the entrepreneurs of the Empire, really ingenious traders, but within the memory of some of our older men they were a sore-spot. They didn't understand the meaning of Empire any more than Earth does, and they never did understand it until we goaded them into open rebellion. The very reverse of divide and rule, you might say, and it worked. We withdrew trading privileges one by one, until they revolted successfully, thus educating themselves sociologically in only a few generations. Vorka said, "The problem of Earth is not quite that simple." He leaned back, made a bridge of his fingers, and peered across them at me. "Do you know precisely what a provocateur job is, Conru?" I said that I did, but only in a hazy way, because until now my work had been pretty much restricted to social relations on the more advanced Empire planets. However, I told him that I did know the idea was to provoke discontent and, ultimately, rebellion. The Coordinator smiled. "Well, that's just the starter, Conru. It's a lot more complex than that. Each planet has its own special problems. The Samtraks, for example, had a whole background of cutthroat competition. That was easy: we eliminated that by showing them what real cutthroat competition could be like. But Earth is different. Look at it this way. They fight among themselves. Because of their mythical distinctions, not realizing that there are no inferior races, only more or less advanced ones, and that individuals must be judged as individuals, not as members of groups, nations or races. A planet like Earth can be immensely valuable to the Empire, but not if it has to be garrisoned. Its contribution must be voluntary and whole-hearted." "A difficult problem," I said. "My opinion is that we should treat all exactly alike— force them to abandon their unrealistic differences." "Exactly!" The Coordinator seemed pleased, but, actually, this was pretty elementary stuff. "We're never too rough on the eager lads who come here from Valgol and kick the natives around a bit. We even encourage it when the spirit of rebelliousness dies down." I told him I had met one. "Irritating, wasn't it, Conru? Humiliating. Of course, these lads will be reconditioned to civilization when they finish their military service and prepare for more specialized work. Yes, treating all Earthlings alike is the solution. We put restrictions on these colonials; they can't hold top jobs, and so on. And we encourage wild stories about brutality on our part. Not enough to make everybody mad at us, or even a majority—the rumored tyranny has always happened to someone else. But there's a certain class of beings who'll get fighting mad, and that's the class we want." "The leaders," I chimed in. "The idealists. Brave, intelligent, patriotic. The kind who probably wouldn't be a part of this racial bickering, anyway." "Right," said the Coordinator. "We'll give them the ammunition for their propaganda. We've been doing it. Result: the leaders get mad. Races, religions, nationalities, they hate us worse than they hate each other." The way he painted it, I was hardly needed at all. I told him that. "Ideally, that would be the situation, Conru. Only it doesn't work that way." He took out a soft cloth and wiped his forehead. "Even the leaders are too involved in this myth of differences and they can't concentrate all their efforts. Luron, of course, would be the other alternative—" That was a very logical statement, but sometimes logic has a way of making you laugh, and I was laughing now. Luron considered itself our arch-enemy. With a few dozen allies on a path of conquest, Luron thought it could wrest Empire from our hands. Well, we let them play. And each time Luron swooped down on one of the more primitive planets, we let them, for Luron would serve as well as ourselves in goading backward peoples to unite and advance. Perhaps Luron, as a social entity, grew wiser each time. Certainly the primitive colonials did. Luron had started a chain reaction which threatened to overthrow the tyranny of superstition on a hundred planets. Good old Luron, our arch-enemy, would see the light itself some day. The Coordinator shook his head. "Can't use Luron here. Technologies are entirely too similar. It might shatter both planets, and we wouldn't want that." "So what do we use?" "You, Conru. You get in with the revolutionaries, you make sure that they want to fight, you—" "I see," I told him. "Then I try to stop it at the last minute. Not so soon that the rebellion doesn't help at all—" The Coordinator put his hand down flat. "Nothing of the sort. They must fight. And they must be defeated, again and again, if necessary, until they are ready to succeed. That will be, of course, when they are totally against us." I stood up. "I understand." He waved me back into the chair. "You'll be lucky to understand it by the time you're finished with this assignment and transferred to another ... that is, if you come out of this one alive." I smiled a bit sheepishly and told him to go ahead. "We have some influence in the underground movement, as you might logically expect. The leader is a man we worked very hard to have elected." "A member of one of the despised races?" I guessed. "The best we could do at this point was to help elect someone from a minority sub-group of the dominant white race. The leader's name is Levinsohn. He is of the white sub-group known as Jews." "How well is this Levinsohn accepted by the movement?" "Considerable resistance and hostility," the Coordinator said. "That's to be expected. However, we've made sure that there is no other organization the minority-haters can join, so they have to follow him or quit. He's able, all right; one of the most able men they have, which helps our aims. Even those who discriminate against Jews reluctantly admire him. He's moved the headquarters of the movement out into space, and the man's so brilliant that we don't even know where. We'll find out, mainly through you, I hope, but that isn't the important thing." "What is?" I asked, baffled. "To report on the unification of Earth. It's possible that the anarch movement can achieve it under Levinsohn. In that case, we'll make sure they win, or think they win, and will gladly sign a treaty giving Earth equal planetary status in the Empire." "And if unity hasn't been achieved?" "We simply crush this rebellion and make them start all over again. They'll have learned some degree of unity from this revolt and so the next one will be more successful." He stood up and I got out of my chair to face him. "That's for the future, though. We'll work out our plans from the results of this campaign." "But isn't there a lot of danger in the policy of fomenting rebellion against us?" I asked. He lifted his shoulders. "Evolution is always painful, forced evolution even more so. Yes, there are great dangers, but advance information from you and other agents can reduce the risk. It's a chance we must take, Conru." "Conrad," I corrected him, smiling. "Plain Mr. Conrad Haugen ... of Earth." II A few days later, I left North America Center, and in spite of the ominous need to hurry, my eastward journey was a ramble. The anarchs would be sure to check my movements as far back as they could, and my story had better ring true. For the present, I must be my role, a vagabond. The city was soon behind me. It was far from other settlement—it is good policy to keep the Centers rather isolated, and we could always contact our garrisons in native towns quickly enough. Before long I was alone in the mountains. I liked that part of the trip. The Rockies are huge and serene, a fresh cold wind blows from their peaks and roars in the pines, brawling rivers foam through their dales and canyons—it is a big landscape, clean and strong and lonely. It speaks with silence. I hitched a ride for some hundreds of miles with one of the great truck-trains that dominate the western highways. The driver was Earthling, and though he complained much about the Valgolian tyranny he looked well-fed, healthy, secure. I thought of the wars which had been laying the planet waste, the social ruin and economic collapse which the Empire had mended, and wondered if Terra would ever be fit to rule itself. I came out of the enormous mountainlands into the sage plains of Nevada. For a few days I worked at a native ranch, listening to the talk and keeping my mouth shut. Yes, there was discontent! "Their taxes are killing me," said the owner. "What the hell incentive do I have to produce if they take it away from me?" I nodded, but thought: Your kind was paying more taxes in the old days, and had less to show for it. Here you get your money back in public works and universal security. No one on Earth is cold or hungry. Can you only produce for your own private gain, Earthling? "The labor draft got my kid the other day," said the foreman. "He'll spend two good years of his life working for them, and prob'ly come back hopheaded about the good o' the Empire." There was a time , I thought, when millions of Earthlings clamored for work, or spent years fighting their wars, gave their youth to a god of battle who only clamored for more blood. And how can we have a stable society without educating its members to respect it? "I want another kid," said the female cook. "Two ain't really enough. They're good boys, but I want a girl too. Only the Eridanian law says if I go over my quota, if I have one more, they'll sterilize me! And they'd do it, the meddling devils." A billion Earthlings are all the Solar System can hold under decent standards of living without exhausting what natural resources their own culture left us , I thought. We aren't ready to permit emigration; our own people must come first. But these beings can live well here. Only now that we've eliminated famine, plague, and war, they'd breed beyond reason, breed till all the old evils came back to throttle them, if we didn't have strict population control. "Yeah," said her husband bitterly. "They never even let my cousin have kids. Sterilized him damn near right after he was born." Then he's a moron, or carries hemophilia, or has some other hereditary taint , I thought. Can't they see we're doing it for their own good? It costs us fantastically in money and trouble, but the goal is a level of health and sanity such as this race never in its history dreamed possible. "They're stranglin' faith," muttered someone else. Anyone in the Empire may worship as he chooses, but should permission be granted to preach demonstrable falsehoods, archaic superstitions, or antisocial nonsense? The old "free" Earth was not noted for liberalism. "We want to be free." Free? Free for what? To loose the thousand Earthly races and creeds and nationalisms on each other—and on the Galaxy—to wallow in barbarism and slaughter and misery as before we came? To let our works and culture be thrown in the dust, the labor of a century be demolished, not because it is good or bad but simply because it is Valgolian? Epsilon Eridanian! "We'll be free. Not too long to wait, either—" That's up to nobody else but you! I couldn't get much specific information, but then I hadn't expected to. I collected my pay and drifted on eastward, talking to people of all classes—farmers, mechanics, shopowners, tramps, and such data as I gathered tallied with those of Intelligence. About twenty-five per cent of the population, in North America at least—it was higher in the Orient and Africa—was satisfied with the Imperium, felt they were better off than they would have been in the old days. "The Eridanians are pretty decent, on the whole. Some of 'em come in here and act nice and human as you please." Some fifty per cent was vaguely dissatisfied, wanted "freedom" without troubling to define the term, didn't like the taxes or the labor draft or the enforced disarmament or the legal and social superiority of Valgolians or some such thing, had perhaps suffered in the reconquest. But this group constituted no real threat. It would tend to be passive whatever happened. Its greatest contribution would be sporadic rioting. The remaining twenty-five per cent was bitter, waiting its chance, muttering of a day of revenge—and some portion of this segment was spreading propaganda, secretly manufacturing and distributing weapons, engaging in clandestine military drill, and maintaining contact with the shadowy Legion of Freedom. Childish, melodramatic name! But it had been well chosen to appeal to a certain type of mind. The real, organized core of the anarch movement was highly efficient. In those months I spent wandering and waiting, its activities mounted almost daily. The illegal radio carried unending programs, propaganda, fabricated stories of Valgolian brutality. I knew from personal experience that some were false, and I knew the whole Imperial system well enough to spot most of the rest at least partly invented. I realized we couldn't trace such a well-organized setup of mobile and coordinated units, and jamming would have been poor tactics, but even so— The day is coming.... Earthmen, free men, be ready to throw off your shackles.... Stand by for freedom! I stuck to my role. When autumn came, I drifted into one of the native cities, New Chicago, a warren of buildings near the remains of the old settlement, the same gigantic slum that its predecessor had been. I got a room in a cheap hotel and a job in a steel mill. I was Conrad Haugen, Norwegian-American, assigned to a spaceship by the labor draft and liking it well enough to re-enlist when my term was up. I had wandered through much of the Empire and had had a great deal of contact with Eridanians, but was most emphatically not a Terrie. In fact, I thought it would be well if the redskin yoke could be thrown off, both because of liberty and the good pickings to be had in the Galaxy if the Empire should collapse. I had risen to second mate on an interstellar tramp, but could get no further because of the law that the two highest officers must be Valgolian. That had embittered me and I returned to Earth, foot-loose and looking for trouble. I found it. With officer's training and the strength due to a home planet with a gravity half again that of Earth, I had no difficulty at all becoming a foreman. There was a big fellow named Mike Riley who thought he was entitled to the job. We settled it behind a shed, with the workmen looking on, and I beat him unconscious as fast as possible. The raw, sweating savagery of it made me feel ill inside. They'd let this loose among the stars ! After that I was one of the boys and Riley was my best friend. We went out together, wenching and drinking, raising hell in the cold dirty canyons of steel and stone which the natives called streets. Valgolia, Valgolia, the clean bare windswept heights of your mountains, soughing trees and thunderous waters and Maara waiting for me to come home! Riley often proposed that we find an Eridanian and beat him to death, and I would agree, hiccupping, because I knew they didn't go alone into native quarters any more. I sat in the smoky reek of the bars, half deafened by the clatter and raucousness called music, trying not to think of a certain low-ceilinged, quiet tavern amid the gardens of Kalariho, and sobbed the bitterness of Conrad Haugen into my beer. "Dirty redskins," I muttered. "Dirty, stinking, bald-headed, sons of bitches. Them and their god-damn Empire. Why, y'know, if 't hadn' been f' their laws I'd be skipper o' my own ship now. I knew more'n that slob o' a captain. But he was born Eridanian—God, to get my hands on his throat!" Riley nodded. Through the haze of smoke I saw that his eyes were narrowed. He wasn't drunk when he didn't want to be, and at times like this he was suddenly as sober as I was, and that in spite of not having a Valgolian liver. I bided my time, not too obviously anxious to contact the Legion. I just thought they were swell fellows, the only brave men left in the rotten, stinking Empire; I'd sure be on their side when the day came. I worked in the mill, and when out with the boys lamented the fact that we were really producing for the damned Eridanians, we couldn't even keep the products of our own sweat. I wasn't obtrusive about it, of course. Most of the time we were just boozing. But when the talk came to the Empire, I made it clear just where I stood. The winter went. I continued the dreary round of days, wondering how long it would take, wondering how much time was left. If the Legion was at all interested, they would be checking my background right now. Let them. There wouldn't be much to check, but what there was had been carefully manufactured by the experts of the Intelligence Service. Riley came into my room one evening. His face was tight, and he plunged to business. "Con, do you really mean all you've said about the Empire?" "Why, of course. I—" I glanced out the window, as if expecting to see a spy. If there were any, I knew he would be native. The Empire just doesn't have enough men for a secret police, even if we wanted to indulge in that sort of historically ineffective control. "You'd like to fight them? Like really to help the Legion of Freedom when they strike?" "You bet your obscenity life!" I snarled. "When they land on Earth, I'll get a gun somewhere and be right there in the middle of the battle with them!" "Yeah." Riley puffed a cigaret for a while. Then he said, "Look, I can't tell you much. I'm taking a chance just telling you this. It could mean my life if you passed it on to the Eridanians." "I won't." His eyes were bleak. "You damn well better not. If you're caught at that—" He drew a finger sharply across his throat. "Quit talking like a B-class stereo," I bristled. "If you've got something to tell me, let's have it. Otherwise get out." "Yeah, sure. We checked up on you, Con, and we think you're as good a prospect as we ever came across. If you want to fight the Eridanians now— join the Legion now—here's your chance." "My God, you know I do! But who—" "I can't tell you a thing. But if you really want to join, memorize this." Riley gave me a small card on which was written a name and address. "Destroy it, thoroughly. Then quit at the mill and drift to this other place, as if you'd gotten tired of your work and wanted to hit the road again. Take your time, don't make a beeline for it. When you do arrive, they'll take care of you." I nodded, grimly. "I'll do it, Mike. And thanks!" "Just my job." He smiled, relaxing, and pulled a flask from his overcoat. "Okay, Con, that's that. We'd better not go out to drink, after this, but nothing's to stop us from getting stinko here." III Spring had come and almost gone when I wandered into the little Maine town which was my destination. It lay out of the way, with forested hills behind it and the sea at its foot. Most of the houses were old, solidly built, almost like parts of the land, and the inhabitants were slow-spoken, steady folk, fishermen and artisans and the like, settled here and at home with the darkling woods and the restless sea and the high windy sky. I walked down a narrow street with a cool salt breeze ruffling my hair and decided that I liked Portsboro. It reminded me of my own home, twenty light-years away on the wide beaches of Kealvigh. I made my way to Nat Hawkins' store and asked for work like any drifter. But when we were alone in the back room, I told him, "I'm Conrad Haugen. Mike Riley said you'd be looking for me." He nodded calmly. "I've been expecting you. You can work here a few days, sleep at my house, and we'll run the tests after dark." He was old for an Earthling, well over sixty, with white hair and lined leathery face. But his blue eyes were as keen and steady, his gnarled hands as strong and sure as those of any young man. He spoke softly and steadily, around the pipe which rarely left his mouth, and there was a serenity in him which I could hardly associate with anarch fanaticism. But the first night he led me into his cellar, and through a well-hidden trapdoor to a room below, and there he had a complete psychological laboratory. I gaped at the gleaming apparatus. "How off Earth—" "It came piece by piece, much of it from Epsilon Eridani itself," he smiled. "There is, after all, no ban on humans owning such material. But to play safe, we spread the purchases over several years, and made them in the names of many people." "But you—" "I took a degree in psychiatry once. I can handle this." He could. He put me through the mill in the next few nights—intelligence tests, psychometry, encephalography, narcosis, psycho-probing, everything his machines and his skill could cover. He did not find out anything we hadn't meant to be found out. The Service had ways of guarding its agents with counter-blocks. But he got a very thorough picture of Conrad Haugen. In the end he said, still calmly, "This is amazing. You have an IQ well over the borderline of genius, an astonishing variety of assorted knowledge about the Empire and about technical subjects, and an implacable hatred of Eridanian rule—based on personal pique and containing self-seeking elements, but no less firm for that. You're out for yourself, but you'll stand by your comrades and your cause. We'd never hoped for more recruits of your caliber." "When do I start?" I asked impatiently. "Easy, easy," he smiled. "There's time. We've waited fifty years; we can wait a while longer." He riffled through the dossier. "Actually, the difficulty is where to assign you. A man who knows astrogation, the use of weapons and machines, and the Empire, who is physically strong as a bull, can lead men, and has a dozen other accomplishments, really seems wasted on any single job. I'm not sure, but I think you'll do best as a roving agent, operating between Main Base and the planets where we have cells, and helping with the work at the base when you're there."

test

51336

What is POSAT? By PHYLLIS STERLING SMITH Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Of course coming events cast their shadows before, but this shadow was 400 years long! The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines: MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS! What is the secret source of those profound principles that can solve the problems of life? Send for our FREE booklet of explanation. Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU can alter the course of your life! Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages! The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth POSAT an ancient secret society Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand. Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil. "You can alter the course of your life!" he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time. Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Not but what the cats weren't almost smart enough to read, she always said. It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible. Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object. He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn't be scratched until he turned back to the page. It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it. "I wonder what their racket is," he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn't fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn't bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters. Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form. Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope. He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility. Miss Arnable was delighted with the opportunity for autobiographical composition. It required five extra sheets of paper to convey all the information that she wished to give—all about her poor, dear father who had been a missionary to China, and the kinship that she felt toward the mystic cults of the East, her belief that her cats were reincarnations of her loved ones (which, she stated, derived from a religion of the Persians; or was it the Egyptians?) and in her complete and absolute acceptance of everything that POSAT had stated in their booklet. And what would the dues be? She wished to join immediately. Fortunately, dear father had left her in a comfortable financial situation. To Donald Alford, the booklet seemed to confirm his suspicion that POSAT was a racket of some sort. Why else would they be interested in his employment or financial position? It also served to increase his curiosity. "What do you suppose they're driving at?" he asked his wife Betty, handing her the booklet and questionnaire. "I don't really know what to say," she answered, squinting a little as she usually did when puzzled. "I know one thing, though, and that's that you won't stop until you find out!" "The scientific attitude," he acknowledged with a grin. "Why don't you fill out this questionnaire incognito, though?" she suggested. "Pretend that we're wealthy and see if they try to get our money. Do they have anything yet except your name and address?" Don was shocked. "If I send this back to them, it will have to be with correct answers!" "The scientific attitude again," Betty sighed. "Don't you ever let your imagination run away with the facts a bit? What are you going to give for your reasons for asking about POSAT?" "Curiosity," he replied, and, pulling his fountain pen from his vest pocket, he wrote exactly that, in small, neat script. It was unfortunate for his curiosity that Don could not see the contents of the three envelopes that were mailed from the offices of POSAT the following week. For this time they differed. Bill Evans was once again disappointed. The pamphlet that was enclosed gave what apparently meant to be final answers to life's problems. They were couched in vaguely metaphysical terms and offered absolutely no help to him. His disappointment was tempered, however, by the knowledge that he had unexpectedly found a job. Or, rather, it had fallen into his lap. When he had thought that every avenue of employment had been tried, a position had been offered him in a wholesale pharmacy in the older industrial part of the city. It was not a particularly attractive place to work, located as it was next to a large warehouse, but to him it was hope for the future. It amused him to discover that the offices of POSAT were located on the other side of the same warehouse, at the end of a blind alley. Blind alley indeed! He felt vaguely ashamed for having placed any confidence in them. Miss Arnable was thrilled to discover that her envelope contained not only several pamphlets, (she scanned the titles rapidly and found that one of them concerned the sacred cats of ancient Egypt), but that it contained also a small pin with the symbol of POSAT wrought in gold and black enamel. The covering letter said that she had been accepted as an active member of POSAT and that the dues were five dollars per month; please remit by return mail. She wrote a check immediately, and settled contentedly into a chair to peruse the article on sacred cats. After a while she began to read aloud so that her own cats could enjoy it, too. Don Alford would not have been surprised if his envelope had shown contents similar to the ones that the others received. The folded sheets of paper that he pulled forth, however, made him stiffen with sharp surprise. "Come here a minute, Betty," he called, spreading them out carefully on the dining room table. "What do you make of these?" She came, dish cloth in hand, and thoughtfully examined them, one by one. "Multiple choice questions! It looks like a psychological test of some sort." "This isn't the kind of thing I expected them to send me," worried Don. "Look at the type of thing they ask. 'If you had discovered a new and virulent poison that could be compounded from common household ingredients, would you (1) publish the information in a daily newspaper, (2) manufacture it secretly and sell it as rodent exterminator, (3) give the information to the armed forces for use as a secret weapon, or (4) withhold the information entirely as too dangerous to be passed on?'" "Could they be a spy ring?" asked Betty. "Subversive agents? Anxious to find out your scientific secrets like that classified stuff that you're so careful of when you bring it home from the lab?" Don scanned the papers quickly. "There's nothing here that looks like an attempt to get information. Besides, I've told them nothing about my work except that I do research in physics. They don't even know what company I work for. If this is a psychological test, it measures attitudes, nothing else. Why should they want to know my attitudes?" "Do you suppose that POSAT is really what it claims to be—a secret society—and that they actually screen their applicants?" He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't it be interesting if I didn't make the grade after starting out to expose their racket?" He pulled out his pen and sat down to the task of resolving the dilemmas before him. His next communication from POSAT came to his business address and, paradoxically, was more personal than its forerunners. Dear Doctor Alford: We have examined with interest the information that you have sent to us. We are happy to inform you that, thus far, you have satisfied the requirements for membership in the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. Before accepting new members into this ancient and honorable secret society, we find it desirable that they have a personal interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT. Accordingly, you are cordially invited to an audience with our Grand Chairman on Tuesday, July 10, at 2:30 P.M. Please let us know if this arrangement is acceptable to you. If not, we will attempt to make another appointment for you. The time specified for the appointment was hardly a convenient one for Don. At 2:30 P.M. on most Tuesdays, he would be at work in the laboratory. And while his employers made no complaint if he took his research problems home with him and worried over them half the night, they were not equally enthusiastic when he used working hours for pursuing unrelated interests. Moreover, the headquarters of POSAT was in a town almost a hundred miles distant. Could he afford to take a whole day off for chasing will-o-wisps? It hardly seemed worth the trouble. He wondered if Betty would be disappointed if he dropped the whole matter. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home, he couldn't consult her about it without telephoning. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible! He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them! "Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—" But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information. His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?" Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic. At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT. He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday. At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms. It was at the back of one of the alleys that he finally found a door marked with the now familiar emblem of POSAT. He opened the frosted glass door with a feeling of misgiving, and faced a dark flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. Somewhere above him a buzzer sounded, evidently indicating his arrival. He picked his way up through the murky stairwell. The reception room was hardly a cheerful place, with its battered desk facing the view of the empty alley, and a film of dust obscuring the pattern of the gray-looking wallpaper and worn rug. But the light of the summer afternoon filtering through the window scattered the gloom somewhat, enough to help Don doubt that he would find the menace here that he had come to expect. The girl addressing envelopes at the desk looked very ordinary. Not the Mata-Hari type , thought Don, with an inward chuckle at his own suspicions. He handed her the letter. She smiled. "We've been expecting you, Dr. Alford. If you'll just step into the next room—" She opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Don stepped through it. The sight of the luxurious room before him struck his eyes with the shock of a dentist's drill, so great was the contrast between it and the shabby reception room. For a moment Don had difficulty breathing. The rug—Don had seen one like it before, but it had been in a museum. The paintings on the walls, ornately framed in gilt carving, were surely old masters—of the Renaissance period, he guessed. Although he recognized none of the pictures, he felt that he could almost name the artists. That glowing one near the corner would probably be a Titian. Or was it Tintorretto? He regretted for a moment the lost opportunities of his college days, when he had passed up Art History in favor of Operational Circuit Analysis. The girl opened a filing cabinet, the front of which was set flush with the wall, and, selecting a folder from it, disappeared through another door. Don sprang to examine the picture near the corner. It was hung at eye level—that is, at the eye level of the average person. Don had to bend over a bit to see it properly. He searched for a signature. Apparently there was none. But did artists sign their pictures back in those days? He wished he knew more about such things. Each of the paintings was individually lighted by a fluorescent tube held on brackets directly above it. As Don straightened up from his scrutiny of the picture, he inadvertently hit his head against the light. The tube, dislodged from its brackets, fell to the rug with a muffled thud. Now I've done it! thought Don with dismay. But at least the tube hadn't shattered. In fact—it was still glowing brightly! His eyes registered the fact, even while his mind refused to believe it. He raised his eyes to the brackets. They were simple pieces of solid hardware designed to support the tube. There were no wires! Don picked up the slender, glowing cylinder and held it between trembling fingers. Although it was delivering as much light as a two or three hundred watt bulb, it was cool to the touch. He examined it minutely. There was no possibility of concealed batteries. The thumping of his heart was caused not by the fact that he had never seen a similar tube before, but because he had. He had never held one in his hands, though. The ones which his company had produced as experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded. Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment! But this is impossible! he thought. We're the only company that's working on this, and it's secret. There can't be any in actual production! And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth? The conviction grew in Don's mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now— With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked! A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous. "Our Grand Chairman will see you now," she said in a quiet voice. Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find. She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT. Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman. But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony. "Good Lord!" Don gasped. "That's an atomic reactor down there!" There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it. His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened. He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent? His scientist's mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn't—couldn't—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world! "Hello, Don," said a quiet voice beside him. "It's good to see you again." "Dr. Crandon!" he heard his own voice reply. " You're the Grand Chairman of POSAT?" He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn't anything make sense any longer? "I think we have rather abused you, Don," Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. "I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid." Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him. Crandon's voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. "You're partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don't condemn us yet, though. You'll be a member yourself before the day is over." Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility. "What do you use?" he asked bitterly. "Drugs? Hypnosis?" Crandon sighed. "I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You'll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We're probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves." Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue. "Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?" Don nodded, too bewildered to speak. "They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory." "Then the pictures are modern," said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. "I thought one was a Titian—" "It is," said Crandon. "We have several original Titians, although I really don't know too much about them." "But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?" "He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries." "But you said that he designed your atomic reactor." "Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however." Don's confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. "Let's start at the beginning," he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. "Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years. "Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man's thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly. "The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell's equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—" "But it can't be done," Don objected. "It's an observed phenomenon. It hasn't been derived." Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And yet—there sat the reactor, sheathed in its strange shield. Crandon watched the direction of Don's glance. "Yes, the reactor," said Crandon. "He built one like it. It confirmed his theories. His calculations showed him something else too. He saw the destructive potentialities of an atomic explosion. He himself could not have built an atomic bomb; he didn't have the facilities. But his knowledge would have enabled other men to do so. He looked about him. He saw a political setup of warring principalities, rival states, intrigue, and squabbles over political power. Giving the men of his time atomic energy would have been like handing a baby a firecracker with a lighted fuse. "What should he have done? Let his secrets die with him? He didn't think so. No one else in his age could have derived the knowledge that he did. But it was an age of brilliant men. Leonardo. Michelangelo. There were men capable of learning his science, even as men can learn it today. He gathered some of them together and founded this society. It served two purposes. It perpetuated his discoveries and at the same time it maintained the greatest secrecy about them. He urged that the secrets be kept until the time when men could use them safely. The other purpose was to make that time come about as soon as possible." Crandon looked at Don's unbelieving face. "How can I make you see that it is the truth? Think of the eons that man or manlike creatures have walked the Earth. Think what a small fraction of that time is four hundred years. Is it so strange that atomic energy was discovered a little early, by this displacement in time that is so tiny after all?" "But by one man," Don argued. Crandon shrugged. "Compared with him, Don, you and I are stupid men. So are the scientists who slowly plodded down the same road he had come, stumbling first on one truth and then the succeeding one. We know that inventions and discoveries do not occur at random. Each is based on the one that preceded it. We are all aware of the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. The path to truth is a straight one. It is only our own stupidity that makes it seem slow and tortuous. "He merely followed the straight path," Crandon finished simply. Don's incredulity thawed a little. It was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility. But if it were true! A vast panorama of possible achievements spread before him. "Four hundred years!" he murmured with awe. "You've had four hundred years head-start on the rest of the world! What wonders you must have uncovered in that time!" "Our technical achievements may disappoint you," warned Crandon. "Oh, they're way beyond anything that you are familiar with. You've undoubtedly noticed the shielding material on the reactor. That's a fairly recent development of our metallurgical department. There are other things in the laboratory that I can't even explain to you until you have caught up on the technical basis for understanding them. "Our emphasis has not been on physical sciences, however, except as they contribute to our central project. We want to change civilization so that it can use physical science without disaster." For a moment Don had been fired with enthusiasm. But at these words his heart sank. "Then you've failed," he said bitterly. "In spite of centuries of advance warning, you've failed to change the rest of us enough to prevent us from trying to blow ourselves off the Earth. Here we are, still snarling and snapping at our neighbors' throats—and we've caught up with you. We have the atomic bomb. What's POSAT been doing all that time? Or have you found that human nature really can't be changed?" "Come with me," said Crandon. He led the way along the narrow balcony to another door, then down a steep flight of stairs. He opened a door at the bottom, and Don saw what must have been the world's largest computing machine. "This is our answer," said Crandon. "Oh, rather, it's the tool by which we find our answer. For two centuries we have been working on the newest of the sciences—that of human motivation. Soon we will be ready to put some of our new knowledge to work. But you are right in one respect, we are working now against time. We must hurry if we are to save our civilization. That's why you are here. We have work for you to do. Will you join us, Don?" "But why the hocus-pocus?" asked Don. "Why do you hide behind such a weird front as POSAT? Why do you advertise in magazines and invite just anyone to join? Why didn't you approach me directly, if you have work for me to do? And if you really have the answers to our problems, why haven't you gathered together all the scientists in the world to work on this project—before it's too late?" Crandon took a sighing breath. "How I wish that we could do just that! But you forget that one of the prime purposes of our organization is to maintain the secrecy of our discoveries until they can be safely disclosed. We must be absolutely certain that anyone who enters this building will have joined POSAT before he leaves. What if we approached the wrong scientist? Centuries of accomplishment might be wasted if they attempted either to reveal it or to exploit it! "Do you recall the questionnaires that you answered before you were invited here? We fed the answers to this machine and, as a result, we know more about how you will react in any given situation than you do yourself. Even if you should fail to join us, our secrets would be safe with you. Of course, we miss a few of the scientists who might be perfect material for our organization. You'd be surprised, though, at how clever our advertisements are at attracting exactly the men we want. With the help of our new science, we have baited our ads well, and we know how to maintain interest. Curiosity is, to the men we want, a powerful motivator." "But what about the others?" asked Don. "There must be hundreds of applicants who would be of no use to you at all." "Oh, yes," replied Crandon. "There are the mild religious fanatics. We enroll them as members and keep them interested by sending pamphlets in line with their interests. We even let them contribute to our upkeep, if they seem to want to. They never get beyond the reception room if they come to call on us. But they are additional people through whom we can act when the time finally comes. "There are also the desperate people who try POSAT as a last resort—lost ones who can't find their direction in life. For them we put into practice some of our newly won knowledge. We rehabilitate them—anonymously, of course. Even find jobs or patch up homes. It's good practice for us. "I think I've answered most of your questions, Don. But you haven't answered mine. Will you join us?" Don looked solemnly at the orderly array of the computer before him. He had one more question. "Will it really work? Can it actually tell you how to motivate the stubborn, quarrelsome, opinionated people one finds on this Earth?" Crandon smiled. "You're here, aren't you?" Don nodded, his tense features relaxing. "Enroll me as a member," he said.