Contents
Contents
Introduction: An Appreciation Frederik Pohl
The Rocket of 1955
The Words of Guru
The Only Thing We Learn
The Adventurer
The Little Black Bag
The Luckiest Man in Denv
The Silly Season
The Remorseful
Gomez
The Advent on Channel Twelve
The Marching Morons
The Last Man Left in the Bar
The Mindworm
With These Hands
Shark Ship
Friend to Man
The Altar at Midnight
Dominoes
Two Dooms
About the Author
Edited and with an introduction by FREDERIK POHL
NELSON DOUBLEDAY, inc.
Garden City, New York
COPYRIGHT © 1976 BY MARY KORNBLUTH, JOHN KORNBLUTH, AND
DAVID KORNBLUTH
introduction: An Appreciation COPYRIGHT © 1976 BY FREDERIK
POHL
Published by arrangement with Ballantine Books A division of
Random House, Inc.
201 East 50th Street New York, New York 10022
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
"The Rocket of 1955," copyright © 1941 by Albing
Publications for Stirring
Science Stories, April 1941. "The Words of Guru,"
copyright © 1941 by Albing Publications for Stirring
Science Stories, June 1941. "The Only Thing We
Learn," copyright © 1949 by Better Publications, Inc., for
Startling Stories, July 1949. "The Adventurer,"
copyright © 1953 by Space Publications, Inc., for Space
Science Fiction, May 1953. "The Little Black Bag,"
copyright © 1950 by Street and Smith Publications for
Astounding Science Fiction, July 1950.
'The Luckiest Man in Denv," copyright © 1952 by Galaxy
Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1952.
"The Silly Season," copyright © 1950 by Fantasy
House, Inc., for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fall 1950.
"The Remorseful," copyright © 1953 by Ballantine Books, Inc.
"Gomez," copyright © 1955 for New Worlds #32, February 1955.
"The Advent on Channel 12," copyright © 1958 by Ballantine Books,
Inc. "The Marching Morons," copyright © 1951 by World Editions, Inc.,
for Galaxy
Science Fiction, April 1951. "The Last Man Left in the
Bar," copyright © 1957 by Royal Publications, Inc.,
for Infinity Science Fiction, October 1957. "The
Mindworm," copyright © 1950 by Hillman Periodicals, Inc., for Worlds
Beyond, December 1950. "With These Hands,"
copyright © 1951 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for
Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1951. "Shark
Ship," copyright © 1953 by Vanguard Science Fiction, Inc., for
Vanguard Science Fiction. "Friend to Man," copyright
© 1951 by Avon Periodicals, Inc., for 10 Story
Fantasy, Spring 1951. "The Altar at Midnight,"
copyright © 1952 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation
for Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1952.
"Dominoes," copyright © 1953 by Ballantine Books, Inc. "Two Dooms,"
copyright © 1958 by Mercury Press, Inc., for Venture Science
Fiction, July 1958.
Printed in the United States of America
THE
BEST OF C. M. KORNBLUTH
AN APPRECIATION
by
Frederik Pohl
Cyril
kornbluth was my friend from the time we were both in our middle teens until
the day of his death, and for most of that time we were collaborators as well.
It
isn't easy for me to speak of him objectively. A collaboration is too close a
relationship for impersonal appraisal. And yet I have no doubt that Kornbluth's
work deserves critical study. From first to last, it was lucid, inventive,
economical, and informed. Cyril was a wise as well as a talented man.
He
was also a sardonic soul. The comedy present in almost everything he wrote
relates to the essential hypocrisies and foolishnesses of mankind. His target
was not always Man in the abstract and general. Sometimes it was one particular
man, or woman, thinly disguised as a character in a storyand thinly sliced,
into quivering bits. Once or twice it was me. Cyril and I were good friends,
but there was too much ego in both of our cosmoses for the relationship to be
always tranquil. We had our differences, and one of the periods when we were
having them coincided with his writing the novel Gunner Cade, in collaboration
with Judith Merril. There is a character in the book who is pitifully corrupt
and whiningly ineffectual. It is not an accident that the character's name is
what Judy's first daughter called me when she was first learning to talk:
Threadwick.
Cyril's
total catalogue comprises about a dozen novels and about fifty shorter stories,
alone or in collaboration. Nearly all were science fiction. Of the novels,
seven were done with me and two with Judith Merril (in one of which I had some
slight part).
Of
his own science-fiction novels, there were three. The first was Takeoff. Events
have outrun Takeoffit is about the machinations by which the first manned
launch into space occursand so it is not widely read these days; but it is a
good story, and parts of it are brilliant. I remember Cyril writing it. Walter
Bradbury, then the science-fiction editor at Doubleday, read the first couple
of chapters and liked them; he offered Cyril a contract on condition that he
write an outline of the balance of the book, preferably over the weekend, so
that Brad could present it at the Doubleday editorial conference on Monday
morning. Cyril wanted the contract but he didn't want to write outlines, then
or ever; so he took his typewriter to the Hotel Latham on East Twenty-eighth
Street in New York, holed up in a tiny attic room next to the elevators (I know
the room well; I've used it myself from time to time) and wrote the balance of
the novel in seventy-two sleepless hours.
Takeoff
did well, so Cyril wrote another one, The Syndic. That also did well. Then he
wrote a third, Not This August, and for a while it looked as though that novel
might do at least an order of magnitude better than anything of his before. To
begin with, this one was not serialized in a science-fiction magazine, but in a
large-circulation slick. Then the New York Sunday News took it up. Not This
August is a cold-war story of the purest ray serene. The Commies have conquered
America, and in the novel the Americans, with wit and spunk and good old U.S. knowhow, regather their strength and destroy the invaders. The News's editorial writer
was turned on by all this, and he devoted his whole Sunday column to a glowing
plug for this real Amurrican type of book. However, the people who read News
editorials apparently don't read books, for in the long run, the bottom line
for Not This August was just as good as, but not visibly better than, that for
Takeoff.
These
are good novels; but, for my taste, they are not the best there is of Cyril
Kornbluth. His unique contribution to science fiction is in the shorter
stories. One of the words I used to describe Korn-bluth's work was
"economical." He did not ramble, and he did not digress. If he used
ten words to describe a character or set a scene, every word of the ten worked.
Perhaps
if Kornbluth's major work had been written in the 1960s and 70s instead of in
the 40s and 50s he might have been corrupted, as many writers have been, by the
hard market fact that it is as easy to get a novel published as a short story .
. . and a novel brings in a lot more moneywherefore so many bad sf novels get
published. He might have been tempted, but I don't think so. I think Cyril was
too much a craftsman to do that.
In
any case, when Cyril was writing, that particular temptation did, not exist.
There were many, many markets for science-fiction short stories and
novelettessomething like thirty-five magazines just before his deathso he
was free to write his stories to the length they themselves dictated.
He
began by filling up the Futurian magazines (the ones edited by Donald A.
Wollheim, Robert A. W. Lowndes, and myself) with stories that were often
somewhat slim, tricksy, and special ("The Rocket of 1955," "The
City in the Sofa," "Thirteen O'clock") but always bright and
brightly written. He was in his teens when he wrote them. The best and worst
that can be said of them is that they were damn good teenage stories. Cyril
didn't write for several years during World War II. When he began again, in the
early 40s, he had matured. He wrote "The Luckiest Man in Denv,"
"The Adventurer," and "That Share of Glory," and then began
to hit his stride, in the novelettes and novellas of the 50s.
I
had a little to do with a couple of his best stories. I say it with, some
pride, maybe more pride than is justified, but it is something I feel good
about.
Once,
I think while he was still in Chicago, possibly even earlier, Cyril mentioned
to me that he had thought of writing a story about medical instruments of the
future coming back to the present. Years later, when Horace Gold was badgering
Cyril for stories for Galaxy and Cyril complained that he couldn't think of
anything he felt like writing at that moment, I reminded him of the notion. A
week later he had written "The Little Black Bag" (which, as it
happened, appeared in John Campbell's Astounding instead of Horace Gold's Galaxy
anyway). I think "The Little Black Bag" is my very favorite of
Cyril's stories. It has been reprinted endlessly and adapted for TV by Rod
Serling, and I think it will go on for a long time.
In
it there is a throwaway scene about the human population of the future,
ludicrous dummies all, and I thought they were interesting enough to deserve a
story of their own. I told that to Cyril. He poured himself another shot of
Hiram Walker's Imperialor vanilla extract, or elixir of terpin hydrate or
whatever we were drinking that nightand pursed his lips. He could see doing
that, he said. Maybe bring a man from the present into the future for contrast;
but how could he get the man from the present there? "Steal," I
advised him.
In the old, bad sf film Just Imagine the comedian, El Brendel, had gone from
1930 to 1980 simply by being hit by lightning and paralyzed for fifty years. If
you're writing farce, I said, why worry about inviting time machines? So Cyril
went away, and came back with a man who had been paralyzed by a malfunction of
the anesthesia systems in his dentist's office and woke up in the future; he
called the story "The Marching Morons."
I have seen the criticism directed against "The Marching Morons,"
including a quite recent article that points out it is bad genetics (the plot
implies that the tendency of lower-class families to be larger than upper-class
ones is selective breeding for dumbness). True. But I have also had grown men
say to me, with tears in their eyes, that "The Marching Morons" was
the best story of any kind they had ever read, and that it had changed their
lives. What the story warns against is not the degradation of the human germ
plasm, but the degradation of human life, by cheapening values and substituting
what is meretricious for what is true.
There
were more storiesmany, many more, and all good. Cyril had never written better
than he was writing in the 50s, right up to the day his wife called to say that
he had shoveled snow out of his driveway and then run to catch a train; he had
a heart attack on the station platform and died on the spot.
Cyril
died too young. There isn't any doubt about that. He was growing and developing
every year. It's interesting, as an intellectual exercise, to wonder what he
might have written for us if he had lived a normal span.
I
do know some of what his intention was, and that was that a good deal of what
he was intending to write would not have been science fiction. He had already
published four novels of his own outside the sf field (and three in
collaboration with me: Presidential Year, A Town Is Drowning, and Sorority
Housethe last under Cyril's potboiler pseudonym, Jordan Park). One of his own
novels was called The Naked Storm, in which a trainful of people is marooned by
a blizzard in the Donner Pass. One was Valerie, about a Scottish girl accused
of witchcraft in the days of the burnings. Man of Cold Rages was about an
ex-dictator; Half was about a sexually incomplete man. Except for Presidential
Year and A Town Is Drowning, all had appeared under somewhat tongue-in-cheek
pseudonyms like "Simon Eisner" and "Jordan Park," and none
had broken through the paperback-original barrier, and gained a mass
readership. But Cyril had established to his own satisfaction what none of the
rest of us had ever doubted, that he could write successfully in modes other
than science fiction if he chose. And he chose.
When
he died he left two incomplete major projects that were not science fiction.
One was a novel, some two hundred pages of it written, called The Crater.
"The crater" was a real event of the Civil War. It took place in the
fortifications outside Petersburg just before the defeat of the Confederate
States, when some Pennsylvania miners used gunpowder to blow a solid hole in
the Southern defenses, only to see their efforts go for nothing because of
cowardice and incompetence on the part of two Union generals. And he had
signed a contract for another historical novel, a good deal farther back in
time; as far as I know nothing was ever put on paper.
The
Crater was a disappointment to me when I read the manuscript. It has not been
published, and I suspect it never will be. Where Cyril was quicksilver bright
in everything he wrote, The Crater plods. I don't know why. I do know that he
went to immense pains to research every aspect of the battle and the times;
perhaps he was smothered in his research.
I
think he would have written science fiction again, because it was the thing he
did so very well. I am tempted to wonder what kind.
Cyril
died before the Wars of the New Wave began. I am not sure which side he would
have taken. Everything he wrote is a perfectly polished example of the
structured Galaxy or Astounding story of the 50swhich is, after all, what the
New Wave was fighting against. But Cyril might have elected to fight on the
same side. He was a poet before he was a science-fiction writer, and the fact
that he mastered form does not mean he worshipped it.
In
a sense, I don't think his choice of sides would have made much difference. I
don't think it really did for any of us.
A
fundamental characteristic of most wars is that nobody wins them. It seems to
me that the War of the New Wave was unique everybody won. The old stalwarts
learned how to break free of the formal pulp structure. The New Wavers
learnedor at least the educable ones learnedhow to include some of the
special content of sf, which is irreplaceably valuable, in their experiments
with form and style.
All
of us learned something from the New Wave. I know I did. I think that in that
struggle Cyril would have produced some richly rewarding works, even finer
than the stories that survive. If he were writing now he might not choose
between being poet and science-fiction writer. He might at the same time be
both.
It's
hard for me to realize that if Cyril Kornbluth were alive today he would be in
his fifties.
My
memories of him are very clear, and we were both so young. I have a vagrant
recollection of a particular Sunday morningit must have been around 1939in
the summer. We had stayed up all night to talk, or for no reason at all. (We
did that a lot.) I lived in Brooklyn at the time, at one corner of Prospect Park, and Isaac Asimov's family owned a candy store at the opposite corner, and
Cyril and I decided to walk across the park to call on the Asimovs. We had powerful
motives for this. Isaac's mother could always be counted on to supply us with
free chocolate malteds. And I can remember our wandering across the park in
the bright summer dawn, pausing now and then to climb trees and practice the
call of the plover-tailed teal. We must not have been very good at it. No teal
ever came down to investigate.
Dawns
were bright and warm, in the summer of 1939.
So
it is not only as a writer that I remember Cyril Kornbluth. He was part of my
growing up. As a person he was what he was as a writer: bright, sardonic, and
immensely rewarding. Cyril had a great deal to say, and he said it all tersely,
wittily, and with grace. I do not think we shall soon see his like again.
THE ROCKET OF 1955
it is always a mistake to put a date
on a science-fiction
story, and now that 1955 is embalmed in history we know that the first attempt at space travel didn't go this
way at all. But when it was writtenwhen
Cyril was in his teens, World War II was
just settling into the routine of grinding human beings into garbage, and space
travel was still only a crazy
science-fiction ideait might have.
The
scheme was all Fein's, but the trimmings that made it more than a pipe dream
and its actual operation depended on me. How long the plan had been in
incubation I do not know, but Fein, one spring day, broke it to me in crude
form. I pointed out some errors, corrected and amplified on the thing in
general, and told him that I'd have no part of itand changed my mind when he
threatened to reveal certain indiscretions committed by me some years ago.
It
was necessary that I spend some months in Europe, conducting research work
incidental to the scheme. I returned with recorded statements, old newspapers,
and photostatic copies of certain documents. There was a brief, quiet interview
with that old, bushy-haired Viennese worshipped incontinently by the mob; he
was convinced by the evidence I had compiled that it would be wise to assist
us.
You
all know what happened nextit was the professor's historic radio broadcast.
Fein had drafted the thing, I had rewritten it, and told the astronomer to
assume a German accent while reading. Some of the phrases were beautiful:
"American dominion over the very planets! . . . veil at last ripped aside
. . . man defies gravity . . . travel through limitless space ... plant the
red-white-and-blue banner in the soil of Mars!"
The
requested contributions poured in. Newspapers and magazines ostentatiously
donated yard-long checks of a few thousand dollars; the government gave a
welcome half-million; heavy sugar came from the "Rocket Contribution
Week" held in the nation's public schools; but independent contributions
were the largest. We cleared seven million dollars, and then started to build
the spaceship.
The
virginium that took up most of the money was tin plate; the monoatomic fluorine
that gave us our terrific speed was hydrogen. The takeoff was a party for the
newsreels: the big, gleaming bullet extravagant with vanes and projections;
speeches by the professor; Farley, who was to fly it to Mars, grinning into the
cameras. He climbed an outside ladder to the nose of the thing, then dropped
into the steering compartment. I screwed down the soundproof door, smiling as
he hammered to be let out. To his surprise, there was no duplicate of the
elaborate dummy controls he had been practicing on for the past few weeks.
I
cautioned the pressmen to stand back under the shelter, and gave the professor
the knife switch that would send the rocket on its way. He hesitated too
longFein hissed into his ear: "Anna Pareloff of Cracow, Herr Professor .
. ."
The
triple blade clicked into the sockets. The vaned projectile roared a hundred
yards into the air with a wobbling curvethen exploded.
A
photographer, eager for an angle shot, was killed; so were some kids. The steel
roof protected the rest of us. Fein and I shook hands, while the pressmen
screamed into the telephones which we had provided.
But
the professor got drunk, and, disgusted with the part he had played in the
affair, told all and poisoned himself. Fein and I left the cash behind , and
hopped a freight. We were picked off it by a vigilance committee (headed by a
man who had lost fifty cents in our rocket). Fein was too frightened to talk or
write so they hanged him first, and gave me a paper and pencil to tell the
story as best I could.
Here
they come, with an insulting thick rope.
THE WORDS OF GURU
the second Futurian to get his own
professional science-fiction
magazines to edit was Donald A. Wollheim (now editor and publisher of his own line of paperbacks, DAW Books).
Over the lifetimes
of his two magazines, Stirring and Cosmic, Cyril wrote (under one penname or
another, with or
without collaborators) probably half the total contents. This is the one I like
best.
Yesterday,
when I was going to meet Guru in the woods a man stopped me and said:
"Child, what are you doing out at one in the morning? Does your mother
know where you are? How old are you, walking around this late?"
I
looked at him, and saw that he was white-haired, so I laughed. Old men never
see; in fact men hardly see at all. Sometimes young women see part, but men
rarely ever see at all. "I'm twelve on my next birthday," I said. And
then, because I would not let him live to tell people, I said, "and I'm
out this late to see Guru."
"Guru?"
he asked. "Who is Guru? Some foreigner, I suppose? Bad business mixing
with foreigners, young fellow. Who is Guru?"
So
I told him who Guru was, and just as he began talking about cheap magazines and
fairy tales I said one of the words that Guru taught me and he stopped talking.
Because he was an old man and his joints were stiff he didn't crumple up but
fell in one piece, hitting his head on the stone. Then I went on.
Even
though I'm going to be only twelve on my next birthday I know many things that
old people don't. And I remember things that other boys can't. I remember being
born out of darkness, and I remember the noises that people made about me. Then
when I was two months old I began to understand that the noises meant things
like the things that were going on inside my head. I found out that I could
make the noises too, and everybody was very much surprised. "Talking!"
they said, again and again. "And so very young! Clara, what do you make of
it?" Clara was my mother.
And
Clara would say: "I'm sure I don't know. There never was any genius in my
family, and I'm sure there was none in Joe's." Joe was my father.
Once
Clara showed me a man I had never seen before, and told me that he was a
reporterthat he wrote things in newspapers. The reporter tried to talk to me
as if I were an ordinary baby; I didn't even answer him, but just kept looking
at him until his eyes fell and he went away. Later Clara scolded me and read me
a little piece in the reporter's newspaper that was supposed to be funnyabout
the reporter asking me very complicated questions and me answering with baby
noises. It was not true, of course. I didn't say a word to the reporter, and he
didn't ask me even one of the questions.
I
heard her read the little piece, but while I listened I was watching the slug
crawling on the wall. When Clara was finished I asked her: "What is that
grey thing?"
She
looked where I pointed, but couldn't see it. "What grey thing,
Peter?" she asked. I had her call me by my whole name, Peter, instead of
anything silly like Petey. "What grey thing?"
"It's
as big as your hand, Clara, but soft. I don't think it has any bones at all.
It's crawling up, but I don't see any face on the top-wards side. And there
aren't any legs."
I
think she was worried, but she tried to baby me by putting her hand on the wall
and trying to find out where it was. I called out whether she was right or left
of the thing. Finally she put her hand right through the slug. And then I
realized that she really couldn't see it, and didn't believe it was there. I
stopped talking about it then and only asked her a few days later: "Clara,
what do you call a thing which one person can see and another person
can't?"
"An
illusion, Peter," she said. "If that's what you mean." I said
nothing, but let her put me to bed as usual, but when she turned out the light
and went away I waited a little while and then called out softly.
"Illusion! Illusion!"
At
once Guru came for the first time. He bowed, the way he always has since, and
said: "I have been waiting." "I didn't know that was the way to
call you," I said.
"Whenever
you want me I will be ready. I will teach you, Peterif you want to learn. Do
you know what I will teach you?"
"If
you will teach me about the grey thing on the wall," I said, "I will
listen. And if you will teach me about real things and unreal things I will
listen."
"These
things," he said thoughtfully, "very few wish to learn. And there are
some things that nobody ever wished to learn. And there are some things that I
will not teach."
Then
I said: "The things nobody has ever wished to learn I will learn. And I
will even learn the things you do not wish to teach."
He
smiled mockingly. "A master has come," he said, half-laughing.
"A master of Guru."
That
was how I learned his name. And that night he taught me a word which would do
little things, like spoiling food.
From
that day to the time I saw him last night he has not changed at all, though now
I am as tall as he is. His skin is still as dry and shiny as ever it was, and
his face is still bony, crowned by a head of very coarse, black hair.
When
I was ten years old I went to bed one night only long enough to make Joe and
Clara suppose I was fast asleep. I left in my place something which appears
when you say one of the words of Guru and went down the drainpipe outside my
window. It always was easy to climb down and up, ever since I was eight years
old.
I
met Guru in Inwood Hill Park. "You're late," he said.
"Not
too late," I answered. "I know it's never too late for one of these
things."
"How
do you know?" he asked sharply. "This is your first."
"And
maybe my last," I replied. "I don't like the idea of it. If I have
nothing more to learn from my second than my first I shan't go to
another."
"You
don't know," he said. "You don't know what it's likethe voices, and
the bodies slick with unguent, leaping flames; mind-filling ritual! You can
have no idea at all until you've taken part."
"We'll
see," I said. "Can we leave from here?"
"Yes,"
he said. Then he taught me the word I would need to know, and we both said it
together.
The
place we were in next was lit with red lights, and I think that the walls were
of rock. Though of course there was no real seeing there, and so the lights
only seemed to be red, and it was not real rock.
As
we were going to the fire one of them stopped us. "Who's with you?"
she asked, calling Guru by another name. I did not know that he was also the
person bearing that name, for it was a very powerful one.
He
cast a hasty, sidewise glance at me and then said: "This is Peter of whom
I have often told you."
She
looked at me then and smiled, stretching out her oily arms. "Ah," she
said, softly, like the cats when they talk at night to me. "Ah, this is
Peter. Will you come to me when I call you, Peter? And sometimes call for mein
the darkwhen you are alone?"
"Don't
do that!" said Guru, angrily pushing past her. "He's very youngyou
might spoil him for his work."
She
screeched at our backs: "Guru and his pupilfine pair! Boy, he's no more
real than I amyou're the only real thing here!"
"Don't
listen to her," said Guru. "She's wild and raving. They're always
tight-strung when this time comes around."
We
came near the fires then, and sat down on rocks. They were killing animals and
birds and doing things with their bodies. The blood was being collected in a
basin of stone, which passed through the crowd. The one to my left handed it to
me. "Drink," she said, grinning to show me her fine, white teeth. I
swallowed twice from it and passed it to Guru.
When
the bowl had passed all around we took off our clothes. Some, like Guru, did
not wear them, but many did. The one to my left sat closer to me, breathing
heavily at my face. I moved away. "Tell her to stop, Guru," I said.
"This isn't part of it, I know."
Guru
spoke to her sharply in their own language, and she changed her seat, snarling.
Then
we all began to chant, clapping our hands and beating our thighs. One of them
rose slowly and circled about the fires in a slow pace, her eyes rolling
wildly. She worked her jaws and flung her arms about so sharply that I could
hear the elbows crack. Still shuffling her feet against the rock floor she bent
her body backwards down to her feet. Her belly muscles were bands nearly
standing out from her skin, and the oil rolled down her body and legs. As the
palms of her hands touched the ground, she collapsed in a twitching heap and
began to set up a thin wailing noise against the steady chant and hand beat
that the rest of us were keeping up. Another of them did the same as the first,
and we chanted louder for her and still louder for the third. Then, while we
still beat our hands and thighs, one of them took up the third, laid her across
the altar, and made her ready with a stone knife. The fire's light gleamed off
the chipped edge of obsidian. As her blood drained down the groove, cut as a
gutter into the rock of the altar, we stopped our chant and the fires were snuffed
out.
But
still we could see what was going on, for these things were, of course, not
happening at allonly seeming to happen, really, just as all the people and
things there only seemed to be what they were. Only I was real. That must be
why they desired me so.
As
the last of the fires died Guru excitedly whispered: "The Presence!"
He was very deeply moved.
From
the pool of blood from the third dancer's body there issued the Presence. It
was the tallest one there, and when it spoke its voice was deeper, and when it
commanded its commands were obeyed.
"Let
blood!" it commanded, and we gashed ourselves with flints. It smiled and
showed teeth bigger and sharper and whiter than any of the others.
"Make
water!" it commanded, and we all spat on each other. It flapped its wings
and rolled its eyes, which were bigger and redder than any of the others.
"Pass
flame!" it commanded, and we breathed smoke and fire on our limbs. It
stamped its feet, let blue flames roar from its mouth, and they were bigger and
wilder than any of the others.
Then
it returned to the pool of blood and we lit the fires again. Guru was staring
straight before him; I tugged his arm. He bowed as though we were meeting for
the first time that night.
"What
are you thinking of?" I asked. "We shall go now."
"Yes,"
he said heavily. "Now we shall go." Then we said the word that had
brought us there.
The
first man I killed was Brother Paul, at the school where I went to learn the
things that Guru did not teach me.
It
was less than a year ago, but it seems like a very long time. I have killed so
many times since then.
"You're
a very bright boy, Peter," said the brother.
"Thank
you, brother."
"But
there are things about you that I don't understand. Normally I'd ask your
parents butI feel that they don't understand either. You were an infant
prodigy, weren't you?" "Yes, brother."
"There's
nothing very unusual about thatglands, I'm told. You know what glands
are?"
Then
I was alarmed. I had heard of them, but I was not certain whether they were the
short, thick green men who wear only metal or the things with many legs with
whom I talked in the woods. "How did you find out?" I asked him.
"But
Peter! You look positively frightened, lad! I don't know a thing about them
myself, but Father Frederick does. He has whole books about them, though I
sometimes doubt whether he believes them himself."
"They
aren't good books, brother," I said. "They ought to be burned."
"That's
a savage thought, my son. But to return to your own problem"
I
could not let him go any further knowing what he did about me. I said one of
the words Guru taught me and he looked at first very surprised and then seemed
to be in great pain. He dropped across his desk and I felt his wrist to make
sure, for I had not used that word before. But he was dead.
There
was a heavy step outside and I made myself invisible. Stout Father Frederick
entered, and I nearly killed him too with the word, but I knew that that would
be very curious. I decided to wait, and went through the door as Father
Frederick bent over the dead monk. He thought he was asleep.
I
went down the corridor to the book-lined office of the stout priest and,
working quickly, piled all his books in the center of the room and lit them
with my breath. Then I went down to the schoolyard and made myself visible
again when there was nobody looking. It was very easy. I killed a man I passed
on the street the next day.
There
was a girl named Mary who lived near us. She was fourteen then, and I desired
her as those in the Cavern out of Time and Space had desired me.
So
when I saw Guru and he had bowed, I told him of it, and he looked at me in
great surprise. "You are growing older, Peter," he said.
"I
am, Guru. And there will come a time when your words will not be strong enough
for me."
He
laughed. "Come, Peter," he said. "Follow me if you wish. There
is something that is going to be done" He licked his thin, purple
lips and said: "I have told you what it will be like."
"I
shall come," I said. "Teach me the word." So he taught me the
word and we said it together.
The
place we were in next was not like any of the other places I had been to before
with Guru. It was No-place. Always before there had been the seeming passage of
time and matter, but here there was not even that. Here Guru and the others cast
off their forms and were what they were, and No-place was the only place where
they could do this.
It
was not like the Cavern, for the Cavern had been out of Time and Space, and
this place was not enough of a place even for that. It was No-place.
What
happened there does not bear telling, but I was made known to certain ones who
never departed from there. All came to them as they existed. They had not color
or the seeming of color, or any seeming of shape.
There
I learned that eventually I would join with them; that I had been selected as
the one of my planet who was to dwell without being forever in that No-place.
Guru
and I left, having said the word.
"Well?"
demanded Guru, staring me in the eye.
"I
am willing," I said. "But teach me one word now"
"Ah,"
he said grinning. "The girl?"
"Yes,"
I said. "The word that will mean much to her."
Still
grinning, he taught me the word.
Mary,
who had been fourteen, is now fifteen and what they call incurably mad.
Last
night I saw Guru again and for the last time. He bowed as I approached him.
"Peter," he said warmly. "Teach me the word," said I. "It is not too late." "Teach me the word." "You can
withdrawwith what you master you can master also this world. Gold without
reckoning; sardonyx and gems, Peter! Rich crushed velvetstiff, scraping,
embroidered tapestries!"
"Teach
me the word."
"Think,
Peter, of the house you could build. It could be of white marble, and every
slab centered by a winking ruby. Its gate could be of beaten gold within and
without and it could be built about one slender tower of carven ivory, rising
mile after mile into the turquoise sky. You could see the clouds float
underneath your eyes."
"Teach
me the word."
"Your
tongue could crush the grapes that taste like melted silver. You could hear always
the song of the bulbul and the lark that sounds like the dawnstar made musical.
Spikenard that will bloom a thousand thousand years could be ever in your
nostrils. Your hands could feel the down of purple Himalayan swans that is
softer than a sunset cloud."
"Teach
me the word."
"You
could have women whose skin would be from the black of ebony to the white of
snow. You" could have women who would be as hard as flints or as soft as a
sunset cloud."
"Teach
me the word."
Guru
grinned and said the word.
Now,
I do not know whether I will say that word, which was the last that Guru taught
me, today or tomorrow or until a year has passed.
It
is a word that will explode this planet like a stick of dynamite in a rotten
apple.
The Only Thing We Learn
another member of the Futurians was a tall, good-looking young man named
Dirk Wylie. Like Cyril Kornbluth,
Dirk was in the Battle of the Bulge; like
him, he received there the injuries that ultimately killed him. (And like
Cyril, it was not a wound. What Cyril
got was a strained heart. What Dirk
got was a back disability that developed by slow and painful stages into
tuberculosis of the spineapparently from
getting hurt jumping off a truck.)
Dirk, with some help from me, started a •* literary agency in the last two years of his life, and one of his first clients was Cyril Kornbluth, off
in Chicago writing stories when his
news-wire job permitted. The first
sale for Cyril the agency made was a long mystery novelette called The Yogi
Says Yes to the Trojan magazine group in July 1948; three months later it sold his first post-war sf
story, "The Only Thing We
Learn."
The professor, though he did not know the actor's phrase for it, was
counting the housepeering through a spyhole in the door through which he would
in a moment appear before the class. He was pleased with what he saw. Tier
after tier of young people, ready with notebooks and styli, chattering
tentatively, glancing at the door against which his nose was flattened, waiting
for the pleasant interlude known as "Archaeo-Literature 203" to
begin.
The professor stepped back, smoothed his tunic, crooked four books in
his left elbow and made his entrance. Four swift strides brought him to the
lectern and, for the thousandth-odd time, he impassively swept the lecture hall
with his gaze. Then he gave a wry little smile. Inside, for the thousandth-odd
time, he was nagged by the irritable little thought that the lectern really
ought to be a foot or so higher.
The irritation did not show. He was out to win the audience, and he
did. A dead silence, the supreme tribute, gratified him. Imperceptibly, the
lights of the lecture hall began to dim and the light on the lectern to
brighten.
He spoke.
"Young gentlemen of the Empire, I ought to warn you that this and
the succeeding lectures will be most subversive."
There was a little rustle of incomprehension from the audiencebut by
then the lectern light was strong enough to show the twinkling smile about his
eyes that belied his stern mouth, and agreeable chuckles sounded in the gathering
darkness of the tiered seats. Glow-lights grew bright gradually at the
students' tables, and they adjusted their notebooks in the narrow ribbons of
illumination. He waited for the small commotion to subside.
"Subversive" He gave them a link to cling to.
"Subversive because I shall make every effort to tell both sides of our
ancient beginnings with every resource of archaeology and with every clue my
diligence has discovered in our epic literature.
"There were two sides, you knowdifficult though it may be
to believe that if we judge by the Old Epic alonesuch epics as the noble and
tempestuous Chant of Remd, the remaining fragments of Krall's Voyage,
or the gory and rather out-of-date Battle for the Ten Suns." He
paused while styli scribbled across the notebook pages.
"The Middle Epic is marked, however, by what I might call the
rediscovered ethos." From his voice, every student knew that that phrase,
surer than death and taxes, would appear on an examination paper. The styli
scribbled. "By this I mean an awakening of fellow-feeling with the Home
Suns People, which had once been filial loyalty to them when our ancestors were
few and pioneers, but which turned into contempt when their numbers grew.
"The Middle Epic writers did not despise the Home Suns People, as
did the bards of the Old Epic. Perhaps this was because they did not have
tosince their long war against the Home Suns was drawing to a victorious
close.
"Of the New Epic I shall have little to say. It was a literary
fad, a pose, and a silly one. Written within historic times, the some two score
pseudo-epics now moulder in their cylinders, where they belong. Our ripening
civilization could not with integrity work in the epic form, and the artistic
failures produced so indicate. Our genius turned to the lyric and to the
unabashedly romantic novel.
"So much, for the moment, of literature. What contribution, you
must wonder, have archaeological studies to make in an investigation of the
wars from which our ancestry emerged?
"Archaeology offersonea check in historical matter in the
epicsconfirming or denying. Twoit provides evidence glossed over in the
epicsfor artistic or patriotic reasons. Threeit provides evidence which has
been lost, owing to the fragmentary nature of some of the early epics."
All this he fired at them crisply, enjoying himself. Let them not think
him a dreamy litterateur, nor, worse, a flat precisionist, but let them be
always a little off-balance before him, never knowing what came next, and often
wondering, in class and out. The styli paused after heading Three.
"We shall examine first, by our archaeo-literary technique, the
second book of the Chant of Remd. As the selected youth of the Empire,
you know much about it, of coursemuch that is false, some that is true and a
great deal that is irrelevant. You know that Book One hurls us into the middle
of things, aboard ship with Algan and his great captain, Remd, on their way
from the triumph over a Home Suns stronghold, the planet Telse. We watch Remd
on his diversionary action that splits the Ten Suns Fleet into two halves. But
before we see the destruction of those halves by the Horde of Algan, we are
told in Book Two of the battle for Telse."
He opened one of his books on the lectern, swept the amphitheater again
and read sonorously.
"Then battle broke
And high the blinding blast
Sight-searing leaped
While folk in fear below
Cowered in caverns
From the wrath of Remd
"Or, in less sumptuous language, one fission bombor a stick of
time-on-target bombswas dropped. An unprepared and disorganized populace did
not take the standard measure of dispersing, but huddled foolishly to await
Algan's gunfighters and the death they brought.
"One of the things you believe because you have seen them in notes
to elementary-school editions of Remd is that Telse was the fourth
planet of the star, Sol. Archaeology denies it by establishing that the fourth
planetactually called Marse, by the waywas in those days weather-roofed at
least, and possibly atmosphere-roofed as well. As potential warriors, you know
that one does not waste fissionable material on a roof, and there is no mention
of chemical explosives being used to crack the roof. Marse, therefore, was not
the locale of Remd, Book Two.
"Which planet was? The answer to that has been established by
X-radar, differential decay analyses, video-coring and every other resource of
those scientists still quaintly called 'diggers.' We know and can prove that
Telse was the third planet of Sol. So much for the opening of the
attack. Let us jump to Canto Three, the Storming of the Dynastic Palace.
"Imperial purple wore they
Fresh from the feast
Grossly gorged
They sought to slay
"And so on. Now, as I warned you, Remd is of the Old Epic, and
makes no pretense at fairness. The unorganized huddling of Telse's population
was read as cowardice instead of poor A.R.P. The same is true of the Third
Canto. Video-cores show on the site of the palace a hecatomb of dead in
once-purple livery, but also shows impartially that they were not particularly
gorged and that digestion of their last meals had been well advanced. They
didn't give such a bad accounting of themselves, either. I hesitate to guess,
but perhaps they accounted for one of our ancestors apiece and were simply
outnumbered. The study is not complete.
"That much we know." The professor saw they were tiring of
the terse scientist and shifted gears. "But if the veil of time were rent
that shrouds the years between us and the Home Suns People, how much more would
we learn? Would we despise the Home Suns People as our frontiersman ancestors
did, or would we cry: 'This is our spiritual homethis world of rank and
order, this world of formal verse and exquisitely patterned arts'?"
If the veil of time were rent?
We can try to rend it . . .
* * *
Wing Commander Arris heard the clear jangle of the radar net alarm as
he was dreaming about a fish. Struggling out of his too-deep, too-soft bed, he
stepped into a purple singlet, buckled on his Sam Browne belt with its
holstered .45 automatic and tried to read the radar screen. Whatever had set it
off was either too small or too distant to register on the five-inch C.R.T.
He rang for his aide, and checked his appearance in a wall-mirror while
waiting. His space tan was beginning to fade, he saw, and made a mental note to
get it renewed at the parlor. He stepped into the corridor as Evan, his aide,
trotted upyounger, browner, thinner, but the same officer type that made the
Service what it was, Arris thought with satisfaction.
Evan gave him a bone-cracking salute, which he returned. They set off
for the elevator that whisked them down to a large, chilly, dark underground
room where faces were greenly lit by radar screens and the lights of plotting
tables. Somebody yelled "Attention!" and the tecks snapped. He gave them
"At ease" and took the brisk salute of the senior teck, who reported
to him in flat, machine-gun delivery:
"Object-becoming-visible-on-primary-screen-sir."
He studied the sixty-inch disk for several seconds before he spotted
the intercepted particle. It was coming in fast from zenith, growing while he
watched.
"Assuming it's now traveling at maximum, how long will it be
before it's within striking range?" he asked the teck.
"Seven hours, sir."
"The interceptors at Idlewild alerted?"
"Yessir."
Arris turned on a phone that connected with Interception. The boy at
Interception knew the face that appeared on its screen, and was already capped
with a crash helmet.
"Go ahead and take him, Efrid," said the wing commander.
"Yessir!" and a punctilious salute, the
boy's pleasure plain at being known by name and a great deal more at being on
the way to a fight that might be first-class.
Arris cut him off before the boy could detect a smile
that was forming on his face. He turned from the pale lumar glow of the sixty-incher
to enjoy it. Those kidswhen every meteor was an invading dreadnaught, when
every ragged scouting ship from the rebels was an armada!
He watched Efrid's squadron soar off the screen and
then he retreated to a darker corner. This was his post until the meteor or
scout or whatever it was got taken care of. Evan joined him, and they silently
studied the smooth, disciplined functioning of the plot room, Arris with
satisfaction and Evan doubtless with the same. The aide broke silence, asking:
"Do you suppose it's a Frontier ship, sir?"
He caught the wing commander's look and hastily corrected himself: "I mean
rebel ship, sir, of course."
"Then you should have said so. Is that what the
junior officers generally call those scoundrels?"
Evan conscientiously cast his mind back over the last
few junior messes and reported unhappily: "I'm afraid we do, sir. We seem
to have got into the habit."
"I shall write a memorandum about it. How do you
account for that very peculiar habit?"
"Well, sir, they do have something like a fleet,
and they did take over the Regulus Cluster, didn't they?"
What had got into this incredible fellow, Arris
wondered in amazement. Why, the thing was self-evident! They had a few
shipsaccounts differed as to how manyand they had, doubtless by raw sedition,
taken over some systems temporarily.
He turned from his aide, who sensibly became
interested in a screen and left with a murmured excuse to study it very
closely.
The brigands had certainly knocked together some
ramshackle league or other, but The wing commander wondered briefly if it
could last, shut the horrid thought from his head, and set himself to composing
mentally a stiff memorandum that would be posted in the junior officer's mess
and put an end to this absurd talk.
His eyes wandered to the sixty-incher, where he saw
the interceptor squadron climbing nicely toward the particlewhich, he noticed,
had become three particles. A low crooning distracted him. Was one of the tecks
singing at work? It couldn't be!
It wasn't. An unsteady shape wandered up in the
darkness, murmuring a song and exhaling alcohol. He recognized the Chief
Archivist, Glen.
"This is service country, mister," he told
Glen.
"Hullo, Arris," the round little civilian
said, peering at him. "I come down here regularlyregularly against
regulationsto wear off my regular irregularities with the wine bottle. That's
all right, isn't it?"
He was drunk and argumentative. Arris felt hemmed in.
Glen couldn't be talked into leaving without loss of dignity to the wing
commander, and he couldn't be chucked out because he was writing a biography of
the chamberlain and could, for the time being, have any head in the palace for
the asking. Arris sat down unhappily, and Glen plumped down beside him.
The little man asked him.
"Is that a fleet from the Frontier League?"
He pointed to the big screen. Arris didn't look at his face, but felt that Glen
was grinning maliciously.
"I know of no organization called the Frontier
League," Arris said. "If you are referring to the brigands who have recently
been operating in Galactic East, you could at least call them by their proper
names." Really, he thoughtcivilians!
"So sorry. But the brigands should have the
Regulus Cluster by now, shouldn't they?" he asked, insinuatingly.
This was seriousa grave breach of security. Arris
turned to the little man.
"Mister, I have no authority to command
you," he said measuredly. "Furthermore, I understand you are enjoying
a temporary eminence in the non-service world which would make it very
difficult for me toahtangle with you. I shall therefore refer only to your
altruism. How did you find out about the Regulus Cluster?"
"Eloquent!" murmured the little man, smiling
happily. "I got it from Rome."
Arris searched his memory. "You mean Squadron
Commander Romo broke security? I can't believe it!"
"No, commander. I mean Romea placea timea
civilization. I got it also from Babylon, Assyria, the Mogul Rajevery one of
them. You don't understand me, of course."
"I understand that you're trifling with Service
security and that you're a fat little, malevolent, worthless drone and
scribbler!"
"Oh, commander!" protested the archivist.
"I'm not so little!" He wandered away, chuckling.
Arris wished he had the shooting of him, and tried to
explore the chain of secrecy for a weak link. He was tired and bored by this
harping on the Fronon the brigands.
His aide tentatively approached him.
"Interceptors in striking range, sir," he murmured.
"Thank you," said the wing commander,
genuinely grateful to be back in the clean, etched-line world of the Service
and out of that blurred, water-color, civilian land where long-dead Syrians
apparently retailed classified matter to nasty little drunken warts who had no
business with it. Arris confronted the sixty-incher. The particle that had
become three particles was nowhe countedeighteen particles. Big ones. Getting
bigger.
He did not allow himself emotion, but turned to the
plot on the interceptor squadron.
"Set up Lunar relay," he ordered.
"Yessir."
Half the plot room crew bustled silently and
efficiently about the delicate job of applied relativistic physics that was
'lunar relay.' He knew that the palace power plant could take it for a few
minutes, and he wanted to see. If he could not believe radar pips, he
might believe a video screen.
On the great, green circle, the eighteennow
twenty-fourparticles neared the thirty-six smaller particles that were
interceptors, led by the eager young Efrid.
"Testing Lunar relay, sir," said the chief
teck.
The wing commander turned to a twelve-inch screen.
Unobtrusively, behind him, tecks jockeyed for position. The picture on the
screen was something to see. The chief let mercury fill a thick-walled, ceramic
tank. There was a sputtering and contact was made.
"Well done," said Arris. "Perfect
seeing."
He saw, upper left, a globe of shipswhat ships! Some
were Service jobs, with extra turrets plastered on them wherever there was
room. Some were orthodox freighters, with the same porcupine-bristle of
weapons. Some were obviously home-made crates, hideously uglyand as heavily
armed as the others.
Next to him, Arris heard his aide murmur, "It's
all wrong, sir. They haven't got any pick-up boats. They haven't got any
hospital ships. What happens when one of them gets shot up?"
"Just what ought to happen, Evan," snapped
the wing commander. "They float in space until they desiccate in their
suits. Or if they get grappled inboard with a boat hook, they don't get any
medical care. As I told you, they're brigands, without decency even to care for
their own." He enlarged on the theme. "Their morale must be
insignificant compared with our men's. When the Service goes into action, every
rating and teck knows he'll be cared for if he's hurt. Why, if we didn't have
pick-up boats and hospital ships the men wouldn't" He almost finished it
with "fight," but thought, and lamely ended"wouldn't like
it."
* * *
Evan nodded, wonderingly, and crowded his chief a
little as he craned his neck for a look at the screen.
"Get the hell away from here!" said the wing
commander in a restrained yell, and Evan got.
The interceptor squadron swam into the fielda sleek,
deadly needle of vessels in perfect alignment, with its little cloud of
pick-ups trailing, and farther astern a white hospital ship with the ancient
red cross.
The contact was immediate and shocking. One of the
rebel ships lumbered into the path of the interceptors, spraying fire from what
seemed to be as many points as a man has pores. The Service ships promptly
riddled it and it should have drifted awaybut it didn't. It kept on fighting.
It rammed an interceptor with a crunch that must have killed every man before
the first bulwark, but aft of the bulwark the ship kept fighting.
It took a torpedo portside and its plumbing drifted
through space in a tangle. Still the starboard side kept squirting fire.
Isolated weapon blisters fought on while they were obviously cut off from the
rest of the ship. It was a pounded tangle of wreckage, and it had destroyed two
interceptors, crippled two more, and kept fighting.
Finally, it drifted away, under feeble jets of power.
Two more of the fantastic rebel fleet wandered into action, but the wing
commander's horrified eyes were on the first pile of scrap. It was going somewhere
The ship neared the thin-skinned, unarmored, gleaming
hospital vessel, rammed it amidships, square in one of the red crosses, and
then blew itself up, apparently with everything left in its powder magazine,
taking the hospital ship with it.
The sickened wing commander would never have recognized what he had
seen as it was told in a later version, thus:
"The crushing course they took
And nobly knew
Their death undaunted
By heroic blast
The hospital's host
They dragged to doom
Hail! Men without mercy
From the far frontier!"
Lunar relay flickered out as overloaded fuses flashed
into vapor. Arris distractedly paced back to the dark corner and sank into a
chair.
"I'm sorry," said the voice of Glen next to him, sounding
quite sincere. "No doubt it was quite a shock to you."
"Not to you?" asked Arris bitterly.
"Not to me."
"Then how did they do it?" the wing commander asked the
civilian in a low, desperate whisper. "They don't even wear .45's.
Intelligence says their enlisted men have hit their officers and got away with
it. They elect ship captains! Glen, what does it all mean?"
"It means," said the fat little man with a timbre of doom in
his voice, "that they've returned. They always have. They always will. You
see, commander, there is always somewhere a wealthy, powerful city, or nation,
or world. In it are those whose blood is not right for a wealthy, powerful
place. They must seek danger and overcome it. So they go outon the marshes, in
the desert, on the tundra, the planets, or the stars. Being strong, they grow
stronger by fighting the tundra, the planets or the stars. Theythey change.
They sing new songs. They know new heroes. And then, one day, they return to
their old home.
"They return to the wealthy, powerful city, or nation or world.
They fight its guardians as they fought the tundra, the planets or the starsa
way that strikes terror to the heart. Then they sack the city, nation or world
and sing great, ringing sagas of their deeds. They always have. Doubtless they
always will."
"But what shall we do?"
"We shall cower, I suppose, beneath the bombs they drop on us, and
we shall die, some bravely, some not, defending the palace within a very few
hours. But you will have your revenge."
"How?" asked the wing commander, with haunted eyes.
The fat little man giggled and whispered in the
officer's ear. Arris irritably shrugged it off as a bad joke. He didn't believe
it. As he died, drilled through the chest a few hours later by one of Algan's
gunfighters, he believed it even less.
* * *
The professor's lecture was drawing to a close. There
was time for only one more joke to send his students away happy. He was about
to spring it when a messenger handed him two slips of paper. He raged inwardly
at his ruined exit and poisonously read from them:
"I have been asked to make two announcements.
One, a bulletin from General Sleg's force. He reports that the so-called
Outland Insurrection is being brought under control and that there is no cause
for alarm. Two, the gentlemen who are members of the S.O.T.C. will please
report to the armory at 1375 hourswhatever that may meanfor blaster
inspection. The class is dismissed."
Petulantly, he swept from the lectern and through the
door.
The Adventurer
At
the time "The Adventurer" was written, R*ch*rd M. N*x*n was not quite
yet even Vice-President. So it isn't about him. Is it?
President
Folsom XXIV said petulantly to his Secretary of the Treasury: "Blow me to
hell, Bannister, if I understood a single word of that. Why can't I buy
the Nicolaides Collection? And don't start with the rediscount and the Series W
business again. Just tell me why."
The
Secretary of the Treasury said with an air of apprehension and a thread-like
feeling across his throat: "It boils down tono money, Mr.
President."
The
President was too engrossed in thoughts of the marvelous collection to fly into
a rage. "It's such a bargain," he said mournfully.
"An archaic Henry Moore figure-really too big to finger, but I'm no
culture-snob, thank Godand fifteen early Morrisons and I can't begin to tell
you what else." He looked hopefully at the Secretary of Public Opinion.
"Mightn't I seize it for the public good or something?"
The
Secretary of Public Opinion shook his head. His pose was gruffly professional.
"Not a chance, Mr. President. We'd never get away with it. The art lovers
would scream to high Heaven."
"I
suppose so ... Why isn't there any money?" He had swiveled
dangerously on the Secretary of the Treasury again.
"Sir,
purchases of the new Series W bond issue have lagged badly because potential
buyers have been attracted to"
"Stop
it, stop it, stop it! You know I can't make head or tail of that stuff.
Where's the money going?"
The
Director of the Budget said cautiously: "Mr. President, during the
biennium just ending, the Department of Defense accounted for seventy-eight per
cent of expenditures"
The
Secretary of Defense growled: "Now wait a minute, Felder! We were
voted"
The
President interrupted, raging weakly: "Oh, you rascals! My father would
have known what to do with you! But don't think I can't handle it. Don't think
you can hoodwink me." He punched a button ferociously; his silly face was
contorted with rage and there was a certain tension on all the faces around the
Cabinet table.
Panels
slid down abruptly in the walls, revealing grim-faced Secret Servicemen. Each
Cabinet officer was covered by at least two automatic rifles.
"Take
that-that traitor away!" the President yelled. His finger pointed at the
Secretary of Defense, who slumped over the table, sobbing. Two Secret
Servicemen half-carried him from the room.
President
Folsom XXIV leaned back, thrusting out his lower lip. He told the Secretary of
the Treasury: "Get me the money for the Nicolaides Collection. Do
you understand? I don't care how you do it. Get it." He glared at
the Secretary of Public Opinion. "Have you any comments?"
"No,
Mr. President."
"All
right, then." The President unbent and said plaintively: "I don't see
why you can't all be more reasonable. I'm a very reasonable man. I don't see
why I can't have a few pleasures along with my responsibilities. Really I
don't. And I'm sensitive. I don't like these scenes. Very well. That's
all. The Cabinet meeting is adjourned."
They
rose and left silently in the order of their seniority. The President noticed
that the panels were still down and pushed the button that raised them again
and hid the granite-faced Secret Servicemen. He took out of his pocket a late
Morrison fingering-piece and turned it over in his hand, a smile of relaxation
and bliss spreading over his face. Such amusing textural contrast! Such
unexpected variations on the classic sequences!
The
Cabinet, less the Secretary of Defense, was holding a rump meeting in an
untapped corner of the White House gymnasium.
"God,"
the Secretary of State said, white-faced. "Poor old Willy!"
The
professionally gruff Secretary of Public Opinion said: "We should murder
the bastard. I don't care what happens"
The
Director of the Budget said dryly: "We all know what would happen.
President Folsom XXV would take office. No; we've got to keep plugging as
before. Nothing short of the invincible can topple the Republic . . ."
"What
about a war?" the Secretary of Commerce demanded fiercely. "We've no
proof that our program will work. What about a war?"
State
said wearily: "Not while there's a balance of power, my dear man. The
Io-Callisto Question proved that. The Republic and the Soviet fell all over
themselves trying to patch things up as soon as it seemed that there would be
real shooting. Folsom XXIV and his excellency Premier Yersinsky know at least
that much."
The
Secretary of the Treasury said: "What would you all think of Steiner for
Defense?"
The
Director of the Budget was astonished. "Would he take it?"
Treasury
cleared his throat. "As a matter of fact, I've asked him to stop by right
about now." He hurled a medicine ball into the budgetary gut.
"Oof!"
said the Director. "You bastard. Steiner would be perfect. He runs
Standards like a watch. He treacherously fired the medicine ball at the
Secretary of Raw Materials, who blandly caught it and slammed it back.
"Here
he comes," said the Secretary of Raw Materials. "Steiner! Come and
sweat some oleo off!"
Steiner
ambled over, a squat man in his fifties, and said: "I don't mind if I do.
Where's Willy?"
State
said: "The President unmasked him as a traitor. He's probably been
executed by now."
Steiner
looked grim, and grimmer yet when the Secretary of the Treasury said, deadpan:
"We want to propose you for Defense."
"I'm
happy in Standards," Steiner said. "Safer, too. The Man's father
took an interest in science, but The Man never comes around. Things are very
quiet. Why don't you invite Winch, from the National Art Commission? It
wouldn't be much of a change for the worse for him."
"No
brains," the Secretary for Raw Materials said briefly. "Heads
up!"
Sterner
caught the ball and slugged it back at him. "What good are brains?"
he asked quietly.
"Close
the ranks, gentlemen," State said. "These long shots are too hard on
my arms."
The
ranks closed and the Cabinet told Steiner what good were brains. He ended by
accepting.
The
Moon is all Republic. Mars is all Soviet. Titan is all Republic. Ganymede is
all Soviet. But Io and Callisto, by the Treaty of Greenwich, are half-and-half
Republic and Soviet.
Down
the main street of the principal settlement on Io runs an invisible line. On
one side of the line, the principal settlement is known as New Pittsburgh. On
the other side it is known as Nizhni-Magnitogorsk.
Into
a miner's home in New Pittsburgh one day an eight-year-old boy named Grayson
staggered, bleeding from the head. His eyes were swollen almost shut.
His
father lurched to his feet, knocking over a bottle. He looked stupidly at the
bottle, set it upright too late to save much of the alcohol, and then stared
fixedly at the boy. "See what you made me do, you little bastard?" he
growled, and fetched the boy a clout on his bleeding head that sent him
spinning against the wall of the hut. The boy got up slowly and silentlythere
seemed to be something wrong with his left armand glowered at his father.
He
said nothing.
"Fighting
again," the father said, in a would-be fierce voice. His eyes fell under
the peculiar fire in the boy's stare. "Damn fool"
A
woman came in from the kitchen. She was tall and thin. In a flat voice she said
to the man: "Get out of here." The man hiccupped and said: "Your
brat spilled my bottle. Gimme a dollar."
In
the same flat voice: "I have to buy food."
"I said gimme a dollar!" The man slapped her
faceit did not changeand wrenched a small purse from the string that
suspended it around her neck. The boy suddenly was a demon, flying at his
father with fists and teeth. It lasted only a second or two. The father kicked
him into a corner where he lay, still glaring, wordless and dry-eyed. The
mother had not moved; her husband's handmark was still red on her face when he
hulked out, clutching the money bag.
Mrs.
Grayson at last crouched in the corner with the eight-year-old boy.
"Little Tommy," she said softly. "My little Tommy! Did you cross
the line again?"
He
was blubbering in her arms, hysterically, as she caressed him. At last he was
able to say: "I didn't cross the line, Mom. Not this time. It was in
school. They said our name was really Krasinsky. God damn him!" the boy
shrieked. "They said his grandfather was named Krasinsky and he moved over
the line and changed his name to Grayson! God damn him! Doing that to us!"
"Now
darling," his mother said, caressing him. "Now, darling." His
trembling began to ebb. She said: "Let's get out the spools, Tommy. You
mustn't fall behind in school. You owe that to me, don't you, darling?"
"Yes,
Mom," he said. He threw his spindly arms around her and kissed her.
"Get out the spools. We'll show him. I mean them."
President
Folsom XXIV lay on his deathbed, feeling no pain, mostly because his personal
physician had pumped him full of morphine. Dr. Barnes sat by the bed holding
the presidential wrist and waiting, occasionally nodding off and recovering
with a belligerent stare around the room. The four wire service men didn't care
whether he fell asleep or not; they were worriedly discussing the nature and
habits of the President's first born, who would shortly succeed to the highest
office in the Republic.
"A
firebrand, they tell me," the A.P. man said unhappily.
"Firebrands
I don't mind," the U.P. man said. "He can send out all the
inflammatory notes he wants just as long as he isn't a fiend for exercise. I'm
not as young as I once was. You boys wouldn't remember the old President,
Folsom XXII. He used to do point-to-point hiking. He worshipped old
F.D.R."
The
I.N.S. man said, lowering his voice: "Then he was worshipping the wrong Roosevelt. Teddy was the athlete."
Dr.
Barnes started, dropped the presidential wrist, and held a mirror to the mouth
for a moment. "Gentlemen," he said, "the President is
dead."
"O.K.,"
the A.P. man said. "Let's go, boys. I'll send in the flash. U.P., you go
cover the College of Electors. I.N.S., get onto the President Elect. Trib,
collect some interviews and background"
The
door opened abruptly; a colonel of infantry was standing there, breathing hard,
with an automatic rifle at port. "Is he dead?" he asked.
"Yes,"
the A.P. man said. "If you'll let me past"
"Nobody
leaves the room," the colonel said grimly. "I represent General
Slocum, Acting President of the Republic. The College of Electors is acting now
to ratify"
A
burst of gunfire caught the colonel in the back; he spun and fell, with a
single hoarse cry. More gunfire sounded through the White House. A Secret
Serviceman ducked his head through the door: "President's dead? You boys
stay put. We'll have this thing cleaned up in an hour" He vanished.
The
doctor sputtered his alarm and the newsmen ignored him with professional poise.
The A.P. man asked: "Now who's Slocum? Defense Command?"
I.N.S.
said: "I remember him. Three stars. He headed up the Tactical Airborne
Force out in Kansas four-five years ago. I think he was retired since
then."
A
phosphorus grenade crashed through the window and exploded with a globe of
yellow flame the size of a basketball; dense clouds of phosphorus pentoxide
gushed from it and the sprinkler system switched on, drenching the room.
"Come
on!" hacked the A.P. man, and they scrambled from the room and slammed the
door. The doctor's coat was burning in two or three places, and he was retching
feebly on the corridor floor. They tore his coat off and flung it back into the
room.
The
U.P. man, swearing horribly, dug a sizzling bit of phosphorus from the back of
his hand with a penknife and collapsed, sweating, when it was out. The I.N.S.
man passed him a flask and he gurgled down half a pint of liquor. "Who
flang that brick?" he asked faintly.
"Nobody,"
the A.P. man said gloomily. "That's the hell of it. None of this is
happening. Just the way Taft the Pretender never happened in nineteen oh
three. Just the way the Pentagon Mutiny never happened in sixty-seven."
"Sixty-eight,"
the U.P. man said faintly. "It didn't happen in sixty-eight, not
sixty-seven."
The
A.P. man smashed a fist into the palm of his hand and swore. "God damn,"
he said. "Some day I'd like to" He broke off and was bitterly
silent.
The
U.P. man must have been a little dislocated with shock and quite drunk to talk
the way he did. "Me too," he said. "Like to tell the story.
Maybe it was sixty-seven not sixty-eight. I'm not sure now. Can't write it down
so the details get lost and then after a while it didn't happen at all.
Revolution'd be good deal. But it takes people t' make revolution. People. With
eyes 'n ears. 'N memories. We make things not-happen an' we make people not-see
an' not-hear . . ."
He
slumped back against the corridor wall, nursing his burned hand. The others
were watching him, very scared.
Then
the A.P. man caught sight of the Secretary of Defense striding down the
corridor, flanked by Secret Servicemen. "Mr. Steiner!" he called.
"What's the picture?"
Steiner
stopped, breathing heavily, and said: "Slocum's barricaded in the Oval
Study. They don't want to smash in. He's about the only one left. There were
only fifty or so. The Acting President's taken charge at the Study. You want to
come along?"
They
did, and even hauled the U.P. man after them.
The
Acting President, who would be President Folsom XXV as soon as the Electoral
College got around to it, had his father's face-the petulant lip, the soft
jowlon a hard young body. He also had an auto-rifle ready to fire from the
hip. Most of the Cabinet was present. When the Secretary of Defense arrived, he
turned on him. "Sterner," he said nastily, "can you explain why
there should be a rebellion against the Republic in your department?"
"Mr.
President," Steiner said, ''Slocum was retired on my recommendation two
years ago. It seems to me that my responsibility ended there and Security
should have taken over."
The
President Elect's finger left the trigger of the auto-rifle and his lip drew in
a little. "Quite so," he said curtly, and turned to the door.
"Slocum!" he shouted. "Come out of there. We can use gas if we
want."
The
door opened unexpectedly and a tired-looking man with three stars on each
shoulder stood there, bare-handed. "All right," he said drearily.
"I was fool enough to think something could be done about the regime. But
you fat-faced imbeciles are going to go on and on and"
The
stutter of the auto-rifle cut him off. The President Elect's knuckles were
white as he clutched the piece's forearm and grip; the torrent of slugs
continued to hack and plow the general's body until the magazine was empty.
"Burn that," he said curtly, turning his back on it. "Dr.
Barnes, come here. I want to know about my father's passing."
The
doctor, hoarse and red-eyed from the whiff of phosphorus smoke, spoke with him.
The U.P. man had sagged drunkenly into a chair, but the other newsmen noted
that Dr. Barnes glanced at them as he spoke, in a confidential murmur.
"Thank
you, doctor," the President Elect said at last, decisively. He gestured to
a Secret Serviceman. "Take those traitors away." They went, numbly.
The
Secretary of State cleared his throat. "Mr. President," he said,
"I take this opportunity to submit the resignations of myself and fellow
Cabinet members according to custom."
"That's
all right," the President Elect said. "You may as well stay on. I
intend to run things myself anyway." He hefted the auto-rifle.
"You," he said to the Secretary of Public Opinion. "You have
some work to do. Have the memory of my father'sartisticpreoccupations
obliterated as soon as possible. I wish the Republic to assume a warlike
postureyes; what is it?"
A
trembling messenger said: "Mr. President, I have the honor to inform you
that the College of Electors has elected you President of the Republicunanimously."
Cadet
Fourth Classman Thomas Grayson lay on his bunk and sobbed in an agony of
loneliness. The letter from his mother was crumpled in his hand: "prouder
than words can tell of your appointment to the Academy. Darling, I hardly knew
my grandfather but I know that you will serve as brilliantly as he did, to the
eternal credit of the Republic. You must be brave and strong for my sake"
He
would have given everything he had or ever could hope to have to be back with
her, and away from the bullying, sneering fellow-cadets of the Corps. He kissed
the letterand then hastily shoved it under his mattress as he heard footsteps.
He
popped to a brace, but it was only his roommate Ferguson. Ferguson was from
Earth, and rejoiced in the lighter Lunar gravity which was punishment to
Grayson's Io-bred muscles.
"Rest,
mister," Ferguson grinned.
"Thought
it was night inspection."
"Any
minute now. They're down the hall. Lemme tighten your bunk or you'll be in
trouble" Tightening the bunk he pulled out the letter and said,
calfishly: "Ah-hah! Who is she?" and opened it.
When
the cadet officers reached the room they found Ferguson on the floor being
strangled black in the face by spidery little Grayson. It took all three of
them to pull him off. Ferguson went to the infirmary and Grayson went to the
Commandant's office.
The
Commandant glared at the cadet from under the most spectacular pair of eyebrows
in the Service. "Cadet Grayson," he said, "explain what
occurred."
"Sir,
Cadet Ferguson began to read a letter from my mother without my
permission."
"That
is not accepted by the Corps as grounds for mayhem. Do you have anything
further to say?"
"Sir,
I lost my temper. All I thought of was that it was an act of disrespect to my
mother and somehow to the Corps and the Republic toothat Cadet Ferguson was
dishonoring the Corps."
Bushwah,
the Commandant thought. A snow job
and a crude one. He studied the youngster. He had never seen such a brace
from an Io-bred fourth-classman. It must be torture to muscles not yet toughened
up to even Lunar gravity. Five minutes more and the boy would have to give way,
and serve him right for showing off.
He
studied Grayson's folder. It was too early to tell about academic work, but the
fourth-classman was a bearor a foolfor extra duty. He had gone out for half a
dozen teams and applied for membership in the exacting Math Club and Writing
Club. The Commandant glanced up; Grayson was still in his extreme brace. The
Commandant suddenly had the queer idea that Grayson could hold it until it
killed him.
"One
hundred hours of pack drill," he barked, "to be completed before
quarter-term. Cadet Grayson, if you succeed in walking off your tours, remember
that there is a tradition of fellowship in the Corps which its members are
expected to observe. Dismiss."
After
Grayson's steel-sharp salute and exit the Commandant dug deeper into the
folder. Apparently there was something wrong with the boy's left arm, but it
had been passed by the examining team that visited Io. Most unusual. Most irregular.
But nothing could be done about it now.
The
President, softer now in body than on his election day, and infinitely more
cautious, snapped: "It's all very well to create an incident. But where's
the money to come from? Who wants the rest of Io anyway? And what will happen
if there's war?"
Treasury
said: "The hoarders will supply the money, Mr. President. A system of
percentage bounties for persons who report currency hoarders, and then
enforced purchase of a bond issue."
Raw
Materials said: "We need that iron, Mr. President. We need it
desperately."
State
said: "All our evaluations indicate that the Soviet Premier would consider
nothing less than armed invasion of his continental borders as occasion for
all-out war. The consumer-goods party in the Soviet has gained immensely during
the past five years and of course their armaments have suffered. Your shrewd
directive to put the Republic in a warlike posture has borne fruit, Mr. President.
. ."
President
Folsom XXV studied them narrowly. To him the need for a border incident
culminating in a forced purchase of Soviet Io did not seem as pressing as they
thought, but they were, after all, specialists. And there was no conceivable
way they could benefit from it personally. The only alternative was that they
were offering their professional advice and that it would be best to heed it.
Still, there was a vague, nagging something . . .
Nonsense,
he decided. The spy dossiers on his Cabinet showed nothing but the usual. One
had been blackmailed by an actress after an affair and railroaded her off the
Earth. Another had a habit of taking bribes to advance favorite sons in civil
and military service. And so on. The Republic could not suffer at their hands;
the Republic and the dynasty were impregnable. You simply spied on everybody
including the spiesand ordered summary executions often enough to show that
you meant it, and kept the public ignorant: deaf-dumb-blind ignorant. The spy
system was simplicity itself; you had only to let things get as tangled and confused
as possible until nobody knew who was who. The executions were literally
no problem, for guilt or innocence made no matter. And mind control, when there
were four newspapers, six magazines, and three radio and television stations,
was a job for a handful of clerks.
No;
the Cabinet couldn't be getting away with anything. The system was unbeatable.
President
Folsom XXV said: "Very well. Have it done."
Mrs.
Grayson, widow, of New Pittsburgh, Io, disappeared one night. It was in all the
papers and on all the broadcasts. Some time later she was found dragging
herself back across the line between Nizhni-Magnitogorsk and New Pittsburgh in
sorry shape. She had a terrible tale to tell about what she had suffered at the
hands and so forth of the Nizhni-Magnitogorskniks. A diplomatic note from the
Republic to the Soviet was answered by another note which was answered by the
dispatch of the Republic's First Fleet to Io which was answered by the dispatch
of the Soviet's First and Fifth Fleets to Io.
The
Republic's First Fleet blew up the customary deserted target hulk, fulminated
over a sneak sabotage attack, and moved in its destroyers. Battle was joined.
Ensign
Thomas Grayson took over the command of his destroyer when its captain was
killed on his bridge. An electrified crew saw the strange, brooding youngster
perform prodigies of skill and courage, and responded to them. In one week of
desultory action the battered destroyer had accounted for seven Soviet
destroyers and a cruiser.
As
soon as this penetrated to the flagship Grayson was decorated and given a
flotilla. His weird magnetism extended to every officer and man aboard the
seven craft. They struck like phantoms, cutting out cruisers and battlewagons
in wild unorthodox actions that couldn't have succeeded but didevery time.
Grayson was badly wounded twice, but his driving nervous energy carried him
through.
He
was decorated again and given the battlewagon of an ailing four-striper.
Without
orders he touched down on the Soviet side of Io, led out a landing party of
marines and bluejackets, cut through two regiments of Soviet infantry, and
returned to his battlewagon with prisoners: the top civil and military
administrators of Soviet Io.
They
discussed him nervously aboard the flagship.
"He
had a mystical quality, Admiral. His men would follow him into an atomic
furnace. Andand I almost believe he could bring them through safely if he
wanted to." The laugh was nervous.
"He
doesn't look like much. But when he turns on the charmwatch out!"
"He'she's
a winner. Now I wonder what I mean by that?"
"I
know what you mean. They turn up every so often. People who can't be stopped.
People who have everything. Napoleons. Alexanders. Stalins. Up from
nowhere."
"Suleiman.
Hitler. Folsom I. Jenghiz Khan."
"Well,
let's get it over with."
They
tugged at their gold-braided jackets and signalled the honor guard.
Grayson
was piped aboard, received another decoration and another speech. This time he
made a speech in return.
President
Folsom XXV, not knowing what else to do, had summoned his Cabinet.
"Well?" he rasped at the Secretary of Defense.
Steiner
said with a faint shrug: "Mr. President, there is nothing to be done. He
has the fleet, he has the broadcasting facilities, he has the people."
"People!"
snarled the President. His finger stabbed at a button and the wall panels
snapped down to show the Secret Servicemen standing in their niches. The
finger shot tremulously out at Steiner. "Kill that traitor!" he
raved.
The
chief of the detail said uneasily: "Mr. President, we were listening to
Grayson before we came on duty. He says he's de facto President now"
"Kill
him! Kill him!"
The
chief went doggedly on: "and we liked what he had to say about the
Republic and he said citizens of the Republic shouldn't take orders from you
and he'd relieve you"
The
President fell back.
Grayson
walked in, wearing his plain ensign's uniform and smiling faintly. Admirals and
four-stripers flanked him.
The
chief of the detail said: "Mr. Grayson! Are you taking over?"
The
man in the ensign's uniform said gravely: "Yes. And just call me
'Grayson,' please. The titles come later. You can go now."
The
chief gave a pleased grin and collected his detail. The rather slight, youngish
man who had something wrong with one arm was in chargecomplete charge.
Grayson
said: "Mr. Folsom, you are relieved of the presidency. Captain, take him
out and" He finished with a whimsical shrug. A portly four-striper took
Folsom by one arm. Like a drugged man the deposed president let himself be led
out.
Grayson
looked around the table. "Who are you gentlemen?"
They
felt his magnetism, like the hum when you pass a power station.
Steiner
was the spokesman. "Grayson," he said soberly, "we were Folsom's
Cabinet. However, there is more that we have to tell you. Alone, if you will
allow it."
"Very
well, gentlemen." Admirals and captains backed out, looking concerned.
Steiner
said: "Grayson, the story goes back many years. My predecessor, William
Malvern, determined to overthrow the regime, holding that it was an affront to
the human spirit. There have been many such attempts. All have broken up on the
rocks of espionage, terrorism, and opinion controlthe three weapons which the
regime holds firmly in its hands.
"Malvern
tried another approach than espionage versus espionage, terrorism versus
terrorism, and opinion control versus opinion control. He determined to use
the basic fact that certain men make history: that there are men born to be
mould breakers. They are the Philips of Macedon, the Napoleons, Stalins and
Hitlers, the Suleimansthe adventurers. Again and again they flash across
history, bringing down an ancient empire, turning ordinary soldiers of the line
into unkillable demons of battle, uprooting cultures, breathing new life into
moribund peoples.
"There
are common denominators among all the adventurers. Intelligence, of course.
Other things are more mysterious but are always present. They are foreigners.
Napoleon the Corsican. Hitler the Austrian. Stalin the Georgian. Philip the
Macedonian. Always there is an Oedipus complex. Always there is physical
deficiency. Napoleon's stature. Stalin's withered armand yours. Always there
is a minority disability, real or fancied.
"This
is a shock to you, Grayson, but you must face it. You were manufactured.
"Malvern
packed the Cabinet with the slyest double-dealers he could find and they went
to work. Eighty-six infants were planted on the outposts of the Republic in
simulated family environments. Your mother was not your mother but one of the
most brilliant actresses ever to drop out of sight on Earth. Your intelligence
heredity was so good that we couldn't turn you down for lack of a physical
deficiency. We withered your arm with gamma radiation. I hope you will forgive
us. There was no other way.
"Of
the eighty-six you are the one that worked. Somehow the combination for you
was minutely different from all the other combinations, genetically or
environmentally, and it worked. That is all we were after. The mould has been
broken, you know now what you are.
Let
come whatever chaos is to come; the dead hand of the past no longer lies
on"
Grayson
went to the door and beckoned; two captains came in. Steiner broke off his
speech as Grayson said to them: "These men deny my godhood. Take them out
and" he finished with a whimsical shrug.
"Yes,
your divinity," said the captains, without a trace of humor in their
voices.
The Little Black Bag
in 1971 I was speaking at the First
General Assembly
of the World Future Society at the Washington Hilton. One evening I went up to
my room to
make a phone call and, waiting for the person at the other end to get off the
phone, nipped on the television. What turned up on the screen was "The Little Black Bag." I hadn't
expected it. It was Rod Serling's adaptation, faithful to the text and very good. So I forgot to make my
phone call, and was late joining
friends downstairs . . . but it was worth
it.
Dr.
Full felt the winter in his bones as he limped down the alley. It was the alley
and the back door he had chosen rather than the sidewalk and the front door
because of the brown paper bag under his arm. He knew perfectly well that the
flat-faced, stringy-haired women of his street and their gap-toothed,
sour-smelling husbands did not notice if he brought a bottle of cheap wine to
his room. They all but lived on the stuff themselves, varied with whiskey when
pay checks were boosted by overtime. But Dr. Full, unlike them, was ashamed. A
complicated disaster occurred as he limped down the littered alley. One of the
neighborhood dogsa mean little black one he knew and hated, with its teeth
always bared and always snarling with menacehurled at his legs through a hole
in the board fence that lined his path. Dr. Full flinched, then swung his leg
in what was to have been a satisfying kick to the animal's gaunt ribs. But the
winter in his bones weighed down the leg. His foot failed to clear a
half-buried brick, and he sat down abruptly, cursing. When he smelled unbottled
wine and realized his brown paper package had slipped from under his arm and smashed,
his curses died on his lips. The snarling black dog was circling him at a
yard's distance, tensely stalking, but he ignored it in the greater disaster.
With
stiff fingers as he sat on the filth of the alley, Dr. Full unfolded the brown
paper bag's top, which had been crimped over, grocer-wise. The early autumn
dusk had come; he could not see plainly what was left. He lifted out the
jug-handled top of his half gallon, and some fragments, and then the bottom of
the bottle. Dr. Full was far too occupied to exult as he noted that there was a
good pint left. He had a problem, and emotions could be deferred until the
fitting time.
The
dog closed in, its snarl rising in pitch. He set down the bottom of the bottle
and pelted the dog with the curved triangular glass fragments of its top. One
of them connected, and the dog ducked back through the fence, howling. Dr. Full
then placed a razor-like edge of the half-gallon bottle's foundation to his
lips and drank from it as though it were a giant's cup. Twice he had to put it
down to rest his arms, but in one minute he had swallowed the pint of wine.
He
thought of rising to his feet and walking through the alley to his room, but a
flood of well-being drowned the notion. It was, after all, inexpressibly
pleasant to sit there and feel the frost-hardened mud of the alley turn soft,
or seem to, and to feel the winter evaporating from his bones under a warmth
which spread from his stomach through his limbs.
A
three-year-old girl in a cut-down winter coat squeezed through the same hole in
the board fence from which the black dog had sprung its ambush. Gravely she
toddled up to Dr. Full and inspected him with her dirty forefinger in her
mouth. Dr. Full's happiness had been providentially made complete; he had been
supplied with an audience.
"Ah,
my dear," he said hoarsely. And then: "Preposterous accusation. 'If
that's what you call evidence,' I should have told them, 'you better stick to
your doctoring.' I should have told them: 'I was here before your County
Medical Society. And the License Commissioner never proved a thing on me. So
gennulmen, doesn't it stand to reason? I appeal to you as fellow members of a
great profession?'
The
little girl bored, moved away, picking up one of the triangular pieces of glass
to play with as she left. Dr. Full forgot her immediately, and continued to
himself earnestly: "But so help me, they couldn't prove a thing.
Hasn't a man got any rights?" He brooded over the question, of
whose answer he was so sure, but on which the Committee on Ethics of the County
Medical Society had been equally certain. The winter was creeping into his
bones again, and he had no money and no more wine.
Dr.
Full pretended to himself that there was a bottle of whiskey somewhere in the
fearful litter of his room. It was an old and cruel trick he played on himself
when he simply had to be galvanized into getting up and going home. He might
freeze there in the alley. In his room he would be bitten by bugs and would
cough at the moldy reek from his sink, but he would not freeze and be cheated
of the hundreds of bottles of wine that he still might drink, and the thousands
of hours of glowing content he still might feel. He thought about that bottle
of whiskey was it back of a mounded heap of medical journals? No; he had looked
there last time. Was it under the sink, shoved well to the rear, behind the
rusty drain? The cruel trick began to play itself out again. Yes, he told
himself with mounting excitement, yes, it might be! Your memory isn't so good
nowadays, he told himself with rueful good-fellowship. You know perfectly well
you might have bought a bottle of whiskey and shoved it behind the sink drain
for a moment just like this.
The
amber bottle, the crisp snap of the sealing as he cut it, the pleasurable
exertion of starting the screw cap on its threads, and then the refreshing
tangs in his throat, the wannth in his stomach, the dark, dull happy oblivion
of drunkennessthey became real to him. You could have, you know! You could
have! he told himself. With the blessed conviction growing in his mindIt could
have happened, you know! It could have!he struggled to his right
knee. As he did, he heard a yelp behind him, and curiously craned his neck
around while resting. It was the little girl, who had cut her hand quite badly
on her toy, the piece of glass. Dr. Full could see the rilling bright blood
down her coat, pooling at her feet.
He
almost felt inclined to defer the image of the amber bottle for her, but not
seriously. He knew that it was there, shoved well to the rear under the sink,
behind the rusty drain where he had hidden it. He would have a drink and then
magnanimously return to help the child. Dr. Full got to his other knee and then
his feet, and proceeded at a rapid totter down the littered alley toward his
room, where he would hunt with calm optimism at first for the bottle that was
not there, then with anxiety, and then with frantic violence. He would hurl
books and dishes about before he was done looking for the amber bottle of
whiskey, and finally would beat his swollen knuckles against the brick wall
until old scars on them opened and his thick old blood oozed over his hands.
Last of all, he would sit down somewhere on the floor, whimpering, and would
plunge into the abyss of purgative nightmare that was his sleep.
After
twenty generations of shilly-shallying and "we'll cross that bridge when
we come to it," genus homo had bred itself into an impasse. Dogged
biometricians had pointed out with irrefutable logic that mental subnormals
were outbreeding mental normals and supemormals, and that the process was
occurring on an exponential curve. Every fact that could be mustered in the
argument proved the biometricians' case, and led inevitably to the conclusion
that genus homo was going to wind up in a preposterous jam quite soon. If you
think that had any effect on breeding practices, you do not know genus homo.
There
was, of course, a sort of masking effect produced by that other exponential
function, the accumulation of technological devices. A moron trained to punch
an adding machine seems to be a more skillful computer than a medieval
mathematician trained to count on his fingers. A moron trained to operate the
twenty-first century equivalent of a linotype seems to be a better typographer
than a Renaissance printer limited to a few fonts of movable type. This is also
true of medical practice.
It
was a complicated affair of many factors. The supemormals "improved the
product" at greater speed than the subnormals degraded it, but in smaller
quantity because elaborate training of their children was practiced on a
custom-made basis. The fetish of higher education had some weird avatars by the
twentieth generation: "colleges" where not a member of the student
body could read words of three syllables; "universities" where such
degrees as "Bachelor of Typewriting," "Master of Shorthand"
and "Doctor of Philosophy (Card Filing)" were conferred with the
traditional pomp. The handful of supernormals used such devices in order that
the vast majority might keep some semblance of a social order going.
Some
day the supernormals would mercilessly cross the bridge; at the twentieth
generation they were standing irresolutely at its approaches wondering what had
hit them. And the ghosts of twenty generations of biometricians chuckled malignantly.
It
is a certain Doctor of Medicine of this twentieth generation that we are
concerned with. His name was HemingwayJohn Hemingway. B.Sc., M.D. He was a
general practitioner, and did not hold with running to specialists with every
trifling ailment. He often said as much, in approximately these words:
"Now, uh, what I mean is you got a good old G.P. See what I mean? Well,
uh, now a good old G.P. don't claim he knows all about lungs and glands and
them things, get me? But you got a G.P., you got, uh, you got a, well, you got
a all-around man! That's what you got when you got a G.P.you got a all-around
man."
But
from this, do not imagine that Dr. Hemingway was a poor doctor. He could remove
tonsils or appendixes, assist at practically any confinement and deliver a
living, uninjured infant, correctly diagnose hundreds of ailments, and
prescribe and administer the correct medication or treatment for each. There
was, in fact, only one thing he could not do in the medical line, and that was,
violate the ancient canons of medical ethics. And Dr. Hemingway knew better
than to try.
Dr.
Hemingway and a few friends were chatting one evening when the event occurred
that precipitates him into our story. He had been through a hard day at the
clinic, and he wished his physicist friend Walter Gillis, B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D.,
would shut up so he could tell everybody about it. But Gillis kept rambling on,
in his stilted fashion: "You got to hand to old Mike; he don't have what
we call the scientific method, but you got to hand it to him. There this poor
little dope is, puttering around with some glassware, and I come up and ask
him, kidding of course, 'How's about a time-travel machine, Mike?'
Dr.
Gillis was not aware of it, but "Mike" had an I.Q. six times his own
and wasto be blunthis keeper. "Mike" rode herd on the
pseudo-physicists in the pseudo-laboratory, in the guise of a bottle-washer. It
was a social wastebut as has been mentioned before, the supernormals were
still standing at the approaches to a bridge. Their irresolution led to many
such preposterous situations. And it happens that "Mike," having
grown frantically bored with his task, was malevolent enough tobut let Dr.
Gillis tell it:
"So
he gives me these here tube numbers and says, 'Series circuit. Now stop
bothering me. Build your time machine, sit down at it and turn on the switch.
That's all I ask, Dr. Gillisthat's all I ask.'
"Say,"
marveled a brittle and lovely blond guest, "you remember real good, don't
you, doc?" She gave him a melting smile.
"Heck,"
said Gillis modestly, "I always remember good. It's what you call an
inherent facility. And besides I told it quick to my secretary, so she wrote it
down. I don't read so good, but I sure remember good, all right. Now, where was
I?"
Everybody
thought hard, and there were various suggestions:
"Something
about bottles, doc?"
"You
was starting a fight. You said 'time somebody was traveling.'
"Yeahyou
called somebody a swish. Who did you call a swish?"
"Not
swishswitch!"
Dr.
Gillis' noble brow grooved with thought, and he declared: "Switch is
right. It was about time travel. What we call travel through time. So I took
the tube numbers he gave me and I put them into the circuit-builder; I set it
for 'series' and there it ismy time-traveling machine. It travels things
through time real good." He displayed a box.
"What's
in the box?" asked the lovely blonde.
Dr.
Hemingway told her: "Time travel. It travels things through time."
"Look,"
said Gillis, the physicist. He took Dr. Hemingway's little black bag and put it
on the box. He turned on the switch and the little black bag vanished.
"Say,"
said Dr. Hemingway, "that was, uh, swell. Now bring it back."
"Huh?"
"Bring
back my little black bag."
"Well,"
said Dr. Gillis, "they don't come back. I guess maybe that dummy Mike gave
me a bum steer."
There
was wholesale condemnation of "Mike" but Dr. Hemingway took no part
in it. He was nagged by a vague feeling that there was something he would have
to do. He reasoned: "I am a doctor, and a doctor has got to have a little black
bag. I ain't got a little black bagso ain't I a doctor no more?" He
decided that this was absurd. He knew he was a doctor. So it must be the
bag's fault for not being there. It was no good, and he would get another one
tomorrow from that dummy Al, at the clinic. Al could find things good, but he
was a dummy never liked to talk sociable to you.
So
the next day Dr. Hemingway remembered to get another little black bag from his
keeperanother little black bag with which he could perform tonsillectomies,
appendectomies and the most difficult confinements, and with which he could
diagnose and cure his kind until the day when the supernormals could bring
themselves to cross that bridge. Al was kinda nasty about the missing little
black bag, but Dr. Hemingway didn't exactly remember what had happened, so no
tracer was sent out, so Old Dr. Full awoke from the horrors of the night to
the horrors of the day.
His
gummy eyelashes pulled apart convulsively. He was propped against the corner of
his room, and something was making a little drumming noise. He felt very cold
and cramped. As his eyes focused on his lower body, he croaked out a laugh. The
drumming noise was being made by his left heel, agitated by fine tremors
against the bare floor. It was going to be the D.T. 's again, he decided
dispassionately. He wiped his mouth with his bloody knuckles, and the fine
tremor coarsened; the snaredrum beat became louder and slower. He was getting a
break this fine morning, he decided sardonically. You didn't get the horrors
until you had been tightened like a violin string, just to the breaking point.
He had a reprieve, if a reprieve into his old body with the blazing, endless
headache just back of the eyes and the screaming stillness in the joints were
anything to be thankful for.
There
was something or other about a kid, he thought vaguely. He was going to doctor
some kid. His eyes rested on a little black bag in the center of the room, and
he forgot about the kid. "I could have sworn," said Dr. Full, "I
hocked that two years ago!" He hitched over and reached the bag, and then
realized it was some stranger's kit, arriving here he did not know how. He
tentatively touched the lock and it snapped open and lay flat, rows and rows of
instruments and medications tucked into loops in its four walls. It seemed
vastly larger open than closed. He didn't see how it could possibly fold up
into that compact size again, but decided it was some stunt of the instrument
makers. Since his timethat made it worth more at the hock shop, he thought
with satisfaction.
Just
for old times' sake, he let his eyes and fingers rove over the instruments
before he snapped the bag shut and headed for Uncle's. More than few were a
little hard to recognizeexactly that is. You could see the things with blades
for cutting, the forceps for holding and pulling, the retractors for holding
fast, the needles and gut for suturing, the hyposa fleeting thought crossed
his mind that he could peddle the hypos separately to drug addicts.
Let's
go, he decided, and tried to fold up the case. It didn't fold until he happened
to touch the lock, and then it folded all at once into a little black bag. Sure
have forged ahead, he thought, almost able to forget that what he was primarily
interested in was its pawn value.
With
a definite objective, it was not too hard for him to get to his feet. He
decided to go down the front steps, out the front door and down the sidewalk.
But first He snapped the bag open again on his kitchen table, and pored
through the medication tubes. "Anything to sock the autonomic nervous
system good and hard," he mumbled. The tubes were numbered, and there was
a plastic card which seemed to list them. The left margin of the card was a
run-down of the systems vascular, muscular, nervous. He followed the last
entry across to the right. There were columns for "stimulant,"
"depressant," and so on. Under "nervous system" and
"depressant" he found the number 17, and shakily located the little
glass tube which bore it. It was full of pretty blue pills and he took one.
It
was like being struck by a thunderbolt.
Dr.
Full had so long lacked any sense of well-being except the brief glow of
alcohol that he had forgotten its very nature. He was panic-stricken for a long
moment at the sensation that spread through him slowly, finally tingling in his
fingertips. He straightened up, his pains gone and his leg tremor stilled.
That
was great, he thought. He'd be able to run to the hock shop, pawn the
little black bag and get some booze. He started down the stairs. Not even the
street, bright with mid-morning sun, into which he emerged made him quail. The
little black bag in his left hand had a satisfying authoritative weight. He was
walking erect, he noted, and not in the somewhat furtive crouch that had grown
on him in recent years. A little self-respect, he told himself, that's what I
need. Just because a man's down doesn't mean "Docta, please-a come
wit'!" somebody yelled at him, tugging his arm. "Da-lift-la girl,
she's-a burn' up!" It was one of the slum's innumerable flat-faced,
stringy-haired women, in a slovenly wrapper.
"Ah,
I happen to be retired from practice" he began hoarsely, but she would
not be put off.
"In
by here, Docta!" she urged, tugged him to a doorway. "You come look-a
da litt-la girl. I got two dolla, you come look!" That put a different
complexion on the matter. He allowed himself to be towed through the doorway
into a messy, cabbage-smelling flat. He knew the woman now, or rather knew who
she must bea new arrival who had moved in the other night. These people moved
at night, in motorcades of battered cars supplied by friends and relatives,
with furniture lashed to the tops, swearing and drinking until the small hours.
It explained why she had stopped him: she did not yet know he was old Dr. Full,
a drunken reprobate whom nobody would trust. The little black bag had been his
guarantee, outweighing his whiskey face and stained black suit.
He
was looking down on a three-year-old girl who had, he rather suspected, just
been placed in the mathematical center of a freshly changed double bed. God
knew what sour and dirty mattress she usually slept on. He seemed to recognize
her as he noted a crusted bandage on her right hand. Two dollars, he thought.
An ugly flush had spread up her pipe-stem arm. He poked a finger into the
socket of her elbow, and felt little spheres like marbles under the skin and
ligaments roll apart. The child began to squall thinly; beside him, the woman
gasped and began to weep herself.
"Out,"
he gestured briskly at her, and she thudded away, still sobbing.
Two
dollars, he thought. Give her some mumbo jumbo, take the money and tell her to
go to a clinic. Strep, I guess, from that stinking alley. It's a wonder any of
them grow up. He put down the little black bag and forgetfully fumbled for his
key, then remembered and touched the lock. It flew open, and he selected a
bandage shears, with a blunt wafer for the lower jaw. He fitted the lower jaw
under the bandage, trying not to hurt the kid by its pressure on the infection,
and began to cut. It was amazing how easily and swiftly the shining shears
snipped through the crusty rag around the wound. He hardly seemed to be driving
the shears with fingers at all. It almost seemed as though the shears were
driving his fingers instead as they scissored a clean, light line through the
bandage.
Certainly
have forged ahead since my time, he thoughtsharper than a microtome knife. He
replaced the shears in their ioop on the extraordinarily big board that the
little black bag turned into when it unfolded, and leaned over the wound. He
whistled at the ugly gash, and the violent infection which had taken immediate
root in the sickly child's thin body. Now what can he do with a thing like
that? He pawed over the contents of the little black bag, nervously. If he
lanced it and let some of the pus out, the old woman would think he'd done
something for her and he'd get the two dollars. But at the clinic they'd want
to know who did it and if they got sore enough they might send a cop around.
Maybe there was something in the kit He ran down the left edge of the card to
"lymphatic" and read across to the column under
"infection." It didn't sound right at all to him; he checked again,
but it still said that. In the square to which the line and the column led were
the symbols: "IV-g-3cc." He couldn't find any bottles marked with
Roman numerals, and then noticed that that was how the hypodermic needles were
designated. He lifted number IV from its loop, noting that it was fitted with a
needle already and even seemed to be charged. What a way to carry those things
around! So three cc. of whatever was in hypo number IV ought to do something
or other about infections settled in the lymphatic systemwhich, God knows,
this one was. What did the lower-case "g" mean, though? He studied
the glass hypo and saw letters engraved on what looked like a rotating disk at
the top of the barrel. They ran from "a" to "i," and there
was an index line engraved on the barrel on the opposite side from the
calibrations.
Shrugging,
old Dr. Full turned the disk until "g" coincided with the index line,
and lifted the hypo to eye level. As he pressed in the plunger he did not see
the tiny thread of fluid squirt from the tip of the needle. There was a sort of
dark mist for a moment about the tip. A closer inspection showed that the
needle was not even pierced at the tip. It had the usual slanting cut across
the bias of the shaft, but the cut did not expose an oval hole. Baffled, he
tried pressing the plunger again. Again something appeared around the tip
and vanished. "We'll settle this," said the doctor. He slipped the
needle into the skin of his forearm. He thought at first that he had
missedthat the point had glided over the top of his skin instead of catching
and slipping under it. But he saw a tiny blood-spot and realized that somehow
he just hadn't felt the puncture. Whatever was in the barrel, he decided,
couldn't do him any harm if it lived up to its billingand if it could ever
come out through a needle that had no hole. He gave himself three cc. and
twitched the needle out. There was the swellingpainless, but otherwise
typical.
Dr.
Full decided it was his eyes or something, and gave three cc. of "g"
from hypodermic IV to the feverish child. There was no interruption to her
wailing as the needle went in and the swelling rose. But a long instant later,
she gave a final gasp and was silent.
Well,
he told himself, cold with horror, you did it that time. You killed her with
that stuff.
Then
the child sat up and said: "Where's my mommy?"
Incredulously,
the doctor seized her arm and palpated the elbow. The gland infection was zero,
and the temperature seemed normal. The blood-congested tissues surrounding the
wound were subsiding as he watched. The child's pulse. was stronger and no
faster than a child's should be. In the sudden silence of the room he could
hear the little girl's mother sobbing in her kitchen, outside. And he also
heard a girl's insinuating voice:
"She
gonna be OK, doc?"
He
turned and saw a gaunt-faced, dirty-blond sloven of perhaps eighteen leaning in
the doorway and eyeing him with amused contempt. She continued: "I heard
about you, Doc-tor Full. So don't go try and put the bite on the old
lady. You couldn't doctor up a sick cat."
"Indeed?"
he rumbled. This young person was going to get a lesson she richly deserved.
"Perhaps you would care to look at my patient?"
"Where's
my mommy?" insisted the little girl, and the blond's jaw fell. She went to
the bed and cautiously asked:
"You
OK now, Teresa? You all fixed up?"
"Where's
my mommy?" demanded Teresa. Then, accusingly, she gestured with her
wounded hand at the doctor. "You poke me!" she complained, and
giggled pointlessly.
"Well"
said the blond girl, "I guess I got to hand it to you, doc. These
loud-mouth women around here said you didn't know your . . . I mean, didn't
know how to cure people. They said you ain't a real doctor."
"I
have retired from practice," he said. "But I happened to be
taking this case to a colleague as a favor, your good mother noticed me,
and" a deprecating smile. He touched the lock of the case and it folded
up into the little black bag again.
"You
stole it," the girl said flatly.
He
sputtered.
"Nobody'd
trust you with a thing like that. It must be worth plenty. You stole that case.
I was going to stop you when I came in and saw you working over Teresa, but it
looked like you wasn't doing her any harm. But when you give me that line about
taking that case to a colleague I know you stole it. You gimme a cut or I go to
the cops. A thing like that must be worth twenty-thirty dollars."
The
mother came timidly in, her eyes red. But she let out a whoop of joy when she
saw the little girl sitting up and babbling to herself, embraced her madly,
fell on her knees for a quick prayer, hopped up to kiss the doctor's hand, and then
dragged him into the kitchen, all the while rattling in her native language
while the blond girl let her eyes go cold with disgust. Dr. Full allowed
himself to be towed into the kitchen, but flatly declined a cup of coffee and a
plate of anise cakes and St.-John's-bread.
"Try
him on some wine, ma," said the girl sardonically.
"Hyass!
Hyass!" breathed the woman delightedly. "You like-a wine,
docta?" She had a carafe of purplish liquid before him in an instant, and
the blond girl snickered as the doctor's hand twitched out at it. He drew his
hand back, while there grew in his head the old image of how it would smell and
then taste and then warm his stomach and limbs. He made the kind of calculation
at which he was practiced; the delighted woman would not notice as he downed
two tumblers, and he could overawe her through two tumblers more with his tale
of Teresa's narrow brush with the Destroying Angel, and thenwhy, then it would
not matter. He would be drunk.
But
for the first time in years, there was a sort of counter-image: a blend of the
rage he felt at the blond girl to whom he was so transparent, and of pride at
the cure he had just effected. Much to his own surprise, he drew back his hand
from the carafe and said, luxuriating in the words: "No, thank you. I
don't believe I'd care for any so early in the day." He covertly watched
the blond girl's face, and was gratified at her surprise. Then the mother was
shyly handing him two bills and saying: "Is no much-a-money, doctabut you
come again, see Teresa?"
"I
shall be glad to follow the case through," he said. "But now excuse
me I really must be running along." He grasped the little black bag
firmly and got up; he wanted very much to get away from the wine and the older
girl.
"Wait
up, doc," said she. "I'm going your way." She followed him out
and down the street. He ignored her until he felt her hand on the black bag.
Then old Dr. Full stopped and tried to reason with her:
"Look,
my dear. Perhaps you're right. I might have stolen it. To be perfectly frank, I
don't remember how I got it. But you're young and you can earn your own
money"
"Fifty-fifty,"
she said, "or I go to the cops. And if I get another word outta you, it's
sixty-forty. And you know who gets the short end, don't you, doc?"
Defeated,
he marched to the pawnshop, her impudent hand still on the handle with his, and
her heels beating out a tattoo against his stately tread.
In
the pawnshop, they both got a shock.
"It
ain't standard," said Uncle, unimpressed by the ingenious lock. "I
ain't nevva seen one like it. Some cheap Jap stuff, maybe? Try down the street.
This I nevva could sell."
Down
the street they got an offer of one dollar. The same complaint was made:
"I
ain't a collecta, mistaI buy stuff that got resale value. Who could I sell
this to, a Chinaman who doesn't know medical instruments? Every one of them
looks funny. You sure you didn't make these yourself?" They didn't take
the one-dollar offer.
The
girl was baffled and angry; the doctor was baffled too, but triumphant. He had
two dollars, and the girl had a half-interest in something nobody wanted. But,
he suddenly marveled, the thing had been all right to cure the kid, hadn't it?
"Well,"
he asked her, "do you give up? As you see, the kit is practically
valueless."
She
was thinking hard. "Don't fly off the handle, doc. I don't get this but
something's going on all right . . . would those guys know good stuff if they
saw it?"
"They
would. They make a living from it. Wherever this kit came from"
She
seized on that, with a devilish faculty she seemed to have of eliciting answers
without asking questions. "I thought so. You don't know either, huh? Well,
maybe I can find out for you. C'mon in here. I ain't letting go of that thing.
There's money in itsome way, I don't know how, there's money in it." He
followed her into a cafeteria and to an almost empty corner. She was oblivious
to stares and snickers from the other customers as she opened the little black
bag it almost covered a cafeteria tableand ferreted through it. She picked out
a retractor from a loop, scrutinized it, contemptuously threw it down, picked
out a speculum, threw it down, picked out the lower half of an 0. B. forceps,
turned it over, close to her sharp young eyesand saw what the doctor's dim old
ones could not have seen.
All
old Dr. Full knew was that she was peering at the neck of the forceps and then
turned white. Very carefully, she placed the half of the forceps back in its
loop of cloth and then replaced the retractor and the speculum.
"Well?" he asked. "What did you see?"
'Made
in U.S.A.,' "she quoted hoarsely. " 'Patent Applied for July 2450.'
He
wanted to tell her she must have misread the inscription, that it must be a
practical joke, that But he knew she had read correctly. Those bandage shears:
they had driven his fingers, rather than his fingers driving them. The
hypo needle that had no hole. The pretty blue pill that had struck him like a
thunderbolt.
"You
know what I'm going to do?" asked the girl, with sudden animation.
"I'm going to go to charm school. You'll like that, won't ya, doc? Because
we're sure going to be seeing a lot of each other."
Old
Dr. Full didn't answer. His hands had been playing idly with that plastic card
from the kit on which had been printed the rows and columns that had guided him
twice before. The card had a slight convexity; you could snap the convexity
back and forth from one side to the other. He noted, in a daze, that with each
snap a different text appeared on the cards. Snap. "The knife with
the blue dot in the handle is for tumors only. Diagnose tumors with your
Instrument Seven, the Swelling Tester. Place the Swelling Tester" Snap.
"An overdose of the pink pills in Bottle 3 can be fixed with one pill
from bottle" Snap. "Hold the suture needle by the end without
the hole in it. Touch it to one end of the wound you want to close and let go.
After it has made the knot, touch it" Snap. "Place the top
half of the O.B. Forceps near the opening. Let go. After it has entered and
conformed to the shape of" Snap.
The
slot man saw "FLANNERY 1MEDICAL" in the upper left corner of the
hunk of copy. He automatically scribbled "trim to .75" on it
and skimmed it across the horseshoe-shaped copy desk to Piper, who had been
handling Edna Flannery's quack-exposé series. She was a nice youngster, he
thought, but like all youngsters she over-wrote. Hence, the "trim."
Piper
dealt back a city hall story to the slot, pinned down Flannery's feature with
one hand and began to tap his pencil across it, one tap to a word, at the same
steady beat as a teletype carriage traveling across the roller. He wasn't
exactly reading it this first time. He was just looking at the letters and
words to find out whether, as letters and words, they conformed to Herald style.
The steady tap of his pencil ceased at intervals as it drew a black line ending
with a stylized letter "d" through the word "breast" and
scribbled in "chest" instead, or knocked down the capital
"E" in "East" to lower case with a diagonal, or closed up a
split wordin whose middle Flannery had bumped the space bar of her
typewriterwith two curved lines like parentheses rotated through ninety
degrees. The thick black pencil zipped a ring around the "30" which,
like all youngsters, she put at the end of her stories. He turned back to the
first page for the second reading. This time the pencil drew lines with the
stylized "d's" at the end of them through adjectives and whole
phrases, printed big "L's" to mark paragraphs, hooked some of
Flannery's own paragraphs together with swooping recurved lines.
At
the bottom of "FLANNERY ADD 2MEDICAL" the pencil slowed down and
stopped. The slot man, sensitive to the rhythm of his beloved copy desk, looked
up almost at once. He saw Piper squinting at the story, at a loss. Without
wasting words, the copy reader skimmed it back across the masonite horseshoe to
the chief, caught a police story in return and buckled down, his pencil
tapping. The slot man read as far as the fourth add, barked at Howard, on the
rim: "Sit in for me," and stamped through the clattering city room
toward the alcove where the managing editor presided over his own bedlam.
The
copy chief waited his turn while the makeup editor, the pressroom foreman and
the chief photographer had words with the M . E. When his turn came, he dropped
Flanneiy's copy on his desk and said: "She says this one isn't a
quack."
The
M.E. read:
"FLANNERY
1MEDICAL, by Edna Flannery, Herald Staff Writer.
"The
sordid tale of medical quackery which the Herald has exposed in this
series of articles undergoes a change of pace today which the reporter found a
welcome surprise. Her quest for the facts in the case of today's subject
started just the same way that her exposure of one dozen shyster M.D.'s and
faith-healing phonies did. But she can report for a change that Dr. Bayard Full
is, despite unorthodox practices which have drawn the suspicion of the rightly
hypersensitive medical associations, a true healer living up to the highest
ideals of his profession.
"Dr.
Full's name was given to the Herald's reporter by the ethical committee
of a county medical association, which reported that he had been expelled from
the association, on July 18, 1941 for allegedly 'milking' several patients
suffering from trivial complaints. According to sworn statements in the
committee's files, Dr. Full had told them they suffered from cancer, and that
he had a treatment which would prolong their lives. After his expulsion from
the association, Dr. Full dropped out of their sightuntil he opened a midtown
'sanitarium' in a brownstone front which had for several years served as a
rooming house.
"The
Herald's reporter went to that sanitarium, on East 89th Street, with the
full expectation of having numerous imaginary ailments diagnosed and of being
promised a sure cure for a flat sum of money. She expected to find unkept
quarters, dirty instruments and the mumbo-jumbo paraphernalia of the shyster
M.D. which she had seen a dozen times before.
"She
was wrong.
"Dr.
Full's sanitarium is spotlessly clean, from its tastefully furnished entrance
hail to its shining white treatment rooms. The attractive, blond receptionist
who greeted the reporter was soft-spoken and correct, asking only the
reporter's name, address and the general nature of her complaint. This was
given, as usual, as 'nagging backache.' The receptionist asked the Herald's reporter
to be seated, and a short while later conducted her to a second-floor treatment
room and introduced her to Dr. Full.
"Dr.
Full's alleged past, as described by the medical society spokesman, is hard to
reconcile with his present appearance. He is a clear-eyed, white-haired man in
his sixties, to judge by his appearancea little above middle height and
apparently in good physical condition. His voice was firm and friendly,
untainted by the ingratiating whine of the shyster M.D. which the reporter has
come to know too well.
"The
receptionist did not leave the room as he began his examination after a few
questions as to the nature and location of the pain. As the reporter lay face
down on a treatment table the doctor pressed some instrument to the small of
her back. In about one minute he made this astounding statement: 'Young woman,
there is no reason for you to have any pain where you say you do. I understand
they're saying nowadays that emotional upsets cause pains like that. You'd
better go to a psychologist or psychiatrist if the pain keeps up. There is no
physical cause for it, so I can do nothing for you.'
"His
frankness took the reporter's breath away. Had he guessed she was, so to speak,
a spy in his camp? She tried again: 'Well, doctor, perhaps you'd give me a
physical checkup, I feel rundown all the time, besides the pains. Maybe I need
a tonic.' This is a never-failing bait to shyster M.D. 'san invitation for
them to find all sorts of mysterious conditions wrong with a patient, each of
which 'requires' an expensive treatment. As explained in the first article of
this series, of course, the reporter underwent a thorough physical checkup
before she embarked on her quack-hunt and was found to be in one hundred
percent perfect condition, with the exception of a 'scarred' area at the bottom
tip of her left lung resulting from a childhood attack of tuberculosis and a
tendency toward 'hyperthyroidism' overactivity of the thyroid gland which
makes it difficult to put on weight and sometimes causes a slight shortness of
breath.
"Dr.
Full consented to perform the examination, and took a number of shining,
spotlessly clean instruments from loops in a large board literally covered with
instrumentsmost of them unfamiliar to the reporter. The instrument with which
he approached first was a tube with a curved dial in its surface and two wires
that ended on flat disks growing from its ends. He placed one of the disks on
the back of the reporter's right hand and the other on the back of her left.
'Reading the meter,' he called out some number which the attentive receptionist
took down on a ruled form. The same procedure was repeated several times,
thoroughly covering the reporter's anatomy and thoroughly convincing her that
the doctor was a complete quack. The reporter had never seen any such
diagnostic procedure practiced during the weeks she put in preparing for this
series.
"The
doctor then took the ruled sheet from the receptionist, conferred with her in
low tones and said: 'You have a slightly overactive thyroid, young woman. And
there's something wrong with your left lungnot seriously, but I'd like a
closer look.'
"He
selected an instrument from the board which, the reporter knew, is called a
'speculum'a scissorlike device which spreads apart body openings such as the
orifice of the ear, the nostril and so on, so that a doctor can look in during
an examination. The instrument was, however, too large to be an aural or nasal
speculum but too small to be anything else. As the Herald's reporter was
about to ask further questions, the attending receptionist told her: 'It's
customary for us to blindfold our patients during lung examinationsdo you
mind?' The reporter, bewildered, allowed her to tie a spotlessly clean bandage
over her eyes, and waited nervously for what would come next.
"She
still cannot say exactly what happened while she was blindfoldedbut X rays
confirm her suspicions. She felt a cold sensation at her ribs on the left
sidea cold that seemed to enter inside her body. Then there was a snapping
feeling, and the cold sensation was gone. She heard Dr. Full say in a
matter-offact voice: 'You have an old tubercular scar down there. It isn't
doing any particular harm, but an active person like you needs all the oxygen
she can get. Lie down and I'll fix it for you.'
"Then
there was a repetition of the cold sensation, lasting for a longer time.
'Another batch of alveoli and some more vascular glue,' the Herald's reporter
heard Dr. Full say, and the receptionist's crisp response to the order. Then
the strange sensation departed and the eye-bandage was removed. The reporter
saw no scar on her ribs, and yet the doctor assured her: 'That did it. We took
out the fibrosis and a good fibrosis it was, too; it walled off the infection
so you're still alive to tell the tale. Then we planted a few clumps of
alveolithey're the little gadgets that get the oxygen from the air you breathe
into your blood. I won't monkey with your thyroxin supply. You've got used to
being the kind of person you are, and if you suddenly found yourself easy-going
and all the rest of it, chances are you'd only be upset. About the backache:
just check with the county medical society for the name of a good psychologist
or psychiatrist. And look out for quacks; the woods are full of them.'
"The
doctor's self-assurance took the reporter's breath away. She asked what the
charge would be, and was told to pay the receptionist fifty dollars. As usual,
the reporter delayed paying until she got a receipt signed by the doctor himself,
detailing the services for which it paid. Unlike most the doctor cheerfully
wrote:
'For
removal of fibrosis from left lung and restoration of alveoli,' and signed it.
"The
reporter's first move when she left the sanitarium was to head for the chest specialist
who had examined her in preparation for this series. A comparison of X rays
taken on the day of the 'operation' and those taken previously would, the Herald's
reporter thought, expose Dr. Full as a prince of shyster M.D. 's and
quacks.
"The
chest specialist made time on his crowded schedule for the reporter, in whose
series he has shown a lively interest from the planning stage on. He laughed
uproariously in his staid Park Avenue examining room as she described the weird
procedure to which she had been subjected. But he did not laugh when he took a
chest X ray of the reporter, developed it, dried it, and compared it with the
ones he had taken earlier. The chest specialist took six more X rays that
afternoon, but finally admitted that they all told the same story. The Herald's
reporter has it on his authority that the scar she had eighteen days ago
from her tuberculosis is now gone and has been replaced by healthy lung-tissue.
He declares that this is a happening unparalleled in medical history. He does
not go along with the reporter in her firm conviction that Dr. Full is
responsible for the change.
"The
Herald's reporter, however, sees no two ways about it. She concludes
that Dr. Bayard Fullwhatever his alleged past may have beenis now an
unorthodox but highly successful practitioner of medicine, to whose hands the
reporter would trust herself in any emergency.
"Not
so is the case of 'Rev.' Annie Dimswortha female harpy who, under the guise of
'faith,' preys on the ignorant and suffering who come to her sordid 'healing
parlor' for help and remain to feed 'Rev.' Annie's bank account, which now
totals up to $53,238.64. Tomorrow's article will show, with photostats of bank
statements and sworn testimony, that"
The
managing editor turned down "FLANNERY LAST ADDMEDICAL" and tapped
his front teeth with a pencil, trying to think straight. He finally told the
copy chief: "Kill the story. Run the teaser as a box." He tore off
the last paragraphthe "teaser" about "Rev." Annieand
handed it to the desk man, who stumped back to his masonite horseshoe.
The
makeup editor was back, dancing with impatience as he tried to catch the M.E.'s
eye. The interphone buzzed with the red light which indicated that the editor
and publisher wanted to talk to him. The ME. thought briefly of a special
series on this Dr. Full, decided nobody would believe it and that he probably
was a phony anyway. He spiked the story on the "dead" hook and
answered his interphone.
Dr.
Full had become almost fond of Angie. As his practice had grown to engross the
neighborhood illnesses, and then to a corner suite in an uptown taxpayer
building, and finally to the sanitarium, she seemed to have grown with it. Oh,
he thought, we have our little disputes The girl, for instance, was too much
interested in money. She had wanted to specialize in cosmetic surgeryremoving
wrinkles from wealthy old women and what-not. She didn't realize, at first,
that a thing like this was in their trust, that they were the stewards and not
the owners of the little black bag and its fabulous contents.
He
had tried, ever so cautiously, to analyze them, but without success. All the
instruments were slightly radioactive, for instance, but not quite so. They
would make a Geiger-Mueller counter indicate, but they would not collapse the
leaves of an electroscope. He didn't pretend to be up on the latest
developments, but as he understood it, that was just plain wrong. Under
the highest magnification there were lines on the instruments' superfinished
surfaces: incredibly fine lines, engraved in random hatchments which made no
particular sense. Their magnetic properties were preposterous. Sometimes the
instruments were strongly attracted to magnets, sometimes less so, and
sometimes not at all.
Dr.
Full had taken X rays in fear and trembling lest he disrupt whatever delicate
machinery worked in them. He was sure they were not solid, that the
handles and perhaps the blades must be mere shells filled with busy little
watch-works but the X rays showed nothing of the sort. Oh, yesand they were
always sterile, and they wouldn't rust. Dust fell off them if you shook
them: now, that was something he understood. They ionized the dust, or were
ionized themselves, or something of the sort. At any rate he had read of
something similiar that had to do with phonograph records.
She
wouldn't know about that, he proudly
thought. She kept the books well enough, and perhaps she gave him a useful prod
now and then when he was inclined to settle down. The move from the
neighborhood slum to the uptown quarters had been her idea, and so had the
sanitarium. Good, good, it enlarged his sphere of usefulness. Let the child
have her mink coats and her convertible, as they seemed to be calling roadsters
nowadays. He himself was too busy and too old. He had so much to make up for.
Dr.
Full thought happily of his Master Plan. She would not like it much, but she
would have to see the logic of it. This marvelous thing that had happened to
them must be handed on. She was herself no doctor; even though the instruments practically
ran themselves, there was more to doctoring than skill. There were the ancient
canons of the healing art. And so, having seen the logic of it, Angie would
yield; she would assent to his turning over the little black bag to all
humanity.
He
would probably present it to the College of Surgeons, with as little fuss as
possiblewell, perhaps a small ceremony, and he would like a souvenir of
the occasion, a cup or a framed testimonial. It would be a relief to have the
thing out of his hands, in a way; let the giants of the healing art decide who
was to have its benefits. No, Angie would understand. She was a good-hearted
girl.
It
was nice that she had been showing so much interest in the surgical side
latelyasking about the instruments, reading the instruction card for hours,
even practicing on guinea pigs. If something of his love for humanity had been
communicated to her, old Dr. Full sentimentally thought, his life would not
have been in vain. Surely she would realize that a greater good would be served
by surrendering the instruments to wiser hands than theirs, and by throwing
aside the cloak of secrecy necessary to work on their small scale.
Dr.
Full was in the treatment room that had been the brownstone's front parlor;
through the window he saw Angie's yellow convertible roll to a stop before the
stoop. He liked the way she looked as she climbed the stairs; neat, not flashy,
he thought. A sensible girl like her, she'd understand. There was somebody with
hera fat woman, puffing up the steps, overdressed and petulant. Now, what
could she want?
Angie
let herself in and went into the treatment room, followed by the fat woman.
"Do€tor," said the blond girl gravely, "may I present Mrs.
Coleman?" Charm school had not taught her everything, but Mrs. Coleman,
evidently nouveau riche, thought the doctor, did not notice the blunder.
"Miss
Aquella told me so much about you, doctor, and your remarkable
system!" she gushed.
Before
he could answer, Angie smoothly interposed: "Would you excuse us for just
a moment, Mrs. Coleman?"
She
took the doctor's arm and led him into the reception hall. "Listen,"
she said swiftly, "I know this goes against your grain, but I couldn't
pass it up. I met this old thing in the exercise class at Elizabeth Barton's.
Nobody else'll talk to her there. She's a widow. I guess her husband was a
black marketeer or something, and she has a pile of dough. I gave her a line
about how you had a system of massaging wrinkles out. My idea is, you blindfold
her, cut her neck open with the Cutaneous Series knife, shoot some Firmol into
the muscles, spoon out some of the blubber with an Adipose Series curette and
spray it all with Skintite. When you take the blindfold off she's got rid of a
wrinkle and doesn't know what happened. She'll pay five hundred dollars. Now,
don't say 'no,' doc. Just this once, let's do it my way, can't you? I've been
working on this deal all along too, haven't I?"
"Oh,"
said the doctor, "very well." He was going to have to tell her about
the Master Plan before long anyway. He would let her have it her way this time.
Back
in the treatment room, Mrs. Coleman had been thinking things over. She told the
doctor sternly as he entered: "Of course, your system is permanent, isn't
it?''
"It
is, madam," he said shortly. "Would you please lie down there? Miss
Aquella get a sterile three-inch bandage for Mrs. Coleman's eyes." He
turned his back on the fat woman to avoid conversation and pretended to be
adjusting the lights. Angie blindfolded the woman and the doctor selected the
instruments he would need. He handed the blond girl a pair of retractors, and
told her: "Just slip the corners of the blades in as I cut" She gave
him an alarmed look, and gestured at the reclining woman. He lowered his voice:
"Very well. Slip in the corners and rock them along the incision. I'll
tell you when to pull them out."
Dr.
Full held the Cutaneous Series knife to his eyes as he adjusted the little
slide for three centimeters' depth. He sighed a little as he recalled that its
last use had been in the extirpation of an "inoperable" tumor of the
throat.
"Very
well," he said, bending over the woman. He tried a tentative pass through
her tissues. The blade dipped in and flowed through them, like a finger through
quicksilver, with no wound left in the wake. Only the retractors could hold the
edges of the incision apart.
Mrs.
Coleman stirred and jabbered: "Doctor, that felt so peculiar! Are you sure
you're rubbing the right way?"
"Quite
sure, madam," said the doctor wearily. "Would you please try not to
talk during the massage?"
He
nodded at Angie, who stood ready with the retractors. The blade sank in to its
three centimeters, miraculously .cutting only the dead horny tissues of the
epidermis and the live tissue of the dermis, pushing aside mysteriously all
major and minor blood vessels and muscular tissue, declining to affect any
system or organ except the one it wastuned to, could you say? The doctor
didn't know the answer, but he felt tired and bitter at this prostitution.
Angie slipped in the retractor blades and rocked them as he withdrew the knife,
then pulled to separate the lips of the incision. It bloodlessly exposed an
unhealthy string of muscle, sagging in a dead-looking loop from blue-gray
ligaments. The doctor took a hypo, Number IX, preset to "g," and raised
it to his eye level. The mist came and went; there probably was no possibility
of an embolus with one of these gadgets, but why take chances? He shot one cc.
of "g"identified as "Firmol" by the cardinto the muscle.
He and Angie watched as it tightened up against the phaiynx.
He
took the Adipose Series curette, a small one, and spooned out yellowish tissue,
dropping it into the incinerator box, and then nodded to Angie. She eased out
the retractors and the gaping incision slipped together into unbroken skin,
sagging now. The doctor had the atomizerdialed to "Skintite' 'ready. He
sprayed, and the skin shrank up into the new firm throat line.
As
he replaced the instruments, Angie removed Mrs. Coleman's bandage and gaily
announced: "We're finished! And there's a mirror in the reception
hall"
Mrs.
Coleman didn't need to be invited twice. With incredulous fingers she felt her
chin, and then dashed for the hall. The doctor grimaced as he heard her yelp of
delight, and Angie turned to him with a tight smile. "I'll get the money
and get her out," she said. "You won't have to be bothered with her
anymore."
He
was grateful for that much.
She
followed Mrs. Coleman into the reception hall, and the doctor dreamed over the
case of instruments. A ceremony, certainlyhe was entitled to one. Not
everybody, he thought, would turn such a sure source of money over to the good
of humanity. But you reached an age when money mattered less, and when you
thought of these things you had done that might be open to misunderstanding
if, just if, there chanced to be any of that, well, that judgment business. The
doctor wasn't a religious man, but you certainly found yourself thinking hard
about some things when your time drew near Angie was back, with a bit of paper
in her hands. "Five hundred dollars," she said matter-of-factly.
"And you realize, don't you, that we could go over her an inch at a
timeat five hundred dollars an inch?"
"I've
been meaning to talk to you about that," he said.
There
was bright fear in her eyes, he thoughtbut why?
"Angie,
you've been a good girl and an understanding girl, but we can't keep this up
forever, you know."
"Let's
talk about it some other time," she said flatly. "I'm tired
now."
"No-I
really feel we've gone far enough on our own. The instruments"
"Don't
say it, doc!" she hissed. "Don't say it, or you'll be sorry!" In
her face there was a look that reminded him of the hollow-eyed, gaunt-faced,
dirty-blond creature she had been. From under the charm-school finish there
burned the guttersnipe whose infancy had been spent on a sour and filthy
mattress, whose childhood had been play in the littered alley and whose
adolescence had been the sweatshops and the aimless gatherings at night under
the glaring street lamps.
He
shook his head to dispel the puzzling notion. "It's this way," he
patiently began. "I told you about the family that invented the O.B.
forceps and kept them a secret for so many generations, how they could have
given them to the world but didn't?"
"They
knew what they were doing," said the guttersnipe flatly.
"Well,
that's neither here nor there," said the doctor, irritated. "My mind
is made up about it. I'm going to turn the instruments over to the College of Surgeons. We have enough money to be comfortable. You can even have the house.
I've been thinking of going to a warmer climate, myself." He felt peeved
with her for making the unpleasant scene. He was unprepared for what happened
next.
Angie
snatched the little black bag and dashed for the door, with panic in her eyes.
He scrambled after her, catching her arm, twisting it in a sudden rage. She
clawed at his face with her free hand, babbling curses. Somehow, somebody's
finger touched the little black bag, and it opened grotesquely into the
enormous board, covered with shining instruments, large and small. Half a dozen
of them joggled loose and fell to the floor.
"Now
see what you've done!" roared
the doctor, unreasonably. Her hand was still viselike on the handle, but she
was standing still, trembling with choked-up rage. The doctor bent stiffly to
pick up the fallen instruments. Unreasonable girl! he thought bitterly. Making
a scene Pain drove in between his shoulderblades and he fell face down. The
light ebbed. "Unreasonable girl!" he tried to croak. And then:
"They'll know I tried, anyway"
Angie
looked down on his prone body, with the handle of the Number Six Cautery Series
knife protruding from it. "will cut through all tissues. Use for
amputations before you spread on the Re-Gro. Extreme caution should be used in
the vicinity of vital organs and major blood vessels or nerve trunks"
"I
didn't mean to do that," said Angie, dully, cold with horror. Now the
detective would come, the implacable detective who would reconstruct the crime
from the dust in the room. She would run and turn and twist, but the detective
would find her out and she would be tried in a courtroom before a judge and
jury; the lawyer would make speeches, but the jury would convict her anyway,
and the headlines would scream: "BLOND KILLER GUILTY!" and she'd
maybe get the chair, walking down a plain corridor where a beam of sunlight
struck through the dusty air, with an iron door at the end of it. Her mink, her
convertible, her dresses, the handsome man she was going to meet and marry The
mist of cinematic clichés cleared, and she knew what she would do next.
Quite
steadily, she picked the incinerator box from its loop in the boarda metal
cube with a different-textured spot on one side. "to dispose of fibroses
or other unwanted matter, simply touch the disk" You dropped something in
and touched the disk. There was a sort of soundless whistle, very powerful and
unpleasant if you were too close, and a sort of lightless flash. When you
opened the box again, the contents were gone. Angie took another of the Cautery
Series knives and went grimly to work. Good thing there wasn't any blood to
speak ofShe finished the awful task in three hours.
She
slept heavily that night, totally exhausted by the wringing emotional demands
of the slaying and the subsequent horror. But in the morning, it was as though
the doctor had never been there. She ate breakfast, dressed with unusual care
and then undid the unusual care. Nothing out of the ordinary, she told herself.
Don't do one thing different from the way you would have done it before. After
a day or two, you can phone the cops. Say he walked out spoiling for a drunk,
and you're worried. But don't rush it, babydon't rush it.
Mrs.
Coleman was due at ten A.M. Angie had counted on being able to talk the doctor
into at least one more five-hundred-dollar session. She'd have to do it herself
nowbut she'd have to start sooner or later.
The
woman arrived early. Angie explained smoothly: "The doctor asked me to
take care of the massage today. Now that he has the tissue-firming process beginning,
it only requires somebody trained in his methods" As she spoke, her eyes
swiveled to the instrument caseopen! She cursed herself for the single flaw as
the woman followed her gaze and recoiled.
"What
are those things!" she demanded. "Are you going to cut me with them?
I thought there was something fishy"
"Please,
Mrs. Coleman," said Angie, "please, dear Mrs. Colemanyou
don't understand about the . . . the massage instruments!"
"Massage
instruments, my foot!" squabbled the woman shrilly. "The doctor operated
on me. Why, he might have killed me!"
Angie
wordlessly took one of the smaller Cutaneous Series knives and passed it
through her forearm. The blade flowed like a finger through quicksilver,
leaving no wound in its wake. That should convince the old cow!
It
didn't convince her, but it did startle her. "What did you do with it? The
blade folds up into the handlethat's it!"
"Now
look closely, Mrs. Coleman," said Angie, thinking desperately of the five
hundred dollars. "Look very closely and you'll see that the, uh, the
sub-skin massager simply slips beneath the tissues without doing any harm,
tightening and firming the muscles themselves instead of having to work through
layers of skin and adipose tissue. It's the secret of the doctor's method. Now,
how can outside massage have the effect that we got last night?"
Mrs.
Coleman was beginning to calm down. "It did work, all right,"
she admitted, stroking the new line of her neck. "But your arm's one thing
and my neck's another! Let me see you do that with your neck!"
Angie
smiled Al returned to the clinic after an excellent lunch that had almost
reconciled him
to
three more months he would have to spend on duty. And then, he thought, and
then a blessed year at the blessedly super-normal South Pole working on his
specialtywhich happened to be telekinesis exercises for ages three to six.
Meanwhile, of course, the world had to go on and of course he had to shoulder
his share in the running of it.
Before
settling down to desk work he gave a routine glance at the bag board. What he
saw made him stiffen with shocked surprise. A red light was on next to one of
the numbersthe first since he couldn't think when. He read off the number and
murmured "OK, 674101. That fixes you." He put the number on a
card sorter and in a moment the record was in his hand. Oh, yesHemingway's
bag. The big dummy didn't remember how or where he had lost it; none of them
ever did. There were hundreds of them floating around.
Al's
policy in such cases was to leave the bag turned on. The things practically ran
themselves, it was practically impossible to do harm with them, so whoever
found a lost one might as well be allowed to use it. You turn it off, you have
a social lossyou leave it on, it may do some good. As he understood it, and
not very well at that, the stuff wasn't "used up." A temporalist had
tried to explain it to him with little success that the prototypes in the
transmitter had been transduced through a series of point-events of
transfinite cardinality. Al had innocently asked whether that meant prototypes
had been stretched, so to speak, through all time, and the temporalist had
thought he was joking and left in a huff.
"Like
to see him do this," thought Al darkly, as he telekinized himself to the
combox, after a cautious look to see that there were no medics around. To the
box he said: "Police chief," and then to the police chief:
"There's been a homicide committed with Medical Instrument Kit 674101. It
was lost some months ago by one of my people, Dr. John Hemingway. He didn't
have a clear account of the circumstances."
The
police chief groaned and said: "I'll call him in and question him."
He was to be astonished by the answers, and was to learn that the homicide was
well out of his jurisdiction.
Al
stood for a moment at the bag board by the glowing red light that had been
sparked into life by a departing vital force giving, as its last act, the
warning that Kit 674101 was in homicidal hands. With a sigh, Al pulled the plug
and the light went out.
"Yah,
"jeered the woman. "You'd fool around with my neck, but you wouldn't
risk your own with that thing!"
Angie
smiled with serene confidence a smile that was to shock hardened morgue
attendants. She set the Cutaneous Series knife to three centimeters before
drawing it across her neck. Smiling, knowing the blade would cut only the dead
horny tissue of the epidermis and the live tissue of the dermis, mysteriously
push aside all major and minor blood vessels and muscular tissue Smiling, the
knife plunging in and its microtomesharp metal shearing through major and minor
blood vessels and muscular tissue and pharynx, Angie~ cut her throat.
In
the few minutes it took the police, summoned by the shrieking Mrs. Coleman, to
arrive, the instruments had become crusted with rust, and the flasks which had
held vascular glue and clumps of pink, rubbery alveoli and spare gray cells and
coils of receptor nerves held only black slime, and from them when opened
gushed the foul gases of decomposition.
The Luckiest Man in Denv
one of the words that seems most
applicable to Kornbluth's
work is "economical." For some audiences this is not a virtue; Kornbluth grew up in science fiction and made full use of its
short-hand vocabulary: he expected
his audience to understand it
without explanation, and so is sometimes too telegraphic and too compact for readers who expect to be told
everything in full detail, and twice. The Luckiest Man in Denv contains six
major characters, almost as many plot turns, a working model of a whole new social structure, and the germ of a
textbook's worth of warning about the waste
of scarce resources ... all in five thousand words!
May's
man Reuben, of the eighty-third level, Atomist, knew there was something wrong
when the binoculars flashed and then went opaque. Inwardly he cursed, hoping
that he had not committed himself to anything. Outwardly he was unperturbed.
He handed the binoculars back to Rudolph's man Almon, of the eighty-ninth
level, Maintainer, with a smile.
"They
aren't very good," he said.
Almon
put them to his own eyes, glanced over the parapet, and swore mildly.
"Blacker than the heart of a crazy Angelo, eh? Never mind; here's another
pair."
This
pair was unremarkable. Through it, Reuben studied the thousand setbacks and
penthouses of Denv that ranged themselves below. He was too worried to enjoy
his first sight of the vista from the eighty-ninth level, but he let out a
murmur of appreciation. Now to get away from this suddenly sinister fellow and
try to puzzle it out.
"Could
we?" he asked cryptically, with a little upward jerk of his chin.
"It's
better not to," Almon said hastily, taking the glasses from his hands.
"What if somebody with stars happened to see, you know? How'd you like it
if you saw some impudent fellow peering up at you?"
"He
wouldn't dare!" said Reuben, pretending to be stupid and indignant, and
joined a moment later in Almon's sympathetic laughter.
"Never
mind," said Almon. "We are young. Some day, who knows? Perhaps we
shall look from the ninety-fifth level, or the hundredth."
Though
Reuben knew that the Maintainer was no friend of his, the generous words sent
blood hammering through his veins; ambition for a moment.
He
pulled a long face and told Almon: "Let us hope so. Thank you for being my
host. Now I must return to my quarters."
He
left the windy parapet for the serene luxury of an eighty-ninth-level corridor
and descended slow-moving stairs through gradually less luxurious levels to his
own Spartan floor. Selene was waiting, smiling, as he stepped off the stairs.
She
was decked out nicelytoo nicely. She wore a steely hued corselet and a touch
of scent; her hair was dressed long. The combination appealed to him, and
instantly he was on his guard. Why had she gone to the trouble of learning his
tastes? What was she up to? After all, she was Griffin's woman.
"Coming
down?" she asked, awed. "Where have you been?"
"The
eighty-ninth, as a guest of that fellow Almon. The vista is immense."
"I've
never been . . ." she murmured, and then said decisively: "You belong
up there. And higher. Griffin laughs at me, but he's a fool. Last night in
chamber we got to talking about you, I don't know how, and he finally became
quite angry and said he didn't want to hear another word." She smiled
wickedly. "I was revenged, though."
Blank-faced,
he said: "You must be a good hand at revenge, Selene, and at stirring up
the need for it."
The
slight hardening of her smile meant that he had scored and he hurried by with a
rather formal salutation.
Burn
him for an Angelo, but she was easy enough to take! The contrast of the
metallic garment with her soft, white skin was disturbing, and her long hair
suggested things. It was hard to think of her as scheming something or other;
scheming Selene was displaced in his mind by Selene in chamber.
But
what was she up to? Had she perhaps heard that he was to be elevated? Was Griffin going to be swooped on by the Maintainers? Was he to kill off Griffin so she could
leech onto some rising third party? Was she perhaps merely giving her man a
touch of the lash?
He
wished gloomily that the binoculars problem and the Selene problem had not come
together. That trickster Almon had spoken of youth as though it were something
for congratulation; he hated being young and stupid and unable to puzzle out
the faulty binoculars and the warmth of Griffin's woman.
The
attack alarm roared through the Spartan corridor. He ducked through the nearest
door into a vacant bedroom and under the heavy steel table. Somebody else
floundered under the table a moment later, and a third person tried to join
them.
The
firstcomer roared: "Get out and find your own shelter! I don't propose to
be crowded out by you or to crowd you out either and see your ugly blood and
brains if there's a hit. Go, now!"
"Forgive
me, sir! At once, sir!" the latecomer wailed; and scrambled away as the
alarm continued to roar.
Reuben
gasped at the "sirs" and looked at his neighbor. It was May! Trapped,
no doubt, on an inspection tour of the level.
"Sir,"
he said respectfully, "if you wish to be alone, I can find another
room."
"You
may stay with me for company. Are you one of mine?" There was power in the
general's voice and on his craggy face.
"Yes,
sir. May's man Reuben, of the eighty-third level, Atomist."
May
surveyed him, and Reuben noted that there were pouches of skin depending from
cheekbones and the jaw linedead-looking, coarse-pored skin.
"You're
a well-made boy, Reuben. Do you have women?"
"Yes,
sir," said Reuben hastily. "One after anotherI always have women.
I'm making up at this time to a charming thing called Selene. Well-rounded, yet
firm, soft but supple, with long red hair and long white legs"
"Spare
me the details," muttered the general. "It takes all kinds. An
Atomist, you said. That has a future, to be sure. I myself was a Controller
long ago. The calling seems to have gone out of fashion"
Abruptly
the alarm stopped. The silence was hard to bear.
May
swallowed and went on: "for some reason or other. Why don't youngsters
elect for Controller any more? Why didn't you, for instance?"
Reuben
wished he could be saved by a direct hit. The binoculars, Selene, the raid, and
now he was supposed to make intelligent conversation with a general.
"I
really don't know, sir," he said miserably. "At the time there seemed
to be very little differenceController, Atomist, Missiler, Maintainer. We have
a saying, 'The buttons are different,' which usually ends any conversation on
the subject."
"Indeed?"
asked May distractedly. His face was thinly filmed with sweat. "Do you
suppose Ellay intends to clobber us this time?" he asked almost hoarsely.
"It's been some weeks since they made a maximum effort, hasn't it?"
"Four,"
said Reuben. "I remember because one of my best Servers was killed by a
falling corridor roofthe only fatality and it had to happen to my team!"
He
laughed nervously and realized that he was talking like a fool, but May seemed
not to notice.
Far
below them, there was a series of screaming whistles as the interceptors were
loosed to begin their intricate, double basketwork wall of defense in a
towering cylinder about Denv.
"Go
on, Reuben," said May. "That was most interesting." His eyes
were searching the underside of the steel table.
Reuben
averted his own eyes from the frightened face, feeling some awe drain out of
him. Under a table with a general! It didn't seem so strange now.
"Perhaps,
sir, you can tell me what a puzzling thing, that happened this afternoon,
means. A fellowRudolph's man Almon, of the eighty-ninth levelgave me a pair
of binoculars that flashed in my eyes and then went opaque. Has your wide experience"
May
laughed hoarsely and said in a shaky voice: "That old trick! He was
photographing your retinas for the blood-vessel pattern. One of Rudolph's men,
eh? I'm glad you spoke to me; I'm old enough to spot a revival like that.
Perhaps my good friend Rudolph plans"
There
was a thudding volley hi the air and then a faint jar. One had got through,
exploding, from the feel of it, far down at the foot of Denv.
The
alarm roared again, in bursts that meant all clear; only one flight of missiles
and that disposed of.
The
Atomist and the general climbed out from under the table; May's secretary
popped through the door. The general waved him out again and leaned heavily on
the table, his arms quivering. Reuben hastily brought a chair.
"A
glass of water," said May.
The
Atomist brought it. He saw the general wash down what looked like a triple dose
of xxxgreen capsules which it was better to leave alone.
May
said after a moment: "That's better. And don't look so shocked, youngster;
you don't know the strain we're under. It's only a temporary measure which I
shall discontinue as soon as things ease up a bit. I was saying that perhaps my
good friend Rudolph plans to substitute one of his men for one of mine. Tell
me, how long has this fellow Almon been a friend of yours?"
"He
struck up an acquaintance with me only last week. I should have realized"
"You
certainly should have. One week. Time enough and more. By now you've been
photographed, your fingerprints taken, your voice recorded, and your gait
studied without your knowledge. Only the retinascope is difficult, but one must
risk it for a real double. Have you killed your man, Reuben?"
He
nodded. It had been a silly brawl two years ago over precedence at the
refectory; he disliked being reminded of it.
"Good,"
said May grimly. "The way these things are done, your double kills you in
a secluded spot, disposes of your body, and takes over your role. We shall
reverse it. You will kill the double and take over his role."
The
powerful, methodical voice ticked off possibilities and contingencies,
measures and countermeasures. Reuben absorbed them and felt his awe return.
Perhaps May had not really been frightened under the table; perhaps it had been
he reading his own terror in the general's face. May was actually talking to
him of backgrounds and policies. "Up from the eighty-third level!" he
swore to himself as the great names were uttered.
"My
good friend Rudolph, of course, wants the five stars. You would not know this,
but the man who wears the stars is now eighty years old and failing fast. I
consider myself a likely candidate to replace him. So, evidently, must Rudolph.
No doubt he plans to have your double perpetrate some horrible blunder on the
eve of the election, and the discredit would reflect on me. Now what you and I
must do"
You
and IMay's man Reuben and Mayup from the eighty-third! Up from the bare
corridors and cheerless bedrooms to marble halls and vaulted chambers! From the
clatter of the crowded refectory to small and glowing restaurants where you had
your own table and servant and where music came softly from the walls! Up from
the scramble to win this woman or that, by wit or charm or the poor bribes you
could afford, to the eminence from which you could calmly command your pick of
the beauty of Denv! From the moiling intrigue of tripping your fellow Atomist
and guarding against him tripping you to the heroic thrust and parry of
generals!
Up
from the eighty-third!
Then
May dismissed him with a speech whose implications were deliriously exciting. "I
need an able man and a young one, Reuben. Perhaps I've waited too long looking
for him. If you do well in this touchy business, I'll consider you very
seriously for an important task I have in mind."
Late
that night, Selene came to his bedroom.
"I
know you don't like me," she said pettishly, "but Griffin's such a
fool and I wanted somebody to talk to. Do you mind? What was it like up there
today? Did you see carpets? I wish I had a carpet."
He
tried to think about carpets and not the exciting contrast of metallic cloth
and flesh.
"I
saw one through an open door," he remembered. "It looked odd, but I
suppose a person gets used to them. Perhaps I didn't see a very good one.
Aren't the good ones very thick?"
"Yes,"
she said. "Your feet sink into them. I wish I had a good carpet and four
chairs and a small table as high as my knees to put things on and as many
pillows as I wanted. Griffin's such a fool. Do you think I'll ever get those
things? I've never caught the eye of a general. Am I pretty enough to get one,
do you think?"
He
said uneasily: "Of course you're a pretty thing, Selene. But carpets and
chairs and pillows" It made him uncomfortable, like the thought of
peering up through binoculars from a parapet.
"I
want them," she said unhappily. "I like you very much, but I want so
many things and soon I'll be too old even for the eighty-third level, before
I've been up higher, and I'll spend the rest of my life tending babies or
cooking in the creche or the refectory."
She
stopped abruptly, pulled herself together, and gave him a smile that was
somehow ghastly in the half-light.
"You
bungler," he said, and she instantly looked at the door with the smile
frozen on her face. Reuben took a pistol from under his pillow and demanded,
"When do you expect him?"
"What
do you mean?" she asked shrilly. "Who are you talking about?"
"My
double. Don't be a fool, Selene. May and I" he savored it "May and
I know all about it. He warned me to beware of a diversion by a woman while
the double slipped in and killed me. When do you expect him?"
"I
really do like you," Selene sobbed. "But Almon promised to take me up
there and I knew when I was where they'd see me that I'd meet somebody really
important. I really do like you, but soon I'll be too old"
"Selene,
listen to me. Listen to me! You'll get your chance. Nobody but you and me will
know that the substitution didn't succeed!"
"Then
I'll be spying for you on Almon, won't I?" she asked in a choked voice.
"All I wanted was a few nice things before I got too old. All right, I was
supposed to be in your arms at 2350 hours."
It
was 2349. Reuben sprang from bed and stood by the door, his pistol silenced and
ready. At 2350 a naked man slipped swiftly into the room, heading for the bed
as he raised a ten-centimeter poignard. He stopped in dismay when he realized
that the bed was empty.
Reuben
killed him with a bullet through the throat.
"But
he doesn't look a bit like me," he said in bewilderment, closely examining
the face. "Just in a general way."
Selene
said dully: "Almon told me people always say that when they see their
doubles. It's funny, isn't it? He looks just like you, really."
"How
was my body to be disposed of?"
She
produced a small flat box. "A shadow suit. You were to be left here and
somebody would come tomorrow."
"We
won't disappoint him," Reuben pulled the web of the shadow suit over his
double and turned on the power. In the half-lit room, it was a perfect
disappearance; by daylight it would be less perfect. "They'll ask why the
body was shot instead of knifed. Tell them you shot me with the gun from under
the pillow. Just say I heard the double come in and you were afraid there
might have been a struggle."
She
listlessly asked: "How do you know I won't betray you?"
"You
won't, Selene." His voice bit. "You're broken."
She
nodded vaguely, started to say something, and then went out without saying it.
Reuben
luxuriously stretched in his narrow bed. Later, his beds would be wider and
softer, he thought. He drifted into sleep on a half-formed thought that some
day he might vote with other generals on the man to wear the five starsor even
wear them himself, Master of Denv.
He
slept healthily through the morning alarm and arrived late at his regular
twentieth-level station. He saw his superior, May's man Oscar of the eighty-fifth
level, Atomist, ostentatiously take his name. Let him!
Oscar
assembled his crew for a grim announcement: "We are going to even the
score, and perhaps a little better, with Ellay. At sunset there will be three
flights of missiles from Deck One."
There
was a joyous murmur and Reuben trotted off on his task.
All
forenoon he was occupied with drawing plutonium slugs from hyper-suspicious
storekeepers in the great rock-quarried vaults, and seeing them through
countless audits and assays all the way to Weapons Assembly. Oscar supervised
the scores there who assembled the curved slugs and the explosive lenses into
sixty-kilogram warheads.
In
mid-afternoon there was an incident. Reuben saw Oscar step aside for a moment
to speak to a Maintainer whose guard fell on one of the Assembly Servers, and
dragged him away as he pleaded innocence. He had been detected in sabotage.
When the warheads were in and the Missilers seated, waiting at their boards,
the two Atomists rode up to the eighty-third's refectory.
The
news of a near-maximum effort was in the air; it was electric. Reuben heard on
all sides in tones of self-congratulation: "We'll clobber them
tonight!"
"That
Server you caught," he said to Qscar. "What was he up to?"
His
commander stared. "Are you trying to learn my job? Don't try it, I warn
you. If my black marks against you aren't enough, I could always arrange for
some fissionable material in your custody to go astray."
"No,
no! I was just wondering why people do something like that."
Oscar
sniffed doubtfully. "He's probably insane, like all the Angelos. I've
heard the climate does it to them. You're not a Maintainer or a Controller. Why
worry about it?"
"They'll
brainburn him, I suppose?"
"I
suppose. Listen!"
Deck
One was firing. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five,
six. One, two, three, four, five, six.
People
turned to one another and shook hands, laughed and slapped shoulders heartily.
Eighteen missiles were racing through the stratosphere, soon to tumble on
Ellay. With any luck, one or two would slip through the first wall of
interceptors and blast close enough to smash windows and topple walls in the
crazy city by the ocean. It would serve the lunatics right.
Five
minutes later an exultant voice filled most of Denv.
"Recon
missile report," it said. "Eighteen launched, eighteen perfect
trajectories. Fifteen shot down by Ellay first-line interceptors, three shot
down by Ellay second-line interceptors. Extensive blast damage observed in Griffith Park area of Ellay!"
There
were cheers.
And
eight Full Maintainers marched into the refectory silently, and marched out
with Reuben.
He
knew better than to struggle or ask futile questions. Any question you asked
of a Maintainer was futile. But he goggled when they marched him onto an upward-bound
stairway.
They
rode past the eighty-ninth level and Reuben lost count, seeing only the
marvels of the upper reaches of Denv. He saw carpets that ran the entire length
of corridors, and intricate fountains, and mosaic walls, stained-glass windows,
more wonders than he could recognize, things for which he had no name.
He
was marched at last into a wood-paneled room with a great polished desk and a
map behind it. He saw May, and another man who must have been a
generalRudolph?but sitting at the desk was a frail old man who wore a circlet
of stars on each khaki shoulder.
The
old man said to Reuben: "You are an Ellay spy and saboteur."
Reuben
looked at May. Did one speak directly to the man who wore the stars, even in
reply to such an accusation?
"Answer
him, Reuben," May said kindly.
"I
am May's man Reuben, of the eighty-third level, an Atomist," he said.
"Explain,"
said the other general heavily, "if you can, why all eighteen of the
warheads you procured today failed to fire."
"But
they did!" gasped Reuben. "The Recon missile report said there was
blast damage from the three that got through and it didn't say anything about
the others failing to fire."
The
other general suddenly looked sick and May looked even kindlier. The man who
wore the stars turned inquiringly to the chief of the Maintainers, who nodded
and said: "That was the Recon missile report, sir."
The
general snapped: "What I said was that he would attempt to sabotage the
attack. Evidently he failed. I also said he is a faulty double, somehow
slipped with great ease into my good friend May's organization. You will find
that his left thumb print is a clumsy forgery of the real Reuben's thumb print
and that his hair has been artificially darkened."
The
old man nodded at the chief of the Maintainers, who said: "We have his
card, sir."
Reuben
abruptly found himself being fingerprinted and deprived of some hair.
"The
f.p.s check, sir," one Maintainer said. "He's Reuben."
"Hair's
natural, sir," said another.
The
general began a rearguard action: "My information about his hair seems to
have been inaccurate. But the fingerprint means only that Ellay spies
substituted his prints for Reuben's prints in the files"
"Enough,
sir," said the old man with the stars. "Dismissed. All of you.
Rudolph, I am surprised. All of you, go."
Reuben
found himself in a vast apartment with May, who was bubbling and chuckling
uncontrollably until he popped three of the green capsules into his mouth
hurriedly.
"This
means the eclipse for years of my good friend Rudolph," he crowed.
"His game was to have your double sabotage the attack warheads and so
make it appear that my organization is rotten with spies. The double must have
been under post-hypnotic, primed to admit everything. Rudolph was so sure of
himself that he made his accusations before the attack, the fool!"
He
fumbled out the green capsules again.
"Sir,"
said Reuben, alarmed.
"Only
temporary," May muttered, and swallowed a fourth. "But you're right.
You leave them alone. There are big things to be done in your time, not in
mine. I told you I needed a young man who could claw his way to the top.
Rudolph's a fool. He doesn't need the capsules because he doesn't ask
questions. Funny, I thought a coup like the double affair would hit me hard,
but I don't feel a thing. It's not like the old days. I used to plan and plan,
and when the trap went snap it was better than this stuff. But now I don't feel
a thing."
He
leaned forward from his chair; the pupils of his eyes were black bullets.
"Do
you want to work?" he demanded. "Do you want your world stood on its
head and your brains to crack and do the only worthwhile job there is to do?
Answer me!"
"Sir,
I am a loyal May's man. I want to obey your orders and use my ability to the
full."
"Good
enough," said the general. "You've got brains, you've got push. I'll
do the spade work. I won't last long enough to push it through. You'll have to
follow. Ever been outside of Denv?"
Reuben
stiffened.
"I'm
not accusing you of being a spy. It's really all right to go outside of Denv.
I've been outside. There isn't much to see at firsta lot of ground pocked and
torn up by shorts and overs from Ellay and us. Farther out, especially east,
it's different. Grass, trees, flowers. Places where you could grow food.
"When
I went outside, it troubled me. It made me ask questions. I wanted to know how
we started. Yesstarted. It wasn't always like this. Somebody built Denv. Am I
getting the idea across to you? It wasn't always like this!
"Somebody
set up the reactors to breed uranium and make plutonium. Somebody tooled us up
for the missiles. Somebody wired the boards to control them. Somebody started
the hydroponics tanks.
"I've
dug through the archives. Maybe I found something. I saw mountains of strength
reports, ration reports, supply reports, and yet I never got back to the
beginning. I found a piece of paper and maybe I understood it and maybe I
didn't. It was about the water of the Colorado River and who should get how
much of it. How can you divide water in a river? But it could have been the
start of Denv, Ellay, and the missile attacks."
The
general shook his head, puzzled, and went on: "I don't see clearly what's
ahead. I want to make peace between Denv and Ellay, but I don't know how to
start or what it will be like. I think it must mean not firing, not even making
any more weapons. Maybe it means that some of us, or a lot of us, will go out
of Denv and live a different kind of life. That's why I've clawed my way up.
That's why I need a young man who can claw with the best of them. Tell me what
you think."
"I
think," said Reuben measuredly, "it's magnificentthe salvation of
Denv. I'll back you to my dying breath if you'll let me."
May
smiled tiredly and leaned back in the chair as Reuben tiptoed out.
What
luck, Reuben thoughtwhat unbelievable luck to be at a fulcrum of history like
this!
He
searched the level for Rudolph's apartment and gained admission.
To
the general, he said: "Sir, I have to report that your friend May is
insane. He has just been raving to me, advocating the destruction of
civilization as we know it, and urging me to follow in his footsteps. I
pretended to agreesince I can be of greater service to you if I'm in May's
confidence."
"So?"
said Rudolph thoughtfully. "Tell me about the double. How did that go
wrong?"
"The
bunglers were Selene and Almon. Selene because she alarmed me instead of
distracting me. Almon because he failed to recognize her incompetence."
"They
shall be brainburned. That leaves an eighty-ninth-level vacancy in my
organization, doesn't it?"
"You're
very kind, sir, but I think I should remain a May's manoutwardly. If I earn
any rewards, I can wait for them. I presume that May will be elected to wear
the five stars. He won't live more than two years after that, at the rate he is
taking drugs."
"We
can shorten it," grinned Rudolph. "I have pharmacists who can see
that his drugs are more than normal strength."
"That
would be excellent, sir. When he is too enfeebled to discharge his duties,
there may be an attempt to rake up the affair of the double to discredit you. I
could then testify that I was your man all along and that May coerced me."
They
put their heads together, the two saviors of civilization as they knew it, and
conspired ingeniously long into the endless night.
THE SILLY SEASON
when World War II was over, Cyril
Kornbluth went
to the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill, in an accelerated program aiming at a master's degree. What kept him from making it was that our
mutual friend Richard Wilson was also in Chicago, working as Bureau Manager for a news-wire service called Trans-Radio Press. He offered Cyril a chance
to make a few bucks now and then as a stringer and then got him full-time on
the staff; when Dick Wilson moved on to bigger things Cyril inherited the job as Chicago bureau chief. Many sf writers have used reporters as viewpoint characters in their stories. Cyril was a
reporter. It makes a difference.
It
was a hot summer afternoon in the Omaha bureau of the World Wireless Press
Service, and the control bureau in New York kept nagging me for copy. But since
it was a hot summer afternoon, there was no copy. A wrapup of local baseball
had cleared about an hour ago, and that was that. Nothing but baseball happens
in the summer. During the dog days, politicians are in the Maine woods fishing
and boozing, burglars are too tired to burgle, and wives think it over and
decide not to decapitate their husbands.
I
pawed through some press releases. One sloppy stencil-duplicated sheet began:
"Did you know that the lemonade way to summer comfort and health has been
endorsed by leading physiotherapists from Maine to California? The Federated
Lemon-Growers Association revealed today that a survey of 2,500
physiotherapists in 57 cities of more than 25,000 population disclosed that 87
per cent of them drink lemonade at least once a day between June and September,
and that another 72 per cent not only drink the cooling and healthful beverage
but actually prescribe it"
Another
note tapped out on the news circuit printer from New York: "960M-HW
kicker? ND SNST-NY."
That
was New York saying they needed a bright and sparkling little news item
immediately"soonest." I went to the eastbound printer and punched
out: "96NY-UPCMNG FU MINS-OM."
The
lemonade handout was hopeless; I dug into the stack again. The State University summer course was inviting the governor to attend its summer conference
on aims and approaches hi adult secondary education. The Agricultural College wanted me to warn farmers that white-skinned hogs should be kept from the direct rays
of the summer sun. The manager of a fifth-rate local pug sent a writeup of his
boy and a couple of working press passes to his next bout in the Omaha Arena.
The Schwartz and White Bandage Company contributed a glossy eight-by-ten of a
blonde in a bathing suit improvised from two S. & W. Redi-Dressings.
Accompanying
text: "Pert starlet Miff McCoy is ready for any seaside emergency. That's
not only a darling swim suit she has on it's two standard all-purpose
Redi-Dressing bandages made by the Schwartz and White Bandage Company of Omaha.
If a broken rib results from too-strenuous beach athletics, Miff's dress can
supply the dressing." Yeah. The rest of the stack wasn't even that good. I
dumped them all in the circular file, and began to wrack my brains in spite of
the heat.
I'd
have to fake one, I decided. Unfortunately, there had been no big running silly
season story so far this summerno flying saucers, or monsters in the Florida
Everglades, or chloroform bandits terrifying the city. If there had, I could
have hopped on and faked a "with." As it was, I'd have to fake a
"lead," which is harder and riskier.
The
flying saucers? I couldn't revive them; they'd been forgotten for years, except
by newsmen. The giant turtle of Lake Huron had been quiet for years, too. If I
started a chloroform bandit scare, every old maid in the state would back me up
by swearing she heard the bandit trying to break in and smelled chloroformbut
the cops wouldn't like it. Strange messages from space received at the State University's radar lab? That might do it. I put a sheet of copy paper hi the
typewriter and sat, glaring at it and hating the silly season.
There
was a slight reprievethe Western Union tie-line printer by the desk dinged at
me and its sickly-yellow bulb lit up. I tapped out:
"WW
GA PLS," and the machine began to eject yellow, gummed tape which told me
this:
"wu
co62-dpr collectft hicks ark aug 22 105p worldwireless omahatown marshal
pinkney crawles died mysterious circumstances fishtripping ozark hamlet rush
city today. rushers phoned hicksers 'burned death shining domes appeared
yesterweek.' jeeping body hicksward. queried rush constable p.c. allenby
learning 'seven glassy domes each housesize clearing mile south town. rushers
untouched, unapproached. crawles warned but touched and died burns.' note
deskrush fonecall 1.85. shall i upfollow?benson fishtripping rushers
hicksers yesterweek jeeping hicksward housesize 1.85 428p clr. . ."
It
was just what the doctor ordered. I typed an acknowledgment for the message and
pounded out a story, fast. I punched it and started the tape wiggling through
the eastbound transmitter before New York could send any more irked notes. The
news circuit printer from New York clucked and began relaying my story
immediately: "ww72 (kicker)
fort
hicks, arkansas, aug 22(ww)mysterious death today struck down a law
enforcement officer in a tiny ozark mountain hamlet. marshal pinkney crawles of
fort hicks, arkansas, died of burns while on a fishing trip to the little
village of rush city. terrified natives of rush city blamed the tragedy on what
they called 'shining domes.' they said the so-called domes appeared in a
clearing last week one mile south of town. there are seven of the mysterious
objects each one the size of a house. the inhabitants of rush city did not
dare approach them. they warned the visiting marshal crawlesbut he did not
heed their warning. rush city's constable p.c. allenby was a witness to the
tragedy. said he: "there isn't much to tell. marshal crawles just walked
up to one of the domes and put his hand on it. there was a big plash, and when
i could see again, he was burned to death.' constable allenby is returning the
body of marshal crawles to fort hicks. 602p220m"
That,
I thought, should hold them for a while. I remembered Benson's "note
desk" and put through a long distance call to Fort Hicks, person to
person. The Omaha operator asked for Fort Hicks information, but there wasn't
any. The Fort Hicks operator asked whom she wanted. Omaha finally admitted that
we wanted to talk to Mr. Edwin C. Benson. Fort Hicks figured out loud and then
decided that Ed was probably at the police station if he hadn't gone home for
supper yet. She connected us with the police station, and I got Benson. He had
a pleasant voice, not particularly backwoods Arkansas. I gave him some of the
old oil about a fine dispatch, and a good, conscientious job, and so on. He
took it with plenty of dry reserve, which was odd. Our rural stringers always
ate that kind of stuff up. Where, I asked him, was he from?
"Fort Hicks," he told me, "but I've moved around. I did the courthouse beat in Little Rock" I nearly laughed out loud at that, but the laugh died out as he went
on"rewrite for the A.P. in New Orleans, not to be bureau chief there but
I didn't like wire service work. Got an opening on the Chicago Trib desk. That
didn't last they sent me to head up their Washington bureau. There I switched
to the New York Tunes. They made me a war correspondent and I got hurtback to Fort Hicks. I do some magazine writing now. Did you want a follow-up on the Rush City story?"
"Sure,"
I told him weakly. "Give it a real rideuse your own judgment. Do you
think it's a fake?"
"I
saw Pink's body a little while ago at the undertaker's parlor, and I had a talk
with Allenby, from Rush City. Pink got burned all right, and Allenby didn't
make his story up. Maybe somebody else didhe's pretty dumbbut as far as I can
tell, this is the real thing. I'll keep the copy coming. Don't forget about
that dollar eighty-five phone call, will you?"
I
told him I wouldn't, and hung up. Mr. Edwin C. Benson had handed me quite a
jolt. I wondered how badly he had been hurt, that he had been forced to abandon
a brilliant news career and bury himself in the Ozarks.
Then
there came a call from God, the board chairman of World Wireless. He was
fishing in Canada, as all good board chairmen do during the silly season, but
he had caught a news broadcast which used my Rush City story. He had a mobile
phone in his trailer, and it was but the work of a moment to ring Omaha and louse up my carefully planned vacation schedules and rotation of night shifts.
He wanted me to go down to Rush City and cover the story personally. I said yes
and began trying to round up the rest of the staff. My night editor was sobered
up by his wife and delivered to the bureau in fair shape. A telegrapher on
vacation was reached at his summer resort and talked into checking out. I got a
taxi company on the phone and told them to have a cross-country cab on the roof
in an hour. I specified their best driver, and told them to give him maps of Arkansas.
Meanwhile,
two "with domes" dispatches arrived from Benson and got moved on the
wire. I monitored a couple of newscasts; the second one carried a story by
another wire service on the domesa pickup of our stuff, but they'd have their
own men on the scene fast enough. I filled in the night editor, and went up to
the roof for the cab.
The
driver took off in the teeth of a gathering thunderstorm. We had to rise above
it, and by the time we could get down to sight-pilotage altitude, we were
lost. We circled most of the night until the driver picked up a beacon he had
on his charts at about 3:30 a.m. We landed at Fort Hicks as day was breaking,
not on speaking terms.
Fort Hicks' field
clerk told me where Benson lived, and I walked there. It was a white, frame
house. A quiet, middle-aged woman let me in. She was his widowed sister, Mrs.
McHenry. She got me some coffee and told me she had been up all night waiting
for Edwin to come back from Rush City. He had started out about 8:00 p.m., and
it was only a two-hour trip by car. She was worried. I tried to pump her about
her brother, but she'd only say that he was the bright one of the family. She
didn't want to talk about his work as war correspondent. She did show me some
of his magazine stuffboy-and-girl stories in national weeklies. He seemed to
sell one every couple of months.
We
had arrived at a conversational stalemate when her brother walked in, and I
discovered why his news career had been interrupted. He was blind. Aside from
a long, puckered brown scar that ran from his left temple back over his ear and
onto the nape of his neck, he was a pleasant-looking fellow in his mid-forties.
"Who
is it, Vera?" he asked.
"It's
Mr. Williams, the gentleman who called you from Omaha todayI mean
yesterday."
"How
do you do, Williams. Don't get up," he addedhearing, I suppose, the chair
squeak as I leaned forward to rise.
"You
were so long, Edwin," his sister said with relief and reproach.
"That
young jackass Howiemy chauffeur for the night" he added an aside to
me"got lost going there and coming back. But I did spend more time than
I'd planned at Rush City." He sat down, facing me. "Williams, there
is some difference of opinion about the shining domes. The Rush City people say that they exist, and I say they don't."
His
sister brought him a cup of coffee.
"What
happened, exactly?" I asked.
"That
Allenby took me and a few other hardy citizens to see them. They told me just
what they looked like. Seven hemispheres in a big clearing, glassy, looming up
like houses, reflecting the gleam of the headlights. But they weren't there.
Not to me, and not to any blind man. I know when I'm standing in front of a
house or anything else that big. I can feel a little tension on the skin of my
face. It works unconsciously, but the mechanism is thoroughly understood.
"The
blind getbecause they have toan aural picture of the world. We hear a little
hiss of air that means we're at the corner of a building, we hear and feel big,
turbulent air currents that mean we're coming to a busy street. Some of the
boys can thread their way through an obstacle course and never touch a single
obstruction. I'm not that good, maybe because I haven't been blind as long as
they have, but by hell, I know when there are seven objects the size of houses
in front of me, and there just were no such things in the clearing at Rush City."
"Well,"
I shrugged, "there goes a fine piece of silly-season journalism. What
kind of a gag are the Rush City people trying to pull, and why?"
"No
kind of gag. My driver saw the domes, tooand don't forget the late marshal.
Pink not only saw them but touched them. All I know is that people see them and
I don't. If they exist, they have a kind of existence like nothing else I've
ever met."
"I'll
go up there myself," I decided.
"Best
thing," said Benson. "I don't know what to make of it. You can take
our car." He gave me directions and I gave him a schedule of deadlines. We
wanted the coroner's verdict, due today, an eyewitness storyhis driver would
do for thatsome background stuff on the area and a few statements from local
officials.
I
took his car and got to Rush City in two hours. It was an un-painted collection
of dog-trot homes, set down in the big pine forest
that covers all that rolling Ozark country. There was a general store
that had the place's only phone. I suspected it had been kept busy by
the wire services and a few enterprising newspapers. A state trooper
in a flashy uniform was lounging against a fly-specked tobacco counter
when I got there.
"I'm
Sam Williams, from World Wireless," I said. "You come to have a look
at the domes?"
"World
Wireless broke that story, didn't they?" he asked me, with a look I
couldn't figure out.
"We
did. Our Fort Hicks stringer wired it to us."
The
phone rang, and the trooper answered it. It seemed to have been a call to the
Governor's office he had placed.
"No,
sir," he said over the phone. "No, sir. They're all sticking to the
story, but I didn't see anything. I mean, they don't see them any more, but
they say they were there, and now they aren't any more." A couple more
"No, sirs" and he hung up.
"When
did that happen?" I asked.
"About
a half-hour ago. I just came from there on my bike to report."
The
phone rang again, and I grabbed it. It was Benson, asking for me. I told him to
phone a flash and bulletin to Omaha on the disappearance and then took off to
find Constable Allenby. He was a stage reuben with a nickel-plated badge and a
six-shooter. He cheerfully climbed into the car and guided me to the clearing.
There
was a definite little path worn between Rush City and the clearing by now, but
there was a disappointment at the end of it. The clearing was empty. A few
small boys sticking carefully to its fringes told wildly contradictory stories
about the disappearance of the domes, and I jotted down some kind of dispatch
out of the most spectacular versions. I remember it involved flashes of blue
fire and a smell like sulphur candles. That was all there was to it.
I
drove Allenby back. By then a mobile unit from a TV network had arrived. I said
hello, waited for an A.P. man to finish a dispatch on the phone, and then
dictated my lead direct to Omaha. The hamlet was beginning to fill up with
newsmen from the wire services, the big papers, the radio and TV nets and the
newsreels. Much good they'd get out of it. The story was overI thought. I had
some coffee at the general store's two-table restaurant corner and drove back
to Fort Hicks.
Benson
was tirelessly interviewing by phone and firing off copy to Omaha. I told him
he could begin to ease off, thanked him for his fine work, paid him for his
gas, said goodbye and picked up my taxi at the field. Quite a bill for waiting
had been run up.
I
listened to the radio as we were flying back to Omaha, and wasn't at all
surprised. After baseball, the shining domes were the top news. Shining domes
had been seen in twelve states. Some vibrated with a strange sound. They came
in all colors and sizes. One had strange writing on it. One was transparent,
and there were big green men and women inside. I caught a women's mid-morning
quiz show, and the M.C. kept gagging about the domes. One crack I remember was
a switch on the "pointed-head" joke. He made it "dome-shaped
head," and the ladies in the audience laughed until they nearly burst.
We
stopped in Little Rock for gas, and I picked up a couple of afternoon papers.
The domes got banner heads on both of them. One carried the World Wireless
lead? and had slapped in the bulletin on the disappearance of the domes. The
other paper wasn't a World Wireless client, but between its other services and
"special correspondents"phone calls to the general store at Rush
Cityit had kept practically abreast of us. Both papers had shining dome
cartoons on their editorial pages, hastily drawn and slapped in. One paper,
anti-administration, showed the President cautiously reaching out a finger to
touch the dome of the Capitol, which was rendered as a shining dome and
labeled: "shining dome of congressional immunity to executive
dictatorship." A little man labeled "Mr. and Mrs. Plain,
Self-Respecting Citizens of The United States of America" was in one
corner of the cartoon saying: "CAREFUL, MR. PRESIDENT! REMEMBER WHAT
HAPPENED TO PINKNEY CRAWLES!!"
The
other paper, pro-administration, showed a shining dome that had the President's
face. A band of fat little men in Prince Albert coats, string ties, and
broad-brimmed hats labeled "congressional smear artists and
Hatchet-Men" were creeping up on the dome with the President's face, their
hands reached out as if to strangle. Above the cartoon a cutline said:
"WHOÅ‚S GOING TO GET HURT?"
We
landed at Omaha, and I checked into the office. Things were clicking right
along. The clients were happily gobbling up our dome copy and sending wires
asking for more. I dug into the morgue for the "Flying Disc" folder,
and the "Huron Turtle" and the "Bayou Vampire" and a few
others even further back. I spread out the old clippings and tried to shuffle
and arrange them into some kind of underlying sense. I picked up the latest
dispatch to come out of the tie-line printer from Western Union. It was from
our man in Owosso, Michigan, and told how Mrs. Lettie Overholtzer, age 61, saw
a shining dome in her own kitchen at midnight. It grew like a soap bubble until
it was as big as her refrigerator, and then disappeared.
I
went over to the desk man and told him: "Let's have a downhold on stuff
like Lettie Overholtzer. We can move a sprinkling of it, but I don't want to
run this into the ground. Those things might turn up again, and then we
wouldn't have any room left to play around with them. We'll have everybody's
credulity used up."
He
looked mildly surprised. "You mean," he asked, "there really was
something there?"
"I
don't know. Maybe. I didn't see anything myself, and the only man down there I
trust can't make up his mind. Anyhow, hold it down as far as the clients let
us."
I
went home to get some sleep. When I went back to work, I found the clients
hadn't let us work the downhold after all. Nobody at the other wire services
seemed to believe seriously that there had been anything out of the ordinary at
Rush City, so they merrily pumped out solemn stories like the Lettie
Overholtzer item, and wirefoto maps of locations where domes were reported, and
tabulations of number of domes reported.
We
had to string along. Our Washington bureau badgered the Pentagon and the
A.E.C. into issuing statements, and there was a race between a Navy and an Air
Force investigating mission to see who could get to Rush City first. After they
got there there was a race to see who could get the first report out. The Air
Force won that contest. Before the week was out, "Domies" had
appeared. They were hats for juvenilesshining-dome skull caps molded from a
transparent plastic. We had to ride with it. I'd started the mania, but it was
out of hand and a long tune dying down.
The
World Series, the best in years, finally killed off the domes. By an unspoken
agreement among the services, we simply stopped running stories every time a
hysterical woman thought she saw a dome or wanted to get her name in the paper.
And, of course, when there was no longer publicity to be had for the asking,
people stopped seeing domes. There was no percentage in it. Brooklyn won the
Series, international tension climbed as the thermometer dropped, burglars
began burgling again, and a bulky folder labeled "domes, shining,"
went into our morgue. The shining domes were history, and earnest graduate
students in psychology would shortly begin to bother us with requests to borrow
that folder.
The
only thing that had come of it, I thought, was that we had somehow got through
another summer without too much idle wire time, and that Ed Benson and I had
struck up a casual correspondence.
A
newsman's strange and weary year wore on. Baseball gave way to football. An
off-year election kept us on the run. Christmas loomed ahead, with its feature
stories and its kickers about Santa Claus, Indiana. Christmas passed, and we
began to clear jolly stories about New Year hangovers, and tabulate the great
news stories of the year. New Year's day, a ghastly ratrace of covering 103
bowl games. Record snowfalls in the Great Plains and Rockies. Spring floods in Ohio and the Columbia River Valley. Twenty-one tasty Lenten menus, and Holy Week around the
world. Baseball again, Daylight Saving Time, Mother's Day, Derby Day, the
Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.
It
was about then that a disturbing letter arrived from Benson. I was concerned
not about its subject matter but because I thought no sane man would write such
a thing. It seemed to me that Benson was slipping his trolley. All he said was
that he expected a repeat performance of the domes, or of something like the
domes. He said "they" probably found the tryout a smashing success
and would continue according to plan. I replied cautiously, which amused him.
He
wrote back: "I wouldn't put myself out on a limb like this if I had
anything to lose by it, but you know my station in life. It was just an
intelligent guess, based on a study of power politics and Aesop's fables. And
if it does happen, you'll find it a trifle harder to put over, won't you?"
I
guessed he was kidding me, but I wasn't certain. When people begin to talk
about "them" and what "they" are doing, it's a bad sign.
But, guess or not, something pretty much like the domes did turn up in late
July, during a crushing heat wave.
This
time it was big black spheres rolling across the countryside.
The
spheres were seen by a Baptist congregation in central Kansas which had met in
a prairie to pray for rain. About eighty Baptists took their Bible oaths that
they saw large black spheres some ten feet high, rolling along the prairie.
They had passed within five yards of one man. The rest had run from them as
soon as they could take in the fact that they really were there.
World
Wireless didn't break that story, but we got on it fast enough as soon as we
were tipped. Being now the recognized silly season authority in the W.W.
Central Division, I took off for Kansas.
It
was much the way it had been in Arkansas. The Baptists really thought they had
seen the thingswith one exception. The exception was an old gentleman with a
patriarchal beard. He had been the one man who hadn't run, the man the objects
passed nearest to. He was blind. He told me with a great deal of heat that he
would have known all about it, blind or not, if any large spheres had rolled
within five yards of him, or twenty-five for that matter.
Old
Mr. Emerson didn't go into the matter of air currents and turbulence, as
Benson had. With him, it was all well below the surface. He took the position
that the Lord had removed his sight, and in return had given him another sense
which would do for emergency use.
"You
just try me out, son!" he piped angrily. "You come stand over here,
wait a while and put your hand up in front of my face. IÅ‚ll tell you when you
do it, no matter how quiet you are!" He did it, too, three times, and then
took me out into the main street of his little prairie town. There were several
wagons drawn up before the grain elevator, and he put on a show for me by
threading his way around and between them without touching once.
Thatand
Bensonseemed to prove that whatever the things were, they had some connection
with the domes. I filed a thoughtful dispatch on the blind-man angle, and got
back to Omaha to find that it had been cleared through our desk but killed in New York before relay.
We
tried to give the black spheres the usual ride, but it didn't last as long. The
political cartoonists tired of it sooner, and fewer old maids saw them. People
got to jeering at them as newspaper hysteria, and a couple of highbrow
magazines ran articles on "the irresponsible press." Only the radio
comedians tried to milk the new mania as usual, but they were disconcerted to
find their ratings fall. A network edict went out to kill all sphere gags.
People were getting sick of them.
"It
makes sense," Benson wrote to me. "An occasional exercise of the
sense of wonder is refreshing, but it can't last forever. That plus the
ingrained American cynicism toward all sources of public information has
worked against the black spheres being greeted with the same naive delight with
which the domes were received. Nevertheless, I predictand I'll thank you to
remember that my predictions have been right so far 100 per cent of the
timethat next summer will see another mystery comparable to the domes and the
black things. And I also predict that the new phenomenon will be imperceptible
to any blind person in the immediate vicinity, if there should be any."
If,
of course, he was wrong this time, it would only cut his average down to fifty
per cent. I managed to wait out the yearthe same interminable round I felt I
could do in my sleep. Staffers got ulcers and resigned, staffers got tired and
were fired, libel suits were filed and settled, one of our desk men got a
Nieman Fellowship and went to Harvard, one of our telegraphers got his working
hand mashed in a car door and jumped from a bridge but lived with a broken
back.
In
mid-August, when the weather bureau had been correctly predicting "fair
and warmer" for sixteen straight days, it turned up. It wasn't anything on
whose nature a blind man could provide a negative check, but it had what I had
come to think of as "their" trademark.
A
summer seminar was meeting outdoors, because of the frightful heat, at our own State University. Twelve trained school teachers testified that a series of perfectly
circular pits opened up in the grass before them, one directly under the
education professor teaching the seminar. They testified further that the
professor, with an astonished look and a heart-rending cry, plummeted down into
that perfectly circular pit. They testified further that the pits remained there
for some thirty seconds and then suddenly were there no longer. The scorched
summer grass was back where it had been, the pits were gone, and so was the
professor.
I
interviewed every one of them. They weren't yokels, but grown men and women,
all with Masters' degrees, working toward their doctorates during the summers.
They agreed closely on their stories as I would expect trained and capable
persons to do.
The
police, however, did not expect agreement, being used to dealing with the
lower-I.Q. brackets. They arrested the twelve on some technical
charge"obstructing peace officers in the performance of their
duties," I believeand were going to beat the living hell out of them when
an attorney arrived with twelve writs of habeas corpus. The cops' unvoiced
suspicion was that the teachers had conspired to murder their professor, but
nobody ever tried to explain why they'd do a thing like that.
The
cops' reaction was typical of the way the public took it. Newspaperswhich had
reveled wildly in the shining domes story and less so in the black spheres
storywere cautious. Some went overboard and gave the black pits a ride, in
the old style, but they didn't pick up any sales that way. People declared that
the press was insulting their intelligence, and also they were bored with
marvels.
The
few papers who played up the pits were soundly spanked in very dignified
editorials printed by other sheets which played down the pits.
At
World Wireless, we sent out a memo to all stringers: "File no more
enterpriser dispatches on black pit story. Mail queries should be sent to
regional desk if a new angle breaks in your territory." We got about ten
mail queries, mostly from journalism students acting as string men, and we
turned them all down. All the older hands got the pitch, and didn't bother to
file it to us when the town drunk or the village old maid loudly reported that
she saw a pit open up on High Street across from the drug store. They knew it
was probably untrue, and that furthermore nobody cared.
I
wrote Benson about all this, and humbly asked him what his prediction for next
summer was. He replied, obviously having the time of his life, that there would
be at least one more summer phenomenon like the last three, and possibly two
morebut none after that.
It's
so easy now to reconstruct, with our bitterly earned knowledge!
Any
youngster could whisper now of Benson: "Why, the damned fool! Couldn't
anybody with the brains of a louse see that they wouldn't keep it up for two
years?" One did whisper that to me the other day, when I told this story
to him. And I whispered back that, far from being a damned fool, Benson was the
one person on the face of the earth, as far as I know, who had bridged with
logic the widely separated phenomena with which this reminiscence deals.
Another
year passed. I gained three pounds, drank too much, rowed incessantly with my
staff, and got a tidy raise. A telegrapher took a swing at me midway through
the office Christmas party, and I fired him. My wife and the kids didn't arrive
in April when I expected them. I phoned Florida, and she gave me some excuse
or other about missing the plane. After a few more missed planes and a few more
phone calls, she got around to telling me that she didn't want to come back.
That was okay with me. In my own intuitive way, I knew that the upcoming silly
season was more important than who stayed married to whom.
In
July, a dispatch arrived by wire while a new man was working the night desk. It
was from Hood River, Oregon. Our stringer there reported that more than one
hundred "green capsules" about fifty yards long had appeared in and
around an apple orchard. The new desk man was not so new that he did not recall
the downhold policy on silly-season items. He killed it, but left it on the
spike for my amused inspection in the morning. I suppose exactly the same thing
happened in every wire service newsroom in the region. I rolled in at 10:30 and
riffled through the stuff on the spike. When I saw the "green
capsules" dispatch I tried to phone Portland, but couldn't get a
connection. Then the phone buzzed and a correspondent of ours in Seattle began to yell at me, but the line went dead.
I
shrugged and phoned Benson, in Fort Hicks. He was at the police station, and
asked me: "Is this it?"
"It
is," I told him. I read him the telegram from Hood River and told him
about the line trouble to Seattle.
"So,"
he said wonderingly, "I called the turn, didn't I?"
"Called
what turn?"
"On
the invaders. I don't know who they arebut it's the story of the boy who cried
wolf. Only this time, the wolves realized" Then the phone went dead.
But
he was right.
The
people of the world were the sheep.
We
newsmenradio, TV, press, and wire serviceswere the boy, who should have been
ready to sound the alarm.
But
the cunning wolves had tricked us into sounding the alarm so many times that
the villagers were weary, and would not come when there was real peril.
The
wolves who then were burning their way through the Ozarks, utterly without
opposition, the wolves were the Martians under whose yoke and lash we now
endure our miserable existences.
The Remorseful
one of the things that most attracts me to
science fiction is its capacity
to give what Harlow Shapley calls "the
view from a distant star," the perspective
on our humanity through the eyes of nonhumans.
The Remorseful strikes me as a fine example
of this, but if I said I remembered it primarily for this quality I would be lying to you. The memory has to do
with censorship. When he wrote the story, Cyril had a line in the first
paragraph that said "he masturbated
incessantly." The editor who
published it, after'great soul-searching, deferred to the prudery of
the time and changed "masturbated"
to "brooded." Well, times have changed. If Cyril were alive today and an editor so peremptorily altered his meaning, I think he would punch the clod in the head. I know I would, and
so I am pleased here, for the first time in print, to restore Cyril's original
language to the story. On the other hand, I know just how the original editor felt when he made the change, because
he was me.
It does not matter when it happened. This is because he
was alone and time
had ceased to have any meaning for him. At first he had searched the rubble for other
survivors, which kept him busy for a couple
of years. Then he wandered across the continent in great, vague quarterings, but the plane one day would
not take off and he knew he would never find anybody anyway. He was by then in
his forties, and a kind of sexual
delirium overcame him. He searched out and
pored over pictures of women, preferring leggy, high-breasted types. They haunted his dreams; he masturbated
incessantly with closed eyes, tears leaking from them and running down his
filthy bearded face. One day that
phase ended for no reason and he took up
his wanderings again, on foot. North in the summer, south in the winter on weed-grown U.S. 1, with the haversack
of pork and beans on his shoulders,
usually talking as he trudged, sometimes singing.
It does not matter when it happened. This is because the Visitors
were eternal; endless time stretched before them and behind, which mentions
only two of the infinities of infinities that their "lives" included.
Precisely when they arrived at a particular planetary system was to them the most trivial of irrelevancies.
Eternity was theirs; eventually they would
have arrived at all of them.
They had won eternity in the only practical way: by
outnumbering it. Each of the Visitors was a billion lives as you are a billion
lives the billion
lives, that is, of your cells. But your cells have made the mistake of
specializing. Some of them can only contract and relax. Some can only strain urea from
your blood. Some can only load, carry, and unload oxygen. Some can only transmit minute
electrical pulses and others can only manufacture chemicals in a desperate attempt to keep the impossible
Rube Goldberg mechanism that you are from breaking down. They never succeed and you always do.
Perhaps before you
break down some of your specialized cells unite with somebody else's specialized
cells and grow into another impossible, doomed contraption.
The Visitors were more sensibly arranged. Their billion
lives were not cells
but small, unspecialized, insect-like creatures linked by an electromagnetic field subtler
than the coarse grapplings that hold you together. Each of the billion creatures that made up a
Visitor could live
and carry tiny weights, could manipulate tiny power tools, could carry in its small round black
head, enough brain cells to feed, mate, breed, and workand a few million more brain cells that
were pooled into the
field which made up the Visitor's consciousness.
When one of the insects died there were no rites; it was
matter-of-factly
pulled to pieces and eaten by its neighboring insects while it was still fresh. It mattered no
more to the Visitor than the growing of your hair does to you, and the growing of your hair is
accomplished only by
the deaths of countless cells.
"Maybe on Mars!" he shouted as he trudged. The
haversack jolted a
shoulder blade and he arranged a strap without breaking his stride. Birds screamed and scattered in
the dark pine forests as he roared at them:
"Well, why not? There must of been ten thousand up there easy. Progress, God damn it! That's progress, man!
Never thought it'd come in my time.
But you'd think they would of sent a ship back by now so a man wouldn't feel so all alone. You know better than that, man. You know God damned good and well it
happened up there too. We had
Northern Semisphere, they had Southern Semisphere, so you know God
damned good and well what happened up there. Semisphere?
Hemisphere. Hemi-semi-demisphere."
That was a good one, the best one he'd come across in
years. He roared it
out as he went stumping along.
When he got tired of it he roared: "You should of been
in the Old Old Army, man. We didn't go in for this Liberty Unlimited
crock in the Old-Old
Army. If you wanted to march in step with somebody else you marched in step with somebody else,
man. None of this crock about you march out
of step or twenty lashes from the sergeant for limiting your liberty."
That was a good one too, but it made him a little uneasy.
He tried to remember whether he had been
in the army or had just heard about it. He
realized in time that a storm was blowing up from his depths; unless he headed it off he would soon be
sprawled on the broken concrete of
U.S. 1, sobbing and beating his head with his fists. He went back hastily to Sem-isphere,
flem-isphere, Hem-i-sem-i-de/n-isphere,
roaring it at the scared birds as he trudged.
There were four Visitors aboard the ship when it entered
the planetary system. One of them was
left on a cold outer planet rich in metal
outcrops to establish itself in a billion tiny shelters, build a billion tiny forges, and eventuallyin a thousand
years or a million; it made no
differenceconstruct a space ship, fission into two or more Visitors for
company, and go Visiting. The ship had been getting crowded; as more and more information was acquired in its voyaging it was necessary for the swarms to increase in
size, breeding more insects to store
the new facts.
The three remaining Visitors turned the prow of their
ship toward an
intermediate planet and made a brief, baffling stop there. It was uninhabited
except for about ten thousand entitiesfar fewer than one would expect, and certainly
not enough for an efficient first-contact study. The Visitors made for the next planet sunward
after only the sketchiest observation. And yet that sketchy observation of the entities left them figuratively shaking their heads.
Since the Visitors had no genitals they were in a sense without
emotionsbut you would have said a vague
air of annoyance hung over the ship nevertheless.
They ruminated the odd facts that the entities had
levitated, appeared
at the distance of observation to be insubstantial, appeared at the distance of observation
to be unaware of the Visitors. When you are
a hundred-yard rippling black carpet moving across a strange land, when the
dwellers in this land soar aimlessly about you and above you, you expect to surprise, perhaps to frighten at first, and at least to provoke curiosity. You do not expect to
be ignored.
They reserved judgment pending analysis of the sunward
planet's entitiespossibly
colonizing entities, which would explain the sparseness of the outer planet's
population, though not its indifference.
They landed.
He woke and drank water from a roadside ditch. There had
been a time when water was the problem. You put three drops of iodine in
a canteen. Or you boiled it if you weren't too weak from dysentery. Or you scooped it from the tank of
a flush toilet in the isolated farmhouse with the farmer and his wife and
their kids downstairs grotesquely staring with their empty eye sockets at the television screen for the long-ago-spoken latest word.
Disease or dust or shattering supersonics broadcast from the bullhorn of a low-skimming drone what did it matter? Safe water
was what mattered.
"But
hell," he roared, "it's all good now. Hear that? The rain in the ditches, the standing water in the pools,
it's all good now. You should have
been Lonely Man back when the going was bad, fella, when the bullhorns still came over and the stiffs
shook when they did and Lonely Man didn't die but he wished he could . .
."
This time the storm took him unaware and was long in
passing. His hands
were ragged from flailing the-broken concrete and his eyes were so swollen with weeping
that he could hardly see to shoulder his sack
of cans. He stumbled often that morning. Once he fell and opened an old scar on his forehead, but not even
that interrupted his steady, mumbling chant: "Tain't no boner,
'tain't no blooper; Corey's Gin brings
super stupor. We shall conquer; we will win. Back our boys with Corey's Gin. Wasting time in war is
sinful; black out fast with a Corey
skinful."
They landed.
Five thousand insects of each "life" heaved on
fifteen thousand wires to open the port and let down the landing ramp. While
they heaved a few
hundred felt the pangs of death on them. They communicated the minute
all-they-knew to blank-minded standby youngsters, died, and were eaten. Other hundreds stopped
heaving briefly, gave
birth, and resumed heaving.
The three Visitors swarmed down the ramp, three living
black carpets. For
maximum visibility they arranged themselves in three thin black lines which advanced slowly
over the rugged terrain. At the tip of each line a few of the insects occasionally strayed
too far from their
connecting files and dropped out of the "life" field. These staggered in purposeless circles.
Some blundered back into the field; some did not and died, leaving a minute hiatus in the
"life's" memory perhaps the shape of the full-stop" symbol in the written language
of a planet long ago
visited, long ago dust. Normally the thin line was not used for exploring any but the
smoothest terrain; the fact that they took a small calculated risk was a
measure of the Visitors' slightly irked curiosity.
With three billion faceted eyes the Visitors saw
immediately that this
was no semi-deserted world, and that furthermore it was probably the world which had colonized
the puzzling outer planet. Entities were everywhere; the air was thick with them in some
places. There were
numerous artifacts, all in ruins. Here the entities of the planet clustered, but here the bafflement
deepened. The artifacts were all decidedly material and ponderousbut the entities were
insubstantial. Coarsely organized observers would not have perceived them
consistently. They
existed in a field similar to the organization field of the Visitors. Their bodies were
constructs of wave trains rather than atoms. It was impossible to imagine them manipulating the
materials of which
the artifacts were composed.
And as before, the Visitors were ignored.
Deliberately they clustered themselves in three huge black
balls, with the
object of being as obstreperous as possible and also to mobilize their field strength for a
brute-force attempt at communication with the annoying creatures. By this tune their
attitude approximated: "We'll
show these bastards!"
They didn'tnot after running up and down every spectrum
of thought in which
they could project. Their attempt at reception was more successful, and completely
horrifying. A few weak, attenuated messages did come through to the Visitors. They revealed
the entities of the
planet to be dull, whimpering cravens, whining evasively, bleating with self-pity. Though
there were only two sexes among them, a situation which leads normally to a rather weak
sex drive as such
things go in the cosmos, these wispy things vibrated with libido which it was quite impossible for
them to discharge.
The Visitors, thoroughly repelled, were rippling back
toward their ship
when one signaled: notice and hide.
The three great black carpets abruptly vanishedthat is,
each insect found
itself a cranny to disappear into, a pebble or leaf to be on the other side of. Some hope
flared that the visit might be productive of a more pleasant contact than the
last with those aimless, chittering cretins.
The thing stumping across the terrain toward them was
like and unlike the
wave-train cretins. It had their conformation but was material rather than undulatory in
naturea puzzle that could wait. It appeared to have no contact with the wave-train life
form. They soared
and darted about it as it approached, but it ignored them. It passed once through a group of
three who happened to be on the ground in its way.
Tentatively the three Visitors reached out into its
mind. The thoughts
were comparatively clear and steady.
When the figure had passed the Visitors chorused: Agreed,
and headed back
to their ship. There was nothing there for them. Among other things they had drawn from
the figure's mind was the location of a ruined library; a feeble-minded working party of a
million was dispatched
to it.
Back at the ship they waited, unhappily ruminating the
creature's foreground
thoughts: "From Corey's Gin you get the charge to tote that bale and lift that barge.
That's progress, God damn it. You know better than that, man. Liberty Unlimited for the Lonely
Man, but it be nice to see that Mars ship land. . ."
Agreement: Despite all previous experience it seems
that a sentient race is capable of destroying itself.
When the feeble-minded library detail returned and
gratefully reunited itself with its parent "lives" they studied the
magnetic tapes it had brought, reading them direct in the cans. They learned
the name of the
planet and the technical name for the wave-train entities which had inherited it and which would
shortly be its sole proprietors. The solid life forms, it seemed, had not been totally
unaware of them, though
there was some confusion: Far the vaster section of the library denied that they existed at
all. But in the cellular minds of the Visitors there could be no doubt that the creatures
described in a neglected
few of the library's lesser works were the ones they had encountered. Everything tallied.
Their non-material quality; their curious reaction to light. And, above all,
their dominant personality trait, of remorse, repentance, furious regret. The technical
term that the books
gave to them was: ghosts.
The Visitors worked ship, knowing that the taste of this
world and its colony
would soon be out of what passed for their collective mouths, rinsed clean by new
experiences and better-organized entities.
But they had never left a solar system so gratefully or
so fast.
Gomez
new york was
not always a nightmare city, and Cyril (as did I) loved to ramble around the
neighborhoods. We rambled a lot of them together, but where my particular turf
was Brooklyn his was uptown Manhattan, including the Spanish-speaking
neighborhoods. He had an observant eye, and also a listening ear, which he
sharpened up in neighborhood bars. I don't know who Julio wasbarman? delivery boy? numbers runner?but I
know where Cyril found him: sitting on a stool, with an elbow on the mahogany,
talking about baseball or why the Mayor of New York was clearly insane.
Now
that I'm a cranky, constipated old man I can afford to say that the younger
generation of scientists makes me sick to my stomach. Short-order fry cooks of
destruction, they hear through the little window the dim order: "Atom bomb
rare, with cobalt sixty!" and sing it back and rattle their stinking
skillets and sling the deadly hashjust what the customer ordered, with never a
notion invading their smug, too-heated havens that there's a small matter of
right and wrong that takes precedence even over their haute cuisine.
There
used to be a slew of them who yelled to high heaven about it. Weiner, Urey,
Szilard, Morrisondead now, and worse. Unfashionable. The greatest of them you
have never heard of. Admiral MacDonald never did clear the story. He was Julio
Gomez, and his story was cleared yesterday by a fellow my Jewish friends call
Malach Hamovis, the Hovering Angel of Death. A black-bordered letter from Rosa advised me that Malach Hamovis had come in on runway six with his flaps down and
picked up Julio at the age of thirty-nine. Pneumonia.
"But,"
Rosa painfully wrote, "Julio would want you to know he died not too
unhappy, after a good though short life with much of satisfaction . . ."
I
think it will give him some more satisfaction, wherever he is, to know that his
story at last is getting told.
It
started twenty-two years ago with a routine assignment on a crisp October
morning. I had an appointment with Dr. Sugarman, the head of the physics
department at the University. It was the umpth anniversary of something or
otherfirst atomic pile, the test A-bomb, NagasakiI don't remember what, and
the Sunday editor was putting together a page on it. My job was to interview
the three or four University people who were Manhattan District grads.
I
found Sugarman in his office at the top of the modest physics building's square
gothic tower, brooding through a pointed-arch window at the bright autumn sky.
He was a tubby, jowly little fellow. I'd been seeing him around for a couple of
years at testimonial banquets and press conferences, but I didn't expect him to
remember me. He did, though, and even got the name right.
"Mr.
Vilchek?" he beamed. "From the Tribune?"
"That's
right, Dr. Sugarman. How are you?"
"Fine;
fine. Sit down, please. Well, what shall we talk about?"
"Well,
Dr. Sugarman, I'd like to have your ideas on the really fundamental issues of
atomic energy, A-bomb control and so on. What in your opinion is the single
most important factor in these problems?"
His
eyes twinkled; he was going to surprise me. "Education!" he said, and
leaned back waiting for me to register shock.
I
registered. "That's certainly a different approach, doctor. How do you
mean that, exactly?"
He
said impressively: "Educationtechnical educationis the key to the
underlying issues of our time. I am deeply concerned over the unawareness of
the general public to the meaning and accomplishments of science. People
underrate meunderrate science, that is because they do not understand
science. Let me show you something." He rummaged for a moment through
papers on his desk and handed me a sheet of lined tablet paper covered with
chicken-track handwriting. "A letter I got," he said. I squinted at
the penciled scrawl and read:
October
12
Esteemed
Sir:
Beg
to introduce self to you the atomic Scientist as a youth 17 working with
diligence to perfect self in Mathematical Physics. The knowledge of English is
imperfect since am in New-York 1 year only from Puerto Rico and due to Father
and Mother poverty must wash the dishes in the restaurant. So es teemed sir
excuse imperfect English which will better.
I
hesitate intruding your valuable Scientist time but hope you sometime spare
minutes for diligents such as I. My difficulty is with neutron cross-section
absorptionof boron steel in Reactor which theory I am working out Breeder
reactors demand
for
boron steel, compared with neutron cross-section absorption of
for
any Concrete with which I familiarize myself. Whence arises relationship
indicating
only a fourfold breeder gain. Intuitively I dissatisfy with this gain and beg
to intrude your time to ask wherein I neglect. With the most sincere thanks.
J.
Gomez
%
Porto Bello Lunchroom
124th St. & St. Nicholas Ave.
New-York,
New-York
I
laughed and told Dr. Sugarman appreciatively: "That's a good one. I wish
our cranks kept in touch with us by mail, but they don't. In the newspaper
business they come in-and demand to see the editor. Could I use it, by the way?
The readers ought to get a boot out of it."
He
hesitated and said: "All rightif you don't use my name. Just say 'a
prominent physicist.' I didn't think it was too funny myself though, but I see
your point, of course. The boy may be feeblemindedand he probably isbut he
believes, like too many people, that science is just a bag of tricks that any
ordinary person can acquire"
And
so on and so on.
I
went back to the office and wrote the interview in twenty minutes. It took me
longer than that to talk the Sunday editor into running the Gomez letter in a
box on the atom-anniversary page, but he finally saw it my way. I had to retype
it. If I'd just sent the letter down to the composing room as was, we would
have had a strike on our hands.
On
Sunday morning, at a quarter past six, I woke up to the tune of fists
thundering on my hotel-room door. I found my slippers and bathrobe-and lurched
Wearily across the room. They didn't wait for me to unlatch. The door opened. I
saw one of the hotel clerks, the Sunday editor, a frosty-faced old man, and
three hard-faced, hard-eyed young men. The hotel clerk mumbled and retreated
and the others moved in. "Chief," I asked the Sunday editor hazily,
"what's going?"
A
hard-faced young man was standing with his back to the door; another was
standing with his back to the window and the third was blocking the bathroom
door. The icy old man interrupted me with a crisp authoritative question
snapped at the editor. "You identify this man as Vilchek?"
The
editor nodded.
"Search
him," snapped the old man. The fellow standing guard at the window slipped
up and frisked me for weapons while I sputtered incoherently and the Sunday
editor avoided my eye.
When
the search was over the frosty-faced old boy said to me: "I am Rear
Admiral MacDonald, Mr. Vilchek. I'm here in my capacity as deputy director of
the Office of Security and Intelligence, U. S. Atomic Energy Commission. Did
you write this?" He thrust a newspaper clipping at my face.
I
read, blearily:
WHAT'S
SO TOUGH ABOUT A-SCIENCE?
TEENAGE
POT-WASHER DOESN'T KNOW
A
letter received recently by a prominent local atomic scientist points up Dr.
Sugarman's complaint (see adjoining column) that the public does not appreciate
how hard a physicist works. The text, complete with "mathematics"
follows:
Esteemed
Sir:
Beg
to introduce self to you the Atomic Scientist as youth 17 working
"Yes,"
I told the admiral. "I wrote it, except for the headline. What about
it?"
He
snapped: "The letter is purportedly from a New York youth seeking
information, yet there is no address for him given. Why is that?"
I
said patiently: "I left it off when I copied it for the composing room.
That's Trib style on readers' letters. What is all this
about?"
He
ignored the question and asked: "Where is the purported original of the
letter?"
I
thought hard and told him: "I think I stuck it in my pants pocket. I'll
get it" I started for the chair with my suit draped over it.
"Hold
it, mister!" said the young man
at the bathroom door. I held it and he proceeded to go through the pockets of
the suit. He found the Gomez letter in the inside breast pocket of the coat and
passed it to the admiral. The old man compared it, word for word, with the
clipping and then put them both in his pocket.
"I
want to thank you for your cooperation," he said coldly to me and the
Sunday editor. "I caution you not to discuss, and above all not to
publish, any account of this incident. The national security is involved in the
highest degree. Good day."
He
and his boys started for the door, and the Sunday editor came to life.
"Admiral," he said, "this is going to be on the front page of
tomorrow's Trib."
The
admiral went white. After a long pause he said: "You are aware that this
country may be plunged, into global war at any moment. That American boys are
dying every day in border skirmishes. Is it to protect civilians like you who
won't obey a reasonable request affecting security?"
The
Sunday editor took a seat on the edge of my rumpled bed and lit a cigarette.
"I know all that, admiral," he said. "I also know that this is a
free country and how to keep it that way. Pitiless light on incidents like this
of illegal search and seizure."
The
admiral said: "I personally assure you, on my honor as an officer, that
you would be doing the country a grave disservice by publishing an account of
this."
The
Sunday editor said mildly: "Your honor as an officer. You broke into this
room without a search warrant. Don't you realize that's against the law? And I
saw your boy ready to shoot when Vilchek started for that chair." I began
to sweat a little at that, but the admiral was sweating harder.
With
an effort he said: "I should apologize for the abruptness and discourtesy
with which I've treated you. I do apologize. My only excuse is that, as I've
said, this is a crash-priority matter. May I have your assurance that you
gentlemen will keep silent?"
"On
one condition," said the Sunday editor. "I want the Trib to
have an exclusive on the Gomez story. I want Mr. Vilchek to cover it, with your
full cooperation. In return, we'll hold it for your release and submit it to
your security censorship."
"It's
a deal," said the admiral, sourly. He seemed to realize suddenly that the
Sunday editor had been figuring on such a deal all along.
On
the plane for New York, the admiral filled me in. He was precise and unhappy,
determined to make the best of a bad job. "I was awakened at three this
morning by a phone call from the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. He
had been awakened by a call from Dr. Monroe of the Scientific Advisory
Committee. Dr. Monroe had been up late working and sent out for the Sunday Tribune
to read before going to sleep. He saw the Gomez letter and went off like a
sixteen-inch rifle. The neutron cross-section absorption relationship expressed
in it happens to be, Mr. Vilchek, his own work. It also happens to be one of
the nation's most closely guardederatomic secrets. Presumably this Gomez
stumbled on it somehow, as a janitor or something of the sort, and is
feeding his ego by pretending to be an atomic scientist."
I
scratched my unshaved jaw. "Admiral," I said, "you wouldn't kid
me? How can three equations be a top atomic secret?"
The
admiral hesitated. "All I can tell you," he said slowly, "is
that breeder reactors are involved."
"But
the letter said that. You mean this Gomez not only swiped the equations but
knew what they were about?"
The
admiral said grimly: "Somebody has been incredibly lax. It would be worth
many divisions to the Soviet for their man Kapitza to see those equationsand
realize that they are valid."
He
left me to chew that one over for a while as the plane droned over New Jersey. Finally the pilot called back: "E.T.A. five minutes, sir. We have landing
priority at Newark."
"Good,"
said the admiral. "Signal for a civilian-type car to pick us up without
loss of time."
"Civilian,"
I said.
"Of
course civilian!" he snapped. "That's the hell of it. Above all we
must not arouse suspicion that there is anything special or unusual about this
Gomez or his letter. Copies of the Tribune are on their way to the
Soviet now as a matter of routinethey take all American papers and magazines
they can get. If we tried to stop shipment of Tribunes that would be an
immediate giveaway that there was something of importance going on."
We
landed and the five of us got into a late-model car, neither drab nor flashy.
One of the admiral's young men relieved the driver, a corporal with Signal
Corps insignia. There wasn't much talk during the drive from Newark to Spanish
Harlem, New York. Just once the admiral lit a cigarette, but he flicked it
through the window after a couple of nervous puffs.
The
Porto Bello Lunchroom was a store-front restaurant in the middle of a shabby
tenement block. Wide-eyed, graceful, skinny little kids stared as our car
parked in front of it and then converged on us purposefully. "Watch your
car, mister?" they begged. The admiral surprised themand mewith a flood
of Spanish that sent the little extortionists scattering back to their
stickball game in the street and their potsy layouts chalked on the sidewalks.
"Higgins,"
said the admiral, "see if there's a back exit." One of his boys got
out and walked around the block under the dull, incurious eyes of black-shawled
women sitting on their stoops. He was back hi five minutes, shaking his head.
"Vilchek
and I will go in," said the admiral. "Higgins, stand by the
restaurant door and tackle anyone who comes flying out. Let's go, reporter. And
remember that I do the talking."
The
noon-hour crowd at the Porto Bello's ten tables looked up at us when we came
in. The admiral said to a woman at a primitive cashier's table: "Nueva
York Board of Health, seńora."
"Ah!"
she muttered angrily. "For favor, no aquí! In back, understand?
Come." She beckoned a pretty waitress to take over at the cash drawer and
led us into the steamy little kitchen. It was crowded with us, an old cook, and
a young dishwasher. The admiral and the woman began a rapid exchange of
Spanish. He played his part well. I myself couldn't keep my eyes off the kid
dishwasher who somehow or other had got hold of one of America's top atomic secrets.
Gomez
was seventeen, but he looked fifteen. He was small-boned and lean, with skin
the color of bright Virginia tobacco in an English cigarette. His hair was
straight and glossy-black and a little long. Every so often he wiped his hands
on his apron and brushed it back from his damp forehead. He was working like
hell, dipping and swabbing and rinsing and drying like a machine, but he didn't
look pushed or angry. He wore a half-smile that I later found out was his
normal, relaxed expression and his eyes were far away from the kitchen of the
Porto Bello Lunchroom. The elderly cook was making it clear by the exaggerated
violence of his gesture and a savage frown that he resented these people
invading his territory. I don't think Gomez even knew we were there. A sudden,
crazy idea came into my head.
The
admiral had turned to him. "Como se llama, chico?"
He
started and put down the dish he was wiping. "Julio Gomez, seńor. Porque, par favor? Que pasa?"
He
wasn't the least bit scared.
"Nueva
York Board of Health," said the
admiral. "Con su permiso" He took Gomez's hands in his and
looked at them gravely, front and back, making tsk-tsk noises. Then, decisively: "Vamanos, Julio.
Siento mucho. Usted esta muy enjermo." Everybody started talking at once, the woman doubtless objecting to the
slur on her restaurant and the cook to losing his dishwasher and Gomez to
losing time from the job.
The
admiral gave them broadside for broadside and outlasted them. In five minutes
we were leading Gomez silently from the restaurant. "La lotería!" a
woman customer said in a loud whisper. "O las mutas," somebody
said back. Arrested for policy or marihuana, they thought. The pretty waitress
at the cashier's table looked stricken and said nervously: "Julio?"
as we passed, but he didn't notice.
Gomez
sat in the car with the half-smile on his lips and his eyes a million miles
away as we rolled downtown to Foley Square. The admiral didn't look as though
he'd approve of any questions from me. We got out at the Federal Building and Gomez spoke at last. He said in surprise: "This, it is not the
hospital!"
Nobody
answered. We marched him up the steps and surrounded him in the elevator. It
would have made anybody nervousit would, have made me nervousto be
herded like that; everybody's got something on his conscience. But the kid
didn't even seem to notice. I decided that he must be a half-wit orthere came
that crazy notion again.
The
glass door said "U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Office of Security and
Intelligence." The people behind it were flabbergasted when the admiral
and party walked in. He turned the head man out of his office and sat at his
desk, with Gomez getting the caller's chair. The rest of us stationed ourselves
uncomfortably around the room.
It
started. The admiral produced the letter and asked in English: "Have you
ever seen this before?" He made it clear from the way he held it that
Gomez wasn't going to get his hands on it.
"Si,
seguro. I write it last week. This is
funny business. I am not really sick like you say, no?" He seemed
relieved.
"No.
Where did you get these equations?"
Gomez
said proudly: "I work them out."
The
admiral gave a disgusted little laugh. "Don't waste my time, boy. Where
did you get these equations?"
Gomez
was beginning to get upset. "You got no right to call me liar," he
said. "I not so smart as the big physicists, seguro, and maybe I
make mistakes. Maybe I waste the profesór Soo-har-man his time but he
got no right to have me arrest. I tell him right in letter he don't have to
answer if he don't want. I make no crime and you got no right!"
The
admiral looked bored. "Tell me how you worked the equations out," he
said.
"Okay,"
said Gomez sulkily. "You know the random paths of neutron is expressed in
matrix mechanics by profesór Oppenheim five years ago, all okay. I
transform his equations from path-prediction domain to cross-section domain and
integrate over absorption areas. This gives u series and v series.
And from there, the u-v relationship is obvious, no?"
The
admiral, still bored, asked: "Got it?"
I
noticed that one of his young men had a shorthand pad out. He said:
"Yes."
The
admiral picked up the phone and said: "This is MacDonald. Get me Dr. Mines
out at Brookhaven right away." He told Gomez blandly: "Dr. Mines is
the chief of the A.E.C. Theoretical Physics Division. I'm going to ask him what
he thinks of the way you worked the equations out. He's going to tell me that
you were just spouting a lot of gibberish. And then you're going to tell me
where you really got them."
Gomez
looked mixed up and the admiral turned back to the phone. "Dr. Mines? This
is Admiral MacDonald of Security. I want your opinion on the following."
He snapped his fingers impatiently and the'stenographer passed him his pad.
"Somebody has told me that he discovered a certain relationship by
taking" He read carefully, "by taking the random paths of a neutron
expressed in matrix mechanics by Oppenheim, transforming his equations from the
path-prediction domain to the cross-section domain and integrating over the
absorption areas."
In
the silence of the room I could hear the faint buzz of the voice on the other
end. And a great red blush spread over the admiral's face from his brow to his
neck. The faintly buzzing voice ceased and after a long pause the admiral said
slowly and softly: "No, it wasn't Fermi or Szilard. I'm not at liberty to
tell you who. Can you come right down to the Federal Building Security Office
in New York? I-I need your help. Crash priority." He hung up the phone
wearily and muttered to himself: "Crash priority. Crash." And
wandered out of the office looking dazed.
His
young men stared at one another in frank astonishment. "Five years,"
said one, "and"
"Nix,"
said another, looking pointedly at
me.
Gomez
asked brightly: "What goes on anyhow? This is damn funny business, I
think."
"Relax,
kid," I told him. "Looks as if you'll make out all-"
"Nix,"
said the nixer again savagely, and I
shut up and waited.
After
a while somebody came in with coffee and sandwiches and we ate them. After
another while the admiral came in with Dr. Mines. Mines was a white-haired,
wrinkled Connecticut Yankee. All I knew about him was that he'd been in mild
trouble with Congress for stubbornly plugging world government and getting on
some of the wrong letterheads. But I learned right away that he was all
scientist and didn't have a phony bone in his body.
"Mr.
Gomez?" he asked cheerfully. "The admiral tells me that you are
either a well-trained Russian spy or a phenomenal self-taught nuclear
physicist. He wants me to find out which."
"Russia?" yelled Gomez, outraged. "He crazy! I am American United States
citizen!"
"That's
as may be," said Dr. Mines. "Now, the admiral tells me you describe
the u-v relationship as 'obvious.' I should call it a highly abstruse
derivation in the theory of continued fractions and complex
multiplication."
Gomez
strangled and gargled helplessly trying to talk, and finally asked, his eyes
shining: "Por favor, could I have piece paper?"
They
got him a stack of paper and the party was on.
For
two unbroken hours Gomez and Dr. Mines chattered and scribbled. Mines gradually
shed his jacket, vest, and tie, completely oblivious to the rest of us. Gomez
was even more abstracted. He didn't shed his jacket, vest, and tie. He
didn't seem to be aware of anything except the rapid-fire exchange of ideas via
scribbled formulae and the terse spoken jargon of mathematics. Dr. Mines
shifted on his chair and sometimes his voice rose with excitement. Gomez didn't
shift or wriggle or cross his legs. He just sat and scribbled and talked in a
low, rapid monotone, looking straight at Dr. Mines with his eyes very wide open
and lit up like searchlights.
The
rest of us just watched and wondered.
Dr.
Mines broke at last. He stood up and said: "I can't take any more, Gomez.
I've got to think it over-" He began to leave the room, mechanically
scooping up his clothes, and then realized that we were still there.
"Well?"
asked the admiral grimly.
Dr.
Mines smiled apologetically. "He's a physicist, all right," he said.
Gomez sat up abruptly and looked astonished.
"Take
him into the next office, Higgins," said the admiral. Gomez let himself be
led away, like a sleepwalker.
Dr.
Mines began to chuckle. "Security!" he said. "Security!"
The
admiral rasped: "Don't trouble yourself over my decisions, if you please,
Dr. Mines. My job is keeping the Soviets from pirating American science and I'm
doing it to the best of my ability. What I want from you is your opinion on the
possibility of that young man having worked out the equations as he
claimed."
Dr.
Mines was abruptly sobered. "Yes," he said. "Unquestionably he
did. And will you excuse my remark? I was under some strain in trying to keep
up with Gomez."
"Certainly,"
said the admiral, and managed a frosty smile. "Now if you'll be so good as
to tell me how this completely impossible thing can have happened?"
"It's
happened before, admiral," said Dr. Mines. "I don't suppose you ever
heard of Ramanujan?"
"No."
"Srinivasa
Ramanujan?"
"No!"
"Oh.
-Well, Ramanujan was born in 1887 and died in 1920. He was a poor Hindu who
failed twice in college and then settled down as a government clerk. With only
a single obsolete textbook to go on he made himself a very great mathematician.
In 1913 he sent some of his original work to a Cambridge, professor. He was
immediately recognized and called to England, where he was accepted as a
first-rank man, became a member of the Royal Society, a Fellow of Trinity, and
so forth."
The
admiral shook his head dazedly.
"It
happens," Dr. Mines said. "Oh yes, it happens. Ramanujan had only one
out-of-date book. But this is New York. Gomez has access to all the mathematics
he could hope for and a great mass of unclassified and declassified nuclear
data. Andgenius. The way he puts things together ... he seems to have only the
vaguest notion of what a proof should be. He sees relationships as a
whole. A most convenient faculty, which I envy him. Where I have to take, say,
a dozen painful steps from one conclusion to the next he achieves it in one
grand flying leap. Ramanujan was like that too, by the wayvery strong on
intuition, weak on what we call 'rigor.'" Dr. Mines noted with a start
that he was holding his tie, vest, and coat in one hand and began to put them
on. "Was there anything else?" he asked politely.
"One
thing," said the admiral. "Would you say he'she's a better physicist
than you are?"
"Yes,"
said Dr. Mines. "Much better." And he left.
The
admiral slumped, uncharacteristically, at the desk for a long time. Finally he
said to the air: "Somebody get me the General Manager. No, the Chairman of
the Commission." One of his boys grabbed the phone and got to work on the
call.
"Admiral,"
I said, "where do we stand now?"
"Eh?
Oh, it's you. The matter's out of my hands now since no security violation is
involved. I consider Gomez to be in my custody and I shall turn him over to the
Commission so that he may be put to the best use in the nation's
interest."
"Like
a machine?" I asked, disgusted.
He
gave me both barrels of his ice-blue eyes. "Like a weapon," he said
evenly.
He
was right, of course. Didn't I know there was a war on? Of course I did. Who
didn't? Taxes, housing shortage, somebody's cousin killed in Korea, everybody's kid brother sweating out the draft, prices sky high at the supermarket.
Uncomfortably I scratched my unshaved chin and walked to the window. Foley Square below was full of Sunday peace, with only a single girl stroller to be seen.
She walked the length of the block across the street from the Federal Building and then turned and walked back. Her walk was dragging and hopeless and
tragic.
Suddenly
I knew her. She was the pretty little waitress from the Porto Bello; she must
have hopped a cab and followed the men who were taking her Julio away. Might as
well beat it, sister, I told her silently. Julio isn't just a good-looking kid
any more; he's a military asset. The Security Office is turning him over to the
policy-level boys for disposal. When that happens you might as well give up and
go home.
It
was as if she'd heard me. Holding a silly little handkerchief to her face she
turned and ran blindly for the subway entrance at the end of the block and
disappeared into it.
At
that moment the telephone rang.
"MacDonald
here," said the admiral. "I'm ready to report on the Gomez affair,
Mr. Commissioner."
Gomez
was a minor, so his parents signed a contract for him. The job description on
the contract doesn't matter, but he got a pretty good salary by government
standards and a per-diem allowance too.
I
signed a contract too"Information Specialist." I was partly
companion, partly historian, and partly a guy they'd rather have their eyes on
than not. When somebody tried to cut me out on grounds of economy, Admiral
MacDonald frostily reminded him that he had given his word. I stayed, for all
the good it did me.
We
didn't have any name. We weren't Operation Anything or Project Whoozis or Task
Force Dinwiddie. We were just five people in a big fifteen-room house on the
outskirts of Milford, New Jersey. There was Gomez, alone on the top floor with
a lot of books, technical magazines, and blackboards and a weekly visit from
Dr. Mines. There were the three Security men, Higgins, Dalhousie, and Leitzer,
sleeping by turns and prowling the grounds. And there was me.
From
briefing sessions with Dr. Mines I kept a diary of what went on. Don't think
from that that I knew what the score was. War correspondents have told me of
the frustrating life they led at some close-mouthed commands. Soandso-many air
sorties, the largest number since January fifteenth. Casualties a full fifteen
per cent lighter than expected. Determined advance in an active sector against
relatively strong enemy opposition. And so onall adding up to nothing in the
way of real information.
That's
what it was like in my diary because that's all they told me. Here are some
excerpts: "On the recommendation of Dr. Mines, Mr. Gomez today began work
on a phase of reactor design theory to be implemented at Brookhaven National
Laboratory. The work involves the setting up of thirty-five pairs of partial
differential equations . . . Mr. Gomez announced tentatively today that in
checking certain theoretical work in progress at the Los Alamos Laboratory of
the A.E.C. he discovered a fallacious assumption concerning neutron-spin which
invalidates the conclusions reached. This will be communicated to the
Laboratory . . . Dr. Mines said today that Mr. Gomez has successfully invoked a
hitherto-unexploited aspect of Min-kowski's tensor analysis to crack a stubborn
obstacle toward the control of thermonuclear reactions . . ."
I
protested at one of the briefing sessions with Dr. Mines against this
gobbledegook. He didn't mind my protesting. He leaned back in his chair and
said calmly: "Vilchek, with all friendliness I assure you that you're
getting everything you can understand. Anything more complex than the vague
description of what's going on would be over your head. And anything more
specific would give away exact engineering information which would be of use to
foreign countries."
"This
isn't the way they treated Bill Lawrence when he covered the atomic bomb,"
I said bitterly.
Mines
nodded, with a pleased smile. "That's it exactly," he said.
"Broad principles were being developed theninteresting things that could
be told without any great harm being done. If you tell somebody that a critical
mass of U-two thirty-five or Plutonium goes off with a big bang, you really
haven't given away a great deal. He still has millions of man-hours of
engineering before him to figure out how much is critical mass, to take only
one small point."
So
I took his word for it, faithfully copied the communiques he gave me and wrote
what I could on the human-interest side for release some day.
So
I recorded Gomez's progress with English, his taste for chicken pot pie and
rice pudding, his habit of doing his own housework on the top floor and his
old-maidish neatness. "You live your first fifteen years in a tin shack,
Beel," he told me once, "and you find out you like things nice and
clean." I've seen Dr. Mines follow Gomez through the top floor as the boy
swept and dusted, talking at him hi their mathematical jargon.
Gomez
worked in forty-eight-hour spells usually, and not eating much. Then for a
couple of days he'd live like a human being, grabbing naps, playing catch on
the lawn with one or another of the Security people, talking with me about his
childhood in Puerto Rico and his youth in New York. He taught me a little
Spanish and asked me to catch him up on bad mistakes in English.
"But
don't you ever want to get out of here?" I demanded one day.
He
grinned: "Why should I, Beel? Here I eat good, I can send money to the
parents. Best, I find out what the big professors are up to without I have to
wait five-ten years for damn declassifying."
"Don't
you have a girl?"
He
was embarrassed and changed the subject back to the big professors.
Dr.
Mines drove up then with his chauffeur, who looked like a G-man and almost
certainly was. As usual, the physicist was toting a bulging briefcase. After a
few polite words with me, he and Julio went indoors and upstairs.
They
were closeted for five hoursa record. When Dr. Mines came down I expected the
usual briefing session. But he begged off. "Nothing serious," he
said. "We just sat down and kicked some ideas of his around. I told him to
go ahead. We've beenahusing him very much like a sort of computer, you know.
Turning him loose on the problems that were too tough for me and some of the
other men. He's got the itch for research now. It would be very interesting if
his forte turned out to be creative."
I
agreed.
Julio
didn't come down for dinner. I woke up in darkness that night when there was a
loud bump overhead, and went upstairs in my pyjamas.
Gomez
was sprawled, fully dressed, on the floor. He'd tripped over a footstool. And
he didn't seem to have noticed. His lips were moving and he stared straight at
me without knowing I was there.
"You
"all right, Julio?" I asked, and started to help him to his feet.
He
got up mechanically and said: "real values of the zeta function
vanish."
"How's
that?"
He
saw me then and asked, puzzled: "How you got in here, Beel? Is
dinnertime?"
"Is
four a.m., por dios. Don't you think you ought to get some sleep?"
He looked terrible.
No;
he didn't think he ought to get some sleep. He had some work to do. I went
downstairs and heard him pacing overhead for an hour until I dozed off.
This
splurge of work didn't wear off in forty-eight hours. For a week I brought him
meals and sometimes he ate absently, with one hand, as he scribbled on a yellow
pad. Sometimes I'd bring him lunch to find his breakfast untouched. He didn't
have much beard, but he let it grow for a weektoo busy to shave, too busy to
talk, too busy to eat, sleeping in chairs when fatigue caught up with him.
I
asked Leitzer, badly worried, if we should do anything about it. He had a
direct scrambler-phone connection with the New York Security and Intelligence
office, but his orders didn't cover anything like a self-induced nervous
breakdown of the man he was guarding.
I
thought Dr. Mines would do something when he camecall in an M.D., or tell
Gomez to take it easy, or take some of the load off by parceling out whatever
he had by the tail.
But
he didn't. He went upstairs, came down two hours later, and absently tried to
walk past me. I headed him off into my room. "What's the word?" I
demanded.
He
looked me in the eye and said defiantly: "He's doing fine. I don't want to
stop him."
Dr.
Mines was a good man. Dr. Mines was a humane man. And he wouldn't lift a finger
to keep the boy from working himself into nervous prostration. Dr. Mines liked
people well enough, but he reserved his love for theoretical physics. "How
important can this thing be?"
He
shrugged irritably. "It's just the way some scientists work," he
said. "Newton was like that. So was Sir William Rowan Hamilton"
"Hamilton-Schmamilton,"
I said. "What's the sense of it? Why doesn't he sleep or eat?"
Mines
said: "You don't know what it's like."
"Of
course," I said, getting good and sore. "I'm just a dumb newspaper
man. Tell me, Mr. Bones, what is it like?"
There
was a long pause, and he said mildly: "I'll try. That boy up there is
using his brain. A great chess player can put on a blindfold and play a hundred
opponents in a hundred games simultaneously, remembering all the positions of
his pieces and theirs and keeping a hundred strategies clear in his mind. Well,
that stunt simply isn't in the same league with what Julio's doing up there.
"He
has in his head some millions of facts concerning theoretical physics. He's
scanning them, picking out one here and there, fitting them into new
relationships, checking and rejecting when he has to, fitting the new
relationships together, turning them upside down and inside out to see what
happens, comparing them with known doctrine, holding them in his memory while
he repeats the whole process and comparesand all the while he has a goal
firmly in mind against which he's measuring all these things." He seemed
to be finished.
For
a reporter, I felt strangely shy. "What's he driving at?" I asked.
"I
think," he said slowly, "he's approaching a unified field
theory."
Apparently
that was supposed to explain everything. I let Dr. Mines know that it didn't.
He
said thoughtfully: "I don't know whether I can get it over to a laymanno
offense, Vilchek. Let's put it this way. You know how math comes in waves, and
how it's followed by waves of applied science based on the math. There was a
big wave of algebra in the middle agesfollowing it came navigation, gunnery,
surveying, and so on. Then the renaissance and a wave of analysiswhat you'd
call calculus. That opened up steam power and how to use it, mechanical engineering,
electricity. The wave of modern mathematics since say eighteen
seventy-five gave us atomic energy. That boy upstairs may be starting off the
next big wave."
He
got up and reached for his hat.
"Just
a minute," I said. I was surprised that my voice was steady. "What
conies next? Control of gravity? Control of personality? Sending people by
radio?"
Dr.
Mines wouldn't meet my eye. Suddenly he looked old and shrunken. "Don't
worry about the boy," he said.
I
let him go.
That
evening I brought Gomez chicken pot pie and a nonalcoholic eggnog.-He drank the
eggnog, said, "Hi, Beel," and continued to cover yellow sheets of
paper.
I
went downstairs and worried.
Abruptly
it ended late the next afternoon. Gomez wandered into the big first-floor
kitchen looking like a starved old rickshaw coolie. He pushed his lank hair
back from his forehead, said: "Beel, what is to eat" and pitched
forward onto the linoleum. Leitzer came when I yelled, expertly took Gomez's
pulse, rolled him onto a blanket, and threw another one over him. "It's
just a faint," he said. "Let's get him to bed."
"Aren't
you going to call a doctor, man?"
"Doctor
couldn't do anything we can't do," he said stolidly. "And I'm here to
see that security isn't breached. Give me a hand."
We
got him upstairs and put him to bed. He woke up and said something in Spanish,
and then, apologetically: "Very sorry, fellows. I ought to taken it
easier."
"I'll
get you some lunch," I said, and he grinned.
He
ate it all, enjoying it heartily, and finally lay back gorged. "Well,"
he asked me, "what it is new, Beel?"
"What
is new. And you should tell me. You finish your work?"
"I
got it in shape to finish. The hard part it is over." He rolled out of
bed.
"Hey!"
I said.
"I'm
okay now," he grinned. "Don't write this down in your history, Beel.
Everybody will think I act like a woman."
I
followed him into his work room, where he flopped into an easy
chair,
his eyes on a blackboard covered with figures. He wasn't grinning any more.
"Dr.
Mines says you're up to something big," I said.
"Si.
Big."
"Unified
field theory, he says."
"That
is it," Gomez said.
"Is
it good or bad?" I asked, licking my lips. "The application, I
mean."
His
boyish mouth set suddenly in a grim line. "That, it is not my
business," he said. "I am American citizen of the United States." He stared at the blackboard and its maze of notes.
I
looked at it tooreally looked at it for onceand was surprised by what
I saw. Mathematics, of course, I don't know. But I had soaked up a very little about
mathematics. One of the things I had soaked up was that the expressions of
higher mathematics tend to be complicated and elaborate, involving English,
Greek, and Hebrew letters, plain and fancy brackets, and a great variety of
special signs besides the plus and minus of the elementary school.
The
things on the blackboard weren't like that at all. The board was covered with
variations of a simple expression that consisted of five letters and two
symbols: a right-handed pothook and a left-handed pothook.
"What
do they mean?" I asked, pointing.
"Somethings
I made up," he said nervously. "The word for that one is 'enfields.'
The other one is 'is enfielded by.'"
"What's
that mean?"
His
luminous eyes were haunted. He didn't answer.
"It
looks like simple stuff. I read somewhere that all the basic stuff is simple
once it's been discovered."
"Yes,"
he said almost inaudibly. "It is simple, Beel. Too damn simple, I think.
Better I carry it in my head, I think." He strode to the blackboard and
erased it. Instinctively I half-rose to stop him. He gave me a grin that was
somehow bitter and unlike him. "Don't worry," he said. "I don't
forget it." He tapped his forehead. "I can't forget it."
I hope I never see again on any face the look that was on his.
"Julio,"
I said, appalled. "Why don't you get out of here for a while? Why don't
you run over to New York and see your folks and have some fun? They can't keep
you here against your will."
"They
told me I shouldn't" he said uncertainly. And then he got tough.
"You're damn right, Beel. Let's go in together. I get dressed up. ErYou
tell Leitzer, hah?" He couldn't quite face up to the hard-boiled security
man.
I
told Leitzer, who hit the ceiling. But all it boiled down to was that he
sincerely wished Gomez and I wouldn't leave. We weren't in the Army, we weren't
in jail. I got hot at last and yelled back that we were damn well going out and
he couldn't stop us. He called New York on his direct wire and apparently New York confirmed it, regretfully.
We
got on the 4:05 Jersey Central, with Higgins and Dalhousie tailing us at a
respectful distance. Gomez didn't notice them and I didn't tell him. He was
having too much fun. He had a shine put on his shoes at Penn Station and
worried about the taxi fare as we rode up to Spanish Harlem.
His
parents lived in a neat little three-room apartment. A lot of the furniture
looked brand-new, and I was pretty sure who had paid for it. The mother and
father spoke only Spanish, and mumbled shyly when "mi amigo Beel" was
introduced. I had a very halting conversation with the father while the mother
and Gomez rattled away happily and she poked his ribs to point up the age-old
complaint of any mother anywhere that he wasn't eating enough.
The
father, of course, thought the boy was a janitor or something in the Pentagon
and, as near as I could make out, he was worried about his Julio being grabbed
off by a man-hungry government girl. I kept reassuring him that his Julio was a
good boy, a very good boy, and he seemed to get some comfort out of it.
There
was a little spat when his mother started to set the table. Gomez said
reluctantly that we couldn't stay, that we were eating somewhere else. His
mother finally dragged from him the admission that we were going to the Porto
Bello so he could see Rosa, and everything was smiles again. The father told me
that Rosa was a good girl, a very good girl.
Walking
down the three flights of stairs with yelling little kids playing tag around
us, Gomez asked proudly: "You not think they in America only a little
time, hey?"
I
yanked him around by the elbow as we went down the brown-stone stoop into the
street. Otherwise he would have seen our shadows for sure. I didn't want to
spoil his fun.
The
Porto Bello was full, and the pretty little girl was on duty as cashier at the
table. Gomez got a last-minute attack of cold feet at the sight of her.
"No table," he said. "We better go someplace else."
I
practically dragged him in. "We'll get a table in a minute," I said.
"Julio,"
said the girl, when she saw him.
He
looked sheepish. "Hello, Rosa. I'm back for a while."
"I'm
glad to see you again," she said tremulously.
"I'm
glad to see you again too" I nudged him. "Rosa, this is my good
friend Beel. We work together in Washington."
"Pleased
to meet you, Rosa. Can you have dinner with us? I'll bet you and Julio have a
lot to talk over."
"Well,
I'll see . . . look, there's a table for you. I'll see if I can get away."
We
sat down and she flagged down the proprietress and got away in a hurry.
All
three of us had arróz con poliorice with chicken and lots of other
things. Their shyness wore off and I was dealt out of the conversation, but I
didn't mind. They were a nice young couple. I liked the way they smiled at each
other, and the things they remembered happilymovies, walks, talks. It made me
feel like a benevolent uncle with one foot in the grave. It made me forget for
a while the look on Gomez's face when he turned from the blackboard he had
covered with too-simple math.
Over
dessert I broke in. By then they were unselfconsciously holding hands.
"Look," I said, "why don't you two go on and do the town? Julio,
I'll be at the Madison Park Hotel." I scribbled the address and gave it to
him. "And I'll get a room for you. Have fun and reel in any time." I
rapped his knee. He looked down and I slipped him four twenties. I didn't know
whether he had money on him or not, but anything extra the boy could use he had
coming to him.
"Swell,"
he said. "Thanks." And looked shame-faced while I looked paternal.
I
had been watching a young man who was moodily eating alone in a corner, reading
a paper. He was about Julio's height and build and he wore a sports jacket
pretty much like Julio's. And the street was pretty dark outside.
The
young man got up moodily and headed for the cashier's table. "Gotta
go," I said. "Have fun."
I
went out of the restaurant right behind the young man and walked as close
behind him as I dared, hoping we were being followed.
After
a block and a half of this, he turned on me and snarled: "Wadda you,
mister? A wolf? Beat it!"
"Okay,"
I said mildly, and turned and walked the other way. Hig-gins and Dalhousie were
standing there, flat-footed and open-mouthed. They sprinted back to the Porto
Bello, and I followed them. But Julio and Rosa had already left.
"Tough,
fellows," I said to them as they stood in the doorway. They looked as if
they wanted to murder me. "He won't get into any trouble," I said.
"He's just going out with his girl." Dalhousie made a strangled noise
and told Higgins: "Cruise around the neighborhood. See if you can pick
them up. I'll follow Vilchek." He wouldn't talk to me. I shrugged and got
a cab and went to the Madison Park Hotel, a pleasantly unfashionable old place
with big rooms where I stay when business brings me to New York. They had a
couple of adjoining singles; I took one in my own name and the other for Gomez.
I
wandered around the neighborhood for a while and had a couple of beers in one
of the ultra-Irish bars on Third Avenue. After a pleasant argument with a gent
who thought the Russians didn't have any atomic bombs and faked their
demonstrations and that we ought to blow up their industrial cities tomorrow at
dawn, I went back to the hotel.
I
didn't get to sleep easily. The citizen who didn't believe Russia could maul the United States pretty badly or at all had started me thinking againall kinds
of ugly thoughts. Dr. Mines, who had turned into a shrunken old man at the
mention of applying Gomez's work. The look on the boy's face. My layman's
knowledge that present-day "atomic energy" taps only the smallest
fragment of the energy locked up in the atom. My layman's knowledge that once
genius has broken a trail in science, mediocrity can follow the trail.
But
I slept at last, for three hours.
At
four-fifteen A.M. according to my watch the telephone rang long and hard. There
was some switchboard and long-distance-operator mumbo-jumbo and then Julio's
gleeful voice: "Beel! Congratulate us. We got marriage!"
"Married,"
I said fuzzily. "You got married, not marriage. How's that
again?"
"We
got married. Me and Rosa. We get on the train, the taxi
driver
takes us to justice of peace, we got married, we go to hotel here."
"Congratulations,"
I said, waking up. "Lots of congratulations. But you're under age, there's
a waiting period"
"Not
in this state," he chuckled. "Here is no waiting periods and here I
have twenty-one years if I say so."
"Well,"
I said. "Lots of congratulations, Julio. And tell Rosa she's got herself a
good boy."
"Thanks,
Beel," he said shyly. "I call you so you don't worry when I don't
come in tonight. I think I come in with Rosa tomorrow so we tell her mama and
my mama and papa. I call you at the hotel, I still have the piece of
paper."
"Okay,
Julio. All the best. Don't worry about a thing." I hung up, chuckling, and
went right back to sleep.
Well,
sir, it happened again.
I
was shaken out of my sleep by the strong, skinny hand of Admiral MacDonald. It
was seven-thirty and a bright New York morning. Dalhousie had pulled a blank
canvassing the neighborhood for Gomez, got panicky, and bucked it up to higher
headquarters.
"Where
is he?" the admiral rasped.
"On
his way here with his bride of one night," I said. "He slipped over a
couple of state lines and got married."
"By
God," the admiral said, "we've got to do something about this. I'm
going to have him drafted and assigned to special duty. This is the last
time"
"Look,"
I said. "You've got to stop
treating him like a chesspiece. You've got duty-honor-country on the brain and
thank God for that. Somebody has to; it's your profession. But can't you get it
through your head that Gomez is a kid and that you're wrecking his life by
forcing him to grind out science like a machine? And I'm just a stupe of a
layman, but have you professionals worried once about digging too deep and
blowing up the whole shebang?"
He
gave me a piercing look and said nothing.
I
dressed and had breakfast sent up. The admiral, Dalhousie, and I waited grimly
until noon, and then Gomez phoned up.
"Come
on up, Julio," I said tiredly.
He
breezed in with his blushing bride on his arm. The admiral rose automatically
as she entered, and immediately began tongue-lashing the boy. He spoke more in
sorrow than in anger. He made it clear
that
Gomez wasn't treating his country right. That he had a great talent and it
belonged to the United States. That his behavior had been irresponsible. That
Gomez would have to come to heel and realize that his wishes weren't the most
important thing in his life. That he could and would be drafted if there were
any more such escapades.
"As
a starter, Mr. Gomez," the admiral snapped, "I want you to set down,
immediately, the enfieldment matrices you have developed. I consider it almost
criminal of you to arrogantly and carelessly trust to your memory alone matters
of such vital importance. Here!" He thrust pencil and paper at the boy,
who stood, drooping and disconsolate. Little Rosa was near crying. She didn't
have the ghost of a notion as to what it was about.
Gomez
took the pencil and paper and sat down at the writing table silently. I took Rosa by the arm. She was trembling. "It's all right," I said. "They can't do
a thing to him." The admiral glared briefly at me and then returned his
gaze to Gomez.
The
boy made a couple of tentative marks. Then his eyes went wide and he clutched
his hair. "Dios mlo!" he said. "Estd per dido! Olvidado!"
Which
means: "My God, it's lost! Forgotten!"
The
admiral turned white beneath his tan. "Now, boy," he said slowly and
soothingly. "I didn't mean to scare you. You just relax and collect
yourself. Of course you haven't forgotten, not with that memory of yours. Start
with something easy. Write down a general biquadratic equation, say."
Gomez
just looked at him. After a long pause he said in a strangled voice: "No
puedo. I can't. It too I forget. I don't think of the math or physics at
all since" He looked at Rosa and turned a little red. She smiled shyly
and looked at her shoes.
"That
is it," Gomez said hoarsely. "Not since then. Always before in the
back of my head is the math, but not since then."
"My
God," the admiral said softly. "Can such a thing happen?" He
reached for the phone.
He
found out that such things can happen.
Julio
went back to Spanish Harlem and bought a piece of the Porto Bello with his
savings. I went back to the paper and bought a car with my savings.
MacDonald never cleared the story, so the Sunday editor had the satisfaction of
bulldozing an admiral, but didn't get his exclusive.
Julio
and Rosa sent me a card eventually announcing the birth of their first-born: a
six-pound boy, Francisco, named after Julio's father. I saved the card and when
a New York assignment came my wayit was the National Association of Dry Goods
Wholesalers; dry goods are important in our townI dropped up to see them.
Julio
was a little more mature and a little more prosperous. Rosa alas!was already
putting on weight, but she was still a pretty thing and devoted to her man. The
baby was a honey-skinned little wiggler. It was nice to see all of them
together, happy with their lot.
Julio
insisted that he'd cook arróz con polio for me, as on the night I practically
threw him into Rosa's arms, but he'd have to shop for the stuff. I went along.
In
the corner grocery he ordered the rice, the chicken, the gar-banzos, the
peppers, and, swept along by the enthusiasm that hits husbands in groceries,
about fifty other things that he thought would be nice to have in the pantry.
The
creaking old grocer scribbled down the prices on a shopping bag and began
painfully to add them up while Julio was telling me how well the Porto Bello
was doing and how they were thinking of renting the adjoining store.
"Seventeen
dollars, forty-two cents," the grocer said at last.
Julio
flicked one glance at the shopping bag and the upside-down figures.
"Should be seventeen thirty-nine," he said reprovingly. "Add up
again."
The
grocer painfully added up again and said, "Is seventeen thirty-nine.
Sorry." He began to pack the groceries into the bag.
"Hey,"
I said.
We
didn't discuss it then or ever. Julio just said: "Don't tell, Beel."
And winked.
The Advent on Chanel Twelve
in the mid-50s Cyril's two sons were
both very small,
but not so small that they hadn't discovered television. The Mickey Mouse Club
was a visitor in
the Kornbluth home every night, and the two little kids, and Cyril himself, never missed it. I don't know what the boys thought of this national
.mania (everywhere you went kids were
singing the Mouseketeer song and
wearing mouse-ear hats), but I can
tell what Cyril thought of itand so can you, from reading The Advent on Channel Twelve.
It
came to pass in the third quarter of the fiscal year that the Federal Reserve
Board did raise the rediscount rate and money was tight in the land. And
certain bankers which sate hi New York sent to Ben Graffis in Hollywood a
writing which said, Money is tight in the land so let Poopy Panda up periscope
and fire all bow tubes.
Whereupon
Ben Graffis made to them this moan:
O
ye bankers, Poopy Panda is like unto the child of my flesh and you have made of
him a devouring dragon. Once was I content with my studio and my animators when
we did make twelve Poopy Pandas a year; cursed be the day when I floated a New York loan. You have commanded me to make feature-length cartoon epics and I did obey,
and they do open at the Paramount to sensational grosses, and we do re-release
them to the nabes year on year, without end. You have commanded me to film live
adventure shorts and I did obey, and in the cutting room we do devilishly
splice and pull frames and flop negatives so that I and my cameras are become
bearers of false witness and men look upon my live adventure shorts and say lo!
these beasts and birds are like unto us in their laughter, wooing, pranks, and
contention. You have commanded that I become a mountebank for that I did build
Poopy Pandaland, whereinto men enter with their children, their silver, and
their wits, and wherefrom they go out with their children only, sandbagged by a
thousand catch-penny engines; even this did I obey. You have commanded that
Poopy Panda shill every weekday night on television between five and six for
the Poopy Panda Pals, and even this did I obey, though Poopy Panda is like unto
the child of my flesh.
But
O ye bankers, this last command will I never obey.
Whereupon
the bankers which sate in New York sent to him another writing that said, Even
so, let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes, and they said,
Remember, boy, we hold thy paper.
And
Ben Graffis did obey.
He
called unto him his animators and directors and cameramen and writers, and his
heart was sore but he dissembled and said:
In
jest you call one another brainwashers, forasmuch as you addle the heads of
children five hours a week that they shall buy our sponsors' wares. You have
fulfilled the prophecies, for is it not written in the Book of the Space
Merchants that there shall be spherical trusts? And the Poopy Panda Pals plug
the Poopy Panda Magazine, and the Poopy Panda Magazine plugs Poopy Pandaland,
and Poopy Pandaland plugs the Poopy Panda Pals. You have asked of the Motivational
Research boys how we shall hook the little bastards and they have told ye, and
ye have done it. You identify the untalented kid viewers with the talented kid
performers, you provide in Otto Clodd a bumbling father image to be derided,
you furnish in Jackie Whipple an idealized big brother for the boys and a
sex-fantasy for the more precocious girls. You flatter the cans off the viewers
by ever saying to them that they shall rule the twenty-first century, nor mind
that those who shall in good sooth come to power are doing their homework and
not watching television programs. You have created a liturgy of opening hymn
and closing benediction, and over all hovers the spirit of Poopy Panda urging
and coaxing the viewers to buy our sponsors' wares.
And
Ben Graffis breathed a great breath and looked them not in the eye and said to
them, Were it not a better thing for Poopy Panda to coax and urge no more, but
to command as he were a god?
And
the animators and directors and cameramen and writers were sore amazed and they
said one to the other, This is the bleeding end, and the bankers which sit in New York have flipped their wigs. And one which was an old animator said to Ben Graffis,
trembling, O chief, never would I have stolen for thee Poopy Panda from the Winnie
the Pooh illustrations back in twenty-nine had I known this was in the cards,
and Ben Graffis fired him.
Whereupon
another which was a director said to Ben Graffis, O chief, the thing can be
done with a two-week buildup, and Ben Graffis put his hands over his face and
said, Let it be so.
And
it came to pass that on the Friday after the two-week buildup, in the closing
quarter-hour of the Poopy Panda Pals, there was a special film combining live
and animated action as they were one.
And
in the special film did Poopy Panda appear enhaloed, and the talented kid
performers did do him worship, and Otto Clodd did trip over his feet whilst
kneeling, and Jackie Whipple did urge in manly and sincere wise that all the
Poopy Panda Pals out there in television-land do likewise, and the enhaloed
Poopy Panda did say in his lovable growly voice, Poop-poop-poopy.
And
adoration ascended from thirty-seven million souls.
And
it came to pass that Ben Graffis went into his office with his animators and
cameramen and directors and writers after the show and said to them, It was
definitely a TV first, and he did go to the bar.
Whereupon
one which was a director looked at Who sate behind the desk that was the desk
of Ben Graffis and he said to Ben Graffis, O chief, it is a great gag but how
did the special effects boys manage the halo?
And
Ben Graffis was sore amazed at Who sate behind his desk and he and they all did
crowd about and make as if to poke Him, whereupon He in His lovable growly
voice did say, Poop-poop-poopy, and they were not.
And
certain unclean ones which had gone before turned unbelieving from their
monitors and said, Holy Gee, this is awful. And one which was an operator of
marionettes turned to his manager and said, Pal, if Graffis gets this off the
ground we're dead. Whereat a great and far-off voice was heard, saying, Poop-poop-poopy,
and it was even so; and the days of Poopy Panda were long in the land.
Filtered
for error,
Jan.
18th 36 P.P.
Synod
on Filtration & Infiltration
O.
Clodd, P.P.P.
J.
Whipple, P.P.P.
THE MARCHING MORONS
I described in
this book's introduction my special interest in this story and "The Little Black
Bag." So,
a year or two after both had been published, when Cyril and I were working out
a plot for a new novel (it was
published as Search the Sky), we returned to the
"marching morons" for the finale to the novel. We often borrowed from each other's heads, both for collaborations and once in a while for our own individual work, but I think this was the only time we borrowed from already published work.
Some
things had not changed. A potterłs wheel was still a potterłs wheel and clay
was still clay. Efim Hawkins had built his shop near Goose Lake, which had a narrow band of good fat clay and a narrow beach of white sand. He fired three
bottle-nosed kilns with willow charcoal from the wood lot. The wood lot was
also useful for long walks while the kilns were cooling; if he let himself stay
within sight of them, he would open them prematurely, impatient to see how some
new shape or glaze had come through the fire, andping!the new
shape or glaze would be good for nothing but the shard pile back of his slip
tanks.
A
business conference was in full swing in his shop, a modest cube of brick,
tile-roofed, as the Chicago-Los Angeles “rocket" thundered overheadvery noisy,
very swept back, very fiery jets, shaped as sleekly swift-looking as an
airborne barracuda.
The
buyer from Marshall Fields was turning over a black-glazed one-liter carafe,
nodding approval with his massive, handsome head. “This is real pretty," he
told Hawkins and his own secretary, Gomez-Laplace. “This has got lots of what
ya call real estłetic principles. Yeah, it is real pretty."
“How
much?" the secretary asked the potter.
“Seven-fifty
in dozen lots," said Hawkins. “I ran up fifteen dozen last month."
“They
are real estÅ‚etic," repeated the buyer from Fields. “I will take them all."
“I
donÅ‚t think we can do that, doctor," said the secretary. “TheyÅ‚d cost us
$1,350. That would leave only $532 in our quarterłs budget. And we still
have to run down to East Liverpool to pick up some cheap dinner sets."
“Dinner
sets?" asked the buyer, his big face full of wonder.
“Dinner
sets. The departmentłs been out of them for two months now. Mr. Garvy-Seabright
got pretty nasty about it yesterday. Remember?"
“Garvy-Seabright,
that meat-headed bluenose," the buyer said contemptuously. “He donÅ‚t know
nothinł about estłetics. Why for donłt he lemme run my own department?" His eye
fell on a stray copy of Whambozambo Comix and he sat down with it. An
occasional deep chuckle or grunt of surprise escaped him as he turned the
pages.
Uninterrupted,
the potter and the buyerłs secretary quickly closed a deal for two dozen of the
liter carafes. “I wish we could take more," said the secretary, “but you heard
what I told him. Wełve had to turn away customers for ordinary dinnerware
because he shot the last quarterłs budget on some Mexican piggy banks some
equally enthusiastic importer stuck him with. The fifth floor is packed solid
with them."
“IÅ‚ll
bet they look mighty estłetic."
“TheyÅ‚re
painted with purple cacti."
The
potter shuddered and caressed the glaze of the sample carafe.
The
buyer looked up and rumbled, “AinÅ‚t you dummies through yakkinÅ‚ yet? What
goodłs a seckertary for ifłn he donłt take the burden of de-tail offłn my
back, harh?"
“WeÅ‚re
all through, doctor. Are you ready to go?"
The
buyer grunted peevishly, dropped Whambozambo Comix on the floor and led
the way out of the building and down the log corduroy road to the highway. His
car was waiting on the concrete. It was, like all contemporary cars, too low slung
to get over the logs. He climbed down into the car and started the motor with a
tremendous sparkle and roar.
“Gomez-Laplace,"
called out the potter under cover of the noise, “did anything come of the
radiation program they were working on the last time I was on duty at the
Pole?"
“The
same old fallacy," said the secretary gloomily. “It stopped us on
mutation, it stopped us on culling, it stopped us on segregation, and now itłs
stopped us on hypnosis."
“Well,
IÅ‚m scheduled back to the grind in nine days. Time for another firing right
now. IÅ‚ve got a new luster to try. . .“
“IÅ‚ll
miss you. I shall be ęvacationingłrunning the drafting room of the New Century
Engineering Corporation in Denver. Theyłre going to put up a two-hundred-story
office building, and naturally somebodyłs got to be on hand."
“Naturally,"
said Hawkins with a sour smile.
There
was an ear-piercingly sweet blast as the buyer leaned on the horn button. Also,
a yard-tall jet of what looked like flame spurted up from the carłs radiator cap;
the carłs power plant was a gas turbine and had no radiator.
“IÅ‚m
coming, doctor," said the secretary dispiritedly. He climbed down into the car
and it whooshed off with much flame and noise.
The
potter, depressed, wandered back up the corduroy road and contemplated his
cooling kilns. The rustling wind in the boughs was obscuring the creak and
mutter of the shrinking refractory brick. Hawkins wondered about the number two
kilna reduction fire on a load of lusterware mugs. Had the clay chinking
excluded the air? Had it been a properly smoky blaze? Would it do any harm if
he just took one close?
Common
sense took Hawkins by the scruff of the neck and yanked him over to the tool
shed. He got out his pick and resolutely set off on a prospecting jaunt to a hummocky
field that might yield some oxides. He was especially low on coppers.
The
long walk left him sweating hard, with his lust for a peek into the kiln quiet
in his breast. He swung his pick almost at random into one of the hummocks; it
clanged on a stone which he excavated. A largely obliterated inscription said:
ERSITY
OF CHIC
OGICAL
LABO
ELOVED
MEMORY OF
KILLED
IN ACT
The
potter swore mildly. He had hoped the field would turn out to be a cemetery,
preferably a once-fashionable cemetery full of once-massive bronze caskets
moldered into oxides of tin and copper.
Well,
hell, maybe there was some around anyway.
He
headed lackadaisically for the second largest hillock and sliced into it with
his pick. There was a stone to undercut and topple into a trench, and then the
potter was very glad hełd stuck at it. His nostrils were filled with the bitter
smell and the dirt was tinged with the exciting blue of copper salts. The pick
went clang!
Hawkins,
puffing, pried up a stainless steel plate that was quite badly stained and was
also marked with incised letters. It seemed to have pulled loose from rotting
bronze; there were rivets on the back that brought up flakes of green patina.
The potter wiped off the surface dirt with his sleeve, turned it to catch the
sunlight obliquely and read:
HONEST
JOHN BARLOW
Honest
John, famed in university annals, represents a challenge which medical science
has not yet answered: revival of a human being accidentally thrown into a state
of suspended animation.
In
1988 Mr. Barlow, a leading Evanston real estate dealer, visited his dentist for
treatment of an impacted wisdom tooth. His dentist requested and received
permission to use the experimental anesthetic Cycloparadimethanol-B-7,
developed at the University.
After
administration of the anesthetic, the dentist resorted to his drill. By
freakish mischance, a short circuit in his machine delivered 220 volts of
60-cycle current into the patient. (In a damage suit instituted by Mrs. Barlow
against the dentist, the University and the makers of the drill, a jury found
for the defendants.) Mr. Barlow never got up from the dentistłs chair and was
assumed to have died of poisoning, electrocution or both.
Morticians
preparing him for embalming discovered, however, that their subject wasthough
certainly not livingjust as certainly not dead. The University was notified
and a series of exhaustive tests was begun, including attempts to duplicate
the trance state on volunteers. After a bad run of seven cases which ended
fatally, the attempts were abandoned.
Honest
John was long an exhibit at the University museum and livened many a football
game as mascot of the Universityłs Blue Crushers. The bounds of taste were
overstepped, however, when a pledge to Sigma Delta Chi was ordered in ę03 to
“kidnap" Honest John from his loosely guarded glass museum case and introduce
him into the Rachel Swanson Memorial Girlsł Gymnasium shower room.
On
May 22, 2003, the University Board of Regents issued the following order: “By
unanimous vote, it is directed that the remains of Honest John Barlow be
removed from the University museum and conveyed to the Universityłs Lieutenant
James Scott III Memorial Biological Laboratories and there be securely locked
in a specially prepared vault. It is further directed that all possible
measures for the preservation of these remains be taken by the Laboratory
administration and that access to these remains be denied to all persons
except qualified scholars authorized in writing by the Board. The Board
reluctantly takes this action in view of recent notices and photographs in the
nationłs press which, to say the least, reflect but small credit upon the
University."
It
was far from his field, but Hawkins understood what had happenedan early and
accidental blundering onto the bare bones of the Levantman shock anesthesia,
which had since been replaced by other methods. To bring subjects out of
Levantman shock, you let them have a squirt of simple saline in the trigeminal
nerve. Interesting. And now about that bronze He heaved the pick into the
rotting green salts, expecting no resistance, and almost fractured his wrist. Something
down there was solid. He began to flake off the oxides.
A
half hour of work brought him down to phosphor bronze, a huge casting of the
almost incorruptible metal. It had weakened structurally over the centuries;
he could fit the point of his pick under a corroded boss and pry off great
creaking and grumbling striae of the stuff.
Hawkins
wished he had an archaeologist with him but didnłt dream of returning to his
shop and caffing one to take over the find. He was an all-around man: by
choice, and in his free time, an artist in clay and glaze; by necessity, an
automotive, electronics and atomic engineer who could also swing a project in
traffic control, individual and group psychology, architecture or tool design.
He didnłt yell for a specialist every time something out of his line came up;
there were so few with so much to do.
He
trenched around his find, discovering that it was a great brick-shaped bronze
mass with an excitingly hollow sound. A long strip of moldering metal from one
of the long vertical faces pulled away, exposing red rust that went whoosh and
was sucked into the interior of the mass.
It
had been de-aired, thought Hawkins, and there must have been an inner jacket of
glass which had crystallized through the centuries and quietly crumbled at the
first clang of his pick. He didnłt know what a vacuum would do to a subject of
Levantman shock, but he had hopes, nor did he quite understand what a real
estate dealer was, but it might have something to do with pottery. And anything
might have a bearing on Topic Number One.
He
flung his pick out of the trench, climbed out and set off at a dog-trot for his
shop. A little rummaging turned up a hypo and there was a plastic container of
salt in the kitchen.
Back
at his dig, he chipped for another half hour to expose the juncture of lid and
body. The hinges were hopeless; he smashed them off.
Hawkins
extended the telescopic handle of the pick for the best leverage, fitted its
point into a deep pit, set its built-in fulcrum, and heaved. Five more heaves
and he could see, inside the vault, what looked like a dusty marble statue. Ten
more and he could see that it was the naked body of Honest John Barlow, Evanston real estate dealer, uncorrupted by time.
The
potter found the apex of the trigeminal nerve with his needlełs point and gave
him 60 cc.
In
an hour Barlowłs chest began to pump.
In
another hour, he rasped, “Did it work?"
“Did
it!" muttered Hawkins.
Barlow
opened his eyes and stirred, looked down, turned his hands before his eyes
“IÅ‚ll sue!" he screamed. “My clothes! My fingernails!" A horrid suspicion came
over his face and he clapped his hands to his hairless scalp. “My hair!" he
wailed. “IÅ‚ll sue you for every penny youÅ‚ve got! That release wonÅ‚t mean a
damned thing in courtI didnłt sign away my hair and clothes and fingernails!"
“TheyÅ‚ll
grow back," said Hawkins casually. “Also your epidermis. Those parts of you
werenłt alive, you know, so they werenłt preserved like the rest of you. Iłm
afraid the clothes are gone, though."
“What
is thisthe University hospital?" demanded Barlow. “I want a phone. No, you
phone. Tell my wife Iłm all right and tell Sam Timmermanhełs my lawyerto get
over here right away. Greenleaf 7-4022. Ow!" He had tried to sit up, and a
portion of his pink skin rubbed against the inner surface of the casket, which
was powdered by the ancient crystallized glass. “What the hell did you guys do,
boil me alive? Oh, youłre going to pay for this!"
“YouÅ‚re
all right," said Hawkins, wishing now he had a reference book to clear up
several obscure terms. “Your epidermis will start growing immediately. YouÅ‚re
not in the hospital. Look here."
He
handed Barlow the stainless steel plate that had labeled the casket. After a
suspicious glance, the man started to read. Finishing, he laid the plate
carefully on the edge of the vault and was silent for a spell.
“Poor
Verna," he said at last. “It doesnÅ‚t say whether she was stuck with the court
costs. Do you happen to know"
“No,"
said the potter. “All I know is what was on the plate, and how to revive you.
The dentist accidentally gave you a dose of what we call Levantman shock
anesthesia. We havenłt used it for centuries; it was powerful, but too
dangerous."
“Centuries
. . .“ brooded the man. “Centuries . . . IÅ‚ll bet Sam swindled her out of her
eyeteeth. Poor Verna. How long ago was it? What year is this?"
Hawkins
shrugged. “We call it 7-B-936. ThatÅ‚s no help to you. It takes a long time for
these metals to oxidize."
“Like
that movie," Barlow muttered. “Who would have thought it? Poor Verna!" He
blubbered and sniffled, reminding Hawkins powerfully of the fact that he had
been found under a flat rock.
Almost
angrily, the potter demanded, “How many children did you have?"
“None
yet," sniffed Barlow. “My first wife didnÅ‚t want them. But Verna wants
onewanted onebut wełre going to wait untilwe were going to wait
until"
“Of
course," said the potter, feeling a savage desire to tell him off, blast him to
hell and gone for his work. But he choked it down. There was The Problem to
think of; there was always The Problem to think of, and this poor blubberer
might unexpectedly supply a clue. Hawkins would have to pass him on.
“Come
along," Hawkins said. “My time is short."
Barlow
looked up, outraged. “How can you be so unfeeling? IÅ‚m a human being like"
The
Los Angeles-Chicago “rocket" thundered overhead and Barlow broke off in
mid-complaint. “Beautiful!" he breathed, following it with his eyes. “Beautiful!"
He
climbed out of the vault, too interested to be pained by its roughness against
his infantile skin. “After all," he said briskly, “this should have its sunny
side. I never was much for reading, but this is just like one of those stories.
And I ought to make some money out of it, shouldnłt I?" He gave Hawkins a
shrewd glance.
“You
want money?" asked the potter. “Here." He handed over a fistful of change and
bills. “YouÅ‚d better put my shoes on. ItÅ‚ll be about a quarter mile. Oh, and
youłreuh, modest?yes, that was the word. Here." Hawkins gave him his pants,
but Barlow was excitedly counting the money.
“Eighty-five,
eighty-sixand itłs dollars, too! I thought itłd be credits or whatever they
call them. ęE Pluribus Ununił and ęLibertyłjust different faces. Say, is there
a catch to this? Are these real, genuine, honest twenty-two-cent dollars like
we had or just wallpaper?"
“TheyÅ‚re
quite all right, I assure you," said the potter. “I wish youÅ‚d come along. IÅ‚m
in a hurry."
The
man babbled as they stumped toward the shop. “Where are we goingThe Council of
Scientists, the World Coordinator or something like that?"
“Who?
Oh, no. We call them ęPresidentł and ęCongress.ł No, that wouldnłt do any good
at all. IÅ‚m just taking you to see some people."
“I
ought to make plenty out of this. Plenty! I could write books. Get some
smart young fellow to put it into words for me and IÅ‚ll bet I could turn out a
best seller. Whatłs the setup on things like that?"
“ItÅ‚s
about like that. Smart young fellows. But there arenłt any best sellers any
more. People donłt read much nowadays. Wełll find something equally profitable
for you to do."
Back
in the shop, Hawkins gave Barlow a suit of clothes, deposited him in the
waiting room and called Central in Chicago. “Take him away," he pleaded. “I
have time for one more firing and he blathers and blathers. I havenłt told him
anything. Perhaps we should just turn him loose and let him find his own level,
but therełs a chance-"
“The
Problem," agreed Central. “Yes, thereÅ‚s a chance."
The
potter delighted Barlow by making him a cup of coffee with a cube that not only
dissolved in cold water but heated the water to boiling point. Killing time,
Hawkins chatted about the “rocket" Barlow had admired and had to haul himself
up short; he had almost told the real estate man what its top speed really
wasalmost, indeed, revealed that it was not a rocket.
He
regretted, too, that he had so casually handed Barlow a couple of hundred
dollars. The man seemed obsessed with fear that they were worthless since
Hawkins refused to take a note or I.O.U. or even a definite promise of
repayment. But Hawkins couldnłt go into details, and was very glad when a
stranger arrived from Central.
“Tinny-Peete,
from Algeciras," the stranger told him swiftly as the two of them met at the
door. “Psychist for Poprob. Polassigned special overtake Barlow."
“Thank
Heaven," said Hawkins. “Barlow," he told the man from the past, “this is
Tinny-Peete. Hełs going to take care of you and help you make lots of money."
The
psychist stayed for a cup of the coffee whose preparation had delighted Barlow,
and then conducted the real estate man down the corduroy road to his car,
leaving the potter to speculate on whether he could at last crack his kilns.
Hawkins,
abruptly dismissing Barlow and The Problem, happily picked the chinking from
around the door of the number two kiln, prying it open a trifle. A blast of
heat and the heady, smoky scent of the reduction fire delighted him. He peered
and saw a corner of a shelf glowing cherry red, becoming obscured by wavering
black areas as it lost heat through the opened door. He slipped a charred wood
paddle under a mug on the shelf and pulled it out as a sample, the hairs on the
back of his hand curling and scorching. The mug crackled and pinged and Hawkins
sighed happily.
The
bismuth resinate luster had fired to perfection, a haunting film of
silvery-black metal with strange bluish lights in it as it turned before the
eyes, and the Problem of Population seemed very far away to Hawkins then.
Barlow
and Tinny-Peete arrived at the concrete highway where the psychistłs car was
parked in a safety bay.
“Whataboat!"
gasped the man from the past.
“Boat?
No, thatłs my car."
Barlow
surveyed it with awe. Swept-back lines, deep-drawn compound curves, kilograms
of chrome. He ran his hands over the door or was it the door?in a futile
search for a handle, and asked respectfully, “How fast does it go?"
The
psychist gave him a keen look and said slowly, “Two hundred and fifty. You can
tell by the speedometer."
“Wow!
My old Chevvy could hit a hundred on a straightaway, but youłre out of my
class, mister!"
Tinny-Peete
somehow got a huge, low door open and Barlow descended three steps into immense
cushions, floundering over to the right. He was too fascinated to pay serious
attention to his flayed dermis. The dashboard was a lovely wilderness of dials,
plugs, indicators, lights, scales and switches.
The
psychist climbed down into the driverłs seat and did something with his feet.
The motor started like lighting a blowtorch as big as a silo. Wallowing around
in the cushions, Barlow saw through a rearview mirror a tremendous exhaust
filled with brilliant white sparkles.
“Do
you like it?" yelled the psychist.
“ItÅ‚s
terrific!" Barlow yelled back. “ItÅ‚s He was shut up as the car pulled out from
the bay into the road with a great voo-ooo-ooom! A gale roared past
Barlowłs head, though the windows seemed to be closed; the impression of speed
was terrific. He located the speedometer on the dashboard and saw it climb
past 90, 100, 150, 200.
“Fast
enough for me," yelled the psychist, noting that Barlowłs face fell in
response. “Radio?"
He
passed over a surprisingly light object like a football helmet, with no
trailing wires, and pointed to a row of buttons. Barlow put on the helmet, glad
to have the roar of air stilled, and pushed a pushbutton. It lit up
satisfyingly, and Barlow settled back even farther for a sample of the brave
new worldłs supermodern taste in ingenious entertainment.
“TAKE
IT AND STICK IT!" a voice roared in his ears.
He
snatched off the helmet and gave the psychist an injured look. Tinny-Peete
grinned and turned a dial associated with the pushbutton layout. The man from
the past donned the helmet again and found the voice had lowered to normal.
“The
show of shows! The supershow! The super-duper show! The quiz of quizzes! Take
It and Stick It!"
There
were shrieks of laughter in the background.
“Here
we got the contes-tants all ready to go. You know how we work it. I hand a
contes-tant a triangle-shaped cutout and like that down the line. Now we got
these here boards, they got cutout places the same shape as the triangles and
things, only theyłre all different shapes, and the first contes-tant that
sticks the cutouts into the boards, he wins.
“Now
Iłm gonna innaview the first contes-tant. Right here, honey. Whatłs your name?"
“Name?
Uh"
“Hoddaya
like that, folks? She donłt remember her name! Hah? Would you buy that for a
quarter?" The question was spoken with arch significance, and the audience
shrieked, howled and whistled its appreciation.
It
was dull listening when you didnłt know the punch lines and catch lines. Barlow
pushed another button, with his free hand ready at the volume control.
“latest
from Washington. Itłs about Senator Hull-Mendoza. He is still attacking the
Bureau of Fisheries. The North California Syndicalist says he got affydavits
that John Kingsley-Schultz is a bluenose from way back. He didnłt publistat the
affydavits, but he says they say that Kingsley-Schultz was saw at bluenose
meetings in Oregon State College and later at Florida University.
Kingsley-Schultz says he gotta confess he did major in fly casting at Oregon and got his Ph.D. in game-fish at Florida.
“And
here is a quote from Kingsley-Schultz: ęHull-Mendoza donłt know what hełs
talking about. He should drop dead.ł Unquote. HullMendoza says he wonłt
publistat the affydavits to pertect his sources. He says they was sworn by
three former employes of the Bureau which was fired for in-competence and
in-com-pat-ibility by Kingsley-Schultz.
“Elsewhere
they was the usual run of traffic accidents. A three-way pileup of cars on
Route 66 going outta Chicago took twelve lives. The Chicago-Los Angeles morning
rocket crashed and exploded in the Mo-haveMo-javvywhatever-you-call-it
Desert. All the 94 people aboard got killed. A Civil Aeronautics Authority
investigator on the scene says that the pilot was buzzing herds of sheep and
didnłt pull out in time.
“Hey!
Herełs a hot one from New York! A diesel tug run wild in the harbor while the
crew was below and shoved in the port bow of the luck-shury liner S. S.
Placentia. It says the ship filled and sank taking the lives of an
es-ti-mated 180 passengers and 50 crew members. Six divers was sent down to
study the wreckage, but they died, too, when their suits turned out to be fulla
little holes.
“And
here is a bulletin I just got from Denver. It seems"
Barlow
took off the headset uncomprehendingly. “He seemed so callous," he yelled at
the driver. “I was listening to a newscast"
Tinny-Peete
shook his head and pointed at his ears. The roar of air was deafening. Barlow
frowned baffledly and stared out of the window.
A
glowing sign said:
MOOGS!
WOULD
YOU BUY IT
FOR
A QUARTER?
He
didnłt know what Moogs was or were; the illustration showed an incredibly
proportioned girl, 99.9 percent naked, writhing passionately in animated full
color.
The
roadside jingle was still with him, but with a new feature. Radar or something
spotted the car and alerted the lines of the jingle. Each in turn sped along a
roadside track, even with the car, so it could be read before the next line was
alerted.
IF
THEREÅ‚S A GIRL
YOU
WANT TO GET
DEFLOCCULIZE
UNROMANTIC
SWEAT.
“A*R*M*P*I*T*T*O"
Another
animated job, in two panels, the familiar “Before and After." The first said,
“Just Any Cigar?" and was illustrated with a two-person domestic tragedy of a
wife holding her nose while her coarse and red-faced husband puffed a
slimy-looking rope. The second panel glowed, “Or a VUELTA ABAJO?" and was
illustrated with Barlow blushed and looked at his feet until they had passed
the sign.
“Coming
into Chicago!" bawled Tinny-Peete.
Other
cars were showing up, all of them dreamboats.
Watching
them, Barlow began to wonder if he knew what a kilometer was, exactly. They
seemed to be traveling so slowly, if you ignored the roaring air past your
ears and didnłt let the speedy lines of the dreamboats fool you. He would have
sworn they were really crawling along at twenty-five, with occasional spurts up
to thirty. How much was a kilometer, anyway?
The
city loomed ahead, and it was just what it ought to be: towering skyscrapers,
overhead ramps, landing platforms for helicopters He clutched at the cushions.
Those two copters. They were going tothey were going tothey He didnłt see
what happened because their apparent collision courses took them behind a giant
building.
Screamingly
sweet blasts of sound surrounded them as they stopped for a red light. “What
the hell is going on here?" said Barlow in a shrill, frightened voice, because
the braking time was just about zero, and he wasnłt hurled against the
dashboard. “WhoÅ‚s kidding who?"
“Why,
whatłs the matter?" demanded the driver.
The
light changed to green and he started the pickup. Barlow stiffened as he
realized that the rush of air past his ears began just a brief, unreal split
second before the car was actually moving. He grabbed for the door handle on
his side.
The
city grew on them slowly: scattered buildings, denser buildings, taller
buildings, and a red light ahead. The car rolled to a stop in zero braking
time, the rush of air cut off an instant after it stopped, and Barlow was out
of the car and running frenziedly down a sidewalk one instant after that.
Theyłll
track me down, he thought, panting. itłs
a secret police thing. Theyłll get youmind-reading machines, television eyes
everywhere, afraid youłll tell their slaves about freedom and stuff. They
donłt let anybody cross them, like that story I once read.
Winded,
he slowed to a walk and congratulated himself that he had guts enough not to
turn around. That was what they always watched for. Walking, he was just
another business-suited back among hundreds. He would be safe, he would be
safe A hand gripped his shoulder and words tumbled from a large, coarse,
handsome face thrust close to his: “Wassamatta bumpinninna people likeya owna
sidewalk gotta miner slamya jima mushya bassar!" It was neither the mad potter
nor the mad driver.
“Excuse
me," said Barlow. “What did you say?"
“Oh,
yeah?" yelled the stranger dangerously, and waited for an answer.
Barlow,
with the feeling that he had somehow been suckered into the short end of an
intricate land-title deal, heard himself reply belligerently, “Yeah!"
The
stranger let go of his shoulder and snarled, “Oh, yeah?"
“Yeah!"
said Barlow, yanking his jacket back into shape.
“Aaah!"
snarled the stranger, with more contempt and disgust than ferocity. He added an
obscenity current in Barlowłs time, a standard but physiologically impossible
directive, and strutted off hulking his shoulders and balling his fists.
Barlow
walked on, trembling. Evidently he had handled it well enough. He stopped at a
red light while the long, low dreamboats roared before him and pedestrians in
the sidewalk flow with him threaded their ways through the stream of cars.
Brakes screamed, fenders clanged and dented, hoarse cries flew back and forth
between drivers and walkers. He leaped backward frantically as one car swerved
over an arc of sidewalk to miss another.
The
signal changed to green; the cars kept on coming for about thirty seconds and
then dwindled to an occasional light runner. Barlow crossed warily and leaned
against a vending machine, blowing big breaths.
Look
natural, he told himself. Do
something normal. Buy something from the machine. He fumbled out some
change, got a newspaper for a dime, a handkerchief for a quarter and a candy
bar for another quarter.
The
faint chocolate smell made him ravenous suddenly. He clawed at the glassy
wrapper printed “Crigglies" quite futilely for a few seconds, arid then
it divided neatly by itself. The bar made three good bites, and he bought two
more and gobbled them down.
Thirsty,
he drew a carbonated orange drink in another one of the glassy wrappers from
the machine for another dime. When he fumbled with it, it divided neatly and
spilled all over his knees. Barlow decided he had been there long enough and
walked on.
The
shop windows wereshop windows. People still wore and bought clothes, still
smoked and bought tobacco, still ate and bought food. And they still went to
the movies, he saw with pleased surprise as he passed and then returned to a
glittering place whose sign said it was THE BIJOU.
The
place seemed to be showing a triple feature, Babies Are Terrible, Donłt
Have Children, and The Canali Kid.
It
was irresistible; he paid a dollar and went in.
He
caught the tail end of The Canali Kid in three-dimensional, full-color,
full-scent production. It appeared to be an interplanetary saga winding up with
a chase scene and a reconciliation between estranged hero and heroine. Babies
Are Terrible and Donłt Have Children were fantastic arguments
against parenthoodthe grotesquely exaggerated dangers of painfully graphic
childbirth, vicious children, old parents beaten and starved by their sadistic
offspring. The audience, Barlow astoundedly noted, was placidly chomping
sweets and showing no particular signs of revulsion.
The
Coming Attractions drove him into the lobby. The fanfares were
shattering, the blazing colors blinding, and the added scents stomach heaving.
When
his eyes again became accustomed to the moderate lighting of the lobby, he
groped his way to a bench and opened the newspaper he had bought. It turned out
to be The Racing Sheet, which afflicted him with a crushing sense of
loss. The familiar boxed index in the lower-left-hand corner of the front page
showed almost unbearably that Churchill Downs and Empire City were still in
business Blinking back tears, he turned to the Past Performance at Churchill.
They werenłt using abbreviations any more, and the pages because of that were
single-column instead of double. But it was all the sameor was it?
He
squinted at the first race, a three-quarter-mile maiden claimer for thirteen
hundred dollars. Incredibly, the track record was two minutes, ten and three-fifths
seconds. Any beetle in his time could have knocked off the three-quarter in
one-fifteen. It was the same for the other distances, much worse for route
events.
What
the hell had happened to everything?
He
studied the form of a five-year-old brown mare in the second and couldnłt make
head or tail of it. Shełd won and lost and placed and showed and lost and
placed without rhyme or reason. She looked like a front runner for a couple of
races and then she looked like a no-good pig and then she looked like a mudder
but the next time it rained she wasnłt and then she was a stayer and then she
was a pig again. In a good five-thousand-dollar allowances event, too!
Barlow
looked at the other entries and it slowly dawned on him that they were all like
the five-year-old brown mare. Not a single damned horse running had even the
slightest trace of class.
Somebody
sat down beside him and said, “ThatÅ‚s the story."
Barlow
whirled to his feet and saw it was Tinny-Peete, his driver.
“I
was in doubts about telling you," said the psychist, “but I see you have some
growing suspicions of the truth. Please donłt get excited. Itłs all right, I
tell you."
“So
youłve got me," said Barlow.
“Got
you?"
“DonÅ‚t
pretend. I can put two and two together. Youłre the secret police. You and the
rest of the aristocrats live in luxury on the sweat of these oppressed slaves.
Youłre afraid of me because you have to keep them ignorant."
There
was a bellow of bright laughter from the psychist that got them blank looks
from other patrons of the lobby. The laughter didnłt sound at all sinister.
“LetÅ‚s
get out of here," said Tinny-Peete, still chuckling. “You couldnÅ‚t possibly
have it more wrong." He engaged BarlowÅ‚s arm and led him to the street. “The
actual truth is that the millions of workers live in luxury on the sweat of the
handful of aristocrats. I shall probably die before my time of overwork
unless" He gave Barlow a speculative look. “You may be able to help us."
“I
know that gag," sneered Barlow. “I made money in my time and to make money you
have to get people on your side. Go ahead and shoot me if you want, but youłre
not going to make a fool out of me."
“You
nasty little ingrate!" snapped the psychist, with a kaleidoscopic change of
mood. “This damned mess is all your fault and the fault of people like you! Now
come along and no more of your nonsense."
He
yanked Barlow into an office building lobby and an elevator that,
disconcertingly, went whoosh loudly as it rose. The real estate manłs
knees were wobbly as the psychist pushed him from the elevator, down a
corridor and into an office.
A
hawk-faced man rose from a plain chair as the door closed behind them. After
an angry look at Barlow, he asked the psychist, “Was I called from the Pole to
inspect thisthis?"
“Unget
updandered. IÅ‚ve deeprobed etfind quasichance exhim Poprobattackline," said the
psychist soothingly.
“Doubt,"
grunted the hawk-faced man.
“Try,"
suggested Tinny-Peete.
“Very
well. Mr. Barlow, I understand you and your lamented had no children."
“What
of it?"
“This
of it. You were a blind, selfish stupid ass to tolerate economic and social
conditions which penalized childbearing by the prudent and foresighted. You
made us what we are today, and I want you to know that we are far from
satisfied. Damn-fool rockets! Damn-fool automobiles! Damn-fool cities with
overhead ramps!"
“As
far as I can see," said Barlow, “youÅ‚re running down the best features of your
time. Are you crazy?"
“The
rockets arenłt rockets. Theyłre turbojetsgood turbojets, but the fancy shell
around them makes for a bad drag. The automobiles have a top speed of one
hundred kilometers per houra kilometer is, if I recall my paleolinguistics,
three-fifths of a mileand the speedometers are all rigged accordingly so the
drivers will think theyłre going two hundred and fifty. The cities are
ridiculous, expensive, unsanitary, wasteful conglomerations of people whołd be
better off and more productive if they were spread over the countryside.
“We
need the rockets and trick speedometers and cities because, while you and your
kind were being prudent and foresighted and not having children, the migrant
workers, slum dwellers and tenant farmers were shiftlessly and shortsightedly
having childrenbreeding, breeding. My God, how they bred!"
“Wait
a minute," objected Barlow. “There were lots of people in our crowd who had two
or three children."
“The
attrition of accidents, illness, wars and such took care of that. Your
intelligence was bred out. It is gone. Children that should have been born
never were. The just-average, theyłll-get-along majority took over the
population. The average IQ now is 45."
“But
thatłs far in the future"
“So
are you," grunted the hawk-faced man sourly.
“But
who are you people?"
“Just
peoplereal people. Some generations ago, the geneticists realized at last that
nobody was going to pay any attention to what they said, so they abandoned
words for deeds. Specifically, they formed and recruited for a closed
corporation intended to maintain and improve the breed. We are their
descendants, about three million of us. There are five billion of the others,
so we are their slaves.
“During
the past couple of years IÅ‚ve designed a skyscraper, kept Billings Memorial Hospital here in Chicago running, headed off war with Mexico and directed traffic at
LaGuardia Field in New York."
“I
donłt understand! Why donłt you let them go to hell in their own way?"
The
man grimaced. “We tried it once for three months. We holed up at the South Pole
and waited. They didnłt notice it. Some drafting room people were missing, some
chief nurses didnłt show up, minor government people on the nonpolicy level
couldnłt be located. It didnłt seem to matter.
“In
a week there was hunger. In two weeks there were famine and plague, in three
weeks war and anarchy. We called off the experiment; it took us most of the
next generation to get things squared away again."
“But
why didnłt you let them kill each other off?"
“Five
billion corpses mean about five hundred million tons of rotting flesh."
Barlow
had another idea. “Why donÅ‚t you sterilize them?"
“Two
and one-half billion operations is a lot of operations. Because they breed
continuously, the job would never be done."
“I
see. Like the marching Chinese!"
“Who
the devil are they?"
“It
was auhparadox of my time. Somebody figured out that if all the Chinese in
the world were to line up four abreast, I think it was, and start marching past
a given point, theyłd never stop because of the babies that would be born and
grow up before they passed the point."
“ThatÅ‚s
right. Only instead of ęa given point,ł make it ęthe largest conceivable number
of operating rooms that we could build and staff.Å‚ There could never be
enough."
“Say!"
said Barlow. “Those movies about babieswas that your propaganda?"
“It
was. It doesnłt seem to mean a thing to them. We have abandoned the idea of
attempting propaganda contrary to a biological drive."
“So
if you work with a biological drive?"
“I
know of none which is consistent with inhibition of fertility." Barlowłs face
went poker blank, the result of years of careful discipline. “You donÅ‚t, huh?
Youłre the great brains and you canłt think of any?"
“Why,
no," said the psychist innocently. “Can you?"
“That
depends. I sold ten thousand acres of Siberian tundrathrough a dummy firm, of
courseafter the partition of Russia. The buyers thought they were getting
improved building lots on the outskirts of Kiev. IÅ‚d say that was a lot
tougher than this job."
“How
so?" asked the hawk-faced man.
“Those
were normal, suspicious customers and these are morons, born suckers. You just
figure out a con theyłll fall for; they wonłt know enough to do any smart
checking."
The
psychist and the hawk-faced man had also had training; they kept themselves
from looking with sudden hope at each other.
“You
seem to have something in mind," said the psychist. Barlowłs poker face went
blanker still. “Maybe I have. I havenÅ‚t heard any offer yet."
“ThereÅ‚s
the satisfaction of knowing that youłve prevented Earthłs resources from being
so plundered," the hawk-faced man pointed out, “that the race will soon become
extinct."
“I
donÅ‚t know that," Barlow said bluntly. “All I have is your word."
“If
you really have a method, I donłt think any price would be too great," the
psychist offered.
“Money,"
said Barlow.
“All
you want."
“More
than you want," the hawk-faced man corrected.
“Prestige,"
added Barlow. “Plenty of publicity. My picture and my name in the papers and
over TV every day, statues to me, parks and cities and streets and other things
named after me. A whole chapter in the history books."
The
psychist made a facial sign to the hawk-faced man that meant, “Oh, brother!"
The
hawk-faced man signaled back, “Steady, boy!"
“ItÅ‚s
not too much to ask," the psychist agreed.
Barlow,
sensing a sellerÅ‚s market, said, “Power!"
“Power?"
the hawk-faced man repeated puzzledly. “Your own hydro station or nuclear
pile?"
“I
mean a world dictatorship with me as dictator!"
“Well,
now" said the psychist, but the hawk-faced man interrupted, “It would take a
special emergency act of Congress but the situation warrants it. I think that
can be guaranteed."
“Could
you give us some indication of your plan?" the psychist asked.
“Ever
hear of lemmings?"
“No."
“They
arewere, I guess, since you havenłt heard of themlittle animals in Norway, and every few years theyłd swarm to the coast and swim out to sea until they
drowned. I figure on putting some lemming urge into the population."
“How?"
“IÅ‚ll
save that till I get the right signatures on the deal."
The
hawk-faced man said, “IÅ‚d like to work with you on it, Barlow. My nameÅ‚s Ryan-Ngana."
He put out his hand.
Barlow
looked closely at the hand, then at the manÅ‚s face. “Ryan what?"
“Ngana."
“That
sounds like an African name."
“It
is. My motherłs father was a Watusi."
Barlow
didnÅ‚t take the hand. “I thought you looked pretty dark. I donÅ‚t want to hurt
your feelings, but I donłt think Iłd be at my best working with you. There must
be somebody else just as well qualified, IÅ‚m sure."
The
psychist made a facial sign to Ryan-Ngana that meant, “Steady yourself, boy!"
“Very
well," Ryan-Ngana told Barlow. “WeÅ‚ll see what arrangement can be made."
“ItÅ‚s
not that IÅ‚m prejudiced, you understand. Some of my best friends"
“Mr.
Barlow, donłt give it another thought. Anybody who could pick on the lemming
analogy is going to be useful to us."
And
so he would, thought Ryan-Ngana, alone in the office after Tinny-Peete had
taken Barlow up to the helicopter stage. So he would. Poprob had exhausted
every rational attempt and the new Poprobattacklines would have to be
irrational or subrational. This creature from the past with his lemming legends
and his improved building lots would be a fountain of precious vicious
self-interest.
Ryan-Ngana
sighed and stretched. He had to go and run the San Francisco subway. Summoned
early from the Pole to study Barlow, hełd left unfinished a nice little
theorem. Between interruptions, he was slowly constructing an n-dimensional
geometry whose foundations and superstructure owed no debt whatsoever to
intuition.
Upstairs,
waiting for a helicopter, Barlow was explaining to Tinny-Peete that he had
nothing against Negroes, and Tinny-Peete wished he had some of Ryan-Nganałs
imperturbability and humor for the ordeal.
The
helicopter took them to International Airport where, Tinny-Peete explained,
Barlow would leave for the Pole.
The
man from the past wasnłt sure hełd like a dreary waste of ice and cold.
“ItÅ‚s
all tight," said the psychist. “A civilized layout. Warm, pleasant. YouÅ‚ll be
able to work more efficiently there. All the facts at your fingertips, a good
secretary"
“IÅ‚ll
need a pretty big staff," said Barlow, who had learned from thousands of deals
never to take the first offer.
“I
meant a private, confidential one," said Tinny-Peete readily, “but you can have
as many as you want. Youłll naturally have top-primary-top priority if you
really have a workable plan."
“LetÅ‚s
not forget this dictatorship angle," said Barlow.
He
didnłt know that the psychist would just as readily have promised him
deification to get him happily on the “rocket" for the Pole. Tinny-Peete had no
wish to be torn limb from limb; he knew very well that it would end that way if
the population learned from this anachronism that there was a small elite which
considered itself head, shoulders, trunk and groin above the rest. The fact
that this assumption was perfectly true and the fact that the elite was
condemned by its superiority to a life of the most grinding toil would not be
considered; the difference would.
The
psychist finally put Barlow aboard the “rocket" with some thirty peoplereal
peopleheaded for the Pole.
Barlow
was airsick all the way because of a posthypnotic suggestion Tinny-Peete had
planted in him. One idea was to make him as averse as possible to a return
trip, and another idea was to spare the other passengers from his aggressive, talkative
company.
Barlow
during the first day at the Pole was reminded of his first day in the Army. It
was the same now-where-the-hell-are-we-going-to-put-you? business until he took
a firm line with them. Then instead of acting like supply sergeants they acted
like hotel clerks.
It
was a wonderful, wonderfully calculated buildup, and one that he failed to
suspect. After all, in his time a visitor from the past would have been
lionized.
At
dayłs end he reclined in a snug underground billet with the sixty-mile gales
roaring yards overhead and tried to put two and two together.
It
was like old times, he thoughtlike a coup in real estate where you had the
competition by the throat, like a fifty-percent rent boost when you knew damned
well there was no place for the tenants to move, like smiling when you read
over the breakfast orange juice that the city council had decided to build a
school on the ground you had acquired by a deal with the city council. And it
was simple. He would just sell tundra building lots to eagerly suicidal
lemmings, and that was absolutely all there was to solving The Problem that had
these double-domes spinning.
Theyłd
have to work out most of the details, naturally, but what the hell, that was
what subordinates were for. Hełd need specialists in advertising, engineering,
communicationsdid they know anything about hypnotism? That might be helpful.
If not, therełd have to be a lot of bribery done, but hełd make suredamned
surethere were unlimited funds.
Just
selling building lots to lemmings.
He
wished, as he fell asleep, that poor Verna could have been in on this. It was
his biggest, most stupendous deal. Verna--that sharp shyster Sam Immerman must
have swindled her.
It
began the next day with people coming to visit him. He knew the approach. They
merely wanted to be helpful to their illustrious visitor from the past and
would he help fill them in about his era, which unfortunately was somewhat
obscure historically, and what did he think could be done about The Problem? He
told them he was too old to be roped any more, and they wouldnłt get any
information out of him until he got a letter of intent from at least the Polar
President and a session of the Polar Congress empowered to make him dictator.
He
got the letter and the session. He presented his program, was asked whether his
conscience didnłt revolt at its callousness, explained succinctly that a deal
was a deal and anybody who wasnłt smart enough to protect himself didnłt
deserve protection"Caveat emptor," he threw in for scholarship, and had to
translate it to “Let the buyer beware." He didnÅ‚t, he stated, give a damn
about either the morons or their intelligent slaves; hełd told them his price
and that was all he was interested in.
Would
they meet it or wouldnłt they?
The
Polar President offered to resign in his favor, with certain temporary
emergency powers that the Polar Congress would vote him if he thought them
necessary. Barlow demanded the title of World Dictator, complete control of
world finances, salary to be decided by himself, and the publicity campaign and
historical writeup to begin at once.
“As
for the emergency powers," he added, “they are neither to be temporary nor
limited."
Somebody
wanted the floor to discuss the matter, with the declared hope that perhaps Barlow
would modify his demands.
“YouÅ‚ve
got the proposition," Barlow said. “IÅ‚m not knocking off even ten percent."
“But
what if the Congress refuses, sir?" the President asked.
“Then
you can stay up here at the Pole and try to work it out yourselves. IÅ‚ll get
what I want from the morons. A shrewd operator like me doesnłt have to
compromise; I havenłt got a single competitor in this whole cockeyed moronic
era."
Congress
waived debate and voted by show of hands. Barlow won-unanimously.
“You
donłt know how close you came to losing me," he said in his first official
address to the joint Houses. “IÅ‚m not the boy to haggle; either I get what I
ask, or I go elsewhere. The first thing I want is to see designs for a new
palace for menothing un-ostentatious, either and your best painters and
sculptors to start working on my portraits and statues. Meanwhile, IÅ‚ll get my
staff together."
He
dismissed the Polar President and the Polar Congress, telling them that hełd
let them know when the next meeting would be.
A
week later, the program started with North America the first target.
Mrs.
Garvy was resting after dinner before the ordeal of turning on the dishwasher.
The TV, of course, was on and it said, “Oooh!" long, shuddery and ecstatic,
the cue for the Parfum Assault Criminale spot commercial. “Girls," said
the announcer hoarsely, “do you want your man? ItÅ‚s easy to get himeasy as a
trip to Venus."
“Huh?"
said Mrs. Garvy.
“Wassamatter?"
snorted her husband, starting out of a doze.
“Ja
hear that?" “WhaÅ‚?"
“He
said ęeasy like a trip to Venus."
“So?"
“Well,
I thought ya couldnłt get to Venus. I thought they just had that one rocket
thing that crashed on the Moon."
“Aah,
women donłt keep up with the news," said Garvy righteously, subsiding again.
“Oh,"
said his wife uncertainly.
And
the next day, on Henryłs Other Mistress, there was a new character who
had just breezed in: Buzz Rentshaw, Master Rocket Pilot of the Venus run. On Henryłs
Other Mistress, “the broadcast drama about you and your neighbors, folksy
people, ordinary people, real people!" Mrs. Garvy listened
with amazement over a cooling cup of coffee as Buzz made hay of her hazy
convictions.
MONA: Darling,
itłs so good to see you again!
BUZZ: You
donłt know how Iłve missed you on that dreary Venus run.
SOUND: Venetian
blind run down, key turned in lock.
MONA: Was
it very dull, dearest?
BUZZ: Letłs
not talk about my humdrum job, darling. Letłs talk about us.
SOUND: Creaking
bed.
Well,
the program was back to normal at last. That evening Mrs. Garvy tried to ask
again whether her husband was sure about those rockets, but he was dozing tight
through Take It and Stick It, so she watched the screen and forgot the
puzzle.
She
was still rocking with laughter at the gag line, “Would you buy it for a
quarter?" when the commercial went on for the detergent powder she always
faithfully loaded her dishwasher with on the first of every month.
The
announcer displayed mountains of suds from a tiny piece of the stuff and coyly
added, “Of course, Cleano donÅ‚t lay around for you to pick up like the soap
root on Venus, but itłs pretty cheap and itłs almost pretty near just as good.
So for us plain folks who ainłt lucky enough to live up there on Venus, Cleano
is the real cleaning stuff!"
Then
the chorus went into their “Cleano-is-the-stuff" jingle, but Mrs. Garvy didnÅ‚t
hear it. She was a stubborn woman, but it occurred to her that she was very
sick indeed. She didnłt want to worry her husband. The next day she quietly
made an appointment with her family freud.
In
the waiting room she picked up a fresh new copy of Readers Pablum and
put it down with a faint palpitation. The lead article, according to the table
of contents on the cover, was titled “The Most Memorable Venusian I Ever Met."
“The
freud will see you now," said the nurse, and Mrs. Garvy tottered into his
office.
His
traditional glasses and whiskers were reassuring. She choked out the ritual.
“Freud, forgive me, for I have neuroses."
He
chanted the antiphonal, “Tut, my dear girl, what seems to be the trouble?"
“I
got like a hole in the head," she quavered. “I seem to forget all kinds of
things. Things like everybody seems to know and I donłt."
“Well,
that happens to everybody occasionally, my dear. I suggest a vacation on
Venus."
The
freud stared, openmouthed, at the empty chair. His nurse came in and demanded,
“Hey, you see how she scrammed? What was the matter with her?"
He
took off his glasses and whiskers meditatively. “You can search me. I told her
she should maybe try a vacation on Venus." A momentary bafflement came into his
face and he dug through his desk drawers until he found a copy of the
four-color, profusely illustrated journal of his profession. It had come that
morning and he had lip-read it, though looking mostly at the pictures. He
leafed to the article “Advantages of the Planet Venus in Rest Cures."
“ItÅ‚s
right there," he said.
The
nurse looked. “It sure is," she agreed. “Why shouldnÅ‚t it be?"
“The
trouble with these here neurotics," decided the freud, “is that they all the
time got to fight reality. Show in the next twitch."
He
put on his glasses and whiskers again and forgot Mrs. Garvy and her strange
behavior.
“Freud,
forgive me, for I have neuroses."
“Tut,
my dear girl, what seems to be the trouble?"
Like
many cures of mental disorders, Mrs. Garvyłs was achieved largely by
self-treatment. She disciplined herself sternly out of the crazy notion that
there had been only one rocket ship and that one a failure. She could join
without wincing, eventually, in any conversation on the desirability of Venus
as a place to retire, on its fabulous floral profusion. Finally she went to
Venus.
All
her friends were trying to book passage with the Evening Star Travel and Real
Estate Corporation, but naturally the demand was crushing. She considered
herself lucky to get a seat at last for the two week summer cruise. The
spaceship took off from a place called Los Alamos, New Mexico. It looked just
like all the spaceships on television and in the picture magazines but was
more comfortable than you would expect.
Mrs.
Garvy was delighted with the fifty or so fellow-passengers assembled before
takeoff. They were from all over the country and she had a distinct impression
that they were on the brainy side. The captain, a tall, hawk-faced, impressive
fellow named Ryan Something-or-other, welcomed them aboard and trusted that
their trip would be a memorable one. He regretted that there would be nothing
to see because, “due to the meteorite season," the ports would be dogged down.
It was disappointing, yet reassuring that the line was taking no chances.
There
was the expected momentary discomfort at takeoff and then two monotonous days
of droning travel through space to be whiled away in the lounge at cards or
craps. The landing was a routine bump and the voyagers were issued tablets to
swallow to immunize them against any minor ailments.
When
the tablets took effect, the lock was opened, and Venus was theirs.
It
looked much like a tropical island on Earth, except for a blanket of cloud
overhead. But it had a heady, otherworldly quality that was intoxicating and
glamorous.
The
ten days of the vacation were suffused with a hazy magic. The soap root, as
advertised, was free and sudsy. The fruits, mostly tropical varieties
transplanted from Earth, were delightful. The simple shelters provided by the
travel company were more than adequate for the balmy days and nights.
It
was with sincere regret that the voyagers filed again into the ship and
swallowed more tablets doled out to counteract and sterilize any Venus
illnesses they might unwittingly communicate to Earth.
Vacationing
was one thing. Power politics was another.
At
the Pole, a small man was in a soundproof room, his face deathly pale and his
body limp in a straight chair.
In
the American Senate Chamber, Senator Hull-Mendoza (Synd., N. Cal.) was saying,
“Mr. President and gentlemen, I would be remiss in my duty as a legislature
ifłn I didnłt bring to the attention of the au-gust body I see here a perilous
situation which is fraught with peril. As is well known to members of this au-gust
body, the perfection of space flight has brought with it a situation I can
only describe as fraught with peril. Mr. President and gentlemen, now that
swift American rockets now traverse the trackless void of space between this
planet and our nearest planetarial neighbor in spaceand, gentlemen, I refer
to Venus, the star of dawn, the brightest jewel in fair Vulcanłs diadomenow, I
say, I want to inquire what steps are being taken to colonize Venus with a
vanguard of patriotic citizens like those minutemen of yore.
“Mr.
President and gentlemen! There are in this world nations, envious nationsI do
not name Mexicowho by fair means or foul may seek to wrest from Columbiałs grasp the torch of freedom of space; nations whose low living standards and
innate depravity give them an unfair advantage over the citizens of our fair
republic.
“This
is my program: I suggest that a city of more than 100,000 population be
selected by lot. The citizens of the fortunate city are to be awarded choice
lands on Venus free and clear, to have and to hold and convey to their
descendants. And the national government shall provide free transportation to
Venus for these citizens. And this program shall continue, city by city, until
there has been deposited on Venus a sufficient vanguard of citizens to protect
our manifest rights in that planet.
“Objections
will be raised, for carping critics we have always with us. They will say there
isnłt enough steel. They will call it a cheap giveaway. I say there is enough
steel for one cityłs population to be transferred to Venus, and that is
all that is needed. For when the time comes for the second city to be
transferred, the first, emptied city can be wrecked for the needed steel! And
is it a giveaway? Yes! It is the most glorious giveaway in the history of
mankind! Mr. President and gentlemen, there is no time to wasteVenus must be
American!"
Black-Kupperman,
at the Pole, opened his eyes and said feebly, “The style was a little uneven.
Do you think anybodyłll notice?"
“You
did fine, boy; just fine," Barlow reassured him.
Hull-Mendozałs
bill became law.
Drafting
machines at the South Pole were busy around the clock and the Pittsburgh steel
mills spewed millions of plates into the Los Alamos spaceport of the Evening
Star Travel and Real Estate Corporation. It was going to be Los Angeles, for
logistic reasons, and the three most accomplished psychokineticists went to Washington and mingled in the crowd at the drawing to make certain that the Los Angeles capsule slithered into the fingers of the blindfolded Senator.
Los
Angeles loved the idea and a forest of
spaceships began to blossom in the desert. They werenłt very good spaceships,
but they didnłt have to be.
A
team at the Pole worked at Barlowłs direction on a mail setup. There would have
to be letters to and from Venus to keep the slightest taint of suspicion from
arising. Luckily Barlow remembered that the problem had been solved once
beforeby Hitler. Relatives of persons incinerated in the furnaces of Lublin or Majdanek continued to get cheery postal cards.
The
Los Angeles ifight went off on schedule, under tremendous press, newsreel and
television coverage. The world cheered the gallant Angelenos who were setting
off on their patriotic voyage to the land of milk and honey. The forest of
spaceships thundered up, and up, and out of sight without untoward incident.
Billions envied the Angelenos, cramped and on short rations though they were.
Wreckers
from San Francisco, whose capsule came up second, moved immediately into the
city of the angels for the scrap steel their own flight would require. Senator
Hull-Mendozałs constituents could do no less.
The
president of Mexico, hypnotically alarmed at this extension of yanqui
imperialismo beyond the stratosphere, launched his own Venus-colony program.
Across
the water it was England versus Ireland, France versus Germany, China versus Russia, India versus Indonesia. Ancient hatreds grew into the flames that were
rocket ships assailing the air by hundreds daily.
Dear
Ed, how are you? Sam and I are fine and hope you are fine. Is it nice up there
like they say with food and close grone on trees? I drove by Springfield
yesterday and it sure looked funny all the buildings down but of coarse it is
worth it we have to keep the greasers in their place. Do you have any trouble
with them on Venus? Drop me a line some time. Your loving sister, Alma.
Dear
Alma, I am fine and hope you are fine. It is a fine place here fine climate and
easy living. The doctor told me today that I seem to be ten years younger. He
thinks there is something in the air here keeps people young. We do not have
much trouble with the greasers here they keep to theirselves it is just a
question of us outnumbering them and staking out the best places for the
Americans. In South Bay I know a nice little island that I have been saving for
you and Sam with lots of blanket trees and ham bushes. Hoping to see you and
Sam soon, your loving brother, Ed.
Sam
and Alma were on their way shortly.
Poprob
got a dividend in every nation after the emigration had passed the halfway
mark. The lonesome stay-at-homes were unable to bear the melancholy of a low
population density; their conditioning had been to swarms of their kin. After
that point it was possible to foist off the crudest stripped-down accommodations
on would-be emigrants; they didnłt care.
Black-Kupperman
did a final job on President Hull-Mendoza, the last job that genius of
hypnotics would ever do on any moron, important or otherwise.
Hull-Mendoza,
panic stricken by his presidency over an emptying nation, joined his
constituents. The Independence, aboard which traveled the national
government of America, was the most elaborate of all the spaceshipsbigger,
more comfortable, with a lounge that was handsome, though cramped, and
cloakrooms for Senators and Representatives. It went, however, to the same
place as the others and Black-Kupperman killed himself, leaving a note that
stated he “couldnÅ‚t live with my conscience."
The
day after the American President departed, Barlow flew into a rage. Across his
specially built desk were supposed to flow all Poprob high-level documents, and
this thingthis outrageous thing called Poprobterm apparently had got into the
executive stage before he had even had a glimpse of it!
He
buzzed for Rogge-Smith, his statistician. Rogge-Smith seemed to be at the
bottom of it. Poprobterm seemed to be about first and second and third
derivatives, whatever they were. Barlow had a deep distrust of anything more
complex than what he called an “average."
While
Rogge-Smith was still at the door, Barlow snapped, “WhatÅ‚s the meaning of this?
Why havenłt I been consulted? How far have you people got and why have you been
working on something I havenłt authorized?"
“DidnÅ‚t
want to bother you, Chief," said Rogge-Smith. “It was really a technical
matter, kind of a final cleanup. Want to come and see the work?"
Mollified,
Barlow followed his statistician down the corridor.
“You
still shouldnÅ‚t have gone ahead without my okay," he grumbled. “Where the hell
would you people have been without me?"
“ThatÅ‚s
right, Chief. We couldnłt have swung it ourselves; our minds just donłt work
that way. And all that stuff you knew from Hitlerit wouldnłt have occurred to
us. Like poor Black-Kupperman."
They
were in a fair-sized machine shop at the end of a slight upward incline. It
was cold. Rogge-Smith pushed a button that started a motor, and a flood of
arctic light poured in as the roof parted slowly. It showed a small spaceship
with the door open.
Barlow
gaped as Rogge-Smith took him by the elbow and his other boys appeared:
Swenson-Swenson, the engineer; Tsutsugimushi-Duncan, his propellants man;
Kalb-French, advertising.
“In
you go, Chief," said Tsutsugimushi-Duncan. “This is Poprobterm."
“But
IÅ‚m the World Dictator!"
“You
bet, Chief. Youłll be in history, all rightbut this is necessary, Iłm
afraid."
The
door was closed. Acceleration slammed Bariow cruelly to the metal floor.
Something broke, and warm, wet stuff, salty tasting, ran from his mouth to his
chin. Arctic sunlight through a port suddenly became a fierce lancet stabbing
at his eyes; he was out of the atmosphere.
Lying
twisted and broken under the acceleration, Barlow realized that some things had
not changed, that Jack Ketch was never asked to dinner however many shillings
you paid him to do your dirty work, that murder will out, that crime pays only
temporarily.
The
last thing he learned was that death is the end of pain.
The Last Man Left in the Bar
around 1956, bars were full of new-fangled
television sets, and television was full of tanktown prizefighters and musical
programs. I remember discussing The Hit Parade with Cyril, and confessing to him that I loved Giselle Mackenzie
with a pure and permanent passion. I suspect that, in one of the fragments of
bar talk, with a slight change of name, I am quoted.
You know him, Joeor
Sam, Mike, Tony, Ben, whatever your deceitful, cheaply genial name may be. And
do not lie to yourself, Gentle Reader; you know him too.
You
know him, Joeor Sam, Mike, Tony, Ben, whatever your deceitful, cheaply genial
name may be. And do not lie to yourself, Gentle Reader; you know him too.
A
loner, he was.
You
did not notice him when he slipped in; you only knew by his aggrieved air when
he (finally) caught your eye and self-consciously said "Shot of Red Top
and a beer" that he'd ruffle your working day. (Six at night until two in
the morning is a day? But ah, the horrible alternative is to work for a
living.)
Shot
of Red Top and a beer at 8:35.
And
unbeknownst to him, Gentle Reader, in the garage up the street the two
contrivers of his dilemma conspired; the breaths of tall dark stooped
cadaverous Galardo and the mouse-eyed lassie mingled.
"Hyii
shall be a religion-isst," he instructed her.
"I
know the role," she squeaked and quoted: " 'Woe to the day on which I
was born into the world! Woe to the womb which bare me! Woe to the bowels which
admitted me! Woe to the breasts which suckled me! Woe to the feet upon which I
sat and rested! Woe to the hands which carried me and reared me until I grew!
Woe to my tongue and my lips which have brought forth and spoken vanity,
detraction, falsehood, ignorance, derision, idle tales, craft and hypocrisy!
Woe to mine eyes which have looked upon scandalous things! Woe to mine ears
which have delighted in the words of slanderers! Woe to my hands which have
seized what did not of right belong to them! Woe to my belly and my bowels
which have lusted after food unlawful to be eaten! Woe to my throat which like
a fire has consumed all that it found!'"
He
sobbed with the beauty of it and nodded at last, tears hanging in his eyes:
"Yess, that religion. It iss one of my fave-o-ritts."
She
was carried away. "I can do others. Oh, I can do others. I c$n do Mithras,
and Ms, and Marduk, and Eddyism and Billsword and Pealing and Uranium, both
orthodox and reformed."
"Mithras,
Isis, and Marduk are long gone and the resst are ss-till tii come. Listen tii
your master, dii not chat-ter, and we shall an artwork make of which there will
be talk under the green sky until all food is eaten."
Meanwhile,
Gentle Reader, the loner listened. To his left strong silent sinewy men in
fellowship, the builders, the doers, the darers: "So I told the foreman
where he should put his Bullard. I told him I run a Warner and Swasey, I run a
Warner and Swasey good, I never even seen a Bullard up close in my life, and
where he should put it. I know how to run a Warner and Swasey and why should he
take me off a Warner and Swasey I know how to run and put me on a Bullard and
where he should put it ain't I right?"
"Absolutely."
To
his right the clear-eyed virtuous matrons, the steadfast, the true-seeing, the
loving-kind: "Oh, I don't know what I want, what do you want? I'm a Scotch
drinker really but I don't feel like Scotch but if I come home with Muscatel on
my breath Eddie calls me a wino and laughs his head off. I don't know what I
want. What do you want?"
In
the box above the bar the rollicking raster raced.
VIDEO
Gampa
smashes bottle
over
the head of Bibby.
Bibby
spits out water.
AUDIO
Gampa: Young whippersnapper!
Bibby:
Next time put some flavoring in it, Gramps!
Gampa
picks up sugar bowl and smashes it over Bibby's head. Bibby licks sugar from
face.
Bibby:
My, that's better! But what of Naughty Roger and his attempted kidnapping of
Sis to extort the secret of the Q-bomb?
cut
to Limbo Shot of Reel-Rye bottle.
Announcer:
Yes, kiddies! What of Roger?
But
first a word from the makers of Reel-Rye, that happy syrup that gives your milk
grown-up flavor! YES! Grown-up flavor!
Shot
of Red Top and a beer. At 8:50.
In
his own un-secret heart: Steady, boy. You've got to think this out. Nothing
impossible about it, no reason to settle for a stalemate; just a little time to
think it out. Galardo said the Black Chapter would accept a token submission,
let me return the Seal, and that would be that. But I mustn't count on that as
a datum; he lied to me about the Serpentists. Token submission sounds right;
they go in big for symbolism. Maybe because they're so stone-broke, like the
Japs. Drinking a cup of tea, they gussie it all up until it's a religion;
that's the way you squeeze nourishment out of poverty-Skip the Japs. Think. He
lied to me about the Serpentists. The big thing to remember is, I have the
Chapter Seal and they need it back, or think they do. All you need's a little time
to think things through, place where he won't dare jump you and grab the Seal.
And this is it. "Joe. Sam, Mike, Tony, Ben, whoever you are. Hit me
again." JoeSam, Mike, Tony, Ben?tilts the amber bottle quietly; the
liquid's level rises and crowns the little glass with a convex meniscus. He
turns off the stream with an easy roll of the wrist. The suntan line of neon
tubing at the bar back twinkles off the curve of surface tension, the placid
whiskey, the frothy beer. At 9:05.
To
his left: "So Finkelstein finally meets Goldberg in the garment center and
he grabs him like this by the lapel, and he yells, 'You louse, you rat, you
no-good, what's this about you running around with my wife? I ought toI ought
tosay, you call this a button-hole?'"
Restrained
and apprehensive laughter; Catholic, Protestant, Jew (choice of one), what's
the difference I always say.
Did
they have a Jewish Question still, or was all smoothed and troweled and
interfaithed and brotherhoodooed
Wait.
Your formulation implies that they're in the future, and you have no proof of
that. Think straighter; you don't know where they are, or when they are, or who
they are. You do know that you walked into Big Maggie's resonance chamber to
change the target, experimental indium for old reliable zinc
and
"Bartender,"
in a controlled and formal voice. Shot of Red Top and a beer at 9:09, the hand
vibrating with remembrance of a dirty-green el Greco sky which might be
Brookhaven's heavens a million years either way from now, or one second
sideways, or (bow to Method and formally exhaust the possibilities) a
hallucination. The Seal snatched from the greenlit rock altar could be a blank
washer, a wheel from a toy truck, or the screw top from a jar of shaving cream
but for the fact that it wasn't. It was the Seal.
So:
they began seeping through after that. The Chapter wanted it back. The
Serpentists wanted it, period. Galardo had started by bargaining and wound up
by threatening, but how could you do anything but laugh at his best offer, a
rusty five-pound spur gear with a worn keyway and three teeth missing? His
threats were richer than his bribes; they culminated with The Century of Flame.
"Faith, father, it doesn't scare me at all, at all; sure, no man could
stand it." Subjective-objective (How you used to sling them around!), and
Master Newton's billiard-table similes dissolve into sense impressions of
pointer readings as you learn your trade, but Galardo had scared hell out of
you, or into you, with The Century of Flame.
But
you had the Seal of the Chapter and you had time to think, while on the screen
above the bar:
AUDIO
VIDEO
Paul:
Stop, you fool!
Long
shot down steep, cobble-stoned French village street. Pi-erre darts out of
alley in middle distance, looks wildly around, and runs toward camera, pistol
in hand. Annette and Paul appear from same alley and dash after him.
Pierre: A fool, am I?
Cut
to Cu of Pierre's face; beard stubble and sweat.
Annette:
Darling!
Cut
to long shot; Pierre aims and fires; Paul grabs his left shoulder and falls.
Cut
to Paul.
two-shot,
Annette and Paul: Don't mind me. Take my
gunafter
him. He's a mad dog, I tell you!
Dolly
back.
Annette
takes his pistol.
Annette
stands; we see her aim down at Paul, out of the picture. Then we dolly in to a
cm of her head; sheas smiling triumphantly.
A
hand holding a pistol enters the cm; the pistol muzzle touches Annette's neck.
Dolly
back to middle shot. Hark-rider stands behind Annette as Paul gets up briskly
and takes the pistol from her hand.
Annette:
This, my dear, is as good a time as any to drop my little masquerade. Are you
American agents really so stupid that you never thought I might bea plant, as
you call it?
Harkrider:
Golkov.
Sound:
click of cocking pistol.
Drop
it, Madame
Paul:
No, Madame Golkov; we American agents were not really so stupid. Wish I could
say the same foryour people. Pierre Tourneur was a plant, I am glad to say;
otherwise he would not have missed me. He is one of the best pistol shots hi
Counterintel-ligence.
Cut
to long shot of street, Hark-rider and Paul walk away from the camera, Annette
between them. Fadeout.
Harkrider:
Come along, Madame Golkov.
Music:
theme up and out.
To
his right: "It ain't reasonable. All that shooting and yelling and falling
down and not one person sticks his head out of a window to see what's going on.
They should of had a few people looking out to see what's going on, otherwise
it ain't reasonable."
"Yeah,
who's fighting tonight?"
"Rocky
Mausoleum against Rocky Mazzarella. From Toledo."
"Rocky
Mazzarella beat Rocky Granatino, didn't he?"
"Ah,
that was Rocky Bolderoni, and he whipped Rocky Capa-cola."
Them
and their neatly packaged problems, them and their neatly packaged shows with
beginning middle and end. The rite of the low-budget shot-in-Europe spy series,
the rite of pugilism, the rite of the dog walk after dinner and the beer at the
bar with cocelebrant worshippers at the high altar of Nothing.
9:30.
Shot of Red Top and a beer, positively the last one until you get this figured
out; you're beginning to buzz like a transformer.
Do
they have transformers? Do they have vitamins? Do they have anything but that
glaring green sky, and the rock altar and treasures like the Seal and the rusty
gear with three broken teeth? "All smelling of iodoform. And all quite
bald." But Galardo looked as if he were dying of tuberculosis, and the
letter from the Serpentists was in a sick and straggling hand. Relics of
medieval barbarism.
To
his left-
"Galardo!"
he screamed.
The
bartender scurried overJoe, Sam, Mike, Tony, Ben? scowling. "What's the
matter, mister?"
"I'm
sorry. I got a stitch in my side. A cramp."
Bullyboy
scowled competently and turned. "What'll you have, mister?"
Galardo
said cadaverously: "Wodeffer my vriend hyere iss havfing."
"Shot
of Red Top and a beer, right?"
"What
are you doing here?"
"Drink-ing
beferachiss . . . havf hyu de-site-it hwat rii dii?"
The
bartender rapped down the shot glass and tilted the bottle over it, looking at
Galardo. Some of the whiskey slopped over. The bartender started, went to the
tap and carefully drew a glass of beer, slicing the collar twice.
"My
vriend hyere will pay."
He
got out a half dollar, fumbling, and put it on the wet wood. The bartender,
old-fashioned, rapped it twice on the bar to show he wasn't stealing it even
though you weren't watching; he rang it up double virtuous on the cash
register, the absent owner's fishy eye.
"What
are you doing here?" again, in a low, reasonable, almost amused voice to
show him you have the whip hand.
"Drink-ing
beferachiss ... it iss so cle-an hyere." Galardo's sunken face,
unbelievably, looked wistful as he surveyed the barroom, his head swiveling
slowly from extreme left to extreme right.
"Clean.
Well. Isn't it clean there?"
"Sheh,
not!" Galardo said mournfully. "Sheh, not! Hyere it iss so cle-an . .
. hwai did yii outreach tii us? Hag-rid us, wretch-it, hag-rid us?" There
were tears hanging in his eyes. "Haff yii de-site-it hwat tu dii?"
Expansively:
"I don't pretend to understand the situation fully, Galardo. But you know
and I know that I've got something you people [think you] need. Now there
doesn't seem to be any body .of law covering artifacts that appear [plink!] in
a magnetron on accidental overload, and I just have your word that it's
yours."
"Ah,
that iss how yii re-member it now," said sorrowful Galardo.
"Well,
it's the way it [but wasn't something green? I think of spired Toledo and three
angled crosses toppling] happened. I don't want anything silly, like a million
dollars in small unmarked bills, and I don't want to be bullied, to be bullied,
no, I mean not by you, not by anybody. Just, just tell me who you are, what all
this is about. This is nonsense, you see, and we can't have nonsense. I'm
afraid I'm not expressing myself very well"
And
a confident smile and turn away from him, which shows that you aren't afraid,
you can turn your back and dare him to make something of it. In public, in the
bar? It is laughable; you have him in the palm of your hand. "Shot of Red
Top and a beer, please, Sam." At 9:48.
The
bartender draws the beer and pours the whiskey. He pauses before he picks up
the dollar bill fished from the pants pocket, pauses almost timidly and works
his face into a friend's grimace. But you can read him; he is making amends for
his suspicion that you were going to start a drunken brawl when Galardo merely
surprised you a bit. You can read him because your mind is tensed to concert
pitch tonight, ready for Galardo, ready for the Serpentists, ready to crack
this thing wide open; strange!
But
you weren't ready for the words he spoke from his fake apologetic friend's
grimace as you delicately raised the heavy amber-filled glass to your lips:
"Where'd your friend go?"
You
slopped the whiskey as you turned and looked.
Galardo
gone.
You
smiled and shrugged; he comes and goes as he pleases, you know. Irresponsible,
no manners at allbut loyal. A prince among men when you get to know him, a
prince, I tell you. All this in your smile and shrugwhy, you could have been
an actor! The worry, the faint neurotic worry, didn't show at all, and indeed
there is no reason why it should. You have the whip hand; you have the Seal;
Galardo will come crawling back and explain everything. As for example:
"You
may wonder why I've asked all of you to assemble in the libr'reh."
or
"For
goodness' sake, Gracie, I wasn't going to go to Cuba! When you heard me on the
extension phone I was just ordering a dozen Havana cigars!"
or
"In
your notation, we are from 19,276 a.d. Our basic mathematic is a quite
comprehensible subsumption of your contemporary statistical analysis and
topology which I shall now proceed to explain to you."
And
that was all.
With
sorrow, Gentle Reader, you will have noticed that the marble did not remark:
"I am chiseled," the lumber "I am sawn," the paint "I
am applied to canvas," the tea leaf "I am whisked about in an
exquisite Korean bowl to brew while the celebrants of cha no yu squeeze this
nourishment out of their poverty." Vain victim, relax and play your
hunches; subconscious integration does it. Stick with your lit-tle old
subconscious integration and all will go swimmingly, if only it weren't so
damned noisy in here. But it was dark on the street and conceivably things
could happen there; stick with crowds and stick with witnesses, but if only it
weren't so ...
To
his left they were settling down; it was the hour of confidences, and man to
man they told the secret of their success: "In the needle trade, I'm in
the needle trade, I don't sell anybody a crooked needle, my father told me
that. Albert, he said to me, don't never sell nobody nothing but a straight
needle. And today I-have four shops."
To
his right they were settling down; freed of the cares of the day they invited
their souls, explored the spiritual realm, theologized with exquisite
distinctions: "Now wait a minute, I didn't say I was a good Mormon, I said
I was a Mormon and that's what I am, a Mormon. I never said I was a good
Mormon, I just said I was a Mormon, my mother was a Mormon and my father was a
Mormon, and that makes me a Mormon but I never said I was a good Mormon"
Distinguo,
rolled the canonical thunder; distinguo.
Demurely
a bonneted lassie shook her small-change tambourine beneath his chin and
whispered, snarling: "Galardo lied."
Admit
it; you were startled. But what need for the bartender to come running with
raised hand, what need for needle-trader to your left to shrink away, the
L.D.S. to cower?
"Mister,
that's twice you let out a yell, we run a quiet place, if you can't be good,
begone."
Begob.
"I
ash-assure you, bartender, it wasunintenable."
Greed
vies with hate; greed wins; greed always wins: "Just keep it quiet,
mister, this ain't the Bowery, this is a family place." Then, relenting:
"The same?"
"Yes,
please." At 10:15 the patient lassie jingled silver on the parchment palm
outstretched. He placed a quarter on the tambourine and asked politely:
"Did you say something to me before, Miss?"
"God
bless you, sir. Yes, sir, I did say something. I said Galardo lied; the Seal is
holy to the Serpent, sir, and to his humble emissaries. If you'll only hand it
over, sir, the Serpent will somewhat mitigate the fearsome torments which are
rightly yours for snatching the Seal from the Altar, sir."
[Snatchings
from Altars? Ma foi, the wench is mad!]
"Listen,
lady. That's only talk. What annoys me about you people is, you won't talk sense.
I want to know who you are, what this is about, maybe just a little hint about
your mathematics, and I'll do the rest and you can have the blooming Seal. I'm
a passable physicist even if I'm only a technician. I bet there's something you
didn't know. I bet you didn't know the tech shortage is tighter than the
scientist shortage. You get a guy can tune a magnetron, he writes his own
ticket. So I'm weak on quantum mechanics, the theory side, I'm still a good
all-around man and be-lieve me, the Ph.D.'s would kiss my ever-loving feet if I
told them I got an offer from Argonne
"So
listen, you Janissary emissary. I'm happy right here in this necessary
commissary and here I stay."
But
she was looking at him with bright frightened mouse's eyes and slipped on down
the line when he paused for breath, putting out the parchment palm to others
but not ceasing to watch him.
Coins
tapped the tambour. "God bless you. God bless you. God bless you."
The
raving-maniacal ghost of G. Washington Hill descended then into a girdled
sibyl; she screamed from the screen: "It's Hit Parade!"
"I
like them production numbers."
"I
like that Pigalle Mackintosh."
"I
like them production numbers. Lotsa pretty girls, pretty clothes, something to
take your mind off your troubles."
"I
like that Pigalle Mackintosh. She don't just sing, mind you, she plays the
saxophone. Talent."
"I
like them production numbers. They show you just what the song is all about.
Like last week they did Sadist Calypso with this mad scientist cutting up the
girls, and then Pigalle comes in and whips him to death at the last verse, you
see just what the song's all about, something to take your mind off your
troubles."
"I
like that Pigalle Mackintosh. She don't just sing, mind you, she plays the
saxophone and cracks a blacksnake whip, like last week hi Sadist Calypso"
"Yeah.
Something to take your mind off your troubles."
Irritably
he felt in his pocket for the Seal and moved, stumbling a little, to one of the
tables against the knotty pine wall. His head slipped forward on the polished
wood and he sank into the sea of myth.
Galardo
came to him in his dream and spoke under a storm-green sky: "Take your
mind off your troubles, Edward. It was stolen like the first penny, like the
quiz answers, like the pity for your bereavement." His hand, a tambourine,
was out.
"Never
shall I yield," he declaimed to the miserable wretch. "By the honneur
of a Gascon, I stole it fair and square; 'tis mine, knave! En garde!"
Galardo
quailed and ran, melting into the sky, the altar, the tambourine.
A
ham-hand manhandled him. "Light-up time," said Sam. "I let you
sleep because you got it here, but I got to close up now."
"Sam,"
he says uncertainly.
"One
for the road, mister. On the house, t/p-sy-daisy!" meaty hooks under his
armpits heaving him to the bar.
The
lights are out behind the bar, the jolly neons, glittering off how many gems of
amber rye and the tan crystals of beer? A meager bulb above the register is the
oasis in the desert of inky night.
"Sam,"
groggily, "you don't understand. I mean I never explained it-"
"Drink
up, mister," a pale free drink, soda bubbles lightly tinged with tawny
rye. A small sip to gain time.
"Sam,
there are some people after me"
"You'll
feel better in the morning, mister. Drink up, I got to close up, hurry
up."
"These
people, Sam [it's cold in here and scary as a noise in the attic; the bottles
stand accusingly, the chrome globes that top them eye you] these people,
they've got a thing, The Century of"
"Sure,
mister, I let you sleep because you got it here, but we close up now, drink up
your drink."
"Sam,
let me go home with you, will you? It isn't anything like that, don't
misunderstand, I just can't be alone. These peoplelook, I've got money"
He
spreads out what he dug from Ms pocket.
"Sure,
mister, you got lots of money, two dollars and thirty-eight cents. Now you take
your money and get out of the store because I got to lock up and clean out the
register"
"Listen,
bartender, I'm not drunk, maybe I don't have much money on me but I'm an
important man! Important! They couldn't run Big Maggie at Brookhaven without
me, I may not have a degree but what I get from these people if you'll only let
me stay here"
The
bartender takes the pale one on the house you only sipped and dumps it in the
sink; his hands are iron on you and you float while he chants:
"Decent
man. Decent place. Hold their liquor. Got it here. Try be nice. Drunken bum.
Don'tcomeback."
The
crash of your coccyx on the concrete and the slam of the door are one.
Run!
Down
the black street stumbling over cans, cats, orts, to the pool of light in the
night, safe corner where a standard sprouts and sprays radiance.
The
tall black figure that steps between is Galardo.
The
short one has a tambourine.
"Take
it!" He thrust out the Seal on his shaking palm. "If you won't tell
me anything, you won't. Take it and go away!"
Galardo
inspects it and sadly says: "Thiss appearss to be a blank wash-er."
"Mistake,"
he slobbers. "Minute." He claws in his pockets, ripping. "Here!
Here!"
The
lassie squeaks: "The wheel of a toy truck. It will not do at all,
sir." Her glittereyes.
"Then
this! This is it! This must be it!"
Their
heads shake slowly. Unable to look his fingers feel the rim and rolled
threading of the jar cap.
They
nod together, sad and glitter-eyed, and The Century of Flame begins.
The Mindworm
what's the difference between science fiction and
fantasy? Easy, you say: fantasy is about fairies and vampires and werewolves,
while science fiction is about Mars and the year 8000 a.d. But it's not a very satisfactory answer, because there
have been first-rate stories about werewolves, say (for instance, James Blish's
"There Shall Be No Darkness") that are clearly science fiction. The
difference is that in a science fiction story you are willing to believe, for
the duration of the story at least, that it might under certain circumstances
be true-somewhere else, or at some future tunewhile in fantasy you don't think
for a moment it's true, but are just enjoying the gooseflesh or the romp. And
then you come across something like The Mindworm ...
The
handsome j. g. and the pretty nurse held out against it as long as they
reasonably could, but blue Pacific water, languid tropical nights, the low
atoll dreaming on the horizonand the complete absence of any other nice young
people for company on the small, uncomfortable parts boat-did their work. On
June 30th they watched through dark glasses as the dazzling thing burst over
the fleet and the atoll. Her manicured hand gripped his arm in excitement and
terror. Unfelt radiation sleeted through their loins.
A
storekeeper-third-class named Bielaski watched the young couple with more
interest than he showed in Test Able. After all, he had twenty-five dollars
riding on the nurse. That night he lost it to a chief bosun's mate who had
backed the j. g.
In
the course of time, the careless nurse was discharged under conditions other
than honorable. The j. g., who didn't like to put things in writing, phoned her
all the way from Manila to say it was a damned shame. When her gratitude gave
way to specific inquiry, their overseas connection went bad and he had to hang
up.
She
had a child, a boy, turned it over to a foundling home, and vanished from his
life into a series of good jobs and finally marriage.
The
boy grew up stupid, puny and stubborn, greedy and miserable. To the home's
hilarious young athletics director he suddenly said: "You hate me. You
think I make the rest of the boys look bad."
The
athletics director blustered and laughed, and later told the doctor over
coffee: "I watch myself around the kids. They're sharp they catch a look
or a gesture and it's like a blow in the face to them, I know that, so I watch
myself. So how did he know?"
The
doctor told the boy: "Three pounds more this month isn't bad, but how
about you pitch in and clean up your plate every day? Can't live on meat and
water; those vegetables make you big and strong."
The
boy said: "What's 'neurasthenic' mean?"
The
doctor later said to the director: "It made my flesh creep. I was looking
at his little spindling body and dishing out the old pep talk about growing big
and strong, and inside my head I was thinking we'd call him neurasthenic in the
old days and then out he popped with it. What should we do? Should we do
anything? Maybe it'll go away. I don't know anything about these things. I
don't know whether anybody does."
"Reads
minds, does he?" asked the director. Be damned if he's going to read my
mind about Schultz Meat Market's ten percent. "Doctor, I think I'm going
to take my vacation a little early this year. Has anybody shown any interest in
adopting the child?"
"Not
him. He wasn't a baby doll when we got him, and at present he's an
exceptionally unattractive-looking kid. You know how people don't give a damn
about anything but their looks."
"Some
couples would take anything, or so they tell me."
"Unapproved
for foster-parenthood, you mean?"
"Red
tape and arbitrary classifications sometimes limit us too severely in our
adoptions."
"If
you're going to wish him on some screwball couple that the courts turned down
as unfit, I want no part of it."
"You
don't have to have any part of it, doctor. By the way, which dorm does he sleep
in?
"West,"
grunted the doctor, leaving the office.
The
director called a few friendsa judge, a couple the judge referred him to, a
court clerk. Then he left by way of the east wing of the building.
The
boy survived three months with the Berrymans. Hard-drinking Mimi alternately
caressed and shrieked at him; Edward W. tried to be a good scout and just
gradually lost interest, looking clean through him. He hit the road in June and
got by with it for a while. He wore a Boy Scout uniform, and Boy Scouts can
turn up anywhere, any time. The money he had taken with him lasted a month.
When the last penny of the last dollar was three days spent, he was adrift on a
Nebraska prairie. He had walked out of the last small town because the
constable was beginning to wonder what on earth he was hanging around and who
he belonged to. The town was miles behind on the two-lane highway; the infrequent
cars did not stop.
One
of Nebraska's "rivers", a dry bed at this time of year, lay ahead,
spanned by a railroad culvert. There were some men in its shade, and he was
hungry.
They
were ugly, dirty men, and their thoughts were muddled and stupid. They called
him "Shorty" and gave him a little dirty bread and some stinking
sardines from a can. The thoughts of one of them became less muddled and
uglier. He talked to the rest out of the boy's hearing, and they whooped with
laughter. The boy got ready to run, but his legs wouldn't hold him up.
He
could read the thoughts of the men quite clearly as they headed for him.
Outrage, fear, and disgust blended in him and somehow turned inside-out and one
of the men was dead on the dry ground, grasshoppers vaulting onto his flannel
shirt, the others backing away, frightened now, not frightening.
He
wasn't hungry any more; he felt quite comfortable and satisfied. He got up and
headed for the other men, who ran. The rearmost of them was thinking Jeez he
folded up the evil eye we was only gonna
Again
the boy let the thoughts flow into his head and again he flipped his own
thoughts around them; it was quite easy to do. It was differentthis man's
terror from the other's lustful anticipation. But both had their points . . .
At
his leisure, he robbed the bodies of three dollars and twenty-four cents.
Thereafter
his fame preceded him like a death wind. Two years on the road and he had his
growth and his fill of the dull and stupid minds he met there. He moved to
northern cities, a year here, a year there, quiet, unobtrusive, prudent, an
epicure.
Sebastian
Long woke suddenly, with something on his mind. As night fog cleared away he
remembered, happily. Today he started the Demeter Bowl! At last there was time,
at last there was moneysix hundred and twenty-three dollars in the bank. He
had packed and shipped the three dozen cocktail glasses last night, engraved
with Mrs. Klausman's initialshis last commercial order for as many months as
the Bowl would take.
He
shifted from nightshirt to denims, gulped coffee, boiled an egg but was too
excited to eat it. He went to the front of his shop-workroom-apartment, checked
the lock, waved at neighbors' children on their way to school, and
ceremoniously set a sign in the cluttered window.
It said:
"NO COMMERCIAL ORDERS TAKEN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE."
From
a closet he tenderly carried a shrouded object that made a double armful and
laid it on his workbench. Unshrouded, it was a glass bowlwhat a glass bowl!
The clearest Swedish lead glass, the purest lines he had ever seen, his secret
treasure since the crazy day he had bought it, long ago, for six months'
earnings. His wife had given him hell for that until the day she died. From the
closet he brought a portfolio filled with sketches and designs dating back to
the day he had bought the bowl. He smiled over the first, excitedly scrawleda
florid, rococo conception, unsuited to the classicism of the lines and the
serenity of the perfect glass.
Through
many years and hundreds of sketches he had refined his conception to the point
where it was, he humbly felt, not unsuited to the medium. A strongly-molded
Demeter was to dominate the piece, a matron as serene as the glass, and all the
fruits of the earth would flow from her gravely outstretched arms.
Suddenly
and surely, he began to work. With a candle he thinly smoked an oval area on
the outside of the bowl. Two steady fingers clipped the Demeter drawing against
the carbon black; a hair-fine needle in his other hand traced her lines. When
the transfer of the design was done, Sebastian Long readied his lathe. He
fitted a small copper wheel, slightly worn as he liked them, into the chuck and
with his fingers charged it with the finest rouge from Rouen. He took an
ashtray cracked in delivery and held it against the spinning disk. It bit in
smoothly, with the wiping feel to it that was exactly right.
Holding
out his hands, seeing that the fingers did not tremble with excitement, he
eased the great bowl to the lathe and was about to make the first tiny cut of the
millions that would go into the masterpiece.
Somebody
knocked on his door and rattled the doorknob.
Sebastian
Long did not move or look toward the door. Soon the busybody would read the
sign and go away. But the pounding and the rattling of the knob went on. He
eased down the bowl and angrily went to the window, picked up the sign, and
shook it at whoever it washe couldn't make out the face very well. But the
idiot wouldn't go away.
The
engraver unlocked the door, opened it a bit, and snapped: "The shop is
closed. I shall not be taking any orders for several months. Please don't
bother me now."
"It's
about the Demeter Bowl," said the intruder.
Sebastian
Long stared at him. "What the devil do you know about my Demeter
Bowl?" He saw the man was a stranger, undersized by a little,
middle-aged...
"Just
let me in please," urged the man. "It's important. Please!"
"I
don't know what you're talking about," said the engraver. "But what
do you know about my Demeter Bowl?" He hooked his thumbs pugnaciously over
the waistband of his denims and glowered at the stranger. The stranger promptly
took advantage of his hand being removed from the door and glided in.
Sebastian
Long thought briefly that it might be a nightmare as the man darted quickly
about his shop, picking up a graver and throwing it down, picking up a wire
scratch-wheel and throwing it down. "Here, you!" he roared, as the
stranger picked up a crescent wrench which he did not throw down.
As
Long started for him, the stranger darted to the workbench and brought the
crescent wrench down shatteringly on the bowl.
Sebastian
Long's heart was bursting with sorrow and rage; such a storm of emotions as he
never had known thundered through him. Paralyzed, he saw the stranger smile
with anticipation.
The
engraver's legs folded under him and he fell to the floor, drained and dead.
The
Mindworm, locked in the bedroom of his brownstone front, smiled again,
reminiscently.
Smiling,
he checked the day on a wall calendar.
"Dolores!"
yelled her mother in Spanish. "Are you going to pass the whole day in
there?"
She
had been practicing low-lidded, sexy half-smiles like Lauren Bacall in the
bathroom mirror. She stormed out and yelled in English: "I don't know how
many times I tell you not to call me that Spick name no more!"
"Dolly!"
sneered her mother. "Dah-lee! When was there a Saint Dah-lee that you call
yourself after, eh?"
The
girl snarled a Spanish obscenity at her mother and ran down the tenement
stairs. Jeez, she was gonna be late for sure!
Held
up by a stream of traffic between her and her streetcar, she danced with
impatience. Then the miracle happened. Just like in the movies, a big
convertible pulled up before her and its lounging driver said, opening the
door: "You seem to be in a hurry. Could I drop you somewhere?"
Dazed
at the sudden realization of a hundred daydreams, she did not fail to give the
driver a low-lidded, sexy smile as she said: "Why, thanks!" and
climbed in. He wasn't no Cary Grant, but he had all his hair . . . kind of
small, but so was she . . . and jeez, the convertible had leopard-skin seat
covers!
The
car was in the stream of traffic, purring down the avenue. "It's a lovely
day," she said. "Really too nice to work."
The
driver smiled shyly, kind of like Jimmy Stewart but of course not so tall, and
said: "I feel like playing hooky myself. How would you like a spin down
Long Island?"
"Be
wonderful!" The convertible cut left on an odd-numbered street.
"Play
hooky, you said. What do you do?"
"Advertising."
"Advertising!"
Dolly wanted to kick herself for ever having doubted, for ever having thought
in low, self-loathing moments that it wouldn't work out, that she'd marry a
grocer or a mechanic and live forever after in a smelly tenement and grow old
and sick and stooped. She felt vaguely in her happy daze that it might have
been cuter, she might have accidentally pushed him into a pond or something,
but this was cute enough. An advertising man, leopard-skin seat covers . . .
what more could a girl with a sexy smile and a nice little figure want?
Speeding
down the South Shore she learned that his name was Michael Brent, exactly as it
ought to be. She wished she could tell him she was Jennifer Brown or one of
those real cute names they had nowadays, but was reassured when he told her he
thought Dolly Gonzalez was a beautiful name. He didn't, and she noticed the
omission, add: "It's the most beautiful name I ever heard!" That,
she comfortably thought as she settled herself against the cushions, would come
later.
They
stopped at Medford for lunch, a wonderful lunch in a little restaurant where
you went down some steps and there were candles on the table. She called him
"Michael" and he called her "Dolly." She learned that he
liked dark girls and thought the stories in True Story really were true, and
that he thought she was just tall enough, and that Greer Garson was wonderful,
but not the way she was, and that he thought her dress was just wonderful.
They
drove slowly after Medford, and Michael Brent did most of the talking. He had
traveled all over the world. He had been in the war and woundedjust a flesh
wound. He was thirty-eight, and had been married once, but she died. There were
no children. He was alone in the world. He had nobody to share his town house
in the 50's, his country place in Westchester, his lodge in the Maine woods.
Every word sent the girl floating higher and higher on a tide of happiness;
the signs were unmistakable.
When
they reached Montauk Point, the last sandy bit of the continent before blue
water and Europe, it was sunset, with a great wrinkled sheet of purple and
rose stretching half across the sky and the first stars appearing above the
dark horizon of the water.
The
two of them walked from the parked car out onto the sand, alone, bathed in
glorious Technicolor. Her heart was nearly bursting with joy as she heard
Michael Brent say, his arms tightening around her: "Darling, will you
marry me?"
"Oh,
yes, Michael!" she breathed, dying. .
The
Mindworm, drowsing, suddenly felt the sharp sting of danger. He cast out
through the great city, dragging tentacles of thought:
".
. . die if she don't let me . . ."
".
. . six an' six is twelve an' carry one an' three is four . . ."
".
. . gobblegobble madre de dios pero soy gobblegobble . . ."
".
. . parlay Domino an' Missab and shoot the roll on Duchess Peg in the feature .
. ."
".
. . melt resin add the silver chloride and dissolve in oil of lavender stand
and decant and fire to cone zero twelve give you shimmering streaks of luster
down the walls . . ."
".
. . moiderin' square-headed gobblegobble tried ta poke his eye out wassamatta
witta ref. . ."
".
. . O God I am most heartily sorry I have offended thee in ..."
".
. . talk like a commie. . ."
".
. . gobblegobblegobble two dolla twenny-fi' sense gobble . . ."
".
. . just a nip and fill it up with water and brush my teeth . . ."
".
. . really know I'm God but fear to confess their sins . . ."
".
. . dirty lousy rock-headed claw-handed paddle-footed goggle-eyed snot-nosed
hunch-backed feeble-minded pot-bellied son of . . ."
".
. . write on the wall alfie is a stunkur and then . . ."
".
. . thinks I believe it's a television set but I know he's got a bomb hi there
but who can I tell who can help so alone. . ."
".
. . gabble was ich weiss nicht gabble geh bei Broadvay gabble . . ."
".
. . habt mein daughter Rosie such a fella gobblegobble . . ."
".
. . wonder if that's one didn't look back. . ."
".
. . seen with her in the Medford restaurant. . ."
The
Mindworm struck into that thought.
".
. . not a mark on her but the M. E.'s have been wrong before and heart failure
don't mean a thing anyway try to talk to her old lady authorize an autopsy get
Pancholittle guy talks Spanish be best . . ."
The
Mindworm knew he would have to be moving againsoon. He was sorry; some of the
thoughts he had tapped indicated good . . . hunting?
Regretfully,
he again dragged his net:
".
. . with chartreuse drinks I mean drapes could use a drink come to think of it.
. ."
".
. . reep-beep-reep-beep reepiddy-beepiddy-beep bop man wadda beat. . ."
"
JS,(pfo,, *,)-Å(*" aj, What the Hell was that?"
The
Mindworm withdrew, in frantic haste. The intelligence was massive, its
overtones those of a vigorous adult. He had learned from certain dangerous
children that there was peril of a leveling flow. Shaken and scared, he contemplated
traveling. He would need more than that wretched girl had supplied, and it
would not be epicurean. There would be no time to find individuals at a ripe
emotional crisis, or goad them to one. It would be plainmunching. The Mindworm
drank a glass of water, also necessary to his metabolism.
EIGHT
FOUND DEAD IN UPTOWN MOVIE; "MOLESTER" SOUGHT
Eight
persons, including three women, were found dead Wednesday night of unknown
causes in widely separated seats in the balcony of the Odeon Theater at 117th
St. and Broadway. Police are seeking a man described by the balcony usher,
Michael Fenelly, 18, as "acting like a woman-molester."
Fenelly
discovered the first of the fatalities after seeing the man "moving from
one empty seat to another several times." He went to ask a woman hi a seat
next to one the man had just vacated whether he had annoyed her. She was dead.
Almost
at once, a scream rang out. In another part of the balcony Mrs. Sadie
Rabinowitz, 40, uttered the cry when another victim toppled from his seat next
to her.
Theater
manager I. J. Marcusohn stopped the show and turned on the house lights. He
tried to instruct his staff to keep the audience from leaving before the police
arrived. He failed to get word to them in time, however, and most of the audience
was gone when a detail from the 24th Pet. and an ambulance from Harlem hospital
took over at the scene of the tragedy.
The
Medical Examiner's office has not yet made a report as to the causes of death.
A spokesman said the victims showed no signs of poisoning or violence. He added
that it "was inconceivable that it could be a coincidence."
Lt.
John Braidwood of the 24th Pet. said of the alleged molester: "We got a
fair description of him and naturally we will try to bring him in for
questioning."
Clickety-click,
clickety-dick, dickety-click sang the rails as the Mindworm drowsed in his
coach seat.
Some
people were walking forward from the diner. One was thinking:
"Different-looking fellow, (a) he's aberrant, (b) he's non-aberrant and
ill. Cancel (b)respiration normal, skin smooth and healthy, no tremor of
limbs, well-groomed. Is aberrant (1) trivially. (2) significantly. Cancel
(1)displayed no involuntary interest when . . . odd! Running for the washroom!
Unexpected because (a) neat grooming indicates amour propre inconsistent with
amusing others; (b) evident health inconsistent with . . ." It had taken
one second, was fully detailed.
The
Mindworm, locked in the toilet of the coach, wondered what the next stop was.
He was getting off at itnot frightened, just careful. Dodge them, keep
dodging them and everything would be all right. Send out no mental taps until
the train was far away and everything would be all right.
He
got off at a West Virginia coal and iron town surrounded by ruined mountains and
filled with the offscourings of Eastern Europe. Serbs, Albanians, Croats,
Hungarians, Slovenes, Bulgarians, and all possible combinations and
permutations thereof. He walked slowly from the smoke-stained, brownstone
passenger station. The train had roared on its way.
".
. . ain' no gemmum that's fo sho', fi-cen' tip fo' a good shine lak ah give um
. . ."
".
. . dumb bassar don't know how to make out a billa lading yet he ain't never
gonna know so fire him get it over with..."
".
. . gabblegabblegabble . . ." Not a word he recognized in it.
"...
gobblegobble dat tarn vooman I brek she nack. . ."
".
. . gobble trink visky chin glassabeer gobblegobblegobble . . ."
".
. .gabblegabblegabble. . ."
".
. . makes me so gobblegobble mad little no-good tramp no she ain' but I don'
like no standup from no dame ..."
A
blond, square-headed boy fuming under a street light.
".
. . out wit' Casey Oswiak I could kill that dumb bohunk alia time trine ta paw
her. . ."
It
was a possibility. The Mindworm drew near.
".
. . stand me up for that gobblegobble bohunk I oughtta slap her inna mush like
my ole man says . . ."
"Hello,"
said the Mindworm.
"Waddaya
wan'?"
"Casey
Oswiak told me to tell you not to wait up for your girl. He's taking her out
tonight."
The
blond boy's rage boiled into his face and shot from his eyes. He was about to
swing when the Mindworm began to feed. It was like pheasant after chicken,
venison after beef. The coarseness of the environment, or the ancient strain?
The Mindworm wondered as he strolled down the street. A girl passed him:
".
. . oh but he's gonna be mad like last time wish I came right away so jealous
kinda nice but he might bust me one some day be nice to him tonight there he is
lam'post leaning on it looks kinda funny gawd I hope he ain't drunk looks kinda
funny sleeping sick or bozhe moi gabblegabblegabble . . ."
Her
thoughts trailed into a foreign language of which the Mind-worm knew not a
word. After hysteria had gone she recalled, in the foreign language, that she
had passed him.
The
Mindworm, stimulated by the unfamiliar quality of the last feeding, determined
to stay for some days. He checked in at a Main Street hotel.
Musing,
he dragged his net:
".
. . gobblegobblewhompyeargobblecheskygobblegabblechyesh . . ."
".
. . take him down cellar beat the can off the damn chesky thief put the fear of
god into him teach him can't bust into no boxcars in mah parta the caounty. .
."
".
. . gabblegabble. . ."
".
. . phone ole Mister Ryan in She-cawgo and he'll tell them three-card monte
grifters who got the horse-room rights in this necka the woods by damn don't
pay protection money for no protection . . ."
The
Mindworm followed that one further; it sounded as though it could lead to some
money if he wanted to stay in the town long enough.
The
Eastern Europeans of the town, he mistakenly thought, were like the tramps and
bums he had known and fed on during his years on the roadstupid and safe, safe
and stupid, quite the same thing.
In
the morning he found no mention of the square-headed boy's death in the town's
paper and thought it had gone practically unnoticed. It hadby the paper,
which was of, by, and for the coal and iron company and its native-American
bosses and straw bosses. The other town, the one without a charter or police
force, with only an imported weekly newspaper or two from the nearest city,
noticed it. The other town had roots more than two thousand years deep, which
are hard to pull up. But the Mindworm didn't know it was there.
He
fed again that night, on a giddy young streetwalker in her room. He had
astounded and delighted her with a fistful of ten-dollar bills before he began
to gorge. Again the delightful difference from city-bred folk was there. . . .
Again
in the morning he had been unnoticed, he thought. The chartered town, unwilling
to admit that there were streetwalkers or that they were found dead, wiped the
slate clean; its only member who really cared was the native-American cop on
the beat who had collected weekly from the dead girl.
The
other town, unknown to the Mindworm, buzzed with it. A delegation went to the
other town's only public officer. Unfortunately he was young, American-trained,
perhaps even ignorant about some important things. For what he told them was:
"My children, that is foolish superstition. Go home."
The
Mindworm, through the day, roiled the surface of the town proper by allowing
himself to be roped into a poker game in a parlor of the hotel. He wasn't good
at it, he didn't like it, and he quit with relief when he had cleaned six
shifty-eyed, hard-drinking loafers out of about three hundred dollars. One of
them went straight to the police station and accused the unknown of being a
sharper. A humorous sergeant, the Mindworm was pleased to note, joshed the
loafer out of his temper.
Nightfall
again, hunger again . . .
He
walked the streets of the town and found them empty. It was strange. The
native-American citizens were out, tending bar, walking their beats, locking up
their newspaper on the stones, collecting their rents, managing their
moviesbut where were the others? He cast his net:
".
. . gobblegobblegobble whomp year gobble . . ."
".
. . crazy old pollack mama of mine try to lock me in with Errol
Flynn
at the Majestic never know the difference if I sneak out the back . . ."
That
was near. He crossed the street and it was nearer. He homed on the thought:
".
. . jeez he's a hunka man like Stanley but he never looks at me that Vera
Kowalik I'd like to kick her just once in the gobblegobble-gobble crazy old
mama won't be American so ashamed. . ."
It was
half a block, no more, down a side street. Brick houses, two stories, with back
yards on an alley. She was going out the back way.
How
strangely quiet it was in the alley.
".
. . easy down them steps fix that damn board that's how she caught me last time
what the hell are they all so scared of went to see Father Drugas won't talk
bet somebody got it again that Vera Kowalik and her big..."
".
. . gobble bozhe gobble whomp year gobble. . ."
She
was closer; she was closer.
"All
think I'm a kid show them who's a kid bet if Stanley caught me all alone out
here in the alley dark and all he wouldn't think I was a kid that damn Vera
Kowalik her folks don't think she's a kid . . ."
For
all her bravado she was stark terrified when he said: "Hello."
"Whowhowho?"
she stammered.
Quick,
before she screamed. Her terror was delightful.
Not
too replete to be alert, he cast about, questing.
".
. . gobblegobblegobble whomp year."
The
countless eyes of the other town, with more than two thousand years of
experience in such things, had been following him. What he had sensed as a
meaningless hash of noise was actually an impassioned outburst in a nearby
darkened house.
"Fools!
fools! Now he has taken a virgin! I said not to wait. What will we say to her
mother?"
An
old man with handlebar mustache and, in spite of the heat, his shirt sleeves
decently rolled down and buttoned at the cuffs, evenly replied: "My heart
in me died with hers, Casimir, but one must be sure. It would be a terrible
thing to make a mistake in such an affair."
The
weight of conservative elder opinion was with him. Other old men with
mustaches, some perhaps remembering mistakes long ago, nodded and said: "A
terrible thing. A terrible thing."
The
Mindworm strolled back to his hotel and napped on the made bed briefly. A
tingle of danger awakened him. Instantly he cast out:
".
. . gobblegobble whompyear."
".
. . whampyir."
"WAMPYIR!"
Close!
Close and deadly!
The
door of his room burst open, and mustached old men with their shirt sleeves
rolled down and decently buttoned at the cuffs unhesitatingly marched in, their
thoughts a turmoil of alien noises, foreign gibberish that he could not wrap
his mind around, disconcerting, from every direction.
The
sharpened stake was through his heart and the scythe blade through his throat
before he could realize that he had not been the first of his kind; and that
what clever people have not yet learned, some quite ordinary people have not
yet entirely forgotten.
With These Hands
when Cyril Kornbluth married, it was to a young
femmefan from Ohio named Mary G. Byers. Mary was (and is) a sculptor and
ceramicist, and the furnishings of their home included a potter's wheel and a
kiln, both regularly in use. From Mary Cyril got an understanding of the joys
and difficulties of urging shapeless matter to become art. For years I had one
of his own ceramics (to be catalogued, he said, as "the Pohl bowl"),
until some forgotten guest decided it was an ashtray, and decided to put it on
the floor next to his chair and got up in too much of a hurry to notice where
he was putting his feet. And from Mary Cyril also got the raw material for With These Hands.
halvorsen waited in the Chancery office while
Monsignor Reedy disposed of three persons
who had preceded him. He was a little dizzy
with hunger and noticed only vaguely that the prelate's secretary was beckoning to him. He started to his feet
when the secretary pointedly opened
the door to Monsignor Reedy's inner office and stood waiting beside it.
The artist crossed the floor, forgetting that he had
leaned his portfolio
against his chair, remembered at the door and went back for it, flushing. The secretary looked
patient.
"Thanks," Halvorsen murmured to him as the door
closed.
There was something wrong with the prelate's manner.
"I've brought the designs for the Stations,
Padre," he said, opening the portfolio on the desk.
"Bad news, Roald," said the monsignor. "I
know how you've been looking
forward to the commission"
"Somebody else get it?" asked the artist
faintly, leaning against the desk. "I thought his eminence definitely decided I had the"
"It's not that," said the monsignor. "But
the Sacred Congregation of Rites this week made a pronouncement on images of devotion. Stereopantograph is to be licit
within a diocese at the discretion of the bishop. And his eminence"
"S.P.G.slimy imitations," protested
Halvorsen. "Real as a plastic eye. No texture. No guts. You know that,
Padre!" he said accusingly.
"I'm sorry, Roald," said the monsignor.
"Your work is better than we'll get from a Stereopantographto my eyes, at least. But there are other considerations."
"Money!" spat the artist.
"Yes, money," the prelate admitted. "His
eminence wants to see the
St. Xavier U. building program through before he dies. Is that wrong, Roald? And there are our
schools, our charities, our Venus mission. S.P.G. will mean a considerable saving on
procurement and maintenance of devotional images. Even if I could, I would not
disagree with his
eminence on adopting it as a matter of diocesan policy."
The prelate's eyes fell on the detailed drawings of the
Stations of the
Cross and lingered.
"Your St. Veronica," he said abstractedly.
"Very fine. It suggests one of Caravaggio's careworn saints to me. I would have liked to see her in the bronze."
"So
would I," said Halvorsen hoarsely. "Keep the drawings, Padre." He started for the door.
"But
I can't"
"That's all right."
The artist walked past the secretary blindly and out of
the Chancery into
Fifth Avenue's spring sunlight. He hoped Monsignor Reedy was enjoying the drawings and
was ashamed of himself and sorry for Halvorsen. And he was glad he didn't have to carry the
heavy portfolio any
more. Everything was heavy latelychisels, hammer, wooden palette. Maybe the padre would send him something and
pretend it was for expenses or an advance,
as he had in the past.
Halvorsen's feet carried him up the Avenue. No, there
wouldn't be any
advances any more. The last steady trickle of income had just been dried up, by an
announcement in Osservatore Romano. Religious conservatism had carried the church as far
as it would go in its ancient
role of art patron. When
all Europe was writing on the wonderful new vellum, the church stuck to good old
papyrus. When all Europe was writing on the wonderful new paper, the church stuck to good old
vellum. When all
architects and municipal monument committees and portrait bust clients were patronizing the
stereopantograph, the church stuck to good old expensive sculpture. But not any more.
He was passing an S.P.G. salon now, where one of his
Tuesday night pupils
worked: one of the few men in the classes. Mostly they consisted of lazy, moody,
irritable girls. Halvorsen, surprised at himself, entered the salon, walking between asthenic
semi-nude stereos executed
hi transparent plastic that made the skin of his neck and shoulders prickle with
gooseflesh. Slime! he thought. How can they "May I helpoh,
hello, Roald. What brings you here?" He knew suddenly what had brought him there. "Could
you make a little
advance on next month's tuition, Lewis? I'm strapped." He took a nervous look around the chamber of horrors,
avoiding the man's condescending face.
"I guess so, Roald. Would ten dollars be any help?
That'll carry us through
to the twenty-fifth, right?"
"Fine, right, sure," he said, while he was
being unwillingly towed around the place.
"I know you don't think much of S.P.G., but it's
quiet now, so this is
a good chance to see how we work. I don't say it's Art with a capital A, but you've got to admit
it's an art, something people like at a price they can afford to pay. Here's where we sit
them. Then you run out
the feelers to the reference points on the face. You know what they are?"
He heard himself say dryly: "I know what they are.
The Egyptian sculptors
used them when they carved statues of the pharaohs."
"Yes? I never knew that. There's nothing new under
the Sun, is there? But this is the
heart of the S.P.G." The youngster proudly swung open the door of an electronic device in the wall of the portrait booth. Tubes winked sullenly at Halvorsen.
"The
esthetikon?" he asked indifferently. He did not feel indifferent, but it
would be absurd to show anger, no matter how much
he felt it, against a mindless aggregation of circuits that could calculate layouts, criticize and correct pictures
for a desired effect and that had
put the artist of design out of a job.
"Yes. The lenses take sixteen profiles, you know,
and we set the esthetikon for whatever we wantcute, rugged, sexy, spiritual, brainy,
or a combination. It fairs curves from profile to profile to give us just what we want, distorts the profiles
themselves within limits if it has to, and there's your portrait stored in the
memory tank waiting to be taped. You set your ratio for any enlargement or
reduction you want and play it back.
I wish we were reproducing today; it's fascinating to watch. You just pour in your cold-set plastic, the nozzles ooze out a core and start crawling over to scana
drop here, a worm there, and it
begins to take shape.
"We mostly do portrait busts here, the Avenue trade,
but Wilgus, the
foreman, used to work in a monument shop in Brooklyn. He did that heroic-size war memorial on
the East River Drivehired Garda Bouchette, the TV girl, for the central figure. And what
a figure! He told me he set the
esthetikon plates for three-quarters sexy, one-quarter spiritual. Here's something interestingstanding figurine of
Orin Ryerson, the banker. He ordered twelve. Figurines are coming in. The girls like them because they can show
their shapes. You'd be surprised at
some of the poses they want to try"
Somehow, Halvorsen got out with the ten dollars, walked
to Sixth Avenue,
and sat down hard in a cheap restaurant. He had coffee and dozed a little, waking with a
guilty start at a racket across the street. There was a building going up. For a while he watched
the great machines
pour walls and floors, the workmen rolling here and there on their little chariots to weld on
a wall panel, stripe on an electric circuit of conductive ink, or spray
plastic finish over the "wired" wall, all without leaving the saddles of their little
mechanical chariots.
Halvorsen felt more determined. He bought a paper from a
vending machine by
the restaurant door, drew another cup of coffee, and turned to the help-wanted ads.
The tricky trade-school ads urged him to learn
construction work and make big money. Be
a plumbing-machine setup man. Be a house-wiring
machine tender. Be a servotruck driver. Be a lumber-stacker operator. Learn pouring-machine
maintenance.
Make
big money!
A
sort of panic overcame him. He ran to the phone booth and dialed a Passaic number. He heard the ring-ring-ring
and strained to hear old Mr. Krehbeil's stumping footsteps growing
louder as he neared the phone, even though
he knew he would hear nothing until the
receiver was picked up.
Ring-ring-ring. "Hello?" grunted the old man's voice, and his
face appeared on the
little screen. "Hello, Mr. Halvorsen. What can I do for you?"
Halvorsen was tongue-tied. He couldn't possibly say: I
just wanted to see if you were still there. I was afraid you weren't there any
more. He choked and improvised:
"Hello, Mr. Krehbeil. It's about the banister
on the stairs in my place. I noticed it's pretty shaky. Could you come over sometime and fix it for me?"
Krehbeil peered suspiciously out of the screen. "I
could do that," he
said slowly. "I don't have much work nowadays. But you can carpenter as good as me, Mr.
Halvorsen, and frankly you're very slow pay and I like cabinet work better. I'm not a young man
and climbing around
on ladders takes it out of me. If you can't find anybody else, I'll take the
work, but I got to have some of the money first, just for the materials. It isn't easy to
get good wood any more."
"All right," said Halvorsen. "Thanks, Mr.
Krehbeil. I'll call you if I can't get anybody else."
He hung up and went back to his table and newspaper. His
face was burning with anger at the old
man's reluctance and his own foolish panic. Krehbeil didn't realize they were
both in the same leaky boat. Krehbeil, who
didn't get a job in a month, still thought with senile pride that he was a
journeyman carpenter and cabinetmaker
who could make his solid way anywhere with his toolbox and his skill, and that he could afford to look down
on anything as disreputable as an
artisteven an artist who could carpenter as well as he did himself.
Labuerre had made Halvorsen learn carpentry, and Labuerre
had been right. You
build a scaffold so you can sculp up high, not so it will collapse and you break a
leg. You build your platforms so they hold the rock steady, not so it wobbles and chatters at
every blow of the
chisel. You build your armatures so they hold the plasticine you slam onto them.
But the help-wanted ads wanted no builders of scaffolds,
platforms, and
armatures. The factories were calling for setup men and maintenance men for the
production and assembly machines.
From upstate, General Vegetables had sent a recruiting
team for farm
helpharvest setup and maintenance men, a few openings for experienced operators of tank
caulking machinery. Under "office and professional" the demand was
heavy for computer men, for girls who could run the I.B.M. Letteriter, esp. familiar
sales and collections corresp., for
office machinery maintenance and repair men. A job printing house wanted an esthetikon operator for
letterhead layouts and the like. A.T.
& T. wanted trainees to earn while learning telephone maintenance. A direct-mail advertising
outfit wanted an artist no, they
wanted a sales-executive who could scrawl picture ideas that would be subjected to the criticism and
correction of the esthetikon.
Halvorsen leafed tiredly through the rest of the paper.
He knew he wouldn't
get a job, and if he did he wouldn't hold it. He knew it was a terrible thing to admit to
yourself that you might starve to death because you were bored by anything except art, but he
admitted it.
It had happened often enough in the pastartists
undergoing preposterous
hardships, not, as people thought, because they were devoted to art, but because
nothing else was interesting. If there were only some impressive, sonorous word that summed up the
aching, oppressive
futility that overcame him when he tried to get out of art-only there wasn't.
He thought he could tell which of the photos in the
tabloid had been
corrected by the esthetikon.
There
was a shot of Jink Bitsy, who was to star in a remake of Peter Pan. Her ears had been made to look not pointed but pointy, her upper lip had been lengthened a trifle, her
nose had been pugged a little and
tilted quite a lot, her freckles were cuter than cute, her brows were innocently arched, and her lower lip
and eyes were nothing less than
pornography.
There was a shot, apparently uncorrected, of the last
Venus ship coming
in at LaGuardia and the average-looking explorers grinning. Caption: "Austin Malone and crew smile relief on
safe arrival. Malone says Venus colonies
need men, machines. See story on p. 2."
Petulantly, Halvorsen threw the paper under the table
and walked out. What
had space travel to do with him? Vacations on the Moon and expeditions to Venus and Mars were part of the
deadly encroachment on his livelihood and
no more.
II
He took the subway to Passaic and walked down a
long-still traffic beltway to his studio, almost the only building
alive in the slums near the rusting
railroad freightyard.
A
sign that had once said "F. Labuerre, SculptorPortraits and Architectural Commissions" now said
"Roald Halvorsen; Art Classes Reasonable
Fees." It was a grimy two-story frame building with a shopfront in
which were mounted some of his students' charcoal figure studies and oil
still-lifes. He lived upstairs, taught downstairs front, and did his own work
downstairs, back behind dirty, ceiling-high
drapes.
Going
in, he noticed that he had forgotten to lock the door again. He slammed it
bitterly. At the noise, somebody called from behind the drapes: "Who's that?"
"Halvorsen!"
he yelled in a sudden fury. "I live here. I own this place. Come out of there! What do you want?"
There
was a fumbling at the drapes and a girl stepped between them, shrinking from their dirt.
"Your
door was open," she said firmly, "and it's a shop. I've just been
here a couple of minutes. I came to ask about classes, but I don't think I'm interested if you're this
bad-tempered."
A pupil. Pupils were never to be abused, especially not
now.
"I'm
terribly sorry," he said. "I had a trying day in the city." Now
turn it on. "I wouldn't tell everybody a terrible secret like this, but
I've lost a commission. You understand? I thought so. Anybody who'd traipse out here to my dingy abode would be simpatica.
Won't you sit down? No, not
therehumor an artist and sit over there. The warm background of that
still-life brings out your colorquite good color. Have you ever been
painted? You've a very interesting face, you
know. Some day I'd like tobut you mentioned classes.
"We
have figure classes, male and female models alternating, on Tuesday nights. For
that I have to be very stern and ask you to sign up for an entire course of
twelve lessons at sixty dollars. It's the models' feesthey're exorbitant.
Saturday afternoons we have still-life classes for beginners in oils. That's
only two dollars a class, but you might sign up for a series of six and pay ten
dollars in advance, which saves you two
whole dollars. I also give private instructions to a few talented amateurs."
The price was open on that onewhatever the traffic
would bear. It had been a year since he'd had a private pupil and she'd taken
only six lessons at
five dollars an hour.
"The
still-life sounds interesting," said the girl, holding her head self-consciously the way they all did when he gave
them the patter. It was a good head, carried well up. The muscles clung
close, not yet slacked into geotropic loops and lumps. The line of youth is
helio-tropic, he confusedly thought. "I saw some interesting things back there. Was that your own work?"
She
rose, obviously with the expectation of being taken into the studio. Her body was one of those long-lined,
small-breasted, coltish jobs that the
pre-Raphaelites loved to draw.
"Well" said Halvorsen. A deliberate show of
reluctance and then a bright smile of
confidence. "You'll understand," he said positively and drew aside the curtains.
"What
a curious place!" She wandered about, inspecting the drums of plaster,
clay, and plasticine, the racks of tools, the stands, the stones, the chisels,
the forge, the kiln, the lumber, the glaze bench.
"I
like this," she said determinedly, picking up a figure a half-meter
tall, a Venus he had cast in bronze while studying under Labuerre some years ago. "How much is
it?"
An honest answer would scare her off, and there was no
chance in the world that she'd buy.
"I hardly ever put my things up for sale," he told her lightly.
"That was just a little study. I do work on commission only nowadays."
Her eyes flicked about the dingy room, seeming to take
in its scaling plaster and warped floor
and see through the wall to the abandoned
slum in which it was set. There was amusement in her glance.
I
am not being honest, she thinks. She thinks that is funny. Very well, I will be
honest. "Six hundred
dollars," he said flatly.
The girl set the figurine on its stand with a rap and
said, half angry and half amused: "I
don't understand it. That's more than a month's pay for me. I could get an
S.P.G. statuette just as pretty as this for ten
dollars. Who do you artists think you are, anyway?"
Halvorsen debated with himself about what he could say
in reply:
An S.P.G. operator spends a week learning his skill and
I spend a lifetime
learning mine.
An S.P.G. operator makes a mechanical copy of a human
form distorted
by formulae mechanically arrived at from psychotests of population samples. I take full
responsibility for my work; it is mine, though I use what I see fit from Egypt, Greece,
Rome, the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, the Augustan and Romantic and Modern Eras.
An S.P.G. operator works in soft, homogeneous plastic; I
work in bronze that is more complicated than you dream, that is cast and
acid-dipped today so it will slowly take
on rich and subtle coloring many
years from today.
An S.P.G. operator could not make an Orpheus Fountain
He mumbled, "Orpheus," and keeled over.
Halvorsen awoke in his bed on the second floor of the
building. His
fingers and toes buzzed electrically and he felt very clear-headed. The girl and a man, unmistakably
a doctor, were watching him.
"You don't seem to belong to any Medical Plans,
Halvorsen," the doctor
said irritably. "There weren't any cards on you at all. No Red, no Blue, no Green, no
Brown."
"I used to be on the Green Plan, but I let it
lapse," the artist said defensively.
"And look what happened!"
"Stop nagging him!" the girl said. "I'll
pay you your fee."
"It's supposed to come through a Plan," the
doctor fretted.
"We won't tell anybody," the girl promised.
"Here's five dollars. Just stop nagging him."
"Malnutrition," said the doctor. "Normally
I'd send him to a hospital,
but I don't see how I could manage it. He isn't on any Plan at all. Look, I'll take the money
and leave some vitamins. That's what he needsvitamins. And food."
"I'll see that he eats," the girl said, and
the doctor left.
"How long since you've had anything?" she
asked Halvorsen.
"I had some coffee today," he answered,
thinking back. "I'd been working on detail drawings for a commission and it fell through. I told you that. It was a
shock."
"I'm Lucretia Grumman," she said, and went out.
He dozed until she came back with an armful of
groceries.
"It's hard to get around down here," she
complained.
"It was Labuerre's studio," he told her
defiantly. "He left it to me when he died. Things weren't so rundown in his time. I
studied under him;
he was one of the last. He had a joke'They don't really want my stuff, but they're ashamed to
let me starve.' He warned me that they wouldn't be ashamed to let me starve,
but I insisted and he took me
in."
Halvorsen drank some milk and ate some bread. He thought
of the change from the ten dollars in his pocket and decided not to mention it. Then he remembered that the doctor had gone
through his pockets.
"I can pay you for this," he said. "It's
very kind of you, but you mustn't think I'm penniless. I've just been too
preoccupied to take care
of myself."
"Sure," said the girl. "But we can call
this an advance. I want to sign up for some classes."
"Be happy to have you."
"Am I bothering you?" asked the girl.
"You said something odd when you fainted'Orpheus.'"
"Did I say that? I must have been thinking of
Milles's Orpheus Fountain in Copenhagen.
I've seen photos, but I've never been there."
"Germany? But there's nothing left of Germany."
"Copenhagen's in Denmark. There's quite a lot of
Denmark left. It was
only on the fringes. Heavily radiated, but still there."
"I
want to travel too," she said. "I work at LaGuardia and I've never been off, except for an orbiting excursion.
I want to go to the Moon on my vacation.
They give us a bonus in travel vouchers. It must be wonderful dancing under the low gravity."
Spaceport? Off? Low gravity? Terms belonging to the
detested electronic
world of the stereopantograph in which he had no place.
"Be very interesting," he said, closing his
eyes to conceal disgust.
"I am bothering you. I'll go away now, but
I'll be back Tuesday night
for the class. What time do I come and what should I bring?"
"Eight. It's charcoalI sell you the sticks and
paper. Just bring a smock."
"All
right. And I want to take the oils class too. And I want to bring some people I
know to see your work. I'm sure they'll see something
they like. Austin Malone's in Jirom Venushe's a special friend of mine."
"Lucretia," he said. "Or do some people
call you Lucy?"
"Lucy."
"Will you take that little bronze you liked? As a
thank you?"
"I can't do that!"
"Please. I'd feel much better about this. I really
mean it." She
nodded abruptly, flushing, and almost ran from the room. Now why did I do that? he asked himself. He hoped it
was because he liked Lucy Grumman very
much. He hoped it wasn't a coldblooded
investment of a piece of sculpture that would never be sold, anyway, just to make sure she'd be back with
class fees and more groceries.
III
She was back on Tuesday, a half-hour early and carrying a
smock. He introduced
her formally to the others as they arrived: a dozen or so bored young women who, he
suspected, talked a great deal about their
art lessons outside, but in class used any excuse to stop sketching.
He
didn't dare show Lucy any particular consideration. There were fierce little miniature cliques in the
class. Halvorsen knew they laughed at
him and his line among themselves, and yet, strangely, were fiercely jealous of their seniority and right
to individual attention.
The lesson was an ordeal, as usual. The model, a
muscle-bound young
graduate of the barbell gyms and figure-photography studios, was stupid and argumentative
about ten-minute poses. Two of the girls came near a hair-pulling brawl over the rights to
a preferred sketching
location. A third girl had discovered Picasso's cubist period during the past week and proudly
announced that she didn't feel perspective.
But the two interminable hours finally ticked by. He
nagged them into
cleaning up-not as bad as the Saturdays with oils-and stood by the open door. Otherwise they
would have stayed all night, cackling about absent students and snarling sulkily among
themselves. His well-laid
plans went sour, though. A large and flashy car drove up as the girls were leaving.
"That's Austin Malone," said Lucy. "He
came to pick me up and look at your work."
That was all the wedge her fellow-pupils needed.
"Aus-tin Ma-lone! Well!"
"Lucy, darling, I'd love to meet a real spaceman."
"Roald,
darling, would you mind very much if I stayed a moment?"
"I'm certainly not going to miss this and I don't
care if you mind or
not, Roald, darling!"
Malone was an impressive figure. Halvorsen thought: He
looks as though he's been run
through an esthetikon set for "brawny" and "determined." Lucy made a hash of the introductions and the spaceman didn't rise to
conversational bait dangled enticingly by the girls.
In
a clear voice, he said to Halvorsen: "I don't want to take up too much of your time. Lucy tells me you have
some things for sale. Is there any
place we can look at them where it's quiet?"
The students made sulky exits.
"Back here," said the artist.
The
girl and Malone followed him through the curtains. The spaceman made a slow circuit of the studio, seeming to repel questions.
He sat down at last and said: "I don't know what to
think, Halvorsen.
This place stuns me. Do you know you're in the Dark Ages?"
People who never have given a thought to Chartres and
Mont St. Michel
usually call it the Dark Ages, Halvorsen thought wryly. He asked, "Technologically, you
mean? No, not at all. My plaster's better, my colors are better, my metal is bettertool metal,
not casting metal,
that is."
"I mean hand work," said the spaceman.
"Actually working by hand."
The artist shrugged. "There have been crazes for the
techniques of the boiler works and the
machine shop," he admitted. "Some interesting things were done, but
they didn't stand up well. Is there anything
here that takes your eye?"
"I like those dolphins," said the spaceman,
pointing to a perforated
terra-cotta relief on the wall. They had been commissioned by an architect, then later refused for reasons of
economy when the house had run way over
estimate. "They'd look bully over the fireplace in my town apartment. Like them, Lucy?"
"I think they're wonderful," said the girl.
Roald saw the spaceman go rigid with the effort not to
turn and stare at
her. He loved her and he was jealous.
Roald told the story of the dolphins and said: "The
price that the architect
thought was too high was three hundred and sixty dollars."
Malone grunted. "Doesn't seem unreasonableif you
set a high store on
inspiration."
"I don't know about inspiration," the artist
said evenly. "But I was awake for
two days and two nights shoveling coal and adjusting drafts to fire that thing in my kiln."
The
spaceman looked contemptuous. "I'll take it," he said. "Be something to talk about during those awkward
pauses. Tell me, Halvorsen, how's
Lucy's work? Do you think she ought to stick with it?"
"Austin," objected the girl, "don't be so
blunt. How can he possibly know after one day?"
"She can't draw yet," the artist said
cautiously. "It's ah coordination, you knowthousands of hours of practice, training
your eye and hand to
work together until you can put a line on paper where you want it. Lucy, if you're really interested in it,
you'll learn to draw well. I don't think any
of the other students will. They're in it because of boredom or
snobbery, and they'll stop before they have their eye-hand coordination."
"I am interested," she said firmly.
Malone's
determined restraint broke. "Damned right you are. In" He recovered himself and demanded of Halvorsen: "I understand your point about coordination. But thousands
of hours when you can buy a camera?
It's absurd."
"I was talking about drawing, not art,"
replied Halvorsen. "Drawing is putting a line on paper where you want it, I said." He took
a deep breath and
hoped the great distinction wouldn't sound ludicrous and trivial. "So let's say
that art is knowing how to put the line in the right place."
"Be
practical. There isn't any art. Not any more. I get around quite a bit and I never see anything but photos
and S.P.G.s. A few heirlooms, yes,
but nobody's painting or carving any more."
"There's some art, Malone. My studentsa couple of
them in the still-life
classare quite good. There are more across the country. Art for occupational therapy, or a
hobby, or something to do with the hands. There's trade in their work. They sell them to
each other, they give
them to their friends, they hang them on their walls. There are even some sculptors like that.
Sculpture is prescribed by doctors. The occupational therapists say it's even
better than drawing and painting, so some of these people work in plasticine and soft
stone, and some of
them get to be good."
"Maybe so. I'm an engineer, Halvorsen. We glory in
doing things the easy way. Doing things the easy way got me to Mars and Venus and it's going to get me to
Ganymede. You're doing things the hard way, and your inefficiency has no place
in this world. Look at you! You've lost a fingertipsome accident, I suppose."
"I never noticed" said Lucy, and then let out
a faint, "Oh!"
Halvorsen curled the middle finger of his left hand into
the palm, where he
usually carried it to hide the missing first joint.
"Accidents are a sign of inadequate mastery of
material and equipment,"
said Malone sententiously. "While you stick to your methods and I stick to mine, you can't
compete with me."
His tone made it clear that he was talking about more
than engineering.
"Shall we go now, Lucy? Here's my card, Halvorsen.
Send those dolphins
along and I'll mail you a check."
IV
The artist walked the half-dozen blocks to Mr. Krehbeil's
place the next day.
He found the old man in the basement shop of his fussy house, hunched over his bench
with a powerful light overhead. He was trying to file a saw.
"Mr. Krehbeil!" Halvorsen called over the
shriek of metal.
The carpenter turned around and peered with watery eyes.
"I can't see like I used to," he said querulously. "I go over
the same teeth on this
damn saw, I skip teeth, I can't see the light shine off it when I got one set. The glare." He banged down his
three-cornered file petulantly. "Well,
what can I do for you?"
"I need some crating stock. Anything. I'll trade
you a couple of my
maple four-by-fours."
The
old face became cunning. "And will you set my saw? My saws, I mean.
It's nothing to youan hour's work. You have the eyes."
Halvorsen said bitterly, "All right." The old
man had to drive his bargain,
even though he might never use his saws again. And then the artist promptly repented of his
bitterness, offering up a quick prayer that his own failure to conform didn't make him as much
of a nuisance to the
world as Krehbeil was.
The carpenter was pleased as they went through his small
stock of wood and
chose boards to crate the dolphin relief. He was pleased enough to give Halvorsen coffee
and cake before the artist buckled down to filing the saws.
Over the kitchen table, Halvorsen tried to probe.
"Things pretty slow
now?"
It would be hard to spoil Krehbeil's day now.
"People are always fools. They don't know good hand work. Some day," he said apocalyptically, "I laugh on the other side of my face
when their foolish machine-buildings go
falling down in a strong wind, all of them, all over the country. Even
my boyI used to beat him good, almost every
dayhe works a foolish concrete machine and his house should fall on his head
like the rest."
Halvorsen knew it was Krehbeil's son who supported him by
mail, and changed
the subject. "You get some cabinet work?"
"Stupid women! What they call antiques-they don't
know Meissen, they don't know
Biedermeier. They bring me trash to repair sometimes.
I make them pay; I swindle them good."
"I wonder if things would be different if there
were anything left over
in Europe . . ."
"People will still be fools, Mr. Halvorsen,"
said the carpenter positively. "Didn't you say you were going to file those saws
today?"
So the artist spent two noisy hours filing before he
carried his crating
stock to the studio.
Lucy was there. She had brought some things to eat. He
dumped the lumber
with a bang and demanded: "Why aren't you at work?"
"We get days off," she said vaguely.
"Austin thought he'd give me the cash for the terra-cotta and I could give it to
you."
She held out an envelope while he studied her silently.
The farce was
beginning again. But this time he dreaded it.
It would not be the first time that a lonesome,
discontented girl chose to see him as a combination of romantic rebel and lost
pup, with the
consequences you'd expect.
He knew from books, experience, and Labuerre's
conversation in the
old days that there was nothing novel about the comedythat there had even been artists, lots
of them, who had counted on endless repetitions of it for their livelihood.
The girl drops in with groceries and the artist is
pleasantly surprised;
the girl admires this little thing or that after payday and buys it and the artist is pleasantly
surprised; the girl brings her friends to take lessons or make little purchases and the artist is
pleasantly surprised.
The girl may be seduced by the artist or vice versa, which shortens the comedy, or they may
get married, which lengthens it somewhat.
It had been three years since Halvorsen had last played
out the farce with
a manic-depressive divorcee from Elmira: three years during which he had crossed the
mid-point between thirty and forty; three more years to get beaten down by being unwanted
and working too much
and eating too little.
Also, he knew, he was in love with this girl.
He took the envelope, counted three hundred and twenty
dollars, and crammed it into his pocket.
"That was your idea," he said. "Thanks.
Now get out, will you? I've got work to do."
She stood there, shocked.
"I
said get out. I have work to do."
"Austin was right," she told him miserably.
"You don't care how people feel. You just want to get things out of them."
She ran from the studio, and Halvorsen fought with
himself not to run after her.
He walked slowly into his workshop and studied his array
of tools, though he
paid little attention to his finished pieces. It would be nice to spend about half of this
money on open-hearth steel rod and bar stock to forge into chisels; he thought
he knew where he could get somebut she would be back, or he would break and go to her and be forgiven and the comedy would
be played out, after all.
He couldn't let that happen.
V
Aalesund, on the Atlantic side of the Dourefeld
Mountains of Norway,
was in the lee of the blasted continent. One more archeologist there made no difference, as
long as he had the sense to recognize the propellor-like international signposts that said with
their three blades, Radiation Hazard, and knew what every schoolboy knew about protective clothing and reading a
personal Geiger counter.
The car Halvorsen rented was for a brief trip over the
mountains to study contaminated Oslo. Well muffled, he could make it and back in a dozen hours and no harm done.
But he took the car past Oslo, Wennersborg, and
Goteborg, along the
Kattegat coast to Helsingborg, and abandoned it there, among the three-bladed polyglot signs,
crossing to Denmark. Danes were as unlike Prussians as they could be, but their unfortunate
little peninsula
was a sprout off Prussia that radio-cobalt dust couldn't tell from the real thing. The three-bladed
signs were most specific.
With a long way to walk along the rubble-littered
highways, he stripped
off the impregnated coveralls and boots. He had long since shed the noisy counter and the
uncomfortable gloves and mask.
The silence was eerie as he limped into Copenhagen at
noon. He didn't know
whether the radiation was getting to him or whether he was tired and hungry and no
more. As though thinking of a stranger, he liked what he was doing.
I'll
be my own audience, he thought. God
knows 1 learned there isn't any other, not any more. You have to know when to
stop. Rodin, the dirty old, wonderful old
man, knew that. He taught us not to slick it and polish it and smooth it
until it looked like liquid instead of bronze and stone. Van Gogh was crazy as
a loon, but he knew when to stop and varnish it, and he didn't care if the
paint looked like paint instead of looking
like sunset clouds or moonbeams. Up in Hartford, Browne and Sharpe stop
when they've got a turret lathe; they don't put caryatids on it. I'll stop
while my life is a life, before it becomes a thing with distracting
embellishments such as a wife who will come to despise me, a succession of
gradually less worthwhile pieces that
nobody will look at.
Blame nobody, he told himself, lightheadedly.
And then it was in front of him, terminating a vista of
weeds and bomb
rubbleMilles's Orpheus Fountain.
It took a man, he thought. Esthetikon circuits couldn't
do it. There was a
gross mixture of styles, a calculated flaw that the esthetikon couldn't be set to make. Orpheus
and the souls were classic or later; the three-headed dog was archaic. That was to tell you
about the antiquity
and invincibility of Hell, and that Cerberus knows Orpheus will never go back into life with
his bride.
There
was the heroic, tragic central figure that looked mighty enough to battle with the gods, but battle wasn't
any good against the grinning,
knowing, hateful three-headed dog it stood on. You don't battle the pavement where you walk or the floor of
the house you're in; you can't. So
Orpheus, his face a mask of controlled and suffering fury, crashes a great
chord from his lyre that moved trees and stones. Around him the naked
souls in Hell start at the chord, each in its own
way: the young lovers down in death; the mother down in death; the musician, deaf and down in death, straining to
hear.
Halvorsen, walking uncertainly toward the fountain, felt
something break
inside him, and a heaviness in his lungs. As he pitched forward among the weeds,
he didn't care that the three-headed dog was grinning its knowing, hateful grin down at him. He had
heard the chord from
the lyre.
Shark Ship
down near Union Square in New York City there used
to be a store that specialized in whip-&-chain items, mostly photographs of
girls in high-heeled boots and black-leather bras tying up other girls in
white. There was never a hint of overt sex. Nothing was visible on any of the
girls that was riot visible on any bathing beach. This kept the proprietors out
of jail on pornography charges (this was a long tune ago). The place fascinated
Cyril. He never came to H. L. (Galaxy) Gold's place on East Fourteenth Street
without stopping in for their latest catalogue on the way. I always assumed
that somewhere, somewhen, he would make use of all this . . . and after his
death, halfway through "Shark Ship," I came across the sequence
involving the decimation of land-based mankind and let out a whoop of
recognition.
IT
WAS THE SPRING SWARMING of the plankton; every man and woman and most of the
children aboard Grenville's Convoy had a job to do. As the seventy-five
gigantic sailing ships plowed their two degrees of the South Atlantic, the
fluid that foamed beneath their cutwaters seethed also with life. In the few
weeks of the swarming, in the few meters of surface water where sunlight
penetrated in sufficient strength to trigger photosynthesis, microscopic spores
burst into microscopic plants, were devoured by minute animals which in turn
were swept into the maws of barely visible sea monsters almost a tenth of an
inch from head to tail; these in turn were fiercely pursued and gobbled in
shoals by the fierce little brit, the tiny herring and shrimp that could turn a
hundred miles of green water to molten silver before your eyes.
Through
the silver ocean of the swarming the Convoy scudded and tacked in great
controlled zigs and zags, reaping the silver of the sea in the endlessly
reeling bronze nets each ship payed out behind.
The
Commodore on Grenvllle did not sleep during the swarming; he and his
staff dispatched cutters to scout the swarms, hung on the meteorologists'
words, digested the endless reports from the scout vessels, and toiled through
the night to prepare the dawn signal. The mainmast flags might tell the
captains "Convoy course five degrees right," or "Two degrees
left," or only "Convoy course: no change." On those dawn signals
depended the life for the next six months of the million and a quarter souls of
the Convoy. It had not happened often, but it had happened that a succession of
blunders reduced a Convoy's harvest below the minimum necessary to sustain
life. Derelicts were sometimes sighted and salvaged from such convoys;
strong-stomached men and women were needed for the first boarding and clearing
away of human debris. Cannibalism occurred, an obscene thing one had nightmares
about.
The
seventy-five captains had their own particular purgatory to endure throughout
the harvest, the Sail-Seine Equation. It was their job to balance the push on
the sails and the drag of the ballooning seines so that push exceeded drag by
just the number of pounds that would keep the ship on course and in station,
given every conceivable variation of wind force and direction, temperature of
water, consistency of brit, and smoothness of hull. Once the catch was salted
down it was customary for the captains to converge on Grenville for a
roaring feast by way of letdown.
Rank
had its privileges. There was no such relief for the captains' Net Officers or
their underlings in Operations and Maintenance, or for their Food Officers,
under whom served the Processing and Stowage people. They merely worked,
streaming the nets twenty-four hours a day, keeping them bellied out with lines
from mast and outriding gigs, keeping them spooling over the great drum
amidships, tending the blades that had to scrape the brit from the nets without
damaging the nets, repairing the damage when it did occur; and without
interruption of the harvest, flash-cooking the part of the harvest to be
cooked, drying the part to be dried, pressing oil from the harvest as required,
and stowing what was cooked and dried and pressed where it would not spoil,
where it would not alter the trim of the ship, where it would not be pilfered
by children. This went on for weeks after the silver had gone thin and patchy
against the green, and after the silver had altogether vanished.
The
routines of many were not changed at all by the swarming season. The
blacksmiths, the sailmakers, the carpenters, the water-tenders, to a degree the
storekeepers, functioned as before, tending to the fabric of the ship,
renewing, replacing, reworking. The ships were things of brass, bronze, and
unrusting steel. Phosphor-bronze strands were woven into net, lines, and
cables; cordage, masts, and hull were metal; all were inspected daily by the
First Officer and his men and women for the smallest pinhead of corrosion. The
smallest pinhead of corrosion could spread; it could send a ship to the bottom
before it had done spreading, as the chaplains were fond of reminding
worshippers when the ships rigged for church on Sundays. To keep the hellish
red of iron rust and the sinister blue of copper rust from invading, the squads
of oilers were always on the move, with oil distilled from the catch. The sails
and the clothes alone could not be preserved; they wore out. It was
for this that the felting machines down below chopped wornout sails and
clothing into new fibers and twisted and rolled them with kelp and with glue
from the catch into new felt for new sails and clothing.
While
the plankton continued to swarm twice a year, Grenville's Convoy could continue
to sail the South Atlantic, from ten-mile limit to ten-mile limit. Not one of
the seventy-five ships in the Convoy had an anchor.
The
Captain's Party that followed the end of Swarming 283 was slow getting
underway. McBee, whose ship was Port Squadron 19, said to Salter of Starboard
Squadron 30: "To be frank, I'm too damned exhausted to care whether I
ever go to another party, but I didn't want to disappoint the Old
Man."
The
Commodore, trim and bronzed, not showing his eighty years, was across the great
cabin from them greeting new arrivals.
Salter
said: "You'll feel differently after a good sleep. It was a great harvest,
wasn't it? Enough weather to make it tricky and interesting. Remember 276? That
was the one that wore me out. A grind, going by the book. But this time, on the
fifteenth day my fore-topsail was going to go about noon, big rip in her, but I
needed her for my S-S balance. What to do? I broke out a balloon spinnaker now
wait a minute, let me tell it first before you throw the book at meand pumped
my fore trim tank out. Presto! No trouble; fore-topsail replaced in fifteen
minutes."
McBee
was horrified. "You could have lost your net!"
"My
weatherman absolutely ruled out any sudden squalls."
"Weatherman.
You could have lost your net!"
Salter
studied him. "Saying that once was thoughtless, McBee. Saying it twice is
insulting. Do you think I'd gamble with twenty thousand lives?"
McBee
passed his hands over his tired face. "I'm sorry," he said. "I
told you I was exhausted. Of course under special circumstances it can be a
safe maneuver." He walked to a porthole for a glance at his own ship, the
nineteenth in the long echelon behind Grenville. Salter stared after
him. "Losing one's net" was a phrase that occurred in several
proverbs; it stood for abysmal folly. In actuality a ship that lost its
phosphor-bronze wire mesh was doomed, and quickly. One could improvise with
sails or try to jury-rig a net out of the remaining rigging, but not well
enough to feed twenty thousand hands, and no fewer than that were needed for
maintenance. Grenville's Convoy had met a derelict which lost its net back
before 240; children still told horror stories about it, how the remnants of
port and starboard watches, mad to a man, were at war, a war of vicious night
forays with knives and clubs.
Salter
went to the bar and accepted from the Commodore's steward his first drink of
the evening, a steel tumbler of colorless fluid distilled from a fermented mash
of sargassum weed. It was about forty per cent alcohol and tasted pleasantly of
iodides.
He
looked up from his sip and his eyes widened. There was a man in captain's
uniform talking with the Commodore and he did not recognize his face. But there
had been no promotions lately!
The
Commodore saw him looking and beckoned him over. He saluted and then accepted
the old man's hand-clasp. "Captain Salter," the Commodore said,
"my youngest and rashest, and my best harvester. Salter, this is Captain
Degerand of the White Fleet."
Salter
frankly gawked. He knew perfectly well that Grenville's Convoy was far from
sailing alone upon the seas. On watch he had beheld distant sails from time to
time. He was aware that cruising the two-degree belt north of theirs was
another convoy and that in the belt south of theirs was still another, in fact
that the seaborne population of the world was a constant one billion, eighty
million.
But
never had he expected to meet face to face any of them except the one and a
quarter million who sailed under Grenville's flag.
Degerand
was younger than he, all deeply tanned skin and flashing pointed teeth. His
uniform was perfectly ordinary and very queer. He understood Salter's puzzled
look. "It's woven cloth," he said. "The White Fleet was launched
several decades after Grenville's. By then they had machinery to reconstitute
fibers suitable for spinning and they equipped us with it. It's six of one and
half a dozen of the other. I think our sails may last longer than yours, but
the looms require a lot of skilled labor when they break down."
The
Commodore had left them.
"Are
we very different from you?" Salter asked.
Degerand
said: "Our differences are nothing. Against the dirt men we are
brothersblood brothers."
The
term "dirt men" was discomforting; the juxtaposition with
"blood" more so. Apparently he was referring to whoever it was that
lived on the continents and islandsa shocking breach of manners, of honor, of
faith. The words of the Charter circled through Salter's head. ". . .
return for the sea and its bounty . . . renounce and abjure the land from which
we . . ." Salter had been ten years old before he knew that there were
continents and islands. His dismay must have shown on his face.
"They
have doomed us," the foreign captain said. "We cannot refit. They
have sent us out, each upon our two degrees of ocean in larger or smaller
convoys as the richness of the brit dictated, and they have cut us off. To each
of us will come the catastrophic storm, the bad harvest, the lost net, and
death."
It
was Salter's impression that Degerand had said the same words many times
before, usually to large audiences.
The
Commodore's talker boomed out: "Now hear this!" His huge voice filled
the stateroom easily; his usual job was to roar through a megaphone across a
league of ocean, supplementing flag and lamp signals. "Now hear
this!" he boomed. "There's tuna on the tablebig fish for big
sailors!"
A
grinning steward whisked a felt from the sideboard, and there by Heaven it lay!
A great baked fish as long as your leg, smoking hot and trimmed with kelp! A
hungry roar greeted it; the captains made for the stack of trays and began to
file past the steward, busy with knife and steel.
Salter
marveled to Degerand: "I didn't dream there were any left that size. When
you think of the tons of brit that old-timer must have gobbled!"
The
foreigner said darkly: "We slew the whales, the sharks, the perch, the
cod, the herringeverything that used the sea but us. They fed on brit and one
another and concentrated it in firm savory flesh like that, but we were jealous
of the energy squandered in the long food chain; we decreed that the chain
would stop with the link brit-to-man."
Salter
by then had filled a tray. "Brit's more reliable," he said. "A
Convoy can't take chances on fisherman's luck." He happily bolted a
steaming mouthful.
"Safety
is not everything," Degerand said. He ate, more slowly than Salter.
"Your Commodore said you were a rash seaman."
"He
was joking. If he believed that, he would have to remove me from command."
The
Commodore walked up to them, patting his mouth with a handkerchief and beaming.
"Surprised, eh?" he demanded. "Glasgow's lookout spotted that
big fellow yesterday half a kilometer away. He signaled me and I told him to
lower and row for him. The boat crew sneaked up while he was browsing and
gaffed him clean. Very virtuous of us. By killing him we economize on brit and
provide a fitting celebration for my captains. Eat hearty! It may be the last
we'll ever see."
Degerand
rudely contradicted his senior officer. "They can't be wiped out clean,
Commodore, not exterminated. The sea is deep. Its genetic potential cannot be
destroyed. We merely make temporary alterations of the feeding balance."
"Seen
any sperm whale lately?" the Commodore asked, raising his white eyebrows.
"Go get yourself another helping, captain, before it's gone." It was
a dismissal; the foreigner bowed and went to the buffet.
The
Commodore asked: "What do you think of him?"
"He
has some extreme ideas," Salter said.
"The
White Fleet appears to have gone bad," the old man said. "That fellow
showed up on a cutter last week in the middle of harvest wanting my immediate,
personal attention. He's on the staff of the White Fleet Commodore. I gather
they're all like him. They've got slack; maybe rust has got ahead of them,
maybe they're overbreeding. A ship lost its net and they didn't let it go. They
cannibalized rigging from the whole fleet to make a net for it."
"But"
"Butbutbut.
Of course it was the wrong thing and now they're all suffering. Now they
haven't the stomach to draw lots and cut their losses." He lowered his
voice. "Their idea is some sort of raid on the Western Continent, that
America thing, for steel and bronze and whatever else they find not welded to the
deck. It's nonsense, of course, spawned by a few silly-clever people on the
staff. The crews will never go along with it. Degerand was sent to invite us
in!"
Salter
said nothing for a while and then: "I certainly hope we'll have nothing to
do with it."
"I'm
sending him back at dawn with my compliments, and a negative, and my sincere
advice to his Commodore that he drop the whole thing before his own crew hears
of it and has him bowspritted." The Commodore gave him a wintry smile.
"Such a reply is easy to make, of course, just after concluding an
excellent harvest. It might be more difficult to signal a negative if we had a
couple of ships unnetted and only enough catch in salt to feed sixty percent of
the hands. Do you think you could give the hard answer under those
circumstances?"
"I
think so, sir."
The
Commodore walked away, his face enigmatic. Salter thought he knew what was
going on. He had been given one small foretaste of top command. Perhaps he was
being groomed for Commodorenot to succeed the old man, surely, but his
successor.
McBee
approached, full of big fish and drink. "Foolish thing I said," he
stammered. "Let's have drink, forget about it, eh?"
He
was glad to.
"Damn
fine seaman!" McBee yelled after a couple more drinks. "Best little
captain in the Convoy! Not a scared old crock like poor old McBee, 'fraid of
every puff of wind!"
And
then he had to cheer up McBee until the party began to thin out. McBee fell
asleep at last and Salter saw him to his gig before boarding his own for the
long row to the bobbing masthead lights of his ship.
Starboard
Squadron Thirty was at rest in the night. Only the slowly moving oil lamps of
the women on their ceaseless rust patrol were alive. The brit catch, dried,
came to some seven thousand tons. It was a comfortable margin over the 5,670
tons needed for six months' full rations before the autumnal swarming and
harvest. The trim tanks along the keel had been pumped almost dry by the ship's
current prison population as the cooked and dried and salted cubes were stored
in the glass-lined warehouse tier; the gigantic vessel rode easily on a
swelling sea before a Force One westerly breeze.
Salter
was exhausted. He thought briefly of having his cox'n whistle for a bosun's
chair so that he might be hauled at his ease up the fifty-yard cliff that was
the hull before them, and dismissed the idea with regret. Rank hath its
privileges and also its obligations. He stood up in the gig, jumped for the
ladder and began the long climb. As he passed the portholes of the cabin tiers
he virtuously kept eyes front, on the bronze plates of the hull inches from his
nose. Many couples in the privacy of their double cabins would be celebrating
the end of the back-breaking, night-and-day toil. One valued privacy aboard the
ship; one's own 648 cubic feet of cabin, one's own porthole, acquired an almost
religious meaning, particularly after the weeks of swarming cooperative labor.
Taking
care not to pant, he finished the climb with a flourish, springing onto the
flush deck. There was no audience. Feeling a little ridiculous and forsaken, he
walked aft in the dark with only the wind and the creak of the rigging in his
ears. The five great basket masts strained silently behind their breeze-filled
sails; he paused a moment beside Wednesday mast, huge as a redwood, and put his
hands on it to feel the power that vibrated in its steel latticework.
Six
intent women went past, their hand lamps sweeping the deck; he jumped, though
they never noticed him. They were in something like a trance state while on
their tour of duty. Normal courtesies were suspended for them; with their work
began the job of survival. One thousand women, five per cent of the ship's
company, inspected night and day for corrosion. Sea water is a vicious solvent
and the ship had to live in it; fanaticism was the answer.
His
stateroom above the rudder waited; the hatchway to it glowed a hundred feet
down the deck with the light of a wasteful lantern. After harvest, when the
tanks brimmed with oil, one type acted as though the tanks would brim forever.
The captain wearily walked around and over a dozen stay-ropes to the hatchway
and blew out the lamp. Before descending he took a mechanical look around the
deck; all was well
Except
for a patch of paleness at the fantail.
"Will
this day never end?" he asked the darkened lantern and went to the
fantail. The patch was a little girl in a night dress wandering aimlessly over
the deck, her thumb in her mouth. She seemed to be about two years old, and was
more than half asleep. She could have gone over the railing in a moment; a
small wail, a small splashHe picked her up like a feather. "Who's your
daddy, princess?" he asked.
"Dunno,"
she grinned. The devil she didn't! It was too dark to read her ID necklace and
he was too tired to light the lantern. He trudged down the deck to the crew of
inspectors. He said to their chief: "One of you get this child back to her
parents' cabin," and held her out.
The
chief was indignant. "Sir, we are on watch!"
"File
a grievance with the Commodore if you wish. Take the child."
One
of the rounder women did, and made cooing noises while her chief glared.
"Bye-bye, princess," the captain said. "You ought to be
keel-hauled for this, but I'll give you another chance."
"Bye-bye,"
the little girl said, waving, and the captain went yawning down the hatchway to
bed.
His
stateroom was luxurious by the austere standards of the ship. It was equal to
six of the standard nine-by-nine cabins in volume, or to three of the double
cabins for couples. These, however, had something he did not. Officers above
the rank of lieutenant were celibate. Experience had shown that this was the
only answer to nepotism, and nepotism was a luxury which no convoy could
afford. It meant, sooner or later, inefficient command. Inefficient command meant,
sooner or later, death.
Because
he thought he would not sleep, he did not.
Marriage.
Parenthood. What a strange business it must be! To share a bed with a wife, a
cabin with two children decently behind their screen for sixteen years . . .
what did one talk about in bed? His last mistress had hardly talked at all,
except with her eyes. When these showed signs that she was falling in love with
him, Heaven knew why, he broke with her as quietly as possible and since then
irritably rejected the thought of acquiring a successor. That had been two
years ago, when he was thirty-eight, and already beginning to feel like a
cabin-crawler fit only to be dropped over the fantail into the wake. An old
lecher, a roue, a user of women. Of course she had talked a little;
what did they have in common to talk about? With a wife ripening beside him,
with children to share, it would have been different. That pale, tall quiet
girl deserved better than he could give; he hoped she was decently married now
in a double cabin, perhaps already heavy with the first of her two children.
A
whistle squeaked above his head; somebody was blowing into one of the dozen
speaking tubes clustered against the bulkhead. Then a push-wire popped open the
steel lid of Tube Seven, Signals. He resignedly picked up the flexible reply
tube and said into it: "This is the captain. Go ahead."
"Grenville signals Force Three squall approaching from astern,
sir."
"Force
Three squall from astern. Turn out the fore-starboard watch. Have them reef
sail to Condition Charlie."
"Fore-starboard
watch, reef sail to Condition Charlie, aye-aye."
"Execute."
"Aye-aye,
sir." The lid of Tube Seven, Signals, popped shut. At once he heard the
distant, penetrating shrill of the pipe, the faint vibration as one sixth of
the deck crew began to stir in their cabins, awaken, hit the deck bleary-eyed,
begin to trample through the corridors and up the hatchways to the deck. He got
up himself and pulled on clothes, yawning. Reefing from Condition Fox to
Condition Charlie was no serious matter, not even in the dark, and Walters on
watch was a good officer. But he'd better have a look.
Being
flush-decked, the ship offered him no bridge. He conned her from the
"first top" of Friday mast, the rearmost of her five. The "first
top" was a glorified crow's nest fifty feet up the steel basket-work of
that great tower; it afforded him a view of all masts and spars in one glance.
He
climbed to his command post too far gone for fatigue. A full moon now lit the
scene, good. That much less chance of a green top-man stepping on a ratline
that would prove to be a shadow and hurtling two hundred feet to the deck. That
much more snap in the reefing; that much sooner it would be over. Suddenly he
was sure he would be able to sleep if he ever got back to bed again.
He
turned for a look at the bronze, moonlit heaps of the great net on the fantail.
Within a week it would be cleaned and oiled; within two weeks stowed below in
the cable tier, safe from wind and weather.
The
regiments of the fore-starboard watch swarmed up the masts from Monday to
Friday, swarmed out along the spars as bosun's whistles squealed out the
drillThe squall struck.
Wind
screamed and tore at him; the captain flung his arms around a stanchion. Rain
pounded down upon his head and the ship reeled in a vast, slow curtsy, port to
starboard. Behind him there was a metal sound as the bronze net shifted inches
sideways, back.
The
sudden clouds had blotted out the moon; he could not see the men who swarmed
along the yards but with sudden terrible clarity he felt through the soles of
his feet what they were doing. They were clawing their way through the
sail-reefing drill, blinded and deafened by sleety rain and wind. They were out
of phase by now; they were no longer trying to shorten sail equally on each
mast; they were trying to get the thing done and descend. The wind screamed in
his face as he turned and clung. Now they were ahead of the job on Monday and
Tuesday masts, behind the job on Thursday and Friday masts.
So
the ship was going to pitch. The wind would catch it unequally and it would
kneel in prayer, the cutwater plunging with a great, deep stately obeisance
down into the fathoms of ocean, the stern soaring slowly, ponderously, into the
air until the topmost rudder-trunnion streamed a hundred-foot cascade into the
boiling froth of the wake.
That
was half the pitch. It happened, and the captain clung, groaning aloud. He
heard above the screaming wind loose gear rattling on the deck, clashing
forward in an avalanche. He heard a heavy clink at the stern and bit his lower
lip until it ran with blood that the tearing cold rain flooded from his chin.
The
pitch reached its maximum and the second half began, after interminable moments
when she seemed frozen at a five-degree angle forever. The cutwater rose, rose,
rose, the bowsprit blocked out horizon stars, the loose gear countercharged
astern in a crushing tide of bales, windlass cranks, water-breakers, stilling
coils, steel sun reflectors, lashing tails of bronze rigging
Into
the heaped piles of the net, straining at its retainers on the two great
bollards that took root in the keel itself four hundred feet below. The energy
of the pitch hurled the belly of the net open crashing, into the sea. The
bollards held for a moment.
A
retainer cable screamed and snapped like a man's back, and then the second
cable broke. The roaring slither of the bronze links thundering over the
fantail shook the ship.
The
squall ended as it had come; the clouds scudded on and the moon bared itself,
to shine on a deck scrubbed clean. The net was lost.
Captain
Salter looked down the fifty feet from the rim of the crow's nest and thought:
I should jump. It would be quicker that way.
But
he did not. He slowly began to climb down the ladder to the bare deck.
Having
no electrical equipment, the ship was necessarily a representative republic
rather than a democracy. Twenty thousand people can discuss and decide only
with the aid of microphones, loudspeakers, and rapid calculators to balance the
ayes and noes. With lungpower the only means of communication and an abacus in
a clerk's hands the only tallying device, certainly no more than fifty people
can talk together and make sense, and there are pessimists who say the number
is closer to five than fifty. The Ship's Council that met at dawn on the
fantail numbered fifty.
It
was a beautiful dawn; it lifted the heart to see salmon sky, iridescent sea,
spread white sails of the Convoy ranged in a great slanting line across sixty
miles of oceanic blue.
It
was the kind of dawn for which one liveda full catch salted down, the
water-butts filled, the evaporators trickling from their thousand tubes nine
gallons each sunrise to sunset, wind enough for easy steerageway and a pretty
spread of sail. These were the rewards. One hundred and forty-one years ago
Grenville's Convoy had been launched at Newport News, Virginia, to claim them.
Oh,
the high adventure of the launching! The men and women who had gone aboard
thought themselves heroes, conquerors of nature, self-sacrificers for the glory
of NEMET! But NEMET meant only Northeastern Metropolitan Area, one dense warren
that stretched from Boston to Newport, built up and dug down, sprawling
westward, gulping Pittsburgh without a pause, beginning to peter out past
Cincinnati.
The
first generation at sea clung and sighed for the culture of NEMET, consoled
itself with its patriotic sacrifice; any relief was better than none at all,
and Grenville's Convoy had drained one and a quarter million
population from the huddle. They were immigrants into the sea; like all
immigrants they longed for the Old Country. Then the second generation. Like
all second generations they had no patience with the old people or their tales.
This was real, this sea, this gale, this rope! Then the third
generation. Like all third generations it felt a sudden desperate hollowness
and lack of identity. What was real? Who are we? What is NEMET which we have
lost? But by then grandfather and grandmother could only mumble vaguely; the
cultural heritage was gone, squandered in three generations, spent forever. As
always, the fourth generation did not care.
And
those who sat in counsel on the fantail were members of the fifth and sixth
generations. They knew all there was to know about life. Life was the hull and
masts, the sail and rigging, the net and the evaporators. Nothing more. Nothing
less. Without masts there was no life. Nor was there life without the net.
The
Ship's Council did not command; command was reserved to the captain and his
officers. The Council governed, and on occasion tried criminal cases. During
the black Winter Without Harvest eighty years before it had decreed euthanasia
for all persons over sixty-three years of age and for one out of twenty of the
other adults aboard. It had rendered bloody judgment on the ringleaders of
Peale's Mutiny. It had sent them into the wake and Peale himself had been
bowspritted, given the maritime equivalent of crucifixion. Since then no
megalomaniacs had decided to make life interesting for their shipmates, so
Peale's long agony had served its purpose.
The
fifty of them represented every department of the ship and every age group. If
there was wisdom aboard, it was concentrated there on the fantail. But there
was little to say.
The
eldest of them, Retired Sailmaker Hodgins, presided. Venerably bearded, still
strong of voice, he told them:
"Shipmates,
our accident has come. We are dead men. Decency demands that we do not spin out
the struggle and sink intounlawful eatings. Reason tells us that we cannot
survive. What I propose is an honorable voluntary death for us all, and the
legacy of our ship's fabric to be divided among the remainder of the Convoy at
the discretion of the Commodore."
He
had little hope of his old man's viewpoint prevailing. The Chief Inspector rose
at once. She had only three words to say: "Not my children"
Women's
heads nodded grimly, and men's with resignation. Decency and duty and common
sense were all very well until you ran up against that steel bulkhead. Not
my children.
A brilliant young chaplain asked: "Has the
question even been raised as to whether a collection among the fleet might not
provide cordage enough to improvise a net?"
Captain
Salter should have answered that, but he, murderer of the twenty thousand souls
in his care, could not speak. He nodded jerkily at his signals officer.
Lieutenant
Zwingli temporized by taking out his signals slate and pretending to refresh
his memory. He said: "At 0035 today a lamp signal was made to Grenville
advising that our net was lost. Grenville replied as follows: 'Effective
now, your ship no longer part of Convoy. Have no recommendations. Personal
sympathy and regrets. Signed, Commodore.'"
Captain
Salter found his voice. "I've sent a couple of other messages to Grenville
and to our neighboring vessels. They do not reply. This is as it should be. We
are no longer part of the Convoy. Through our ownlapsewe have become a drag
on the Convoy. We cannot look to it for help. I have no word of condemnation
for anybody. This is how life is."
The
chaplain folded his hands and began to pray inaudibly.
And
then a council member spoke whom Captain Salter knew in another role. It was
Jewel Flyte, the tall, pale girl who had been his mistress two years ago. She
must be serving as an alternate, he thought, looking at her with new eyes. He
did not know she was even that; he had avoided her since then. And no, she was
not married; she wore no ring. And neither was her hair drawn back in the
semiofficial style of the semi-official voluntary celibates, the super-patriots
(or simply sex-shy people, or dislikers of children) who surrendered their
right to reproduce for the good of the ship (or their own convenience). She was
simply a girl in the uniform of aa what? He had to think hard before he could
match the badge over her breast to a department. She was Ship's Archivist with
her crossed key and quill, an obscure clerk and shelf-duster underfar
under!the Chief of Yeomen Writers. She must have been elected alternate by the
Yeomen in a spasm of sympathy for her blind-alley career.
"My
job," she said in her calm steady voice, "is chiefly to search for
precedents in the Log when unusual events must be recorded and nobody
recollects offhand the form in which they should be recorded. It is one of
those provoking jobs which must be done by someone but which cannot absorb the
full time of a person. I have therefore had many free hours of actual working
time. I have also remained unmarried and am not inclined to sports or games. I
tell you this so you may believe me when I say that during the past two years I
have read the Ship's Log in its entirety."
There
was a little buzz. Truly an astonishing, and an astonishingly pointless, thing
to do! Wind and weather, storms and calms, messages and meetings and censuses,
crimes, trials and punishments of a hundred and forty-one years; what a bore!
"Something
I read," she went on, "may have some bearing on our dilemma."
She took a slate from her pocket and read: "Extract from the Log dated
June 30th, Convoy Year 72. 'The Shakespeare-Joyce-Melville Party returned after
dark in the gig. They had not accomplished any part of their mission. Six were
dead of wounds; all bodies were recovered. The remaining six were mentally
shaken but responded to our last ataractics. They spoke of a new religion
ashore and its consequences on population. I am persuaded that we sea-bornes
can no longer relate to the continentals. The clandestine shore trips will
cease.' The entry is signed 'Scolley, Captain'."
A
man named Scolley smiled for a brief proud moment. His ancestor! And then like
the others he waited for the extract to make sense. Like the others he found
that it would not do so.
Captain
Salter wanted to speak, and wondered how to address her. She had been
"Jewel" and they all knew it; could he call her "Yeoman
Flyte" without looking like, being, a fool? Well, if he was fool enough to
lose his net he was fool enough to be formal with an ex-mistress. "Yeoman
Flyte," he said, "where does the extract leave us?"
In
her calm voice she told them all: "Penetrating the few obscure words, it
appears to mean that until Convoy Year 72 the Charter was regularly violated,
with the connivance of successive captains. I suggest that we consider
violating it once more, to survive."
The
Charter. It was a sort of groundswell of their ethical life, learned early,
paid homage every Sunday when they were rigged for church. It was inscribed in
phosphor-bronze plates on the Monday mast of every ship at sea, and the wording
was always the same.
IN
RETURN FOR THE SEA AND ITS BOUNTY WE RENOUNCE AND ABJURE FOR OURSELVES AND OUR
DESCENDANTS THE LAND FROM WHICH WE SPRUNG: FOR THE COMMON GOOD OF MAN WE SET
SAIL FOREVER.
At
least half of them were unconsciously murmuring the words.
Retired
Sailmaker Hodgins rose, shaking. "Blasphemy!" he said. "The
woman should be bowspritted!"
The
chaplain said thoughtfully: "I know a little more about what constitutes
blasphemy than Sailmaker Hodgins, I believe, and assure you that he is
mistaken. It is a superstitious error to believe that there is any religious
sanction for the Charter. It is no ordinance of God but a contract between
men."
"It
is a Revelation!" Hodgins shouted. "A Revelation! It is the newest
testament! It is God's finger pointing the way to the clean hard life at sea,
away from the grubbing and filth, from the over-breeding and the
sickness!"
That
was a common view.
"What
about my children?" demanded
the Chief Inspector. "Does God want them to starve or bebe" She
could not finish the question, but the last unspoken word of it rang in all
their minds.
Eaten.
Aboard
some ships with an accidental preponderance of the elderly, aboard other ships
where some blazing personality generations back had raised the Charter to a
powerful cult, suicide might have been voted. Aboard other ships where nothing
extraordinary had happened in six generations, where things had been easy and
the knack and tradition of hard decision-making had been lost, there might have
been confusion and inaction and the inevitable degeneration into savagery.
Aboard Sailer's ship the Council voted to send a small party ashore to
investigate. They used every imaginable euphemism to describe the action, took
six hours to make up their minds, and sat at last on the fantail cringing a
little, as if waiting for a thunderbolt.
The
shore party would consist of Salter, Captain; Flyte, Archivist; Pemberton,
Junior Chaplain; Graves, Chief Inspector.
Salter
climbed to his conning top on Friday mast, consulted a chart from the archives,
and gave the order through speaking tube to the tiller gang: "Change
course red four degrees."
The
repeat came back incredulously.
"Execute,"
he said. The ship creaked as eighty men heaved the tiller; imperceptibly at
first the wake began to curve behind them.
Ship
Starboard 30 departed from its ancient station; across a mile of sea the
bosun's whistles could be heard from Starboard 31 as she put on sail to close
the gap.
"They
might have signaled something," Salter thought, dropping his glasses at
last on his chest. But the masthead of Starboard 31 remained bare of all but
its commission pennant.
He
whistled up his signals officer and pointed to their own pennant. "Take
that thing down," he said hoarsely, and went below to his cabin.
The
new course would find them at last riding off a place the map described as New
York City.
Salter
issued what he expected would be his last commands to Lieutenant Zwingli; the
whaleboat was waiting in its davits; the other three were in it.
"You'll
keep your station here as well as you're able," said the captain. "If
we live, we'll be back in a couple of months. Should we not return, that would
be a potent argument against beaching the ship and attempting to live off the
continentbut it will be your problem then and not mine."
They
exchanged salutes. Salter sprang into the whaleboat, signaled the deck hands
standing by at the ropes, and the long creaking descent began.
Salter,
Captain, age 40; unmarried ex offido; parents Clayton Salter, master
instrument maintenanceman, and Eva Romano, chief dietician; selected from dame
school age 10 for A Track training; seamanship school certificate at age 16,
navigation certificate at age 20, First Lieutenants School age 24, commissioned
ensign age 24; lieutenant at 30, commander at 32; commissioned captain and
succeeded to command of Ship Starboard 30 the same year.
Flyte,
Archivist, age 25; unmarried; parents Joseph Flyte, entertainer, and Jessie
Waggoner, entertainer; completed dame school age 14, B Track training, Yeoman's
School certificate at age 16, Advanced Yeoman's School certificate at age 18,
Efficiency rating, 3.5.
Pemberton,
Chaplain, age 30; married to Riva Shields, nurse; no children by choice;
parents Will Pemberton, master distiller-water-tender, and Agnes Hunt,
felter-machinist's mate; completed dame school age 12, B Track training,
Divinity School Certificate at age 20; mid-starboard watch curate, later
fore-starboard chaplain.
Graves,
chief inspector, age 34, married to George Omany, blacksmith third class; two
children; completed dame school age 15, Inspectors School Certificate at age 16;
inspector third class, second class, first class, master inspector, then chief.
Efficiency rating, 4.0; three commendations. * Versus the Continent of
North America.
They
all rowed for an hour; then a shoreward breeze came up and Salter stepped the
mast. "Ship your oars," he said, and then wished he dared countermand
the order. Now they would have time to think of what they were doing.
The
very water they sailed was different in color from the deep water they knew,
and different in its way of moving. The life in it
"Great
God!" Mrs. Graves cried, pointing astern.
It
was a huge fish, half the size of their boat. It surfaced lazily and slipped
beneath the water in an uninterrupted arc. They had seen steel-gray skin, not
scales, and a great slit of a mouth.
Salter
said, shaken: "Unbelievable. Still, I suppose in the unfished offshore
waters a few of the large forms survive. And the intermediate sizes to feed
them" And foot-long smaller sizes to feed them, and"
Was
it mere arrogant presumption that Man had permanently changed the life of the
sea?
The
afternoon sun slanted down and the tip of Monday mast sank below the horizon's
curve astern; the breeze that filled their sail bowled them toward a mist which
wrapped vague concretions they feared to study too closely. A shadowed figure
huge as a mast with one arm upraised; behind it blocks and blocks of something
solid.
"This
is the end of the sea," said the captain.
Mrs.
Graves said what she would have said if a silly under-inspector had reported to
her blue rust on steel: "Nonsense!" Then, stammering: "I beg
your pardon, Captain. Of course you are correct."
"But
it sounded strange," Chaplain Pemberton said helpfully. "I wonder
where they all are?"
Jewel
Flyte said in her quiet way: "We should have passed over the discharge
from waste tubes before now. They used to pump their waste through tubes under
the sea and discharge it several miles out. It colored the water and it stank.
During the first voyaging years the captains knew it was time to tack away from
land by the color and the bad smell."
"They
must have improved their disposal system by now," Salter said. "It's
been centuries."
His
last word hung in the air.
The
chaplain studied the mist from the bow. It was impossible to deny it; the huge
thing was an Idol. Rising from the bay of a great city, an Idol, and a female
onethe worst kind! "I thought they had them only in High Places," he
muttered, discouraged.
Jewel
Flyte understood. "I think it has no religious significance," she
said. "It's a sort ofhuge piece of scrimshaw."
Mrs.
Graves studied the vast thing and saw in her mind the glyphic arts as practiced
at sea: compacted kelp shaved and whittled into little heirloom boxes,
miniature portrait busts of children. She decided that Yeoman Flyte had a
dangerously wild imagination. Scrimshaw! Tall as a mast!
There
should be some commerce, thought the captain. Boats going to and fro. The Place
ahead was plainly an island, plainly inhabited; goods and people should be
going to it and coming from it. Gigs and cutters and whaleboats should be
plying this bay and those two rivers; at that narrow bit they should be lined
up impatiently waiting, tacking and riding under sea anchors and furled sails.
There was nothing but a few white birds that shrilled nervously at their
solitary boat.
The
blocky concretions were emerging from the haze; they were sunset-red cubes with
regular black eyes dotting them; they were huge dice laid down side by side by
side, each as large as a ship, each therefore capable of holding twenty thousand
persons.
Where
were they all?
The
breeze and the tide drove them swiftly through the neck of water where a
hundred boats should be waiting. "Furl the sail," said Salter.
"Out oars."
With
no sounds but the whisper of the oarlocks, the cries of the white birds, and
the slapping of the wavelets they rowed under the shadow of the great red dice
to a dock, one of a hundred teeth projecting from the island's rim.
"Easy
the starboard oars," said Salter; "handsomely the port oars. Up oars.
Chaplain, the boat hook." He had brought them to a steel ladder; Mrs.
Graves gasped at the red rust thick on it. Salter tied the painter to a
corroded brass ring. "Come along," he said, and began to climb.
When
the four of them stood on the iron-plated dock Pemberton, naturally, prayed.
Mrs. Graves followed the prayer with half her attention or less; the rest she
could not divert from the shocking slovenliness of the prospectrust, dust,
litter, neglect. What went on in the mind of Jewel Flyte her calm face did not
betray. And the captain scanned those black windows a hundred yards inboardno;
inland!and waited and wondered.
They
began to walk to them at last, Salter leading. The sensation underfoot was
strange and dead, tiring to the arches and the thighs.
The
huge red dice were not as insane close up as they had appeared from a distance.
They were thousand-foot cubes of brick, the stuff that lined ovens. They were
set back within squares of green, cracked surfacing which Jewel Flyte named
"cement" or "concrete" from some queer corner of her
erudition.
There
was an entrance, and written over it: THE HERBERT BROWNELL JR. MEMORIAL HOUSES.
A bronze plaque shot a pang of guilt through them all as they thought of The
Compact, but its words were different and ignoble.
NOTICE
TO ALL TENANTS
A
project Apartment is a Privilege and not a Right. Daily Inspection is the
Cornerstone of the Project. Attendance at Least Once a Week at the Church or
Synagogue of your Choice is Required for Families wishing to remain in Good
Standing; Proof of Attendance must be presented on Demand. Possession of
Tobacco or Alcohol will be considered Prima Facie Evidence of Undesirability.
Excessive Water Use, Excessive Energy Use and Food Waste will be Grounds for
Desirability Review. The speaking of Languages other than American by persons
over the Age of Six will be considered Prima Facie Evidence of
Nonassimilability, though this shall not be construed to prohibit Religious
Ritual in Languages other than American.
Below
it stood another plaque in paler bronze, an afterthought:
None
of the foregoing shall be construed to condone the Practice of Depravity under
the Guise of Religion by Whatever Name, and all Tenants are warned that any
Failure to report the Practice of Depravity will result in summary Eviction and
Denunciation.
Around
this later plaque some hand had painted with crude strokes of a tar brush a
sort of anatomical frame at which they stared in wondering disgust.
At
last Pemberton said: "They were a devout people." Nobody noticed the
past tense, it sounded so right.
"Very
sensible," said Mrs. Graves. "No nonsense about them."
Captain
Salter privately disagreed. A ship run with such dour coercion would founder in
a month; could land people be that much different?
Jewel
Flyte said nothing, but her eyes were wet. Perhaps she was thinking of scared
little human rats dodging and twisting through the inhuman maze of great fears
and minute rewards.
"After
all," said Mrs. Graves, "it's nothing but a Cabin Tier. We have
cabins and so had they. Captain, might we have a look?"
"This
is a reconnaissance," Salter shrugged. They went into a littered
lobby and easily recognized an elevator which had long ago ceased to operate;
there were many hand-run dumbwaiters at sea.
A
gust of air flapped a sheet of printed paper across the chaplain's ankles; he
stooped to pick it up with a kind of instinctive outrage-leaving paper
unsecured, perhaps to blow overboard and be lost forever to the ship's economy!
Then he flushed at his silliness. "So much to unlearn," he said, and
spread the paper to look at it. A moment later he crumpled it in a ball and
hurled it from him as hard and as far as he could, and wiped his hands with
loathing on his jacket. His face was utterly shocked.
The
others stared. It was Mrs. Graves who went for the paper.
"Don't
look at it," said the chaplain.
"I
think she'd better," Salter said.
The
maintenance woman spread the paper, studied it and said: "Just some
nonsense. Captain, what do you make of it?"
It
was a large page torn from a book, and on it were simple polychrome drawings
and some lines of verse in the style of a child's first reader. Salter
repressed a shocked guffaw. The picture was of a little boy and a little girl
quaintly dressed and locked in murderous combat, using teeth and nails. "Jack
and Jill went up the hill," said the text, "to fetch a pail
of water. She threw Jack down and broke his crown; it was a lovely
slaughter."
Jewel
Flyte took the page from his hands. All she said was, after a long pause:
"I suppose they couldn't start them too young." She dropped the page
and she too wiped her hands.
"Come
along," the captain said. "We'll try the stairs." The stairs
were dust, rat dung, cobwebs, and two human skeletons. Murderous knuckledusters
fitted loosely the bones of the two right hands. Salter hardened himself to
pick up one of the weapons, but could not bring himself to try it on. Jewel
Flyte said apologetically. "Please be careful, Captain. It might be
poisoned. That seems to be the way they were."
Salter
froze. By God, but the girl was right! Delicately, handling the spiked steel
thing by its edges, he held it up. Yes; stainsit would be stained,
and perhaps with poison also. He dropped it into the thoracic cage of one
skeleton and said: "Come on." They climbed in quest of a dusty light
from above; it was a doorway onto a corridor of many doors. There was evidence
of fire and violence. A barricade of queer pudgy chairs and divans had been
built to block the corridor, and had been breached. Behind it were sprawled
three more heaps of bones.
"They
have no heads," the chaplain said hoarsely. "Captain Salter, this is
not a place for human beings. We must go back to the ship, even if it means
honorable death. This is not a place for human beings."
"Thank
you, chaplain," said Salter. "You've cast your vote. Is anybody with
you?"
"Kill
your own children, chaplain," said Mrs. Graves. "Not mine."
Jewel Flyte gave the chaplain a sympathetic shrug and said: "No." One
door stood open, its lock shattered by blows of a fire axe. Salter said:
"We'll try that one." They entered into the home of an ordinary
middle-class death-worshipping family as it had been a century ago, in the one
hundred and thirty-first year of Merdeka the Chosen.
Merdeka
the Chosen, the All-Foreigner, the Ur-Alien, had never intended any of it. He
began as a retail mail-order vendor of movie and television stills,
eight-by-ten glossies for the fan trade. It was a hard dollar; you had to keep
an immense stock to cater to a tottery Mae Bush admirer, to the pony-tailed
screamer over Rip Torn, and to everybody in between. He would have no truck
with pinups. "Dirty, lascivious pictures!" he snarled when broadly
hinting letters arrived. "Filth! Men and women kissing, ogling, pawing
each other! Orgies! Bah!" Merdeka kept a neutered dog, a spayed cat, and a
crumpled uncomplaining housekeeper who was technically his wife. He was poor;
he was very poor. Yet he never neglected his charitable duties, contributing
every year to the Planned Parenthood Federation and the Midtown Hysterectomy
Clinic.
They
knew him in the Third Avenue saloons where he talked every night, arguing with
Irishmen, sometimes getting asked outside to be knocked down. He let them knock
him down, and sneered from the pavement. Was this their argument? He
could argue. He spewed facts and figures and cliches in unanswerable profusion.
Hell, man, the Russians'll have a bomb base on the moon in two years and in two
years the Army and the Air Force will still be beating each other over the head
with pigs' bladders. Just a minute, let me tell you: the god-dammycin's making
idiots of us all; do you know of any children born in the past two years
that're healthy? And: 'flu be go to hell; it's our own germ warfare from Camp
Crowder right outside Baltimore that got out of hand, and it happened the week
of the twenty-fourth. And: the human animal's obsolete; they've proved at
M.I.T., Steinwitz and Kohlmann proved that the human animal cannot
survive the current radiation levels. And: enjoy your lung cancer, friend; for
every automobile and its stinking exhaust there will be
two-point-seven-oh-three cases of lung cancer, and we've got to have our
automobiles, don't we? And: delinquency my foot; they're insane and it's got to
the point where the economy cannot support mass insanity; they've got to be
castrated; it's the only way. And: they should dig up the body of Metchnikoff
and throw it to the dogs; he's the degenerate who invented venereal prophylaxis
and since then vice without punishment has run hogwild through the world; what
we need on the streets is a few of those old-time locomotor ataxia cases
limping and drooling to show the kids where vice leads.
He
didn't know where he came from. The delicate New York way of establishing
origins is to ask: "Merdeka, hah? What kind of a name is that now?" And
to this he would reply that he wasn't a lying Englishman or a loudmouthed
Irishman or a perverted Frenchman or a chiseling Jew or a barbarian Russian or
a toadying German or a thickheaded Scandihoovian, and if his listener didn't
like it, what did he have to say in reply?
He
was from an orphanage, and the legend at the orphanage was that a policeman had
found him, two hours old, in a garbage can coincident with the death by
hemorrhage on a trolley car of a luetic young woman whose name appeared to be
Merdeka and who had certainly been recently delivered of a child. No other
facts were established, but for generation after generation of orphanage
inmates there was great solace in having one of their number who indisputably
had got off to a worse start than they.
A
watershed of his career occurred when he noticed that he was, for the seventh
time that year, reordering prints of scenes from Mr. Howard Hughes's production
The Outlaw. These were not the off-the-bust stills of Miss Jane
Russell, surprisingly, but were group scenes of Miss Russell suspended by her
wrists and about to be whipped. Merdeka studied the scene, growled, "Give
it to the bitch!" and doubled the order. It sold out. He canvassed his
files for other whipping and torture stills from Desert Song-type
movies, made up a special assortment, and it sold out within a week. Then he
knew.
The
man and the opportunity had come together, for perhaps the fiftieth time in
history. He hired a model and took the first specially posed pictures himself.
They showed her cringing from a whip, tied to a chair with a clothesline, and
herself brandishing the whip.
Within
two months Merdeka had cleared six thousand dollars and he put every cent of it
back into more photographs and direct-mail advertising. Within a year he was
big enough to attract the post office obscenity people. He went to Washington
and screamed in their faces: "My stuff isn't obscene and I'll sue you if
you bother me, you stinking bureaucrats! You show me one breast, you show me
one behind, you show me one human being touching another in my pictures! You
can't and you know you can't! I don't believe in sex and I don't push sex, so
you leave me the hell alone! Life is pain and suffering and being scared, so
people like to look at my pictures; my pictures are about them, the
scared little jerks! You're just a bunch of goddam perverts if you think
there's anything dirty about my pictures!"
He
had them there; Merdeka's girls always wore at least full panties, bras, and
stockings; he had them there. The post office obscenity people were vaguely
positive that there was something wrong with pictures of beautiful
women tied down to be whipped or burned with hot irons, but what?
The
next year they tried to get him on his income tax; those deductions for the Planned
Parenthood Federation and the Midtown Hysterectomy Clinic were preposterous,
but he proved them with canceled checks to the last nickel. "In
fact," he indignantly told them, "I spend a lot of time at the Clinic
and sometimes they let me watch the operations. That's how highly they
think of me at the Clinic."
The
next year he started DEATH: the Weekly Picture Magazine with the aid
of a half-dozen bright young grads from the new Harvard School of
Communicationeering. As DEATH'S Communicator in Chief (only yesterday
he would have been its Publisher, and only fifty years before he would have
been its Editor) he slumped biliously in a pigskin-paneled office, peering
suspiciously at the closed-circuit TV screen which had a hundred wired eyes
throughout DEATH'S offices, sometimes growling over the voice circuit:
"You! What's your name? Boland? You're through, Boland. Pick up your time
at the paymaster." For any reason; for no reason. He was a living legend
in his narrow-lapel charcoal flannel suit and stringy bullfighter neckties; the
bright young men in their Victorian Revival frock coats and pearl-pinned
cravats wondered at hisnot "obstinacy"; not when there might be a
mike even in the corner saloon; say, his "timelessness."
The
bright young men became bright young-old men, and the magazine which had been
conceived as a vehicle for deadheading house ads of the mail order picture
business went into the black. On the cover of every issue of DEATH was
a pictured execution-of-the-week, and no price for one was ever too high. A
fifty-thousand-dollar donation to a mosque had purchased the right to secretly
snap the Bread Ordeal by which perished a Yemenite suspected of tapping an oil
pipeline. An interminable illustrated History of Flagellation was a staple of the
reading matter, and the Medical Section (in color) was tremendously popular. So
too was the weekly Traffic Report.
When
the last of the Compact Ships was launched into the Pacific the event made DEATH
because of the several fatal accidents which accompanied the launching;
otherwise Merdeka ignored the ships. It was strange that he who had
unorthodoxies about everything had no opinion at all about the Compact Ships
and their crews. Perhaps it was that he really knew he was the greatest
manslayer who ever lived, and even so could not face commanding total
extinction, including that of the seaborne leaven. The more articulate Sokeian,
who in the name of Rinzei Zen Buddhism was at that time depopulating the
immense area dominated by China, made no bones about it: "Even I in my
Hate may err; let the celestial vessels be." The opinions of Dr. Spat,
European member of the trio, are forever beyond recovery due to his advocacy of
the "one-generation" plan.
With
advancing years Merdeka's wits cooled and gelled. There came a time when he
needed a theory and was forced to stab the button of the intercom for his
young-old Managing Communicator and growl at him: "Give me a theory!"
And the M.C. reeled out: "The structural intermesh of DEATH: the
Weekly Picture Magazine with Western culture is no random point-event but
a rising world-line. Predecessor attitudes such as the Hollywood dogma 'No
breastsblood!' and the tabloid press's exploitation of violence were
floundering and empirical. It was Merdeka who sigmaized the convergent traits
of our times and asymptotically congruentizes with them publication-wise.
Wrestling and the roller-derby as blood sports, the routinization of femicide
in the detective tale, the standardization at one million per year of traffic
fatalities, the wholesome interest of our youth in gang rumbles, all point
toward the Age of Hate and Death. The ethic of Love and Life is obsolescent,
and who is to say that Man is the loser thereby? Life and Death compete in the
marketplace of ideas for the Mind of Man"
Merdeka
growled something and snapped off the set. Merdeka leaned back. Two billion
circulation this week, and the auto ads were beginning to Tip. Last year only
the suggestion of a dropped shopping basket as the Dynajetic 16 roared across
the page, this year a hand, limp on the pictured pavement. Next year, blood. In
February the Sylphella Salon chain ads had Tipped, with a crash, "and the
free optional judo course for slenderized Madame or Mademoiselle: learn how to
kill a man with your lovely bare hands, with or without mess as desired."
Applications had risen twenty-eight percent. By God there was a
structural intermesh for you!
It
was too slow; it was still too slow. He picked up a direct-line phone and
screamed into it: "Too slow! What am I paying you people for? The world is
wallowing in filth! Movies are dirtier than ever! Kissing! Pawing! Ogling! Men
and women togetherobscene! Clean up the magazine covers! Clean up the
ads!"
The
person at the other end of the direct line was Executive Secretary of the
Society for Purity in Communications; Merdeka had no need to announce himself
to him, for Merdeka was S.P.C.'s principal underwriter. He began to rattle off
at once: "We've got the Mothers' March on Washington this week, sir, and a
mass dummy pornographic mailing addressed to every Middle Atlantic State female
between the ages of six and twelve next week, sir; I believe this one-two punch
will put the Federal Censorship Commission over the goal line before
recess"
Merdeka
hung up. "Lewd communications," he snarled. "Breeding, breeding,
breeding, like maggots in a garbage can. Burning and breeding. But we will make
them clean."
He
did not need a Theory to tell him that he could not take away Love without
providing a substitute.
He
walked down Sixth Avenue that night, for the first time in years. In this
saloon he had argued; outside that saloon he had been punched in the nose.
Well, he was winning the argument, all the arguments. A mother and daughter
walked past uneasily, eyes on the shadows. The mother was dressed Square; she
wore a sheath dress that showed her neck and clavicles at the top and her legs
from mid-shin at the bottom. In some parts of town she'd be spat on, but the
daughter, never. The girl was Hip; she was covered from neck to ankles by a
loose, unbelted sack-culotte. Her mother's hair floated; hers was hidden by a
cloche. Nevertheless the both of them were abruptly yanked into one of those
shadows they prudently had eyed, for they had not watched the well-lit sidewalk
for waiting nooses.
The
familiar sounds of a Working Over came from the shadows as Merdeka strolled on.
"I mean cool!" an ecstatic young voiceboy's, girl's, what did it
matter?breathed between crunching blows.
That
year the Federal Censorship Commission was created, and the next year the old
Internment Camps in the southwest were filled to capacity by violators, and the
next year the First Church of Merdeka was founded in Chicago. Merdeka died of
an aortal aneurism five years after that, but his soul went marching on.
"The
Family that Prays together Slays together," was the wall motto in the
apartment, but there was no evidence that the implied injunction had been
observed. The bedroom of the mother and the father were secured by steel doors
and terrific locks, but Junior had got them all the same; somehow he had burned
through the steel.
"Thermite?"
Jewel Flyte asked herself softly, trying to remember.
First
he had got the father, quickly and quietly with a wire garotte as he lay
sleeping, so as not to alarm his mother. To her he had taken her own spiked
knobkerry and got in a mortal stroke, but not before she reached under her
pillow for a pistol. Junior's teenage bones testified by their arrangement to
the violence of that leaden blow.
Incredulously
they looked at the family library of comic books, published in a series called
"The Merdekan Five-Foot Shelf of Classics." Jewel Flyte leafed slowly
through one called Moby Dick and found that it consisted of a
near-braining in a bedroom, agonizingly depicted deaths at sea, and for a
climax the eating alive of one Ahab by a monster. "Surely there must have
been more," she whispered.
Chaplain
Pemberton put down Hamlet quickly and held onto a wall. He was quite
sure that he felt his sanity slipping palpably away, that he would gibber in a
moment. He prayed and after a while felt better; he rigorously kept his eyes
away from the Classics after that.
Mrs.
Graves snorted at the waste of it all, at the picture of the ugly, pop-eyed,
busted-nose man labeled MERDEKA THE CHOSEN, THE PURE, THE PURIFIER. There were two
tables, which was a folly. Who needed two tables? Then she looked closer, saw
that one of them was really a bloodstained flogging bench and felt slightly
ill. Its nameplate said Correctional Furniture Corp. Size 6, Ages 10-14.
She had, God knew, slapped her children more than once when they deviated from
her standard of perfection, but when she saw those stains she felt a stirring
of warmth for the parricidal bones in the next room.
Captain
Salter said: "Let's get organized. Does anybody think there are any of
them left?"
"I
think not," said Mrs. Graves. "People like that can't survive. The
world must have been swept clean. They, ah, killed one another but that's not
the important point. This couple had one child, age ten to fourteen. This cabin
of theirs seems to be built for one child. We should look at a few more cabins
to learn whether a one-child family iswasnormal. If we find out that it was,
we can suspect that they aregone. Or nearly so." She coined a happy phrase:
"By race suicide."
"The
arithmetic of it is quite plausible," Salter said. "If no factors
work except the single-child factor, in one century of five generations a
population of two billion will have bred itself down to a hundred and
twenty-five million. In another century, the population is just under four
million. In another, a hundred and twenty-two thousand ... by the thirty-second
generation the last couple descended from the original two billion will breed
one child, and that's the end. And there are the other factors. Besides those
who do not breed by choice" his eyes avoided Jewel Flyte"there are
the things we have seen on the stairs, and in the corridor, and in these
compartments."
"Then
there's our answer," said Mrs. Graves. She smacked the obscene table with
her hand, forgetting what it was. "We beach the ship and march the ship's
company onto dry land. We clean up, we learn what we have to to get
along" Her words trailed off. She shook her head. "Sorry," she
said gloomily. "I'm talking nonsense."
The
chaplain understood her, but he said: "The land is merely another of the
many mansions. Surely they could learn!"
"It's
not politically feasible," Salter said. "Not in its present
form." He thought of presenting the proposal to the Ship's Council in the
shadow of the mast that bore the Compact, and twitched his head in an
involuntary negative.
"There
is a formula possible," Jewel Flyte said.
The
Brownells burst in on them then, all eighteen of the Brownells. They had been
stalking the shore party since its landing. Nine sack-culotted women in cloches
and nine men in penitential black, they streamed through the gaping door and
surrounded the sea people with a ring of spears. Other factors had indeed
operated, but this was not yet the thirty-second generation of extinction.
The
leader of the Brownells, a male, said with satisfaction: "Just when we
needednew blood." Salter understood that he was not speaking in genetic
terms.
The
females, more verbal types, said critically: "Evil-doers, obviously.
Displaying their limbs without shame, brazenly flaunting the rotted pillars of
the temple of lust. Come from the accursed sea itself, abode of infamy, to
seduce us from our decent and regular lives."
"We
know what to do with the women," said the male leader. The rest took up
the antiphon.
"We'll
knock them down."
"And
roll them on their backs."
"And
pull one arm out and tie it fast."
"And
pull the other arm out and tie it fast."
"And
pull one limb out and tie it fast."
"And
pull the other limb out and tie it fast."
"And
then"
"We'll
beat them to death and Merdeka will smile."
Chaplain
Pemberton stared incredulously. "You must look into your hearts," he
told them in a reasonable voice. "You must look deeper than you have, and
you will find that you have been deluded. This is not the way for human beings
to act. Somebody has misled you dreadfully. Let me explain"
"Blasphemy,"
the leader of the females said, and put her spear expertly into the chaplain's
intestines. The shock of the broad, cold blade pulsed through him and felled
him. Jewel Flyte knelt beside him instantly, checking heart beat and breathing.
He was alive.
"Get
up," the male leader said. "Displaying and offering yourself to such
as we is useless. We are pure in heart."
A
male child ran to the door. "Wagners!" he screamed. "Twenty
Wagners coming up the stairs!"
His
father roared at him: "Stand straight and don't mumble!" and slashed
out with the butt of his spear, catching him hard in the ribs. The child
grinned, but only after the pure-hearted eighteen had run to the stairs.
Then
he blasted a whistle down the corridor while the sea people stared with what
attention they could divert from the bleeding chaplain. Six doors popped open
at the whistle and men and women emerged from them to launch spears into the
backs of the Brownells clustered to defend the stairs. "Thanks, Pop!"
the boy kept screaming while the pure-hearted Wagners swarmed over the remnants
of the pure-hearted Brownells; at last his screaming bothered one of the
Wagners and the boy was himself speared.
Jewel
Flyte said: "I've had enough of this. Captain, please pick the chaplain up
and come along."
"They'll
kill us."
"You'll
have the chaplain," said Mrs. Graves. "One moment." She darted
into a bedroom and came back hefting the spiked knobkerry.
"Well,
perhaps," the girl said. She began undoing the long row of buttons down
the front of her coveralls and shrugged out of the garment, then unfastened and
stepped out of her underwear. With the clothes over her arm she walked into the
corridor and to the stairs, the stupefied captain and inspector following.
To
the pure-hearted Merdekans she was not Prynne winning her case; she was Evil
incarnate. They screamed, broke and ran wildly, dropping their weapons. That a
human being could do such a thing was beyond their comprehension; Merdeka alone
knew what kind of monster this was that drew them strangely and horribly, in
violation of all sanity. They ran as she had hoped they would; the other side
of the coin was spearing even more swift and thorough than would have been
accorded to her fully clothed. But they ran, gibbering with fright and covering
their eyes, into apartments and corners of the corridor, their backs turned on
the awful thing.
The
sea people picked their way over the shambles at the stairway and went
unopposed down the stairs and to the dock. It was a troublesome piece of work
for Salter to pass the chaplain down to Mrs. Graves in the boat, but in ten
minutes they had cast off, rowed out a little, and set sail to catch the land
breeze generated by the differential twilight cooling of water and brick. After
playing her part in stepping the mast, Jewel Flyte dressed.
"It
won't always be that easy," she said when the last button was fastened.
Mrs. Graves had been thinking the same thing, but had not said it to avoid the
appearance of envying that superb young body. Salter was checking the chaplain
as well as he knew how. "I think he'll be all right," he said.
"Surgical repair and a long rest. He hasn't lost much blood. This is a
strange story we'll have to tell the Ship's Council."
Mrs.
Graves said, "They've no choice. We've lost our net and the land is there
waiting for us. A few maniacs oppose uswhat of it?" Again a huge fish
lazily surfaced; Salter regarded it thoughtfully. He said: "They'll
propose scavenging bronze ashore and fashioning another net and going on just
as if nothing had happened. And really, we could do that, you know."
Jewel
Flyte said: "No. Not forever. This time it was the net, at the end of
harvest. What if it were three masts in midwinter, in mid-Atlantic?"
"Or,"
said the captain, "the rudderany time. Anywhere. But can you imagine
telling the Council they've got to walk off the ship onto land, take up
quarters in those brick cabins, change everything? And fight maniacs,
and learn to farm?"
"There
must be a way," said Jewel Flyte. "Just as Merdeka, whatever it was,
was a way. There were too many people, and Merdeka was the answer to too many
people. There's always an answer. Man is a land mammal in spite of brief
excursions at sea. We were seed stock put aside, waiting for the land to be
cleared so we could return. Just as these offshore fish are waiting very
patiently for us to stop harvesting twice a year so they can return to deep
water and multiply. What's the way, Captain?"
He
thought hard. "We could," he said slowly, "begin by simply
sailing in close and fishing the offshore waters for big stuff. Then tie up and
build a sort of bridge from the ship to the shore. We'd continue to live aboard
the ship but we'd go out during daylight to try farming."
"It
sounds right."
"And
keep improving the bridge, making it more and more solid, until before they
notice it it's really a solid part of the ship and a solid part of the shore.
It might take . . . mmm . . .ten years?"
"Time
enough for the old shellbacks to make up their minds," Mrs. Graves
unexpectedly snorted.
"And
we'd relax the one-to-one reproduction rule, and some young adults will simply
be crowded over the bridge to live on the land" His face suddenly fell.
"And then the whole damned farce starts all over again, I suppose. I
pointed out that it takes thirty-two generations bearing one child apiece to
run a population of two billion into zero. Well, I should have mentioned that
it takes thirty-two generations bearing four children apiece to run a
population of two into two billion. Oh, what's the use, Jewel?"
She
chuckled. "There was an answer last time," she said. "There will
be an answer the next time."
"It
won't be the same answer as Merdeka," he vowed. "We grew up a little
at sea. This time we can do it with brains and not with nightmares and
superstition."
"I
don't know," she said. "Our ship will be the first, and then the
other ships will have their accidents one by one and come and tie up and build
their bridges, hating every minute of it for the first two generations and then
not hating it, just living it... and who will be the greatest man who ever
lived?"
The
captain looked horrified.
"Yes,
you! Salter, the Builder of the Bridge; Tommy, do you know an old word for 'bridge-builder'?
Pontifex."
"Oh,
my God!" Tommy Salter said in despair.
A
flicker of consciousness was passing through the wounded chaplain; he heard the
words and was pleased that somebody aboard was praying.
Friend to Man
kornbluth's writing concerned mostly the foibles of human
beings, and so he seldom gave us an alien being as a character. But there are
exceptions, and "Friend to Man" is one.
call him, if anything, Smith. He had answered to
that and to other names in the past. Occupation, fugitive. His flight, it is
true, had days before slowed to a walk and then to a crawl, but still he moved,
a speck of gray, across the vast and featureless red plain of a planet not his
own.
call him, if
anything, Smith. He had answered to that and to other names in the past.
Occupation, fugitive. His flight, it is true, had days before slowed to a walk
and then to a crawl, but still he moved, a speck of gray, across the vast and
featureless red plain of a planet not his own.
Nobody
was following Smith, he sometimes realized, and then he would rest for a while,
but not long. After a minute or an hour the posse of his mind would reform and
spur behind him; reason would cry no and still he would heave himself to his
feet and begin again to inch across the sand.
The
posse, imaginary and terrible, faded from front to rear. Perhaps in the very
last rank of pursuers was a dim shadow of a schoolmate. Smith had never been
one to fight fair. More solid were the images of his first commercial venture,
the hijacking job. A truck driver with his chest burned out namelessly pursued;
by his side a faceless cop. The ranks of the posse grew crowded then, for Smith
had been a sort of organizer after that, but never an organizer too proud to
demonstrate his skill. An immemorially old-fashioned garroting-wire trailed
inches from the nape of Winkle's neck, for Winkle had nearly sung to the
police.
"Squealer!"
shrieked Smith abruptly, startling himself. Shaking, he closed his eyes and
still Winkle plodded after him, the tails of wire bobbing with every step,
stiffly.
A
solid, businesslike patrolman eclipsed him, drilled through the throat; beside
him was the miraculously resurrected shade of Henderson.
The
twelve-man crew of a pirated lighter marched, as you would expect, in military
formation, but they bled ceaselessly from their ears and eyes as people do when
shot into space without helmets.
These
he could bear, but, somehow, Smith did not like to look at the leader of the
posse. It was odd, but he did not like to look at her.
She
had no business there! If they were ghosts why was she there? He hadn't killed
her, and, as far as he knew, Amy was alive and doing business in the Open
Quarter at Portsmouth. It wasn't fair, Smith wearily thought. He inched across
the featureless plain and Amy followed with her eyes.
Let
us! Let us! We have waited so long! Wait longer, little ones. Wait longer.
Smith,
arriving at the planet, had gravitated to the Open Quarter and found, of
course, that his reputation had preceded him. Little, sharp-faced men had sidled
up to pay their respects, and they happened to know of a job waiting for the
right touch. He brushed them off.
Smith
found the virginal, gray-eyed Amy punching tapes for the Transport Company,
tepidly engaged to a junior executive. The daughter of the Board Chairman, she
fancied herself daring to work in the rough office at the port.
First
was the child's play of banishing her young man. A minor operation, it was
managed with the smoothness and dispatch one learns after years of such things.
Young Square-Jaw had been quite willing to be seduced by a talented young woman
from the Open Quarter, and had been so comically astonished when the
photographs appeared on the office bulletin board!
He
had left by the next freighter, sweltering in a bunk by the tube butts, and the
forlorn gray eyes were wet for him.
But
how much longer must we wait?
Much
longer, little ones. It is weaktoo weak.
The
posse, Smith thought vaguely, was closing in. That meant, he supposed, that he
was dying. It would not be too bad to be dead, quickly and cleanly. He had a
horror of filth.
Really,
he thought, this was too bad! The posse was in front of him
It
was not the posse; it was a spindly, complicated creature that, after a minute
of bleary staring, he recognized as a native of the planet.
Smith
thought and thought as he stared and could think of nothing to do about it. The
problem was one of the few that he had never considered and debated within
himself. If it had been a cop he would have acted; if it had been any human
being he would have acted, but this
He
could think of nothing more logical to do than to lie down, pull the hood
across his face, and go to sleep.
He
woke in an underground chamber big enough for half a dozen men. It was
egg-shaped and cool, illuminated by sunlight red-filtered through the top half.
He touched the red-lit surface and found it to be composed of glass marbles
cemented together with a translucent plastic. The marbles he knew; the red
desert was full of them, wind-polished against each other for millennia, rarely
perfectly round, as all of these were. They had been most carefully collected.
The bottom half of the egg-shaped cave was a mosaic of flatter, opaque pebbles,
cemented with the same plastic.
Smith
found himself thinking clear, dry, level thoughts. The posse was gone and he
was sane and there had been a native and this must be the native's burrow. He
had been cached there as food, of course, so he would kill the native and
possibly drink its body fluids, for his canteen had been empty for a long time.
He drew a knife and wondered how to kill, his eyes on the dark circle which led
from the burrow to the surface.
Silently
the dark circle was filled with the tangled appendages of the creature, and in
the midst of the appendages was, insanely, a Standard Transport Corporation
five-liter can.
The
STC monogram had been worn down, but was unmistakable. The can had heft to it.
Water?
The creature seemed to hold it out. He reached into the tangle and the can was
smoothly released to him. The catch flipped up and he drank flat, distilled
water in great gulps.
He
felt that he bulged with the stuff when he stopped, and knew the first uneasy
intimations of inevitable cramp. The native was not moving, but something that
could have been an eye turned on him.
"Salt?"
asked Smith, his voice thin in the thin air. "I need salt with
water."
The
thing rubbed two appendages together and he saw a drop of amber exude and
spread on them. It was, he realized a moment later, rosining the bow, for the
appendages drew across each other and he heard a whining, vibrating
cricket-voice say: "S-s-z-z-aw-w?"
"Salt,"
said Smith.
It
did better the next time. The amber drop spread, and"S-z-aw-t?" was
sounded, with a little tap of the bow for the final phoneme.
It
vanished, and Smith leaned back with the cramps beginning. His stomach
convulsed and he lost the water he had drunk. It seeped without a trace into
the floor. He doubled up and groanedonce. The groan had not eased him in body
or mind; he would groan no more but let the cramps run their course.
Nothing
but what is useful had always been
his tacit motto. There had not been a false step in the episode of Amy. When
Square-Jaw had been disposed of, Smith had waited until her father, perhaps
worldly enough to know his game, certain at all events not to like the way he
played it, left on one of his regular inspection trips. He had been formally
introduced to her by a mutual friend who owed money to a dangerous man in the
Quarter, but who had not yet been found out by the tight little clique that
thought it ruled the commercial world of that planet.
With
precision he had initiated her into the Open Quarter by such easy stages that
at no one point could she ever suddenly realize that she was in it or the gray
eyes ever fill with shock. Smith had, unknown to her, disposed of some of her
friends, chosen other new ones, stage-managed entire days for her, gently
forcing opinions and attitudes, insistent, withdrawing at the slightest token
of counter-pressure, always urging again when the counter-pressure relaxed.
The
night she had taken Optol had been prepared for by a magazine articlenotorious
in the profession as a whitewasha chance conversation in which chance did not
figure at all, a televised lecture on addiction, and a trip to an Optol joint
at which everybody had been gay and healthy. On the second visit, Amy had
pleaded for the stuffjust out of curiosity, of course, and he had reluctantly
called the unfrocked medic, who injected the gray eyes with the oil.
It
had been worth his minute pains; he had got two hundred feet of film while she
staggered and reeled loathsomely. And she had, after the Optol evaporated,
described with amazed delight how different everything had looked, and
how exquisitely she had danced . . .
"S-z-aw-t!"
announced the native from the mouth of the burrow. It bowled at him marbles of
rock salt from the surface, where rain never fell to dissolve them.
He
licked one, then cautiously sipped water. He looked at the native, thought, and
put his knife away. It came into the burrow and reclined at the opposite end
from Smith.
It
knows what a knife is, and water and salt, and something about language, he
thought between sips. What's the racket?
But
when? But when?
Wait
longer, little ones. Wait longer.
"You
understand me?" Smith asked abruptly. The amber drop exuded, and the
native played whiningly: "A-ah-nn-nah-t-ann."
"Well,"
said Smith, "thanks."
He
never really knew where the water came from, but guessed that it had been
distilled in some fashion within the body of the native. He had, certainly,
seen the thing shovel indiscriminate loads of crystals into its mouthcalcium
carbonate, aluminum hydroxide, anything and later emit amorphous powders from
one vent and water from another. His food, brought on half an STC can, was
utterly unrecognizablea jelly, with bits of crystal embedded in it that he had
to spit out.
What
it did for a living was never clear. It would lie for hours in torpor,
disappear on mysterious errands, bring him food and water, sweep out the burrow
with a specialized limb, converse when requested.
It
was days before Smith really saw the creature. In the middle of a talk
with it he recognized it as a fellow organism rather than as a machine, or
gadget, or nightmare, or alien monster. It was, for Smith, a vast step to take.
Not
easily he compared his own body with the native's, and admitted that, of
course, his was inferior. The cunning jointing of the limbs, the marvelously
practical detail of the eye, the economy of the external muscle system, were
admirable.
Now
and then at night the posse would return and crowd about him as he lay
dreaming, and he knew that he screamed then, reverberatingly in the burrow. He
awoke to find the most humanoid of the native's limbs resting on his brow,
soothingly, and he was grateful for the new favor; he had begun to take his
food and water for granted.
The
conversations with the creature were whimsy as much as anything else. It was,
he thought, the rarest of Samaritans, who had no interest in the private life
of its wounded wayfarer.
He
told it of life in the cities of the planet, and it sawed out politely that the
cities were very big indeed. He told it of the pleasures of human beings, and
it politely agreed that their pleasures were most pleasant.
Under
its cool benevolence he stammered and faltered in his ruthlessness. On the
nights when he woke screaming and was comforted by it he would demand to know
why it cared to comfort him.
It
would saw out: "S-z-lee-p mm-ah-ee-nn-d s-z-rahng." And from
that he could conjecture that sound sleep makes the mind strong, or that the
mind must be strong for the body to be strong, or whatever else he wished. It
was kindness, he knew, and he felt shifty and rotted when he thought of,
say, Amy.
It
will be soon, will it not? Soon?
Quite
soon, little ones. Quite, quite soon.
Amy
had not fallen; she had been led, slowly, carefully, by the hand. She had gone
delightfully down, night after night. He had been amused to note that there was
a night not long after the night of Optol when he had urged her to abstain from
further indulgence in a certain diversion that had no name that anyone used, an
Avernian pleasure the penalties against which were so severe that one would not
compromise himself so far as admitting that he knew it existed and was practiced.
Smith had urged her to abstain, and had most sincerely this time meant it. She
was heading for the inevitable collapse, and her father was due back from his
inspection tour. The whole process had taken some fifty days.
Her
father, another gray-eyed booby ... A projection room. "A hoax."
"Fifty thousand in small, unmarked . . ." The flickering reel change.
"It can't be-" "You should know that scar."
"I'll kill you first!" "That won't burn the prints." The
lights. "The last one-I don't believe . . ." "Fifty
thousand." "I'll kill you-"
But
he hadn't. He'd killed himself, for no good reason that Smith could understand.
Disgustedly, no longer a blackmailer, much out of pocket by this deal that had
fizzled, he turned hawker and peddled prints of the film to the sort of person
who would buy such things. He almost got his expenses back. After the week of
concentration on his sudden mercantile enterprise, he had thought to inquire
about Amy.
She
had had her smashup, lost her job tape-punching now that her father was dead
and her really scandalous behavior could no longer be ignored. She had got an
unconventional job in the Open Quarter. She had left it. She appeared, hanging
around the shops at Standard Transport, where the watchmen had orders to drive
her away. She always came back, and one day, evidently, got what she wanted.
For
on the Portsmouth-Jamestown run, which Smith was making to see a man who had a
bar with a small theater in what was ostensibly a storeroom, his ship had
parted at the seams.
"Dumped
me where you found memid-desert."
"T-urr-ss-t-ee,"
sawed the native.
There
seemed to be some reproach in the word, and Smith chided himself for imagining
that a creature which spoke by stridulation could charge its language with the
same emotional overtones as those who used lungs and vocal cords.
But
there the note was again: "Ei-m-m-eet-urr-ss-tt-oo."
Amy
thirst too. A stridulating moralist. But still . . . one had to admit ... in
his frosty way, Smith was reasoning, but a wash of emotion blurred the diagrams,
the cold diagrams by which he had always lived.
It's
getting me, he thoughtit's getting me at last. He'd seen it happen before, and
always admitted that it might happen to himbut it was a shock.
Hesitantly,
which was strange for him, he asked if he could somehow find his way across the
desert to Portsmouth. The creature ticked approvingly, brought in sand, and
with one delicate appendage began to trace what might be a map.
He
was going to do it. He was going to be clean again, he who had always had a
horror of filth and never until now had seen that his life was viler than
maggots, more loathsome than carrion. A warm glow of self-approval filled him
while he bent over the map. Yes, he was going to perform the incredible hike
and somehow make restitution to her. Who would have thought an inhuman creature
like his benefactor could have done this to him? With all the enthusiasm of any
convert, he felt young again, with life before him, a life where he could
choose between fair and foul. He chuckled with the newness of it.
But
to work! Good intentions were not enough. There was the map to memorize, his
bearings to establish, some portable food supply to be gathered
He
followed the map with his finger. The tracing appendage of the creature guided
him, another quietly lay around him, its tip at the small of his back. He
accepted it, though it itched somewhat. Not for an itch would he risk offending
the bearer of his new life.
He
was going to get Amy to a cure, give her money, bear her abuseshe could not
understand all at once that he was another man turn his undoubted talent to an
honest
Farewell!
Farewell! Farewell, little ones. Farewell.
The
map blurred a bit before Smith's eyes. Then the map toppled and slid and became
the red-lit ceiling of the burrow. Then Smith tried to move and could not. The
itching in his back was a torment.
The
screy mother did not look at the prostrate host as she turned and crawled up
from the incubator to the surface. Something like fond humor wrinkled the
surface of her thoughts as she remembered the little ones and their impatience.
Heigh-ho! She had given them the best she could, letting many a smaller host go
by until this fine, big host came her way. It had taken feeding and humoring,
but it would last many and many a month while the little wrigglers grew and ate
and grew within it. Heigh-ho! Life went on, she thought; one did the best one
could. . .
The Altar at Midnight
the thing about Kornbluth's characters, James Blish
once said to me, is that so many of them are working stiffs, and they sound like
working stiffs; and how could a middle-class college-going intellectually
oriented youngster like Cyril know so much about how an ex-railway switchman
felt about the world? I knew the answer. He found out about it from ex-railway
switchmen, and all the rest of the world's invisible men who hang around a
neighborhood bar until they succeed in taking aboard enough anesthesia* to get
through another night. Cyril was endlessly fascinated by barfly companions. He
drank with them, listened to them, compared notes on the world with them and
stored them away, until they emerged again in the pages of a story like this
one.
he had quite a
rum-blossom on him for a kid, I thought at first. But when he moved closer to
the light by the cash register to ask the bartender for a match or something, I
saw it wasn't that. Not just the nose. Broken veins on his cheeks, too, and the
funny eyes. He must have seen me look, because he slid back away from the
light.
The
bartender shook my bottle of ale in front of me like a Swiss bell-ringer so it
foamed inside the green glass.
"You
ready for another, sir?" he asked.
I
shook my head. Down the bar, he tried it on the kidhe was drinking Scotch and
water or something like thatand found out he could push him around. He sold
him three Scotch and waters in ten minutes.
When
he tried for number four, the kid had his courage up and said, "I'll tell you
when I'm ready for another, Jack." But there wasn't any trouble.
It
was almost nine and the place began to fill up. The manager, a real hood type,
stationed himself by the door to screen out the high-school kids and give the
big hello to conventioneers. The girls came hurrying in too, with their little
makeup cases and their fancy hair piled up and their frozen faces with the
perfect mouths drawn on them. One of them stopped to say something to the
manager, some excuse about something, and he said: "That's aw ri'; getcha
assina dressing room."
A
three-piece band behind the drapes at the back of the stage began to make
warmup noises and there were two bartenders keeping busy. Mostly it was beera
midweek crowd. I finished my ale and had to wait a couple of minutes before I
could get another bottle. The bar filled up from the end near the stage because
all the customers wanted a good, close look at the strippers for their
fifty-cent bottles of beer. But I noticed that nobody sat down next to the kid,
or, if anybody did, he didn't stay longyou go out for some fun and the
bartender pushes you around and nobody wants to sit next to you. I picked up my
bottle and glass and went down on the stool to his left.
He
turned to me right away and said: "What kind of a place is this,
anyway?" The broken veins were all over his face, little ones, but so
many, so close, that they made his face look something like marbled rubber. The
funny look in his eyes was itthe trick contact lenses. But I tried not to
stare and not to look away.
"It's
okay," I said. "It's a good show if you don't mind a lot of noise
from"
He
stuck a cigarette into his mouth and poked the pack at me. "I'm a
spacer," he said, interrupting.
I
took one of his cigarettes and said: "Oh."
He
snapped a lighter for the cigarettes and said: "Venus."
I
was noticing that his pack of cigarettes on the bar had some kind of yellow
sticker instead of the blue tax stamp.
"Ain't
that a crock?" he asked. "You can't smoke and they give you lighters
for a souvenir. But it's a good lighter. On Mars last week, they gave us all
some cheap pen-and-pencil sets."
"You
get something every trip, hah?" I took a good, long drink of ale and he
finished his Scotch and water.
"Shoot.
You call a trip a 'shoot.'"
One
of the girls was working her way down the bar. She was going to slide onto the
empty stool at his right and give him the business, but she looked at him first
and decided not to. She curled around me and asked if I'd buy her a li'l ole
drink. I said no and she moved on to the next. I could kind of feel the young
fellow quivering. When I looked at him, he stood up. I followed him out of the
dump. The manager grinned without thinking and said, "G'night, boys,"
to us.
The
kid stopped in the street and said to me: "You don't have to follow me
around, Pappy." He sounded like one wrong word and I would get socked in
the teeth.
"Take
it easy. I know a place where they won't spit in your eye."
He
pulled himself together and made a joke of it. "This I have to see,"
he said. "Near here?"
"A
few blocks."
We
started walking. It was a nice night.
"I
don't know this city at all," he said. "I'm from Covington, Kentucky.
You do your drinking at home there. We don't have places like this." He
meant the whole Skid Row area.
"It's
not so bad," I said. "I spend a lot of time here."
"Is
that a fact? I mean, down home a man your age would likely have a wife and
children."
"I
do. The hell with them."
He
laughed like a real youngster and I figured he couldn't even be twenty-five. He
didn't have any trouble with the broken curbstones in spite of his Scotch and
waters. I asked him about it.
"Sense
of balance," he said. "You have to be tops for balance to be a
spaceryou spend so much time outside in a suit. People don't know how much.
Punctures. And you aren't worth a damn if you lose your point."
"What's
that mean?"
"Oh.
Well, it's hard to describe. When you're outside and you lose your point, it
means you're all mixed up, you don't know which way the canthat's the
shipwhich way the can is. It's having all that room around you. But if you
have a good balance, you feel a little tugging to the ship, or maybe you just know
which way the ship is without feeling it. Then you have your point and you
can get the work done."
"There
must be a lot that's hard to describe."
He
thought that might be a crack and he dammed up on me.
"You
call this Gandytown," I said after a while. "It's where the stove-up
old railroad men hang out. This is the place."
It
was the second week of the month, before everybody's pension check was all
gone. Oswiak's was jumping. The Grandsons of the Pioneers were on the juke
singing the Man from Mars Yodel and old Paddy Shea was jigging in the
middle of the floor. He had a full seidel of beer in his right hand and his
empty left sleeve was flapping.
The
kid balked at the screen door. "Too damn bright," he said.
I
shrugged and went on in and he followed. We sat down at a table. At Oswiak's
you can drink at the bar if you want to, but none of the regulars do.
Paddy
jigged over and said: "Welcome home, Doc." He's a Liverpool Irishman;
they talk like Scots, some say, but they sound like Brooklyn to me.
"Hello,
Paddy. I brought somebody uglier than you. Now what do you say?"
Paddy
jigged around the kid in a half-circle with his sleeve flapping and then
flopped into a chair when the record stopped. He took a big drink from the
seidel and said: "Can he do this?" Paddy stretched his face into an
awful grin that showed his teeth. He has three of them. The kid laughed and
asked me: "What the hell did you drag me into here for?"
"Paddy
says he'll buy drinks for the house the day anybody uglier than he is comes
in."
Oswiak's
wife waddled over for the order and the kid asked us what we'd have. I figured
I could start drinking, so it was three double Scotches.
After
the second round, Paddy started blowing about how they took his arm off without
any anesthetics except a bottle of gin because the red-ball freight he was
tangled up in couldn't wait.
That
brought some of the other old gimps over to the table with their stories.
Blackie
Bauer had been sitting in a boxcar with his legs sticking through the door when
the train started with a jerk. Wham, the door closed. Everybody laughed at
Blackie for being that dumb in the first place, and he got mad.
Sam
Fireman has palsy. This week he was claiming he used to be a watchmaker before
he began to shake. The week before, he'd said he was a brain surgeon. A woman I
didn't know, a real old Boxcar Bertha, dragged herself over and began some kind
of story about how her sister married a Greek, but she passed out before we
found out what happened.
Somebody
wanted to know what was wrong with the kid's face Bauer, I think it was, after
he came back to the table.
"Compression
and decompression," the kid said. "You're all the time climbing into
your suit and out of your suit. Inboard air's thin to start with. You get a few
redlinesthat's these ruptured blood vessels and you say the hell with the
money; all you'll make is just one more trip. But, God, it's a lot of money for
anybody my age! You keep saying that until you can't be anything but a spacer.
The eyes are hard-radiation scars."
"You
like dot all ofer?" asked Oswiak's wife politely.
"All
over, ma'am," the kid told her in a miserable voice. "But I'm going
to quit before I get a Bowman Head."
I
took a savage gulp at the raw Scotch.
"I
don't care," said Maggie Rorty. "I think he's cute."
"Compared
with" Paddy began, but I kicked him under the table.
We
sang for a while, and then we told gags and recited limericks for a while, and
I noticed that the kid and Maggie had wandered into the back roomthe one with
the latch on the door.
Oswiak's
wife asked me, very puzzled: "Doc, w'y dey do dot flyink by
planyets?"
"It's
the damn govermint," Sam Fireman said.
"Why
not?" I said. "They got the Bowman Drive, why the hell shouldn't they
use it? Serves 'em right." I had a double Scotch and added: "Twenty
years of it and they found out a few things they didn't know. Redlines are only
one of them. Twenty years more, maybe they'll find out a few more things they
didn't know. Maybe by the time there's a bathtub in every American home and an
alcoholism clinic in every American town, they'll find out a whole lot of
things they didn't know. And every American boy will be a pop-eyed,
blood-raddled wreck, like our friend here, from riding the Bowman Drive."
"It's
the damn govermint," Sam Fireman repeated.
"And
what the hell did you mean by that remark about alcoholism?" Paddy said,
real sore. "Personally, I can take it or leave it alone."
So
we got to talking about that and everybody there turned out to be people who
could take it or leave it alone.
It
was maybe midnight when the kid showed at the table again, looking kind of
dazed. I was drunker than I ought to be by midnight, so I said I was going for
a walk. He tagged along and we wound up on a bench at Screwball Square. The
soap-boxers were still going strong. As I said, it was a nice night. After a
while, a pot-bellied old auntie who didn't give a damn about the face sat down
and tried to talk the kid into going to see some etchings. The kid didn't get
it and I led him over to hear the soap-boxers before there was trouble.
One
of the orators was a mush-mouthed evangelist. "And oh, my friends,"
he said, "when I looked through the porthole of the spaceship and beheld
the wonder of the Firmament"
"You're
a stinkin' Yankee liar!" the kid yelled at him. "You say one damn
more word about can-shootin' and I'll ram your spaceship down your lyin'
throat! Wheah's your redlines if you're such a hot spacer?"
The
crowd didn't know what he was talking about, but "wheah's your
redlines" sounded good to them, so they heckled mushmouth off his box with
it.
I
got the kid to a bench. The liquor was working in him all of a sudden. He
simmered down after a while and asked: "Doc, should I've given Miz Rorty
some money? I asked her afterward and she said she'd admire to have something
to remember me by, so I gave her my lighter. She seem' to be real pleased with
it. But I was wondering if maybe I embarrassed her by asking her right out.
Like I tol' you, back in Covington, Kentucky, we don't have places like that.
Or maybe we did and I just didn't know about them. But what do you think I
should've done about Miz Rorty?"
"Just
what you did," I told him. "If they want money, they ask you for it
first. Where you staying?"
"Y.M.C.A.,"
he said, almost asleep. "Back in Covington, Kentucky, I was a member of
the Y and I kept up my membership. They have to let me in because I'm a member.
Spacers have all kinds of trouble, Doc. Woman trouble. Hotel trouble. Fam'ly
trouble. Religious trouble. I was raised a Southern Baptist, but wheah's
Heaven, anyway? I ask' Doctor Chitwood las' time home before the redlines got
so thickDoc, you aren't a minister of the Gospel, are you? I hope I di'n' say
anything to offend you."
"No
offense, son," I said. "No offense."
I
walked him to the avenue and waited for a fleet cab. It was almost five
minutes. The independent cabs roll drunks and dent the fenders of fleet cabs if
they show up in Skid Row and then the fleet drivers have to make reports on
their own time to the company. It keeps them away. But I got one and dumped the
kid in.
"The
Y Hotel," I told the driver. "Here's five. Help him in when you get
there."
When
I walked through Screwball Square again, some college kids were yelling
"wheah's your redlines" at old Charlie, the last of the Wobblies.
Old
Charlie kept roaring: "The hell with your breadlines! I'm talking about
atomic bombs. Rightupthere!" And he pointed at the Moon.
It
was a nice night, but the liquor was dying in me.
There
was a joint around the corner, so I went in and had a drink to carry me to the
club; I had a bottle there. I got into the first cab that came.
"Athletic
Club," I said.
"Inna
dawghouse, harh?" the driver said, and he gave me a big personality smile.
I
didn't say anything and he started the car.
He
was right, of course. I was in everybody's doghouse. Some day I'd scare hell
out of Tom and Lise by going home and showing them what their daddy looked
like.
Down
at the Institute, I was in the doghouse.
"Oh,
dear," everybody at the Institute said to everybody, "I'm sure I
don't know what ails the man. A lovely wife and two lovely grown children and
she had to tell him 'either you go or I go.' And drinking! And this is
rather subtle, but it's a well-known fact that neurotics seek out low company
to compensate for their guilt feelings. The places he frequents. Doctor
Francis Bowman, the man who made space flight a reality. The man who put the
Bomb Base on the Moon! Really, I'm sure I don't know what ails him."
The
hell with them all.
Dominoes
twenty years ago I was writing a full-scale history of the
Great Depression (one of these days I may finish it). When I completed the
chapter on the causes of the 1929 stock market crash I showed it to Cyril. He
shook his head. "Too complicated," he said. "I bet there was a
simpler explanation." And he went home and wrote "Dominoes."
"MONEY!"
his wife screamed at him. "You're killing yourself, Will. Pull out of the
market and let's go some place where we can live like human"
He
slammed the apartment door on her reproaches and winced, standing in the carpeted
corridor, as an ulcer twinge went through him. The elevator door rolled open
and the elevator man said, beaming: "Good morning, Mr. Born. It's a lovely
day today."
"I'm
glad, Sam," W. J. Born said sourly. "I just had a lovely, lovely
breakfast." Sam didn't know how to take it, and compromised by giving him
a meager smile.
"How's
the market look, Mr. Born?" he hinted as the car stopped on the first
floor. "My cousin told me to switch from Lunar Entertainment, he's
studying to be a pilot, but the Journal has it listed for growth."
W.
J. Born grunted: "If I knew I wouldn't tell you. You've got no business in
the market. Not if you think you can play it like a craps table."
He
fumed all through his taxi ride to the office. Sam, a million Sams, had no business
in the market. But they were in, and they had built up the Great Boom of 1975
on which W. J. Born Associates was coasting merrily along. For how long? His
ulcer twinged again at the thought.
He
arrived at 9:15. Already the office was a maelstrom. The clattering tickers,
blinking boards, and racing messengers spelled out the latest, hottest word
from markets in London, Paris, Milan, Vienna. Soon New York would chime in,
then Chicago, then San Francisco.
Maybe
this would be the day. Maybe New York would open on a significant decline in
Moon Mining and Smelting. Maybe Chicago would nervously respond with a slump in
commodities and San Francisco's Utah Uranium would plummet in sympathy. Maybe
panic in the Tokyo Exchange on the heels of the alarming news from the
Statespanic relayed across Asia with the rising sun to Vienna, Milan, Paris,
London, and crashing like a shockwave into the opening New York market again.
Dominoes,
W. J. Born thought. A row of dominoes. Flick one and they all topple in a heap.
Maybe this would be the day.
Miss
Illig had a dozen calls from his personal crash-priority clients penciled in on
his desk pad already. He ignored them and said into her good-morning smile:
"Get me Mr. Loring on the phone."
Loring's
phone rang and rang while W. J. Born boiled inwardly. But the lab was a barn of
a place, and when he was hard at work he was deaf and blind to distractions.
You had to hand him that. He was screwy, he was insolent, he had an inferiority
complex that stuck out a yard, but he was a worker.
Loring's
insolent voice said in his ear: "Who's this?"
"Born,"
he snapped. "How's it going?"
There
was a long pause, and Loring said casually: "I worked all night. I think I
got it licked."
"What
do you mean?"
Very
irritated: "I said I think I got it licked. I sent a clock and a cat and a
cage of white mice out for two hours. They came back okay."
"You
mean" W. J. Born began hoarsely, and moistened his lips. "How many
years?" he asked evenly.
"The
mice didn't say, but I think they spent two hours in 1977."
"I'm
coming right over," W. J. Born snapped, and hung up. His office staff
stared as he strode out.
If
the man was lying! No; he didn't lie. He'd been sopping up money for six
months, ever since he bulled his way into Bern's office with his time machine
project, but he hadn't lied once. With brutal frankness he had admitted his own
failures and his doubts that the thing ever would be made to work. But now, W.
J. Born rejoiced, it had turned into the smartest gamble of his career. Six
months and a quarter of a million dollarsa two-year forecast on the market was
worth a billion! Four thousand to one, he gloated; four thousand to one! Two
hours to learn when the Great Bull Market of 1975 would collapse and then back
to his office armed with the information, ready to buy up to the very crest of
the boom and then get out at the peak, wealthy forever, forever beyond the
reach of fortune, good or bad!
He
stumped upstairs to Loring's loft in the West Seventies.
Loring
was badly overplaying the role of casual roughneck. Gangling, redheaded, and
unshaved, he grinned at Born and said: "Wat-cha think of soy futures, W.
J.? Hold or switch?"
W.
J. Born began automatically: "If I knew I wouldn'toh, don't be silly.
Show me the confounded thing."
Loring
showed him. The whining generators were unchanged; the tall Van de Graaf
accumulator still looked like something out of a third-rate horror movie. The
thirty square feet of haywired vacuum tubes and resistances were still an
incomprehensible tangle. But since his last visit a phone booth without a phone
had been added. A sheet-copper disk set into its ceiling was connected to the
machinery by a ponderous cable. Its floor was a slab of polished glass.
"That's
it," Loring said. "I got it at a junkyard and fixed it up pretty. You
want to watch a test on the mice?"
"No,"
W. J. Born said. "I want to try it myself. What do you think I've been
paying you for?" He paused. "Do you guarantee its safety?"
"Look,
W. J.," Loring said, "I guarantee nothing. I think this will
send you two years into the future. I think if you're back in it at the
end of two hours you'll snap back to the present. I'll tell you this, though.
If it does send you into the future, you had better be back in it at the
end of two hours. Otherwise you may snap back into the same space as a
strolling pedestrian or a moving carand an H-bomb will be out of your
league."
W.
J. Bern's ulcer twinged. With difficulty he asked: "Is there anything else
I ought to know?"
"Nope,"
Loring said after considering for a moment. "You're just a paying
passenger."
"Then
let's go." W. J. Born checked to make sure that he had his memorandum book
and smooth-working pen in his pocket and stepped into the telephone booth.
Loring
closed the door, grinned, waved, and vanishedliterally vanished, while Born
was looking at him.
Born
yanked the door open and said: "Loring! What the devil" And then he
saw that it was late afternoon instead of early morning. That Loring was
nowhere in the loft. That the generators were silent and the tubes dark and
cold. That there was a mantle of dust and a faint musty smell.
He
rushed from the big room and down the stairs. It was the same street in the
West Seventies. Two hours, he thought, and looked at his watch. It said 9:55,
but the sun unmistakably said it was late afternoon. Something had happened. He
resisted an impulse to grab a passing high-school boy and ask him what year it
was. There was a newsstand down the street, and Born went to it faster than he
had moved in years. He threw down a quarter and snatched a Post, dated
September 11th, 1977. He had done it.
Eagerly
he riffled to the Post's meager financial page. Moon Mining and Smelting
had opened at 27. Uranium at 19. United Com at 24. Catastrophic lows! The crash
had come!
He
looked at his watch again, in panic. 9:59. It had said 9:55. He'd have to be
back in the phone booth by 11:55 orhe shuddered. An H-bomb would be out of his
league.
Now
to pinpoint the crash. "Cab!" he yelled, waving his paper. It eased
to the curb. "Public library," W. J. Born grunted, and leaned back to
read the Post with glee.
The
headline said: 25000 RIOT HERE FOR UPPED JOBLESS DOLE. Naturally; naturally. He
gasped as he saw who had won the 1976 presidential election. Lord, what odds
he'd be able to get back in 1975 if he wanted to bet on the nomination! NO
CRIME WAVE, SAYS COMISSIONER. Things hadn't changed very much after all. BLONDE
MODEL HACKED IN TUB; MYSTERY BOYFRIEND SOUGHT. He read that one all the way
through, caught by a two-column photo of the blonde model for a hosiery
account. And then he noticed that the cab wasn't moving. It was caught in a
rock-solid traffic jam. The time was 10:05.
"Driver,"
he said.
The
man turned around, soothing and scared. A fare was a fare; there was a
depression on. "It's all right, mister. We'll be out of here in a minute.
They turn off the Drive and that blocks the avenue for a couple of minutes,
that's all. We'll be rolling in a minute."
They
were rolling in a minute, but for a few seconds only. The cab inched
agonizingly along while W. J. Born twisted the newspaper in his hands. At 10:13
he threw a bill at the driver and jumped from the cab.
Panting,
he reached the library at 10:46 by his watch. By the time that the rest of the
world was keeping on that day it was quitting-time in the midtown offices. He
had bucked a stream of girls in surprisingly short skirts and surprisingly big
hats all the way.
He
got lost in the marble immensities of the library and his own panic. When he
found the newspaper room his watch said 11:03. W. J. Born panted to the girl at
the desk: "File of the Stock Exchange Journal for 1975,1976
and 1977."
"We
have the microfilms for 1975 and 1976, sir, and loose copies for this
year."
"Tell
me," he said, "what year for the big crash? That's what I want to
look up."
"That's
1975, sir. Shall I get you that?"
"Wait,"
he said. "Do you happen to remember the month?"
"I
think it was March or August or something like that, sir."
"Get
me the whole file, please," he said. Nineteen seventy-five. His yearhis
real year. Would he have a month? A week? Or?
"Sign
this card, mister," the girl was saying patiently. "There's a reading
machine, you just go sit there and I'll bring you the spool."
He
scribbled his name and went to the machine, the only one vacant in a row of a
dozen. The time on his watch was 11:05. He had fifty minutes.
The
girl dawdled over cards at her desk and chatted with a good-looking young page
with a stack of books while sweat began to pop from Bern's brow. At last she
disappeared into the stacks behind her desk.
Born
waited. And waited. And waited. Eleven-ten. Eleven-fifteen. Eleven-twenty.
An
H-bomb would be out of his league.
His
ulcer stabbed him as the girl appeared again, daintily carrying a spool of
35-millimeter film between thumb and forefinger, smiling brightly at Born.
"Here we are," she said, and inserted the spool in the machine and
snapped a switch. Nothing happened.
"Oh,
darn," she said. "The light's out. I told the
electrician."
Born
wanted to scream and then to explain, which would have been just as foolish.
"There's
a free reader," she pointed down the line. W. J. Bern's knees tottered as
they walked to it. He looked at his watch11:27. Twenty-eight minutes to go.
The ground-glass screen lit up with a shadow of the familiar format; January
1st, 1975. "You just turn the crank," she said, and showed him. The
shadows spun past on the screen at dizzying speed, and she went back to her
desk.
Born
cranked the film up to April 1975, the month he had left 91 minutes ago, and to
the sixteenth day of April, the very day he had left. The shadow on the ground
glass was the same paper he had seen that morning: synthetics surge to new
vienna peak.
Trembling
he cranked into a vision of the future; the Stock Exchange Journal for
April 17th, 1975.
Three-inch
type screamed: securities crash in global crisis: banks close; clients storm
brokerages!
Suddenly
he was calm, knowing the future and safe from its blows. He rose from the
reader and strode firmly into the marble halls. Everything was all right now.
Twenty-six minutes was time enough to get back to the machine. He'd have a jump
of several hours on the market; his own money would be safe as houses; he could
get his personal clients off the hook.
He
got a cab with miraculous ease and rolled straight to the loft building in the
West Seventies without hindrance. At 11:50 by his watch he was closing the door
of the phone booth in the dusty, musty-smelling lab.
At
11:54 he noticed an abrupt change in the sunlight that filtered through the
dirt-streaked windows and stepped calmly out. It was April 16th, 1975, again.
Loring was sound asleep beside a gas hotplate on which coffee simmered. W. J.
Born turned off the gas and went downstairs softly. Loring was a screwy,
insolent, insecure young man, but by his genius he had enabled W. J. Born to
harvest his fortune at the golden moment of perfection.
Back
in his office he called his floor broker and said firmly: "Cronin, get
this straight. I want you to sell every share of stock and every bond in my
personal account immediately, at the market, and to require certified checks in
payment."
Cronin
asked forthrightly: "Chief, have you gone crazy?"
"I
have not. Don't waste a moment, and report regularly to me. Get your boys to
work. Drop everything else."
Born
had a light, bland lunch sent in and refused to see anybody or take any calls
except from the floor broker. Cronin kept reporting that the dumping was going
right along, that Mr. Born must be crazy; that the unheard-of demand for
certified checks was causing alarm, and finally, at the close, that Mr. Born's
wishes were being carried out. Born told him to get the checks to him
immediately.
They
arrived in an hour, drawn on a dozen New York banks. W. J. Born called in a
dozen senior messengers, and dealt out the checks, one bank to a messenger. He
told them to withdraw the cash, rent safe-deposit boxes of the necessary sizes
in those banks where he did not already have boxes, and deposit the cash.
He
then phoned the banks to confirm the weird arrangement. He was on first-name
terms with at least one vice president in each bank, which helped enormously.
W.
J. Born leaned back, a happy man. Let the smash come. He turned on his
flashboard for the first time that day. The New York closing was sharply off.
Chicago was worse. San Francisco was shaky as he watched, the flashing figures
on the composite price index at San Francisco began to drop. In five minutes it
was a screaming nosedive into the pit. The closing bell stopped it short of
catastrophe.
W.
J. Born went out to dinner after phoning his wife that he would not be home. He
returned to the office and watched a board in one of the outer rooms that
carried Tokyo Exchange through the night hours, and congratulated himself as
the figures told a tale of panic and rain. The dominoes were toppling,
toppling, toppling.
He
went to his club for the night and woke early, eating alone in an
almost-deserted breakfast room. The ticker in the lobby sputtered a good
morning as he drew on his gloves against the chilly April dawn. He stopped to
watch. The ticker began spewing a tale of disaster on the great bourses of
Europe, and Mr. Born walked to his office. Brokers a-plenty were arriving
early, muttering in little crowds in the lobby and elevators.
"What
do you make of it, Born?" one of them asked.
"What
goes up must come down," he said. "I'm safely out."
"So
I hear," the man told him, with a look that Born decided was envious.
Vienna,
Milan, Paris, and London were telling their sorry story on the boards in the
customers' rooms. There were a few clients silting up the place already, and
the night staff had been busy taking orders by phone for the opening. They all
were to sell at the market.
W.
J. Born grinned at one of the night men and cracked a rare joke: "Want to
buy a brokerage house, Willard?"
Willard
glanced at the board and said: "No thanks, Mr. Born. But it was nice of
you to keep me in mind."
Most
of the staff drifted in early; the sense of crisis was heavy in the air. Born
instructed his staff to do what they could for his personal clients first, and
holed up in his office.
The
opening bell was the signal for hell to break loose. The tickers never had the
ghost of a chance of keeping up with the crash, unquestionably the biggest and
steepest in the history of finance. Born got some pleasure out of the fact that
his boys' promptness had cut the losses of his personal clients a little. A
very important banker called in midmorning to ask Born into a billion-dollar
pool that would shore up the market by a show of confidence. Born said no,
knowing that no show of confidence would keep Moon Mining and Smelting from
opening at 27 on September llth, 1977. The banker hung up abruptly.
Miss
Illig asked: "Do you want to see Mr. Loring? He's here."
"Send
him in."
Loring
was deathly pale, with a copy of the Journal rolled up in his fist.
"I need some money," he said.
W.
J. Born shook his head. "You see what's going on," he said.
"Money's tight. I've enjoyed our association, Loring, but I think it's
time to end it. You've had a quarter of a million dollars clear; I make no
claims on your process"
"It's
gone," Loring said hoarsely. "I haven't paid for the damn
equipmentnot ten cents on the dollar yet. I've been playing the market. I lost
a hundred and fifty thousand on soy futures this morning. They'll dismantle my
stuff and haul it away. I've got to have some money."
"No!"
W. J. Born barked. "Absolutely
not!"
"They'll
come with a truck for the generators this afternoon. I stalled them. My stocks
kept going up. And nowall I wanted was enough in reserve to keep working. I've
got to have money."
"No,"
said Born. "After all, it's not my fault."
Loring's
ugly face was close to his. "Isn't it?" he snarled. And he spread out
the paper on the desk.
Born
read the headlineagainof the Stock Exchange Journal for April 17th,
1975: securities crash in global crisis: banks close; clients storm brokerages!
But this time he was not too rushed to read on: "A world-wide slump in
securities has wiped out billions of paper dollars since it started shortly
before closing yesterday at the New York Stock Exchange. No end to the
catastrophic flood of sell orders is yet in sight. Veteran New York observers
agreed that dumping of securities on the New York market late yesterday by W.
J. Born of W. J. Born Associates pulled the plug out of the big boom which must
now be consigned to memory. Banks have been hard-hit by the"
"Isn't
it?" Loring snarled. "Isn't it?" His eyes were crazy as he
reached for Bern's thin neck.
Dominoes,
W. J. Born thought vaguely through the pain, and managed to hit a button on his
desk. Miss Illig came in and screamed and went out again and came back with a
couple of husky customers' men, but it was too late.
Two Dooms
just before his death, Cyril finished two major pieces
of work. One was the final revision of our last novel in collaboration, Wolfbane.
The other was this. Cyril's name for the story was "The Doomsman,"
and it was accepted under that title by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction. But he died before it was published. Under the circumstances, the
editor thought that title ghoulish, and so he changed it. There have been any
number of sf stories since about .what would have happened if the Germans and
the Japanese had won World War II, but this was one of the firstand one of the
best.
It
was may, not yet summer by five weeks, but the afternoon heat under the
corrugated roofs of Manhattan Engineer District's Los Alamos Laboratory was
daily less bearable. Young Dr. Edward Roy-land had lost fifteen pounds from an
already meager frame during his nine-month hitch in the desert. He wondered
every day while the thermometer crawled up to its 5:45 peak whether he had made
a mistake he would regret the rest of his life in accepting work with the
Laboratory rather than letting the local draft board have his carcass and do
what they pleased with it. His University of Chicago classmates were
glamorously collecting ribbons and wounds from Saipan to Brussels; one of them,
a first-rate mathematician named Hatfield, would do no more first-rate
mathematics. He had gone down, burning, in an Eighth Air Force Mitchell bomber
ambushed over Lille.
"And
what, Daddy, did you do in the war?"
"Well,
kids, it's a little hard to explain. They had this stupid atomic bomb project
that never came to anything, and they tied up a lot of us in a Godforsaken
place in New Mexico. We figured and we calculated and we fooled with uranium
and some of us got radiation burns and then the war was over and they sent us
home."
Royland
was not amused by this prospect. He had heat rash under his arms and he was
waiting, not patiently, for the Computer Section to send him his figures on
Phase 56c, which was the (god-damn childish) code designation for Element
Assembly Time. Phase 56c was Royland's own particular baby. He was under
Rotschmidt, supervisor of weapon design track III, and Rotschmidt was under
Oppenheimer, who bossed the works. Sometimes a General Groves came through, a
fine figure of a man, and once from a window Royland had seen the venerable
Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, walking slowly down their dusty street,
leaning on a cane and surrounded by young staff officers. That's what Royland
was seeing of the war.
Laboratory!
It had sounded inviting, cool, bustling but quiet. So every morning these days
he was blasted out of his cot in a barracks cubicle at seven by "Oppie's
whistle," fought for a shower and shave with thirty-seven other bachelor
scientists in eight languages, bolted a bad cafeteria breakfast, and went through
the barbed-wire Restricted Line to his "office"another
matchboard-walled cubicle, smaller and hotter and noisier, with talking and
typing and clack of adding machines all around him.
Under
the circumstances he was doing good work, he supposed. He wasn't happy about
being restricted to his one tiny problem, Phase 56c, but no doubt he was
happier than Hatfield had been when his Mitchell got it.
Under
the circumstances . . . they included a weird haywire arrangement for
computing. Instead of a decent differential analyzer machine they had a human
sea of office girls with Burroughs' desk calculators; the girls screamed
"Banzai!" and charged on differential equations and swamped them by
sheer volume; they clicked them to death with their little adding machines.
Royland thought hungrily of Conant's huge, beautiful analog differentiator up
at M.I.T.; it was probably tied up by whatever the mysterious "Radiation
Laboratory" there was doing. Royland suspected that the "Radiation
Laboratory" had as much to do with radiation as his own "Manhattan
Engineer District" had to do with Manhattan engineering. And the world was
supposed to be trembling on the edge these days of a New Dispensation of
Computing that would obsolete even the M.I.T. machinetubes, relays, and binary
arithmetic at blinding speed instead of the suavely turning cams and the
smoothly extruding rods and the elegant scribed curves of Conant's masterpiece.
He decided that he wouldn't like that; he would like it even less than he liked
the little office girls clacking away, pushing lank hair from their dewed brows
with undistracted hands.
He
wiped his own brow with a sodden handkerchief and permitted himself a glance at
his watch and the thermometer. Five-fifteen and 103 Fahrenheit.
He
thought vaguely of getting out, of fouling up just enough to be released from
the project and drafted. No; there was the post-war career to think of. But one
of the big shots, Teller, had been irrepressible; he had rambled outside of his
assigned mission again and again until Oppenheimer let him go; now Teller was
working with Lawrence at Berkeley on something that had reputedly gone sour at
a reputed quarter of a billion dollars
A
girl in khaki knocked and entered. "Your material from the Computer
Section, Dr. Royland. Qheck them and sign here, please." He counted the
dozen sheets, signed the clipboarded form she held out, and plunged into the
material for thirty minutes.
When
he sat back in his chair, the sweat dripped into his eyes unnoticed. His hands
were shaking a little, though he did not know that either. Phase 56c of weapon
design track III was finished, over, done, successfully accomplished. The
answer to the question "Can U23B slugs be assembled into a critical mass
within a physically feasible time?" was in. The answer was
"Yes."
Royland
was a theory man, not a Wheatstone or a Kelvin; he liked the numbers for
themselves and had no special passion to grab for wires, mica, and bits of
graphite so that what the numbers said might immediately be given flesh in a
wonderful new gadget. Nevertheless he could visualize at once a workable atomic
bomb assembly within the framework of Phase 56c. You have so many microseconds
to assemble your critical mass without it boiling away in vapor; you use them
by blowing the subassemblies together with shaped charges; lots of microseconds
to spare by that method; practically foolproof. Then comes the Big Bang.
Oppie's
whistle blew; it was quitting time. Royland sat still in his cubicle. He should
go, of course, to Rotschmidt and tell him; Rotschmidt would probably clap him
on the back and pour him a jigger of Bols Geneva from the tall clay bottle he
kept in his safe. Then Rotschmidt would go to Oppenheimer. Before sunset the
project would be redesigned! track I, track II, track IV, and track V would be
shut down and their people crammed into track III, the one with the paydirt!
New excitement would boil through the project; it had been torpid and souring
for three months. Phase 56c was the first good news in at least that long; it
had been one damned blind alley after another. General Groves had looked sour
and dubious last time around.
Desk
drawers were slamming throughout the corrugated, sunbaked building; doors were
slamming shut on cubicles; down the corridor, somebody roared with laughter,
strained laughter. Passing Royland's door somebody cried impatiently: "aber
was kan Man tun?"
Royland
whispered to himself: "You damned fool, what are you thinking of?"
But
he knewhe was thinking of the Big Bang, the Big Dirty Bang, and of torture.
The judicial torture of the old days, incredibly cruel by today's lights,
stretched the whole body, or crushed it, or burned it, or shattered the fingers
and legs. But even that old judicial torture carefully avoided the most
sensitive parts of the body, the generative organs, though damage to these, or
a real threat of damage to these, would have produced quick and copious
confessions. You have to be more or less crazy to torture somebody that way;
the sane man does not think of it as a possibility.
An M.P.
corporal tried Royland's door and looked in. "Quitting time,
professor," he said.
"Okay,"
Royland said. Mechanically he locked his desk drawers and his files, turned his
window lock, and set out his waste-paper basket in the corridor. Click the
door; another day, another dollar.
Maybe
the project was breaking up. They did now and then. The huge boner at
Berkeley proved that. And Royland's barracks was light two physicists now;
their cubicles stood empty since they had been drafted to M.I.T. for some anti-submarine
thing. Groves had not looked happy last time around; how did a general
make up his mind anyway? Give them three months, then the ax? Maybe Stimson
would run out of patience and cut the loss, close the District down. Maybe
F.D.R. would say at a Cabinet meeting, "By the way, Henry, what ever
became of?" and that would be the end if old Henry could say only that
the scientists appear to be optimistic of eventual success, Mr. President, but
that as yet there seems to be nothing concrete. He passed through the
barbed wire of the Line under scrutiny of an M.P. lieutenant and walked down
the barracks-edged company street of the maintenance troops to their motor
pool. He wanted a jeep and a trip ticket; he wanted a long desert drive in the
twilight; he wanted a dinner of frijoles and eggplant with his old
friend Charles Miller Nahataspe, the medicine man of the adjoining Hopi
reservation. Royland's hobby was anthropology; he wanted to get a little drunk
on ithe hoped it would clear his mind.
Nahataspe
welcomed him cheerfully to his hut; his million wrinkles all smiled.
""You want me to play informant for a while?" he grinned. He had
been to Carlisle in the 1880's and had been laughing at the white man ever
since; he admitted that physics was funny, but for a real joke give him
cultural anthropology every time. "You want some nice unsavory stuff about
our institutionalized homosexuality? Should I cook us a dog for dinner? Have a
seat on the blanket, Edward."
"What
happened to your chairs? And the funny picture of McKinley? Andand
everything?" The hut was bare except for cooking pots that simmered on the
stone-curbed central hearth.
"I
gave the stuff away," Nahataspe said carelessly. "You get tired of
things."
Royland
thought he knew what that meant. Nahataspe believed he would die quite soon;
these particular Indians did not believe in dying encumbered by possessions.
Manners, of course, forbade discussing death.
The
Indian watched his face and finally said: "Oh, it's all right for you to
talk about it. Don't be embarrassed."
Royland
asked nervously: "Don't you feel well?"
"I
feel terrible. There's a snake eating my liver. Pitch in and eat. You feel
pretty awful yourself, don't you?"
The
hard-learned habit of security caused Royland to evade the question. "You
don't mean that literally about the snake, do you Charles?"
"Of
course I do," Miller insisted. He scooped a steaming gourd full of stew
from the pot and blew on it. "What would an untutored child of nature know
about bacteria, viruses, toxins, and neoplasms? What would I know about
break-the-sky medicine?"
Royland
looked up sharply; the Indian was blandly eating. "Do you hear any talk
about break-the-sky medicine?" Royland asked.
"No
talk, Edward. I've had a few dreams about it." He pointed with his chin
toward the Laboratory. "You fellows over there shouldn't dream so hard; it
leaks out."
Royland
helped himself to stew without answering. The stew was good, far better than
the cafeteria stuff, and he did not have to guess the source of the meat
in it.
Miller
said consolingly: "It's only kid stuff, Edward. Don't get so worked up
about it. We have a long dull story about a horned toad who ate some loco-weed
and thought he was the Sky God. He got angry and he tried to break the sky but
he couldn't so he slunk into his hole ashamed to face all the other animals and
died. But they never knew he tried to break the sky at all."
In
spite of himself Royland demanded: "Do you have any stories about anybody
who did break the sky?" His hands were shaking again and his voice almost
hysterical. Oppie and the rest of them were going to break the sky, kick
humanity right in the crotch, and unleash a prowling monster that would go up
and down by night and day peering in all the windows of all the houses in the
world, leaving no sane man ever unterrified for his life and the lives of his
kin. Phase 56c, God-damn it to blackest hell, made sure of that! Well done,
Royland; you earned your dollar today!
Decisively
the old Indian set his gourd aside. He said: "We have a saying that the
only good paleface is a dead paleface, but I'll make an exception for you,
Edward. I've got some strong stuff from Mexico that will make you feel better.
I don't like to see my friends hurting."
"Peyote?
I've tried it. Seeing a few colored lights won't make me feel better, but
thanks."
"Not
peyote, this stuff. It's God Food. I wouldn't take it myself without a month of
preparation; otherwise the Gods would scoop me up in a net. That's because my
people see clearly, and your eyes are clouded." He was busily rummaging
through a clay-chinked wicker box as he spoke; he came up with a covered dish.
"You people have your sight cleared just a little by the God Food, so it's
safe for you."
Royland
thought he knew what the old man was talking about. It was one of Nahataspe's
biggest jokes that Hopi children understood Einstein's relativity as soon as
they could talkand there was some truth to it. The Hopi languageand
thoughthad no tenses and therefore no concept of time-as-an-entity; it had
nothing like the Indo-European speech's subjects and predicates, and therefore
no built-in metaphysics of cause and effect. In the Hopi language and mind all
things were frozen together forever into one great relationship, a crystalline
structure of space-time events that simply were because they were. So much for
Nahataspe's people "seeing clearly." But Royland gave himself and any
other physicist credit for seeing as clearly when they were working a
four-dimensional problem in the X Y Z space variables and the T time variable.
He
could have spoiled the old man's joke by pointing that out, but of course he
did not. No, no; he'd get a jag and maybe a bellyache from Nahataspe's herb
medicine and then go home to his cubicle with his problem unresolved: to kick
or not to kick?
The
old man began to mumble in Hopi, and drew a tattered cloth across the door
frame of his hut; it shut out the last rays of the setting sun, long and
slanting on the desert, pink-red against the adobe cubes of the Indian
settlement. It took a minute for Royland's eyes to accommodate to the
flickering light from the hearth and the indigo square of the ceiling smoke
hole. Now Nahataspe was "dancing," doing a crouched shuffle around
the hut holding the covered dish before him. Out of the corner of his mouth,
without interrupting the rhythm, he said to Royland: "Drink some hot water
now." Royland sipped from one of the pots on the hearth; so far it was
much like peyote ritual, but he felt calmer.
Nahataspe
uttered a loud scream, added apologetically: "Sorry, Edward," and
crouched before him whipping the cover off the dish like a headwaiter. So God
Food was dried black mushrooms, miserable, wrinkled little things. "You
swallow them all and chase them with hot water," Nahataspe said.
Obediently
Royland choked them down and gulped from the jug; the old man resumed his dance
and chanting.
A
little old self-hypnosis, Royland thought bitterly. Grab some imitation sleep
and forget about old 56c, as if you could. He could see the big dirty one now,
a hell of a fireball, maybe over Munich, or Cologne, or Tokyo, or Nara. Cooked
people, fused cathedral stone, the bronze of the big Buddha running like water,
perhaps lapping around the ankles of a priest and burning his feet off so he
fell prone into the stuff. He couldn't see the gamma radiation, but it would be
there, invisible sleet doing the dirty unthinkable thing, coldly burning away
the sex of men and women, cutting short so many fans of life at their points of
origin. Phase 56c could snuff out a family of Bachs, or five generations of
Bernoullis, or see to it that the great Huxley-Darwin cross did not occur.
The
fireball loomed, purple and red and fringed with greenThe mushrooms were
reaching him, he thought fuzzily. He could really see it. Nahataspe, crouched
and treading, moved through the fireball just as he had the last time, and the
time before that. Deja vu, extraordinarily strong, stronger than ever before,
gripped him. Royland knew all this had happened to him before, and remembered
perfectly what would come next; it was on the very tip of his tongue, as they
sayThe fireballs began to dance around him and he felt his strength drain
suddenly out; he was lighter than a feather; the breeze would carry him away;
he would be blown like a dust mote into the circle that the circling fireballs
made. And he knew it was wrong. He croaked with the last of his energy, feeling
himself slip out of the world: "Charlie! Help!"
Out
of the corner of his mind as he slipped away he sensed that the old man was
pulling him now under the arms, trying to tug him out of the hut, crying dimly
into his ear: "You should have told me you did not see through smoke! You
see clear; I never knew; I nev"
And
then he slipped through into blackness and silence.
Royland
awoke sick and fuzzy; it was morning in the hut; there was no sign of
Nahataspe. Well. Unless the old man had gotten to a phone and reported to the
Laboratory, there were now jeeps scouring the desert in search of him and all
hell was breaking loose in Security and Personnel. He would catch some of that
hell on his return, and avert it with his news about assembly time.
Then
he noticed that the hut had been cleaned of Nahataspe's few remaining
possessions, even to the door cloth. A pang went through him; had the old man
died in the night? He limped from the hut and looked around for a funeral pyre,
a crowd of mourners. They were not there; the adobe cubes stood untenanted in
the sunlight, and more weeds grew in the single street than he remembered. And
his jeep, parked last night against the hut, was missing.
There
were no wheeltracks, and uncrushed weeds grew tall where the jeep had stood.
Nahataspe's
God Food had been powerful stuff. Royland's hand crept uncertainly to his face.
No; no beard.
He
looked about him, looked hard. He made the effort necessary to see details. He
did not glance at the hut and because it was approximately the same as it had
always been, concluded that it was unchanged, eternal. He looked and saw
changes everywhere. Once-sharp adobe corners were rounded; protruding roof
beams were bleached bone-white by how many years of desert sun? The wooden
framing of the deep fortress-like windows had crumbled; the third building from
him had wavering soot stains above its window boles and its beams were charred.
He
went to it, numbly thinking: Phase 56c at least is settled. Not old Rip's baby
now. They'll know me from fingerprints, I guess. One year? Ten? I feel the
same.
The
burned-out house was a shambles. In one corner were piled dry human bones.
Royland leaned dizzily against the doorframe; its charcoal crumbled and
streaked his hand. Those skulls were Indian-he was anthropologist enough to
know that. Indian men, women and children, slain and piled in a heap. Who kills
Indians? There should have been some sign of clothes, burned rags, but there
were none. Who strips Indians naked and kills them?
Signs
of a dreadful massacre were everywhere in the house. Bullet-pocks in the walls,
high and low. Savage nicks left by bayonetsand swords? Dark stains of blood;
it had run two inches high and left its mark. Metal glinted in a ribcage across
the room. Swaying, he walked to the boneheap and thrust his hand into it. The
thing bit him like a razor blade; he did not look at it as he plucked it out
and carried it to the dusty street. With his back turned to the burned house he
studied his find. It was a piece of swordblade six inches long, hand-honed to a
perfect edge with a couple of nicks in it. It had stiffening ribs and the usual
blood gutters. It had a perceptible curve that would fit into only one shape:
the Samurai sword of Japan.
However
long it had taken, the war was obviously over.
He
went to the village well and found it choked with dust. It was while he stared
into the dry hole that he first became afraid. Suddenly it all was real; he was
no more an onlooker but a frightened and very thirsty man. He ransacked the
dozen houses of the settlement and found nothing to his purposea child's
skeleton here, a couple of cartridge cases there.
There
was only one thing left, and that was the road, the same earth track it had
always been, wide enough for one jeep or the rump-sprung station wagon of the
Indian settlement that once had been. Panic invited him to run; he did not
yield. He sat on the well curb, took off his shoes to meticulously smooth
wrinkles out of his khaki G.I. socks, put the shoes on, and retied the laces
loosely enough to allow for swelling, and hesitated a moment. Then he grinned,
selected two pebbles carefully from the dust and popped them in his mouth.
"Beaver Patrol, forward march," he said, and began to hike.
Yes,
he was thirsty; soon he would be hungry and tired; what of it? The dirt road
would meet state-maintained blacktop in three miles and then there would be
traffic and he'd hitch a ride. Let them argue with his fingerprints if they
felt like it. The Japanese had got as far as New Mexico, had they? Then God
help their home islands when the counterblow had come. Americans were a
ferocious people when trespassed on. Conceivably, there was not a Japanese left
alive . . .
He
began to construct his story as he hiked. In large parts it was a repeated
"I don't know." He would tell them: "I don't expect you to
believe this, so my feelings won't be hurt when you don't. Just listen to what
I say and hold everything until the F.B.I, has checked my fingerprints. My name
is" And so on.
It
was midmorning then, and he would be on the highway soon. His nostrils,
sharpened by hunger, picked up a dozen scents on the desert breeze: the spice
of sage, a whiff of acetylene stink from a rattler dozing on the shaded side of
a rock, the throat-tightening reek of tar suggested for a moment on the air.
That would be the highway, perhaps a recent hotpatch on a chuckhole. Then a
startling tang of sulfur dioxide drowned them out and passed on, leaving him
stung and sniffling and groping for a handkerchief that was not there. What in
God's name had that been, and where from? Without ceasing to trudge he studied
the horizon slowly and found a smoke pall to the far west dimly smudging the
sky. It looked like a small city's, or a fair-sized factory's, pollution. A
city or a factory where "in his time" he formed the thought
reluctantlythere had been none.
Then
he was at the highway. It had been improved; it was a two-laner still, but it
was nicely graded now, built up by perhaps three inches of gravel and tar
beyond its old level, and lavishly ditched on either side.
If
he had a coin he would have tossed it, but you went for weeks without spending
a cent at Los Alamos Laboratory; Uncle took care of everything, from cigarettes
to tombstones. He turned left and began to walk westward toward that sky
smudge.
I
am a reasonable animal, he was telling himself, and I will accept whatever
comes in a spirit of reason. I will control what I can and try to understand
the rest
A
faint siren scream began behind him and built up fast. The reasonable animal
jumped for the ditch and hugged it for dear life. The siren howled closer, and
motors roared. At the ear-splitting climax Royland put his head up for one
glimpse, then fell back into the ditch as if a grenade had exploded in his
middle.
The
convoy roared on, down the center of the two-lane highway, straddling
the white line. First the three little recon cars with the twin-mount machine
guns, each filled brimful with three helmeted Japanese soldiers. Then the
high-profiled, armored car of state, six-wheeled, with a probably ceremonial
gun turret asternnickel-plated gunbarrels are impracticaland the Japanese
admiral in the fore-and-aft hat taking his lordly ease beside a rawboned,
hatchet-faced SS officer in gleaming black. Then, diminuendo, two more little
recon jobs . . .
"We've
lost," Royland said in his ditch meditatively. "Ceremonial tanks with
glass windowswe lost a long time ago." Had there been a Rising Sun
insignia or was he now imagining that?
He
climbed out and continued to trudge westward on the improved blacktop. You
couldn't say "I reject the universe," not when you were as thirsty as
he was.
He
didn't even turn when the put-putting of a westbound vehicle grew loud behind
him and then very loud when it stopped at his side.
"Zeegail,"
a curious voice said. "What are you doing here?"
The
vehicle was just as odd in its own way as the ceremonial tank. It was minimum
motor transportation, a kid's sled on wheels, powered by a noisy little
air-cooled outboard motor. The driver sat with no more comfort than a cleat to
back his coccyx against, and behind him were two twenty-five pound flour sacks
that took up all the remaining room the little buckboard provided. The driver
had the leathery Southwestern look; he wore a baggy blue outfit that was obviously
a uniform and obviously unmilitary. He had a nametape on his breast above an
incomprehensible row of dull ribbons: MARTFIELD, E., 1218824, P/7 NQOTD43. He
saw Royland's eyes on the tape and said kindly: "My name is
MartfieldPaymaster Seventh, but there's no need to use my rank here. Are you
all right, my man?"
"Thirsty,"
Royland said. "What's the NQOTD43 for?"
"You
can read!" Martfield said, astounded. "Those clothes"
"Something
to drink, please," Royland said. For the moment nothing else mattered in
the world. He sat down on the buckboard like a puppet with cut strings.
"See
here, fellow!" Martfield snapped in a curious, strangled way, forcing the
words through his throat with a stagy, conventional effect of controlled anger.
"You can stand until I invite you to sit!"
"Have
you any water?" Royland asked dully.
With
the same bark: "Who do you think you are?"
"I
happen to be a theoretical physicist" tiredly arguing with a dim
seventh-carbon-copy imitation of a drill sergeant.
"Oh-hoh!"
Martfield suddenly laughed. His
stiffness vanished; he actually reached into his baggy tunic and brought out a
pint canteen that gurgled. He then forgot all about the canteen in his hand,
roguishly dug Royland in the ribs and said: "I should have suspected. You
scientists! Somebody was supposed to pick you upbut he was another scientist,
eh? Ah-hah-hah-hah!"
Royland
took the canteen from his hand and sipped. So a scientist was supposed to be an
idiot-savant, eh? Never mind now; drink. People said you were not supposed to
fill your stomach with water after great thirst; it sounded to him like one of
those puritanical rules people make up out of nothing because they sound
reasonable. He finished the canteen while Martfield, Paymaster Seventh, looked
alarmed, and wished only that there were three or four more of them.
"Got
any food?" he demanded.
Martfield
cringed briefly. "Doctor, I regret extremely that I have nothing with me.
However if you would do me the honor of riding with me to my quarters"
"Let's
go," Royland said. He squatted on the flour sacks and away they chugged at
a good thirty miles an hour; it was a fair little engine. The Paymaster Seventh
continued deferential, apologizing over his shoulder because there was no
windscreen, later dropped his cringing entirely to explain that Royland was
seated on flour"white flour, understand?" An
over-the-shoulder wink. He had a friend in the bakery at Los Alamos. Several
buckboards passed the other way as they traveled. At each encounter there was a
peering examination of insignia to decide who saluted. Once they met a
sketchily enclosed vehicle that furnished its driver with a low seat instead of
obliging him to sit with legs straight out, and Paymaster Seventh Martfield
almost dislocated his shoulder saluting first. The driver of that one was a
Japanese in a kimono. A long curved sword lay across his lap.
Mile
after mile the smell of sulfur and sulfides increased; finally there rose
before them the towers of a Frasch Process layout. It looked like an oilfield,
but instead of ground-laid pipelines and bass-drum storage tanks there were
foothills of yellow sulfur. They drove between themmore salutes from baggily
uniformed workers with shovels and yard-long Stilson wrenches. Off to the right
were things that might have been Solvay Process towers for sulfuric acid, and a
glittering horror of a neo-Roman administration-and-labs building. The Rising
Sun banner fluttered from its central flagstaff.
Music
surged as they drove deeper into the area; first it was a welcome
counterirritant to the pop-pop of the two-cycle buckboard engine, and then a
nuisance by itself. Royland looked, annoyed, for the loudspeakers, and saw them
everywhereon power poles, buildings, gateposts. Schmaltzy Strauss waltzes
bathed them like smog, made thinking just a little harder, made communication
just a little more blurry even after you had learned to live with the noise.
"I
miss music in the wilderness," Martfield confided over his shoulder. He
throttled down the buckboard until they were just rolling; they had passed some
line unrecognized by Royland beyond which one did not salute everybodyjust the
occasional Japanese walking by in business suit with blueprint-roll and slide
rule, or in kimono with sword. It was a German who nailed Royland, however: a
classic jack-booted German in black broadcloth, black leather, and plenty of
silver trim. He watched them roll for a moment after exchanging salutes with
Martfield, made up his mind, and said: "Halt."
The
Paymaster Seventh slapped on the brake, killed the engine, and popped to
attention beside the buckboard. Royland more or less imitated him. The German
said, stiffly but without accent: "Whom have you brought here,
Paymaster?"
"A
scientist, sir. I picked him up on the road returning from Los Alamos with
personal supplies. He appears to be a minerals prospector who missed a
rendezvous, but naturally I have not questioned the Doctor."
The
German turned to Royland contemplatively. "So, Doctor. Your name and
specialty."
"Dr.
Edward Royland," he said. "I do nuclear power research." If
there was no bomb he'd be damned if he'd invent it now for these people.
"So?
That is very interesting, considering that there is no such thing as nuclear
power research. Which camp are you from?" The German threw an aside to the
Paymaster Seventh, who was literally shaking with fear at the turn things had
taken. "You may go, Paymaster. Of course you will report yourself for
harboring a fugitive."
"At
once, sir," Martfield said in a sick voice. He moved slowly away pushing
the little buckboard before him. The Strauss waltz oom-pah'd its last chord and
instantly the loudspeakers struck up a hoppity-hoppity folk dance, heavy on the
brass.
"Come
with me," the German said, and walked off, not even looking behind to see
whether Royland was obeying. This itself demonstrated how unlikely any
disobedience was to succeed. Royland followed at his heels, which of course
were garnished with silver spurs. Royland had not seen a horse so far that day.
A
Japanese stopped them politely inside the administration building, a
rimless-glasses, office-manager type in a gray suit. "How nice to see you
again, Major Kappel! Is there anything I might do to help you?"
The
German stiffened. "I didn't want to bother your people, Mr. Ito. This
fellow appears to be a fugitive from one of our camps; I was going to turn him
over to our liaison group for examination and return."
Mr.
Ito looked at Royland and slapped his face hard. Royland, by the insanity of
sheer reflex, cocked his fist as a red-blooded boy should, but the German's
reflexes operated also. He had a pistol in his hand and pressed against
Royland's ribs before he could throw the punch.
"All
right," Royland said, and put down his hand.
Mr.
Ito laughed. "You are at least partly right, Major Kappel; he certainly is
not from one of our camps! But do not let me delay you further. May I
hope for a report on the outcome of this?"
"Of
course, Mr. Ito," said the German. He holstered his pistol and walked on,
trailed by the scientist. Royland heard him grumble something that sounded like
"Damned extraterritoriality!"
They
descended to a basement level where all the door signs were in German, and in
an office labeled wissenschaft-slichesicherheitsliaison Royland finally told
his story. His audience was the major, a fat officer deferentially addressed as
Colonel Biederman, and a bearded old civilian, a Dr. Piqueron, called in from
another office. Royland suppressed only the matter of bomb research, and did it
easily with the old security habit. His improvised cover story made the Los
Alamos Laboratory a research center only for the generation of electricity.
The
three heard him out in silence. Finally, in an amused voice, the colonel asked:
"Who was this Hitler you mentioned?"
For
that Royland was not prepared. His jaw dropped.
Major
Kappel said: "Oddly enough, he struck on a name which does figure,
somewhat infamously, in the annals of the Third Reich. One Adolf Hitler was an
early Party agitator, but as I recall it he intrigued against the Leader during
the War of Triumph and was executed."
"An
ingenious madman," the colonel said. "Sterilized, of course?"
"Why,
I don't know. I suppose so. Doctor, would you?"
Dr.
Piqueron quickly examined Royland and found him all there, which astonished
them. Then they thought of looking for his camp tattoo number on the left
bicep, and found none. Then, thoroughly upset, they discovered that he had no
birth number above his left nipple either.
"And,"
Dr. Piqueron stammered, "his shoes are odd, sirI just noticed. Sir, how
long since you've seen sewn shoes and braided laces?"
"You
must be hungry," the colonel suddenly said. "Doctor, have my aide get
something to eat forfor the doctor."
"Major,"
said Royland, "I hope no harm will come to the fellow who picked me up.
You told him to report himself."
"Have
no fear, er, doctor," said the major. "Such humanity! You are of
German blood?"
"Not
that I know of; it may be."
"It
must be!" said the colonel.
A
platter of hash and a glass of beer arrived on a tray. Royland postponed
everything. At last he demanded: "Now. Do you believe me? There must be
fingerprints to prove my story still in existence."
"I
feel like a fool," the major said. "You still could be hoaxing us.
Dr. Piqueron, did not a German scientist establish that nuclear power is a
theoretical and practical impossibility, that one always must put more into it
than one can take out?"
Piqueron
nodded and said reverently: "Heisenberg. Nineteen fifty-three, during the
War of Triumph. His group was then assigned to electrical weapons research and
produced the blinding bomb. But this fact does not invalidate the doctor's
story; he says only that his group was attempting to produce nuclear
power."
"We've
got to research this," said the colonel. "Dr. Piqueron, entertain
this man, whatever he is, in your laboratory."
Piqueron's
laboratory down the hall was a place of astounding simplicity, even crudeness.
The sinks, reagents, and balance were capable only of simple qualitative and
quantitative analyses; various works in progress testified that they were not
even strained to their modest limits. Samples of sulfur and its compounds were
analyzed here. It hardly seemed to call for a "doctor" of anything,
and hardly even for a human being. Machinery should be continuously testing the
products as they flowed out; variations should be scribed mechanically on a
moving tape; automatic controls should at least stop the processes and signal
an alarm when variation went beyond limits; at most it might correct whatever
was going wrong. But here sat Piqueron every day, titrating, precipitating, and
weighing, entering results by hand in a ledger and telephoning them to the
works!
Piqueron
looked about proudly. "As a physicist you wouldn't understand all this, of
course," he said. "Shall I explain?"
"Perhaps
later, doctor, if you'd be good enough. If you'd first help me orient
myself"
So
Piqueron told him about the War of Triumph (1940-1955) and what came after.
In
1940 the realm of der Fuehrer (Herr Goebbels, of coursethat strapping blond
fellow with the heroic jaw and eagle's eye whom you can see in the picture
there) was simultaneously and treacherously invaded by the misguided French,
the sub-human Slavs, and the perfidious British. The attack, for which the
shocked Germans coined the name blitzkrieg, was timed to coincide with
an internal eruption of sabotage, well-poisoning, and assassination by the Zigeunerjuden,
or Jewpsies, of whom little is now known; there seem to be none left.
By
Nature's ineluctable law, the Germans had necessarily to be tested to the
utmost so that they might fully respond. Therefore Germany was overrun from
East and West, and Holy Berlin itself was taken; but Goebbels and his court
withdrew like Barbarossa into the mountain fastnesses to await their day. It
came unexpectedly soon. The deluded Americans launched a million-man amphibious
attack on the homeland of the Japanese in 1945. The Japanese resisted with
almost Teutonic courage. Not one American in twenty reached shore alive, and
not one in a hundred got a mile inland. Particularly lethal were the women and
children, who lay in camouflaged pits hugging artillery shells and aircraft
bombs, which they detonated when enough invaders drew near to make it
worthwhile.
The
second invasion attempt, a month later, was made up of second-line troops
scraped up from everywhere, including occupation duty in Germany.
"Literally,"
Piqueron said, "the Japanese did not know how to surrender, so they did
not. They could not conquer, but they could and did continue suicidal
resistance, consuming manpower of the allies and their own womanpower and
childpowera shrewd bargain for the Japanese! The Russians refused to become
involved in the Japanese war; they watched with apish delight while two future
enemies, as they supposed, were engaged in mutual destruction.
"A
third assault wave broke on Kyushu and gained the island at last. What lay
ahead? Only another assault on Honshu, the main island, home of the Emperor and
the principal shrines. It was 1946; the volatile, child-like Americans were
war-weary and mutinous; the best of them were gone by then. In desperation the
Anglo-American leaders offered the Russians an economic sphere embracing the
China coast and Japan as the price of participation."
The
Russians grinned and assented; they would take thatat least that. They
mounted a huge assault for the spring of 1947; they would take Korea and leap
off from there for northern Honshu while the Anglo-American forces struck in
the south. Surely this would provide at last a symbol before which the Japanese
might without shame bow down and admit defeat!
And
then, from the mountain fastnesses, came the radio voice: "Germans! Your
Leader calls upon you again!" Followed the Hundred Days of Glory during
which the German Army reconstituted itself and expelled the occupation
troopsby then, children without combat experience, and leavened by
not-quite-disabled veterans. Followed the seizure of the airfields; the
Luftwaffe in business again. Followed the drive, almost a dress parade, to the
Channel Coast, gobbling up immense munition dumps awaiting shipment to the
Pacific Theater, millions of warm uniforms, good boots, mountains of rations,
piles of shells and explosives that lined the French roads for, scores of
miles, thousands of two-and-a-half-ton trucks, and lakes of gasoline to fuel
them. The shipyards of Europe, from Hamburg to Toulon, had been turning out,
furiously, invasion barges for the Pacific. In April of 1947 they sailed
against England in their thousands.
Halfway
around the world, the British Navy was pounding Tokyo, Nagasaki, Kobe,
Hiroshima, Nara. Three quarters of the way across Asia the Russian Army marched
stolidly on; let the decadent British pickle their own fish; the glorious
motherland at last was gaining her long-sought, long-denied, warm-water
seacoast. The British, tired women without their men, children fatherless these
eight years, old folks deathly weary, deathly worried about their sons, were brave
but they were not insane. They accepted honorable peace terms; they
capitulated.
With
the Western front secure for the first time in history, the ancient Drive to
the East was resumed; the immemorial struggle of Teuton against Slav went on.
His
spectacles glittering with rapture, Dr. Piqueron said: "We were worthy in
those days of the Teutonic Knights who seized Prussia from the sub-men! On the
ever-glorious Twenty-first of May, Moscow was ours!"
Moscow
and the monolithic state machinery it controlled, and all the roads and rail
lines and communication wires which led only to and fromMoscow. Detroit-built
tanks and trucks sped along those roads in the fine, bracing spring weather;
the Red Army turned one hundred and eighty degrees at last and countermarched
halfway across the Eurasian landmass, and at Kazan it broke exhausted against
the Frederik Line.
Europe
at last was One and German. Beyond Europe lay the dark and swarming masses of
Asia, mysterious and repulsive folk whom it would be better to handle through
the non-German, but chivalrous, Japanese. The Japanese were reinforced with
shipping from Birkenhead, artillery from the Putilov Works, jet fighters from
Chateauroux, steel from the Ruhr, rice from the Po valley, herring from Norway,
timber from Sweden, oil from Romania, laborers from India. The American forces
were driven from Kyushu in the winter of 1948, and bloodily back across their
chain of island steppingstones that followed.
Surrender
they would not; it was a monstrous affront that shield-shaped North America
dared to lie there between the German Atlantic and the Japanese Pacific
threatening both. The affront was wiped out in 1955.
For
one hundred and fifty years now the Germans and the Japanese had uneasily eyed
each other across the banks of the Mississippi. Their orators were fond of
referring to that river as a vast frontier unblemished by a single
fortification. There was even some interpenetration; a Japanese colony fished
out of Nova Scotia on the very rim of German America; a sulfur mine which was
part of the Farben system lay in New Mexico, the very heart of Japanese
Americathis was where Dr. Edward Royland found himself, being lectured to by
Dr. Piqueron, Dr. Gaston Pierre Piqueron, true-blue German.
"Here,
of course," Dr. Piqueron said gloomily, "we are so damned provincial.
Little ceremony and less manners. Well, it would be too much to expect them to
assign German Germans to this dreary outpost, so we French Germans must
endure it somehow."
"You're
all French?" Royland asked, startled.
"French
Germans," Piqueron stiffly corrected him. "Colonel Biederman
happens to be a French German also; Major Kappel ishrrmphan Italian
German." He sniffed to show what he thought of that.
The
Italian German entered at that point, not in time to shut off the question:
"And you all come from Europe?"
They
looked at him in bafflement. "My grandfather did," Dr. Piqueron said.
Royland remembered; so Roman legions used to guard their empireRomans born and
raised in Britain, or on the Danube, Romans who would never in their lives see
Italy or Rome.
Major
Kappel said affably: "Well, this needn't concern us. I'm afraid, my dear
fellow, that your little hoax has not succeeded." He clapped Royland
merrily on the back. "I admit you've tricked us all nicely; now may we
have the facts?"
Piqueron
said, surprised: "His story is false? The shoes? The missing geburtsnummer?
And he appears to understand some chemistry!"
"Ah-h-hbut
he said his specialty was physics, doctor! Suspicious in itself!"
"Quite
so. A discrepancy. But the rest?"
"As
to his birth number, who knows? As to his shoes, who cares? I took some
inconspicuous notes while he was entertaining us and have checked thoroughly.
There was no Manhattan Engineering District. There was no Dr.
Oppenheimer, or Fermi, or Bohr. There is no theory of relativity, or
equivalence of mass and energy. Uranium has one use onlycoloring glass a pretty
orange. There is such a thing as an isotope but it has nothing to do with
chemistry; it is the name used in Race Science for a permissible variation
within a subrace. And what have you to say to that, my dear
fellow?"
Royland
wondered first, such was the positiveness with which Major Kappel spoke,
whether he had slipped into a universe of different physical properties and
history entirely, one in which Julius Caesar discovered Peru and the oxygen
molecule was lighter than the hydrogen atom. He managed to speak. "How did
you find all that out, major?"
"Oh,
don't think I did a skimpy job," Kappel smiled. "I looked it all up
in the big encyclopedia."
Dr.
Piqueron, chemist, nodded grave approval of the major's diligence and thorough
grasp of the scientific method.
"You
still don't want to tell us?" Major Kappel asked coaxingly.
"I
can only stand by what I said."
Kappel
shrugged. "It's not my job to persuade you; I wouldn't know how to begin.
But I can and will ship you off forthwith to a work camp."
"Whatis
a work camp?" Royland unsteadily asked.
"Good
heavens, man, a camp where one works! You're obviously an ungleichgeschaltling
and you've got to be gleichgeschaltet." He did not speak these
words as if they were foreign; they were obviously part of the everyday
American working vocabulary. Gleichgeschaltet meant to Royland something
like "coordinated, brought into tune with." So he would be brought
into tunewith what, and how?
The
Major went on: "You'll get your clothes and your bunk and your chow, and
you'll work, and eventually your irregular vagabondish habits will disappear
and you'll be turned loose on the labor market. And you'll be damned glad we
took the trouble with you." His face fell. "By the way, I was too
late with your friend the Paymaster. I'm sorry. I sent a messenger to
Disciplinary Control with a stop order. After all, if you took us in for an
hour, why should you not have fooled a Pay-Seventh?"
"Too
late? He's dead? For picking up a hitchhiker?"
"I
don't know what that last word means," said the Major. "If it's
dialect for 'vagabond,' the answer is ordinarily 'yes.' The man, after all, was
a Pay-Seventh; he could read. Either you're keeping up your hoax with
remarkable fidelity or you've been living in isolation. Could that be it? Is
there a tribe of you somewhere? Well, the interrogators will find out; that's
their job."
"The
Dogpatch legend!" Dr. Piqueron burst out, thunderstruck. "He may be
an Abnerite!"
"By
Heaven," Major Kappel said slowly, "that might be it. What a feather
in my cap to find a living Abnerite."
"Whose
cap?" demanded Dr. Piqueron
coldly.
"I
think I'll look the Dogpatch legend up," said Kappel, heading for the door
and probably the big encyclopedia.
"So
will I," Dr. Piqueron announced firmly. The last Royland saw of them they were
racing down the corridor, neck and neck.
Very
funny. And they had killed simple-minded Paymaster Martfield for picking up a
hitchhiker. The Nazis always had been pretty funnyfat Hermann pretending he
was young Seigfried. As blond as Hitler, as slim as Goering, and as tall as
Goebbels. Immature guttersnipes who hadn't been able to hang a convincing frame
on Dimitrov for the Reichstag fire; the world had roared at their bungling.
Huge, corny party rallies with let's-play-detectives nonsense like touching the
local flags to that hallowed banner on which the martyred Horst Wessel had had
a nosebleed. And they had rolled over Europe, and they killed people . . .
One
thing was certain: life in the work camp would at least bore him to death. He
was supposed to be an illiterate simpleton, so things were excused him which
were not excused an exalted Pay-Seventh. He poked through a closet in the
corner of the laboratoryhe and Piqueron were the same size. He found a natty
change of uniform and what must be a civilian suit: somewhat baggy pants and a
sort of tunic with the neat, sensible Russian collar. Obviously it would be all
right to wear it because here it was; just as obviously, it was all wrong for
him to be dressed in chinos and a flannel shirt. He did not know exactly what
this made him, but Martfield had been done to death for picking up a man in
chinos and a flannel shirt. Royland changed into the civilian suit, stuffed his
own shirt and pants far back on the top shelf of the closet; this was probably
concealment enough from those murderous clowns. He walked out, and up the
stairs, and through the busy lobby, and into the industrial complex. Nobody
saluted him and he saluted nobody. He knew where he was goingto a good, sound
Japanese laboratory where there were no Germans.
Royland
had known Japanese students at the University and admired them beyond words.
Their brains, frugality, doggedness, and good humor made them, as far as he was
concerned, the most sensible people he had ever known. Tojo and his warlords
were not, as far as Royland was concerned, essentially Japanese but just more
damn-fool soldiers and politicians. The real Japanese would courteously listen
to him, calmly check against available facts. He rubbed his cheek and
remembered Mr. Ito and his slap in the face. Well, presumably Mr. Ito was a
damnfool soldier and politician and demonstrating for the German's benefit in
a touchy border area full of jurisdictional questions.
At
any rate, he would not go to a labor camp and bust rocks or refinish
furniture until those imbeciles decided he was gleichgeschaltet; he
would go mad in a month.
Royland
walked to the Solvay towers and followed the glass pipes containing their
output of sulfuric acid along the ground until he came to a bottling shed where
beetle-browed men worked silently filling great wicker-basketed carboys and
heaving them outside. He followed other men who levered them up onto hand
trucks and rolled them in one door of a storage shed. Out the door at the other
end more men loaded them onto enclosed trucks which were driven up from time to
time.
Royland
settled himself in a corner of the storage shed behind a barricade of carboys
and listened to the truck dispatcher swear at his drivers and the carboy
handlers swear at their carboys.
"Get
the god-damn Frisco shipment loaded, stupid! I don't care if you
gotta go, we gotta get it out by midnight!"
So
a few hours after dark Royland was riding west, without much air, and in the
dangerous company of one thousand gallons of acid. He hoped he had a careful
driver.
A
night, a day, and another night on the road. The truck never stopped except to
gas up; the drivers took turns and ate sandwiches at the wheel and dozed off
shift. It rained the second night. Royland, craftily and perhaps a little
crazily, licked the drops that ran down the tarpaulin flap covering the rear.
At the first crack of dawn, hunched between two wicker carcasses, he saw they
were rolling through irrigated vegetable fields, and the water in the ditches
was too much for him. He heard the transmission shift down to slow for a curve,
swarmed over the tailgate, and dropped to the road. He was weak and limp enough
to hit like a sack.
He
got up, ignoring his bruises, and hobbled to one of the brimming five-foot
ditches; he drank, and drank, and drank. This time puritanical folklore proved
right; he lost it all immediately, or what had not been greedily absorbed by
his shriveled stomach. He did not mind; it was bliss enough to stretch
The
field crop was tomatoes, almost dead ripe. He was starved for them; as he saw
the rosy beauties he knew that tomatoes were the only thing in the world he
craved. He gobbled one so that the juice ran down his chin; he ate the next two
delicately, letting his teeth break the crispness of their skin and the
beautiful taste ravish his tongue. There were tomatoes as far as the eye could
see, on either side of the road, the green of the vines and the red dots of the
ripe fruit graphed by the checkerboard of silvery ditches that caught the first
light. Nevertheless, he filled his pockets with them before he walked on.
Royland
was happy.
Farewell
to the Germans and their sordid hash and murderous ways. Look at these
beautiful fields! The Japanese are an innately artistic people who bring beauty
to every detail of daily life. And they make damn good physicists, too.
Confined in their stony home, cramped as he had been in the truck, they grew
twisted and painful; why should they not have reached out for more room to grow,
and what other way is there to reach but to make war? He could be very
understanding about any people who had planted these beautiful tomatoes for
him.
A
dark blemish the size of a man attracted his attention. It lay on the margin of
one of the swirling five-foot ditches out there to his right. And then it
rolled slowly into the ditch with a splash, floundered a little, and proceeded
to drown.
In
a hobbling run Royland broke from the road and across the field. He did not
know whether he was limber enough to swim. As he stood panting on the edge of
the ditch, peering into the water, a head of hair surfaced near him. He flung
himself down, stretched wildly, and grabbed the hairand yet had detachment
enough to feel a pang when the tomatoes in his tunic pocket smashed.
"Steady,"
he muttered to himself, yanked the head toward him, took hold with his other
hand and lifted. A surprised face confronted him and then went blank and
unconscious.
For
half an hour Royland, weak as he was, struggled, cursed feebly, and sweated to
get that body out of the water. At last he plunged in himself, found it only
chest-deep, and shoved the carcass over the mudslick bank. He did not know by
then whether the man was alive or dead or much care. He knew only that he
couldn't walk away and leave the job half finished.
The
body was that of a fat, middle-aged Oriental, surely Chinese rather than
Japanese, though Royland could not say why he thought so. His clothes were
soaked rags except for a leather wallet the size of a cigar box which he wore
on a wide cloth belt. Its sole content was a handsome blue-glazed porcelain
bottle. Royland sniffed at it and reeled. Some kind of super-gin! He sniffed
again, and then took a conservative gulp of the stuff. While he was still
coughing he felt the bottle being removed from his hand. When he looked he saw
the Chinese, eyes still closed, accurately guiding the neck of the bottle to
his mouth. The Chinese drank and drank and drank, then returned the bottle to
the wallet and finally opened his eyes.
"Honorable
sir," said the Chinese in flat, California American speech, "you have
deigned to save my unworthy life. May I supplicate your honorable name?"
"Ah,
Royland. Look, take it easy. Don't try to get up; you shouldn't even
talk."
Somebody
screamed behind Royland: "There has been thieving of tomatoes! There has
been smasheeng and deestruction of thee vines! Chil-dren you, will bee
weet-ness be-fore the Jappa-neese!"
Christ,
now what?
Now
a skinny black man, not a Negro, in a dirty loincloth, and beside him like a
pan-pipes five skinny black loinclothed offspring in descending order. All were
capering, pointing, and threatening. The Chinese groaned, fished in his
tattered robes with one hand, and pulled out a soggy wad of bills. He peeled
one off, held it out, and said: "Begone, pestilential barbarians from
beyond Tian-Shang. My master and I give you alms, not tribute."
The
Dravidian, or whatever he was, grabbed the bill and keened:
"Een-suffee-cient for the terrible dommage! The Jappa-neese"
The
Chinese waved them away boredly. He said: "If my master will condescend to
help me arise?"
Royland
uncertainly helped him up. The man was wobbly, whether from the near-drowning
or the terrific belt of alcohol he'd taken there was no knowing. They proceeded
to the road, followed by shrieks to be careful about stepping on the vines.
On
the road, the Chinese said: "My unworthy name is Li Po. Will my master
deign to indicate in which direction we are to travel?"
"What's
this master business?" Royland demanded. "If you're grateful, swell,
but I don't own you.'.'
"My
master is pleased to jest," said Li Po. Politely, face-saving and
third-personing Royland until hell wouldn't have it, he explained that Royland,
having meddled with the Celestial decree that Li Po should, while drunk, roll
into the irrigation ditch and drown, now had Li Po on his hands, for the
Celestial Ones had washed theirs of him. "As my master of course will
recollect in a moment or two." Understandingly, he expressed his sympathy
with Royland's misfortune in acquiring him as an obligation, especially since
he had a hearty appetite, was known to be dishonest, and suffered from fainting
fits and spasms when confronted with work.
"I
don't know about all this," Royland said fretfully. "Wasn't
there another Li Po? A poet?"
"Your
servant prefers to venerate his namesake as one of the greatest drunkards the
Flowery Kingdom has ever known," the Chinese observed. And a moment later
he bent over, clipped Royland behind the knees so that he toppled forward and
bumped his head, and performed the same obeisance himself, more gracefully. A
vehicle went sputtering and popping by on the road as they kowtowed.
Li
Po said reproachfully: "I humbly observe that my master is unaware of the
etiquette our noble overlords exact. Such negligence cost the head of my
insignificant elder brother in his twelfth year. Would my master be pleased to
explain how he can have reached his honorable years without learning what babes
in their cradles are taught?"
Royland
answered with the whole truth. Li Po politely begged clarification from time to
time, and a sketch of his mental horizons emerged from his questioning. That
"magic" had whisked Royland forward a century or more he did not
doubt for an instant, but he found it difficult to understand why the proper fung
shut precautions had not been taken to avert a disastrous outcome to the
God Food experiment. He suspected, from a description of Nahataspe's hut, that
a simple wall at right angles to the door would have kept all really important
demons out. When Royland described his escape from German territory to
Japanese, and why he had effected it, he was very bland and blank. Royland
judged that Li Po privately thought him not very bright for having left any place
to come here.
And
Royland hoped he was not right. "Tell me what it's like," he said.
"This
realm," said Li Po, "under our benevolent and noble overlords, is the
haven of all whose skin is not the bleached-bone hue which indicates the
undying curse of the Celestial Ones. Hither flock men of Han like my unworthy
self, and the sons of Hind beyond the Tian-Shang that we may till new soil and
raise up sons, and sons of sons to venerate us when we ascend."
"What
was that bit," Royland demanded, "about the bleached bones? Do they
shoot, ah, white men on sight here, or do they not?"
Li
Po said evasively: "We are approaching the village where I unworthily
serve as fortune teller, doctor of fung shui, occasional poet and
storyteller. Let my master have no fear about his color. This humble one will
roughen his master's skin, tell a circumstantial and artistic lie or two, and
pass his master off as merely a leper."
After
a week in Li Po's village Royland knew that life was good there. The place was
a wattle-and-clay settlement of about two hundred souls on the bank of an
irrigation ditch large enough to be dignified by the name of "canal."
It was situated nobody knew just where; Royland thought it must be the San
Fernando Valley. The soil was thick and rich and bore furiously the year round.
A huge kind of radish was the principal crop. It was too coarse to be eaten by
man; the villagers understood that it was feed for chickens somewhere up north.
At any rate they harvested the stuff, fed it through a great hand-powered
shredder, and shade-cured the shreds. Every few days a Japanese of low caste
would come by in a truck, they would load tons of the stuff onto it, and wave
their giant radish goodbye forever. Presumably the chickens ate it, and the
Japanese then ate the chickens.
The
villagers ate chicken too, but only at weddings and funerals. The rest of the
time they ate vegetables which they cultivated, a quarter-acre to a family, the
way other craftsmen facet diamonds. A single cabbage might receive, during its
ninety days from planting to maturity, one hundred work hours from grandmother,
grandfather, son, daughter, eldest grandchild, and on down to the smallest
toddler. Theoretically the entire family line should have starved to death, for
there are not one hundred energy hours in a cabbage; somehow they did not. They
merely stayed thin and cheerful and hard-working and fecund.
They
spoke English by Imperial decree; the reasoning seemed to be that they were as
unworthy to speak Japanese as to paint the Imperial Chrysanthemum Seal on their
houses, and that to let them cling to their old languages and dialects would
have been politically unwise.
They
were a mixed lot of Chinese, Hindus, Dravidians, and, to Royland's surprise,
low-caste and outcaste Japanese; he had not known there were such things.
Village tradition had it that a samurai named Ugetsu long ago said,
pointing at the drunk tank of a Hong Kong jail, "I'll have that lot,"
and "that lot" had been the ancestors of these villagers transported
to America in a foul hold practically as ballast and settled here by the canal
with orders to start making their radish quota. The place was at any rate
called The Ugetsu Village, and if some of the descendants were teetotallers,
others like Li Po gave color to the legend of their starting point.
After
a week the cheerful pretense that he was a sufferer from Housen's disease
evaporated and he could wash the mud off his face. He had merely to avoid the
upper-caste Japanese and especially the samurai. This was not exactly a
stigma; in general it was a good idea for everybody to avoid the samurai.
In
the village Royland found his first love and his first religion both false.
He
had settled down; he was getting used to the Oriental work rhythm of slow,
repeated, incessant effort; it did not surprise him any longer that he could
count his ribs. When he ate a bowl of artfully arranged vegetables, the red of
pimiento played off against the yellow of parsnip, a slice of pickled beet
adding visual and olfactory tang to the picture, he felt full enough; he was
full enough for the next day's feeble work in the field. It was pleasant
enough to play slowly with a wooden mattock in the rich soil; did not people
once buy sand so their children might do exactly what he did, and envy their
innocent absorption? Royland was innocently absorbed, then, and the radish
truck had collected six times since his arrival, when he began to feel
stirrings of lust. On the edge of starvation (but who knew this? For everybody
was) his mind was dulled, but not his loins. They burned, and he looked about
him in the fields, and the first girl he saw who was not repulsive he fell
abysmally in love with.
Bewildered,
he told Li Po, who was also Ugetsu Village's go-between. The storyteller was
delighted; he waddled off to seek information and returned. "My master's
choice is wise. The slave on whom his lordly eye deigned to rest is known as
Vashti, daughter of Hari Bose, the distiller. She is his seventh child and so
no great dowry can be expected (I shall ask for fifteen kegs toddy, but would
settle for seven), but all this humble village knows that she is a skilled and
willing worker in the hut as in the fields. I fear she has the customary
lamentable Hindu talent for concocting curries, but a dozen good beatings at
the most should cause her to reserve it to appropriate occasions, such as
visits from her mother and sisters."
So,
according to the sensible custom of Ugetsu, Vashti came that night to the hut
which Royland shared with Li Po, and Li Po visited with cronies by his master's
puzzling request. He begged humbly to point out that it would be dark in the
hut, so this talk of lacking privacy was inexplicable to say the least. Royland
made it an order, and Li Po did not really object, so he obeyed it.
It
was a damnably strange night during which Royland learned all about India's
national sport and most highly developed art form. Vashti, if she found him
weak on the theory side, made no complaints. On the contrary, when Royland woke
she was doing something or other to his feet.
"More?"
he thought incredulously. "With feet?" He asked what she was
doing. Submissively she replied: "Worshipping my lord husband-to-be's big
toe. I am a pious and old-fashioned woman."
So
she painted his toe with red paint and prayed to it, and then she fixed
breakfastcurry, and excellent. She watched him eat, and then modestly licked
his leavings from the bowl. She handed him his clothes, which she had washed
while he still slept, and helped him into them after she helped him wash. Royland
thought incredulously: "It's not possible! It must be a show, to sell me
on marrying heras if I had to be sold!" His heart turned to custard as he
saw her, without a moment's pause, turn from dressing him to polishing his
wooden rake. He asked that day in the field, roundabout fashion, and learned
that this was the kind of service he could look forward to for the rest of his
life after marriage. If the woman got lazy he'd have to beat her, but this
seldom happened more than every year or so. We have good girls here in Ugetsu
Village.
So
an Ugetsu Village peasant was in some ways better off than anybody from
"his time" who was less than a millionaire!
His
starved dullness was such that he did not realize this was true for only half
the Ugetsu Village peasants.
Religion
sneaked up on him in similar fashion. He went to the part-time Taoist priest
because he was a little bored with Li Po's current after-dinner saga. He could
have sat like all the others and listened passively to the interminable tale of
the glorious Yellow Emperor, and the beautiful but wicked Princess Emerald, and
the virtuous but plain Princess Moon Blossom; it just happened that he went to
the priest of Tao and got hooked hard.
The
kindly old man, a toolmaker by day, dropped a few pearls of wisdom which, in
his foggy starvation-daze, Royland did not perceive to be pearls of
undemonstrable nonsense, and showed Royland how to meditate. It worked the
first time. Royland bunged right smack through into a two-hundred-proof state
of samadhithe Eastern version of self-hypnotized
Enlightenmentthat made him feel wonderful and all-knowing and left him without
a hangover when it wore off. He had despised, in college, the type of people
who took psychology courses and so had taken none himself; he did not know a
thing about self-hypnosis except as just demonstrated by this very nice old
gentleman. For several days he was offensively religious and kept trying to
talk to Li Po about the Eightfold Way, and Li Po kept changing the subject.
It
took murder to bring him out of love and religion.
At
twilight they were all sitting and listening to the storyteller as usual.
Royland had been there just one month and for all he knew would be there
forever. He soon would have his bride officially; he knew he had discovered The
Truth About the Universe by way of Tao meditation; why should he change?
Changing demanded a furious outburst of energy, and he did not have energy on
that scale. He metered out his energy day and night; one had to save so much
for tonight's love play, and then one had to save so much for tomorrow's
planting. He was a poor man; he could not afford to change.
Li
Po had reached a rather interesting bit where the Yellow Emperor was declaiming
hotly: "Then she shall die! Whoever dare transgress Our divine will"
A
flashlight began to play over their faces. They perceived that it was in the
hand of a samurai with kimono and sword. Everybody hastily kowtowed, but
the samurai shouted irritably (all samurai were irritable, all
the time): "Sit up, you fools! I want to see your stupid faces. I hear
there's a peculiar one in this flea-bitten dungheap you call a village."
Well,
by now Royland knew his duty. He rose and with downcast eyes asked: "Is
the noble protector in search of my unworthy self?"
"Ha!"
the samurai roared. "It's true! A big nose!" He hurled the
flashlight away (all samurai were nobly contemptuous of the merely
material), held his scabbard in his left hand, and swept out the long curved
sword with his right.
Li
Po stepped forward and said in his most enchanting voice: "If the
Heaven-born would only deign to heed a word from this humble" What he
must have known would happen happened. With a contemptuous backhand sweep of
the blade the samurai beheaded him and Li Po's debt was paid.
The
trunk of the storyteller stood for a moment and then fell stiffly forward. The samurai
stooped to wipe his blade clean on Li Po's ragged robes.
Royland
had forgotten much, but not everything. With the villagers scattering before
him he plunged forward and tackled the samurai low and hard. No doubt
the samurai was a Brown Belt judo master; if so he had nobody but
himself to blame for turning his back. Royland, not remembering that he was
barefoot, tried to kick the samurai's face in. He broke his worshipful
big toe, but its un-trimmed horny nail removed the left eye of the warrior and
after that it was no contest. He never let the samurai get up off the
ground; he took out his other eye with the handle of a rake and then killed him
an inch at a time with his hands, his feet, and the clownish rustic's
traditional weapon, a flail. It took easily half an hour, and for the final
twenty minutes the samurai was screaming for his mother. He died when
the last light left the western sky, and in darkness Royland stood quite alone
with the two corpses. The villagers were gone.
He
assumed, or pretended, that they were within earshot and yelled at them
brokenly: "I'm sorry, Vashti. I'm sorry, all of you. I'm going. Can I make
you understand?
"Listen.
You aren't living. This isn't life. You're not making anything but babies,
you're not changing, you're not growing up. That's not enough! You've got to
read and write. You can't pass on anything but baby stories like the Yellow
Emperor by word of mouth. The village is growing. Soon your fields will touch
the fields of Sukoshi Village to the west, and then what happens? You won't
know what to do, so you'll fight with Sukoshi Village.
"Religion.
No! It's just getting drunk the way you do it. You're set up for it by being
half-starved and then you go into samadhi and you feel better so you
think you understand everything. No! You've got to do things. If you
don't grow up, you die. All of you.
"Women.
That's wrong. It's good for the men, but it's wrong. Half of you are
slaves, do you understand? Women are people too, but you use them like animals
and you've convinced them it's right for them to be old at thirty and discarded
for the next girl. For God's sake, can't you try to think of yourselves in
their place?
"The
breeding, the crazy breedingit's got to stop. You frugal Orientals! But you
aren't frugal; you're crazy drunken sailors. You're squandering the whole
world. Every mouth you breed has got to be fed by the land, and the land isn't
infinite.
"I
hope some of you understood. Li Po would have, a little, but he's dead.
"I'm
going away now. You've been kind to me and all I've done is make trouble. I'm
sorry."
He
fumbled on the ground and found the samurai's flashlight. With it he
hunted the village's outskirts until he found the Japanese's buck-board car. He
started the motor with its crank and noisily rolled down the dirt track from
the village to the highway.
Royland
drove all night, still westward. His knowledge of southern California's
geography was inexact, but he hoped to hit Los Angeles.
There
might be a chance of losing himself in a great city. He had abandoned hope of
finding present-day counterparts of his old classmates like Jimmy Ichimura;
obviously they had lost out. Why shouldn't they have lost? The
soldier-politicians had won the war by happenstance, so all power to the
soldier-politicians! Reasoning under the great natural law post hoc ergo
propter hoc, Tojo and his crowd had decided: fanatic feudalism won the war;
therefore fanatic feudalism is a good thing, and it necessarily follows that
the more fanatical and feudal it is, the better a thing it is. So you had
Sukoshi Village, and Ugetsu Village; Ichi Village, Ni Village, San Village, Shi
Village, dotting that part of Great Japan formerly known as North America,
breeding with the good old fanatic feudalism and so feudally averse to new
thought and innovations that it made you want to scream at themwhich he had.
The
single weak headlight of his buckboard passed few others on the road; a decent
feudal village is self-contained.
Damn
them and their suicidal cheerfulness! It was a pleasant trait; it was a fool in
a canoe approaching the rapids saying: "Chin up! Everything's going to be
all right if we just keep smiling."
The
car ran out of gas when false dawn first began to pale the sky behind him. He
pushed it into the roadside ditch and walked on; by full light he was in a
tumble-down, planless, evil-smelling, paper-and-galvanized-iron city whose name
he did not know. There was no likelihood of him being noticed as a
"white" man by anyone not specifically looking for him. A month of
outdoor labor had browned him, and a month of artistically composed vegetable
plates had left him gaunt.
The
city was carpeted with awakening humanity. Its narrow streets were paved with
sprawled-out men, women, and children beginning to stir and hawk up phlegm and
rub their rheumy eyes. An open sewer-latrine running down the center of each
street was casually used, ostrich-fashionthe users hid their own eyes while in
action.
Every
mangled variety of English rang in Royland's ears as he trod between bodies.
There
had to be something more, he told himself. This was the shabby industrial
outskirts, the lowest marginal-labor area. Somewhere in the city there was
beauty, science, learning!
He
walked aimlessly plodding until noon, and found nothing of the sort. These
people in the cities were food-handlers, food-traders, food-transporters. They
took in one another's washing and sold one another chop suey. They made
automobiles (Yes! There were one-family automobile factories which probably
made six buckboards a year, filing all metal parts by hand out of bar stock!) and
orange crates and baskets and coffins; abacuses, nails, and boots.
The
Mysterious East has done it again, he thought bitterly. The
Indians-Chinese-Japanese won themselves a nice sparse area. They could have
laid things out neatly and made it pleasant for everybody instead of for a
minute speck of aristocracy which he was unable even to detect in this human
soup . . . but they had done it again. They had bred irresponsibly just as fast
as they could until the land was full. Only famines and pestilence could
"help" them now.
He
found exactly one building which owned some clear space around itand which
would survive an earthquake or a flicked cigarette butt. It was the German
Consulate.
I'll
give them the Bomb, he said to himself. Why not? None of this is mine. And for
the Bomb I'll exact a price of some comfort and dignity for as long as I live. Let
them blow one another up! He climbed the consulate steps.
To
the black-uniformed guard at the swastika-trimmed bronze doors he said: "Wenn
die Lichtstdrke der van einer Fl'dche kommen-den Strahlung dem Cosinus des
Winkels zwischen Strahlrichtung und Flachennormalen proportional ist, so nennen
wir die Fl'dche eine volkommen streunde Flache." Lambert's Law, Optics
I. All the Goethe he remembered happened to rhyme, which might have made the
guard suspicious.
Naturally
the German came to attention and said apologetically: "I don't speak
German. What is it, sir?"
"You
may take me to the consul," Royland said, affecting boredom.
"Yes,
sir. At once, sir. Er, you're an agent of course, sir?"
Royland
said witheringly: "Sicherheit, bitte!"
"Yessir.
This way, sir!"
The
consul was a considerate, understanding gentleman. He was somewhat surprised by
Royland's true tale, but said from time to time: "I see; I see. Not
impossible. Please go on."
Royland
concluded: "Those people at the sulfur mine were, I hope, unrepresentative.
One of them at least complained that it was a dreary sort of backwoods
assignment. I am simply gambling that there is intelligence in your Reich. I
ask you to get me a real physicist for twenty minutes of conversation. You, Mr.
Consul, will not regret it. I am in a position to turn over considerable
information on atomic power." So he had not been able to say it after all;
the Bomb was still an obscene kick below the belt.
"This
has been very interesting, Dr. Royland," said the consul gravely.
"You referred to your enterprise as a gamble. I too shall gamble. What
have I to lose by putting you en rapport with a scientist of ours if you
prove to be a plausible lunatic?" He smiled to soften it. "Very
little indeed. On the other hand, what have I to gain if your extraordinary
story is quite true? A great deal. I will go along with you, doctor. Have you
eaten?"
The
relief was tremendous. He had lunch in a basement kitchen with the Consulate
guardsa huge lunch, a rather nasty lunch of stewed lungen with a floured
gravy, and cup after cup of coffee. Finally one of the guards lit up an ugly
little spindle-shaped cigar, the kind Royland had only seen before in the
caricatures of George Grosz, and as an afterthought offered one to him.
He
drank in the rank smoke and managed not to cough. It stung his mouth and cut
the greasy aftertaste of the stew satisfactorily. One of the blessings of the
Third Reich, one of its gross pleasures. They were just people, after alla
certain censorious, busybody type of person with altogether too much power, but
they were human. By which he meant, he supposed, members of Western Industrial
Culture like him.
After
lunch he was taken by truck from the city to an airfield by one of the guards.
The plane was somewhat bigger than a B-29 he had once seen, and lacked
propellers. He presumed it was one of the "jets" Dr. Piqueron had
mentioned. His guard gave his dossier to a Luftwaffe sergeant at the foot of
the ramp and said cheerfully: "Happy landings, fellow. It's all going to
be all right."
"Thanks,"
he said. "I'll remember you, Corporal Collins. You've been very
helpful." Collins turned away.
Royland
climbed the ramp into the barrel of the plane. A bucket-seat job, and most of
the seats were filled. He dropped into one on the very narrow aisle. His
neighbor was in rags; his face showed signs of an old beating. When Royland
addressed him he simply cringed away and began to sob.
The
Luftwaffe sergeant came up, entered, and slammed the door. The "jets"
began to wind up, making an unbelievable racket; further conversation was
impossible. While the plane taxied, Royland peered through the windowless gloom
at his fellow-passengers. They all looked poor and poorly.
God,
were they so quickly and quietly airborne? They were. Even in the bucket seat,
Royland fell asleep.
He
was awakened, he did not know how much later, by the sergeant. The man was
shaking his shoulder and asking him: "Any joolery hid away? Watches? Got
some nice fresh water to sell to people that wanna buy it."
Royland
had nothing, and would not take part in the miserable little racket if he had.
He shook his head indignantly and the man moved on with a grin. He would not
last long!petty chiselers were leaks in the efficient dictatorship; they were
rapidly detected and stopped up. Mussolini made the trains run on time, after
all. (But naggingly Royland recalled mentioning this to a Northwestern
University English professor, one Bevans. Bevans had coldly informed him that
from 1931 to 1936 he had lived under Mussolini as a student and tourist guide,
and therefore had extraordinary opportunities for observing whether the trains
ran on time or not, and could definitely state that they did not; that railway
timetables under Mussolini were best regarded as humorous fiction.)
And
another thought nagged at him, a thought connected with a pale, scarred face
named Bloom. Bloom was a young refugee physical chemist working on weapons
development track I, and he was somewhat crazy, perhaps. Royland, on track III,
used to see little of him and could have done with even less. You couldn't say
hello to the man without it turning into a lecture on the horrors of Nazism. He
had wild stories about "gas chambers" and crematoria which no
reasonable man could believe, and was a blanket slanderer of the German medical
profession. He claimed that trained doctors, certified men, used human beings
in experiments which terminated fatally. Once, to try and bring Bloom to
reason, he asked what sort of experiments these were, but the monomaniac had
heard that worked out: piffling nonsense about reviving mortally frozen men by
putting naked women into bed with them! The man was probably sexually deranged
to believe that; he naively added that one variable in the series of
experiments was to use women immediately after sexual intercourse, one hour
after sexual intercourse, et cetera. Royland had blushed for him and violently
changed the subject.
But
that was not what he was groping for. Neither was Bloom's crazy story about the
woman who made lampshades from the tattooed skin of concentration camp
prisoners; there were people capable of such things, of course, but under no
regime whatever do they rise to positions of authority; they simply can't do
the work required in positions of authority because their insanity gets in the
way.
"Know
your enemy," of coursebut making up pointless lies? At least Bloom was
not the conscious prevaricator. He got letters in Yiddish from friends and
relations in Palestine, and these were laden with the latest wild rumors
supposed to be based on the latest word from "escapees."
Now
he remembered. In the cafeteria about three months ago Bloom had been sipping
tea with somewhat shaking hand and rereading a letter. Royland tried to pass
him with only a nod, but the skinny hand shot out and held him.
Bloom
looked up with tears in his eyes: "It's cruel, I'm tellink you, Royland,
it's cruel. They're not givink them the right to scream, to strike a futile
blow, to sayink prayers Kiddush ha Shem like a Jew should when he is
dyink for Consecration of the Name! They trick them, they say they go to farm
settlements, to labor camps, so four-five of the stinkink bastards can handle a
whole trainload Jews. They trick the clothes off of them at the camps, they
sayink they delouse them. They trick them into room says showerbath over the
door and then is too late to sayink prayers; then goes on the gas."
Bloom
had let go of him and put his head on the table between his hands. Royland had
mumbled something, patted his shoulder, and walked on, shaken. For once the neurotic
little man might have got some straight facts. That was a very circumstantial
touch about expediting the handling of prisoners by systematic liesalways the
carrot and the stick.
Yes,
everybody had been so god-damn, agreeable since he climbed the Consulate steps!
The friendly door guard, the Consul who nodded and remarked that his story was
not an impossible one, the men he'd eaten withall that quiet optimism.
"Thanks. I'll remember you, Corporal Collins. You've been very
helpful." He had felt positively benign toward the corporal, and now
remembered that the corporal had turned around very quickly after he
spoke. To hide a grin?
The
guard was working his way down the aisle again and noticed that Royland was
awake. "Changed your mind by now?" he asked kindly. "Got a good
watch, maybe I'll find a piece of bread for you. You won't need a watch where
you're going, fella."
"What
do you mean?" Royland demanded.
The
guard said soothingly: "Why, they got clocks all over them work camps,
fella. Everybody knows what time it is in them work camps. You don't need no
watches there. Watches just get in the way at them work camps." He went on
down the aisle, quickly.
Royland
reached across the aisle and, like Bloom, gripped the man who sat opposite him.
He could not see much of him; the huge windowless plane was lit only by half a
dozen stingy bulbs overhead. "What are you here for?" he asked.
The
man said shakily: "I'm a Laborer Two, see? A Two. Well, my father he
taught me to read, see, but he waited until I was ten and knew the score? See?
So I figured it was a family tradition, so I taught my own kid to read because
he was a pretty smart kid, ya know? I figured he'd have some fun reading like I
did, no harm done, who's to know, ya know? But I should of waited a couple
years, I guess, because the kid was too young and got to bragging he could
read, ya know how kids do? I'm from St. Louis, by the way. I should of said
first I'm from St. Louis a track maintenance man, see, so I hopped a string of
returning empties for San Diego because I was scared like you get."
He
took a deep sigh. "Thirsty," he said. "Got in with some Chinks,
nobody to trouble ya, ya stay outta the way, but then one of them cops-like
seen me and he took me to the Consul place like they do, ya know? Had me
scared, they always tole me illegal reading they bump ya off, but they don't,
ya know? Two years work camp, how about that?"
Yes,
Royland wondered. How about it?
The
plane decelerated sharply; he was thrown forward. Could they brake with those
"jets" by reversing the stream or were the engines just throttling
down? He heard gurgling and thudding; hydraulic fluid to the actuators letting
down the landing gear. The wheels bumped a moment later and he braced himself;
the plane was still and the motors cut off seconds later.
Their
Luftwaffe sergeant unlocked the door and bawled through it: "Shove that
goddam ramp, willya?" The, sergeant's assurance had dropped from him; he
looked like a very scared man. He must have been a very brave one, really, to
have let himself be locked in with a hundred doomed men, protected only by an
eight-shot pistol and a chain of systematic lies.
They
were herded out of the plane onto a runway of what Royland immediately identified
as the Chicago Municipal Airport. The same reek wafted from the stockyards; the
row of airline buildings at the eastern edge of the field was ancient and
patched but unchanged; the hangars, though, were now something that looked like
inflated plastic bags. A good trick. Beyond the buildings surely lay the dreary
redbrick and painted-siding wastes of Cicero, Illinois.
Luftwaffe
men were yapping at them: "Form up, boys; make a line! Work means freedom!
Look tall!" They shuffled and were shoved into columns of fours. A snappy
majorette in shiny satin panties and white boots pranced out of an
administration building twirling her baton; a noisy march blared from louvers
in her tall fur hat. Another good trick.
"Forward
march, boys," she shrilled at them. "Wouldn't y'all just like to
follow me?" Seductive smile and a wiggle of the rump; a Judas ewe. She
strutted off in time to the music; she must have been wearing earstopples. They
shuffled after her. At the airport gate they dropped their blue-coated Luftwaffe
boys and picked up a waiting escort of a dozen black-coats with skulls on their
high-peaked caps.
They
walked in time to the music, hypnotized by it, through Cicero. Cicero had been
bombed to hell and not rebuilt. To his surprise Royland felt a pang for the
vanished Poles and Slovaks of Al's old bailiwick. There were German Germans,
French Germans, and even Italian Germans, but he knew in his bones that there
were no Polish or Slovakian Germans . . . And Bloom had been right all along.
Deathly
weary after two hours of marching (the majorette was indefatigable) Royland
looked up from the broken pavement to see a cockeyed wonder before him. It was
a Castle; it was a Nightmare; it was the Chicago Parteihof. The thing abutted
Lake Michigan; it covered perhaps sixteen city blocks. It frowned down on the
lake at the east and at the tumbled acres of bombed-out Chicago at the north,
west, and south. It was made of steel-reinforced concrete grained and grooved
to look like medieval masonry. It was walled, moated, portcullis-ed, towered,
ramparted, crenellated. The death's-head guards looked at it reverently and the
prisoners with fright. Royland wanted only to laugh wildly. It was a Disney
production. It was as funny as Hermann Goering in full fig, and probably as
deadly.
With
a mumbo-jumbo of passwords, heils, and salutes they were admitted, and the
majorette went away, no doubt to take off her boots and groan.
The
most bedecked of the death's-head lined them up and said affably: "Hot
dinner and your beds presently, my boys; first a selection. Some of you, I'm
afraid, aren't well and should be in sick bay. Who's sick? Raise your hands,
please."
A
few hands crept up. Stooped old men.
"That's
right. Step forward, please." Then he went down the line tapping a man here
and thereone fellow with glaucoma, another with terrible varicose sores
visible through the tattered pants he wore. Mutely they stepped forward.
Royland he looked thoughtfully over. "You're thin, my boy," he
observed. "Stomach pains? Vomit blood? Tarry stools in the morning?"
"Nossir!"
Royland barked. The man laughed and continued down the line. The "sick
bay" detail was marched off. Most of them were weeping silently; they
knew. Everybody knew; everybody pretended that the terrible thing would not,
might not, happen. It was much more complex than Royland had realized.
"Now,"
said the death's-head affably, "we require some competent cement
workers"
The
line of remaining men went mad. They surged forward almost touching the officer
but never stepping over an invisible line surrounding him. "Me!" some
yelled. "Me! Me!" Another cried: "I'm good with my hands, I can
learn, I'm a machinist too, I'm strong and young, I can learn!" A heavy
middle-aged one waved his hands in the air and boomed: "Grouting and tile-setting!
Grouting and tile-setting!" Royland stood alone, horrified. They knew.
They knew this was an offer of real work that would keep them alive for a
while.
He
knew suddenly how to live in a world of lies.
The
officer lost his patience in a moment or two, and whips came out. Men with
their faces bleeding struggled back into line. "Raise your hands, you
cement people, and no lying, please. But you wouldn't lie, would you?" He
picked half a dozen volunteers after questioning them briefly, and one of his
men marched them off.
Among
them was the grouting-and-tile man, who looked pompously pleased with himself;
such was the reward of diligence and virtue, he seemed to be proclaiming; pooh
to those grasshoppers back there who neglected to learn A Trade.
"Now,"
said the officer casually, "we require some laboratory assistants."
The chill of death stole down the line of prisoners. Each one seemed to shrivel
into himself, become poker-faced, imply that he wasn't really involved in all
this.
Royland
raised his hand. The officer looked at him in stupefaction and then covered up
quickly. "Splendid," he said. "Step forward, my boy. You,"
he pointed at another man. "You have an intelligent forehead; you look as
if you'd make a fine laboratory assistant. Step forward."
"Please,
no!" the man begged. He fell to his knees and clasped his hands in
supplication. "Please no!" The officer took out his whip
meditatively; the man groaned, scrambled to his feet, and quickly stood beside
Royland.
When
there were four more chosen, they were marched off across the concrete yard
into one of the absurd towers, and up a spiral staircase and down a corridor,
and through the promenade at the back of an auditorium where a woman screamed
German from the stage at an audience of women. And through a tunnel and down
the corridor of an elementary school with empty classrooms full of small desks
on either side. And into a hospital area where the fake-masonry walls yielded
to scrubbed white tile and the fake flagstones underfoot to composition flooring
and the fake pinewood torches in bronze brackets that had lighted their way to
fluorescent tubes.
At
the door marked rassenwissenschaft the guard rapped and a frosty-faced man in a
laboratory coat opened up. "You requisitioned a demonstrator, Dr. Kalten,"
the guard said. "Pick any one of these."
Dr.
Kalten looked them qver. "Oh, this one, I suppose," he said. Royland.
"Come in, fellow."
The
Race Science Laboratory of Dr. Kajten proved to be a decent medical setup with
an operating table, intricate charts of the races of men and their anatomical,
mental, and moral makeups. There was also a phrenological head diagram and a
horoscope on the wall, and an arrangement of glittering crystals on wire which
Royland recognized. It was a model of one Hans Hoerbiger's crackpot theory of
planetary formation, the Welteislehre.
"Sit
there," the doctor said, pointing to a stool. "First I've got to take
your pedigree. By the way, you might as well know that you're going to end up
dissected for my demonstration in Race Science III for the Medical School, and
your degree of cooperation will determine whether the dissection is performed
under anaesthesia or not. Clear?"
"Clear,
doctor."
"Curiousno
panic. I'll wager we find you're a proto-Hamitoidal hemi-Nordic of at least degree
five ... but let's get on. Name?"
"Edward
Royland."
"Birthdate?"
"July
second, nineteen twenty-three."
The
doctor threw down his pencil. "If my previous explanation was
inadequate," he shouted, "let me add that if you continue to be
difficult I may turn you over to my good friend Dr. Herzbrenner. Dr.
Herzbrenner happens to teach interrogation technique at the Gestapo School. Doyounowunderstand?"
"Yes,
doctor. I'm sorry I cannot withdraw my answer."
Dr.
Kalten turned elaborately sarcastic. "How then do you account for your
remarkable state of preservation at your age of approximately a hundred and
eighty years?"
"Doctor,
I am twenty-three years old. I have traveled through time."
"Indeed?"
Kalten was amused. "And how was this accomplished?"
Royland
said steadily. "A spell was put on me by a satanic Jewish magician. It
involved the ritual murder and desanguination of seven beautiful Nordic
virgins."
Dr.
Kalten gaped for a moment. Then he picked up his pencil and said firmly:
"You will understand that my doubts were logical under the circumstances.
Why did you not give me the sound scientific basis for your surprising claim at
once? Go ahead; tell me all about it."
He
was Dr. Kalten's prize; he was Dr. Kalten's treasure. His peculiarities of
speech, his otherwise-inexplicable absence of a birth number over his left
nipple, when they got around to it the gold filling in one of his teeth, his
uncanny knowledge of Old America, all now had a simple scientific explanation.
He was from 1944. What was so hard to grasp about that? Any sound specialist
knew about the lost Jewish Cabala magic, golems and such.
His
story was that he had been a student Race Scientist under the pioneering master
William D. Fully. (A noisy whack who used to barnstorm the chaw-and-gallus belt
with the backing of Deutches Neues Euro; sure enough they found him in Volume
VII of the standard Introduction to a Historical Handbook of Race Science.) The
Jewish fiends had attempted to ambush his master on a lonely road; Royland
persuaded him to switch hats and coats; in the darkness the substitution was
not noticed. Later in their stronghold he was identified, but the Nordic
virgins had already been ritually murdered and drained of their blood, and it
wouldn't keep. The dire fate destined for the master had been visited upon the
disciple.
Dr.
Kalten loved that bit. It tickled him pink that the sub-men's
"revenge" on their enemy had been to precipitate him into a world
purged of the sub-men entirely, where a Nordic might breathe freely!
Kalten,
except for discreet consultations with such people as Old America specialists,
a dentist who was stupefied by the gold filling, and a dermatologist who
established that there was not and never had been a geburtsnummer on the
subject examined, was playing Royland close to his vest. After a week it became
apparent that he was reserving Royland for a grand unveiling which would climax
the reading of a paper. Royland did not want to be unveiled; there were too
many holes in his story. He talked with animation about the beauties of Mexico
in the spring, its fair mesas, cactus, and mushrooms. Could they make a short
trip there? Dr. Kalten said they could not. Royland was becoming restless? Let
him study, learn, profit by the matchless arsenal of the sciences available
here in Chicago Parteihof. Dear old Chicago boasted distinguished exponents of
the World Ice Theory, the Hollow World Theory, Dowsing, Homeopathic Medicine,
Curative Folk Botany
This
last did sound interesting. Dr. Kalten was pleased to take his prize to the
Medical School and introduce him as a protege to Professor Albiani, of Folk
Botany.
Albiani
was a bearded gnome out of the Arthur Rackham illustrations for Das
Rheingold. He loved his subject. "Mother Nature, the all-bounteous
one! Wander the fields, young man, and with a seeing eye in an hour's stroll
you will find the ergot that aborts, the dill that cools fever, the tansy that
strengthens the old, the poppy that soothes the fretful teething babe!"
"Do
you have any hallucinogenic Mexican mushrooms?" Royland demanded.
"We
may," Albiani said, surprised. They browsed through the Folk Botany museum
and pored over dried vegetation under glass. From Mexico there were peyote, the
buttons and the root, and there was marihuana, root, stem, seed, and stalk. No
mushrooms.
"They
may be in the storeroom," Albiani muttered.
All
the rest of the day Royland mucked through the storeroom where specimens were
waiting for exhibit space on some rotation plan. He went to Albiani and said, a
little wild-eyed: "They're not there."
Albiani
had been interested enough to look up the mushrooms in question in the
reference books. "See?" he said happily, pointing to a handsome color
plate of the mushroom: growing, mature, sporing, and dried. He read: '". .
. superstitiously called God Food,'" and twinkled through his beard
at the joke.
"They're
not there," Royland said.
The
professor, annoyed at last, said: "There might be some uncatalogued in the
basement. Really, we don't have room for everything in our limited display
spacejust the interesting items."
Royland
pulled himself together and charmed the location of the department's basement
storage space out of him, together with permission to inspect it. And, left
alone for a moment, ripped the color plate from the professor's book and stowed
it away.
That
night Royland and Dr. Kalten walked out on one of the innumerable tower-tops
for a final cigar. The moon was high and full; its light turned the cratered
terrain that had been Chicago into another moon. The sage and his disciple from
another day leaned their elbows on a crenellated rampart two hundred feet above
Lake Michigan.
"Edward,"
said Dr. Kalten, "I shall read my paper tomorrow before the Chicago
Academy of Race Science." The words were a challenge; something was wrong.
He went on: "I shall expect you to be in the wings of the auditorium, and
to appear at my command to answer a few questions from me and, if time permits,
from our audience."
"I
wish it could be postponed," Royland said.
"No
doubt."
"Would
you explain your unfriendly tone of voice, doctor?" Royland demanded.
"I think I've been completely cooperative and have opened the way for you
to win undying fame in the annals of Race Science."
"Cooperative,
yes. CandidI wonder? You see, Edward, a dreadful thought struck me today. I
have always thought it amusing that the Jewish attack on Reverend Fully should
have been for the purpose of precipitating him into the future and that it
should have misfired." He took something out of his pocket: a small
pistol. He armed it casually at Royland. "Today I began to wonder why they
should have done so. Why did they not simply murder him, as they did thousands,
and dispose of him in their secret crematoria, and permit no mention in their
controlled newspapers and magazines of the disappearance?
"Now,
the blood of seven Nordic virgins can have been no cheap commodity. One pictures
with ease Nordic men patrolling their precious enclaves of humanity, eyes
roving over every passing face, noting who bears the stigmata of the sub-men,
and following those who do most carefully indeed lest race-defilement be
committed with a look or an 'accidental' touch in a crowded street.
Nevertheless the thing was done; your presence here is proof of it. It must
have been done at enormous cost; hired Slavs and Negroes must have been
employed to kidnap the virgins, and many of them must have fallen before Nordic
rage.
"This
merely to silence one small voice crying in the wilderness? I thinknot. I
think, Edward Royland, or whatever your real name may be, that Jewish arrogance
sent you, a Jew yourself, into the future as a greeting from the Jewry of that
day to what it foolishly thought would be the triumphant Jewry of this. At any
rate, the public questioning tomorrow will be conducted by my friend Dr.
Herz-brenner, whom I have mentioned to you. If you have any little secrets,
they will not remain secrets long. No, no! Do not move toward me. I shall shoot
you disablingly in the knee if you do."
Royland
moved toward him and the gun went off; there was an agonizing hammer blow high
on his left shin. He picked up Kalten and hurled him, screaming, over the
parapet two hundred feet into the water. And collapsed. The pain was horrible.
His shinbone was badly cracked if not broken through. There was not much
bleeding; maybe there would be later. He need not fear that the shot and scream
would rouse the castle. Such sounds were not rare in the Medical Wing.
He
dragged himself, injured leg trailing, to the doorway of Kalten's living
quarters; he heaved himself into a chair by the signal bell and threw a rug
over his legs. He rang for the diener and told him very quietly: "Go to
the medical storeroom for a leg U-brace and whatever is necessary for a cast,
please. Dr. Kalten has an interesting idea he wishes to work out."
He
should have asked for a syringe of morphineno he shouldn't. It might affect
the time distortion.
When
the man came back he thanked him and told him to turn in for the night.
He
almost screamed getting his shoe off; his trouser leg he cut away. The gauze
had arrived just in time; the wound was beginning to bleed more copiously.
Pressure seemed to stop it. He constructed a sloppy walking cast on his leg.
The directions on the several five-pound cans of plaster helped.
His
leg was getting numb; good. His cast probably pinched some major nerve, and a
week in it would cause permanent paralysis; who cared about that?
He
tried it out and found he could get across the floor inefficiently. With a
strong-enough bannister he could get downstairs but not, he thought, up them.
That was all right. He was going to the basement.
God-damning
the medieval Nazis and their cornball castle every inch of the way, he went to
the basement; there he had a windfall. A dozen drunken SS men were living it up
in a corner far from the censorious eyes of their company commander; they were
playing a game which might have been called Spin the Corporal. They saw Royland
limping and wept sentimental tears for poor old man with a bum leg; they
carried him two winding miles to the storeroom he wanted, and shot the lock off
for him. They departed, begging him to call on Company K any time, bes' fellas
in Chicago, doc. Ol' Bruno here can tear the arm off a Latvik shirker with his
bare hands, honest, doc! Jus' the way you twist a drumstick off a turkey. You
wan' us to get a Latvik an' show you?
He
got rid of them at last, clicked on the light, and began his search. His leg
was now ice cold, painfully so. He rummaged through the uncatalogued botanicals
and found after what seemed like hours a crate shipped from Jalasca. Royland
opened it by beating its corners against the concrete floor. It yielded and
spilled plastic envelopes; through the clear material of one he saw the
wrinkled black things. He did not even compare them with the color plate in his
pocket. He tore the envelope open and crammed them into his mouth, and chewed
and swallowed.
Maybe
there had to be a Hopi dancing and chanting, maybe there didn't have to be.
Maybe one had to be calm, if bitter, and fresh from a day of hard work at
differential equations which approximated the Hopi mode of thought. Maybe you
only had to fix your mind savagely on what you desired, as his was fixed now.
Last time he had hated and shunned the Bomb; what he wanted was a world without
the Bomb. He had got it, all right!
...
his tongue was thick and the fireballs were beginning to dance around him, the
circling circles . . .
Charles
Miller Nahataspe whispered: "Close. Close. I was so frightened."
Royland
lay on the floor of the hut, his leg unsplinted, unfractured, but aching
horribly. Drowsily he felt his ribs; he was merely slender now, no longer gaunt.
He mumbled: "You were working to pull me back from this side?"
"Yes.
You, you were there?"
"I
was there. God, let me sleep."
He
rolled over heavily and collapsed into complete unconsciousness.
When
he awakened it was still dark and his pains were gone. Nahataspe was crooning a
healing song very softly. He stopped when he saw Royland's eyes open. "Now
you know about break-the-sky medicine," he said.
"Better
than anybody. What time is it?"
"Midnight."
"I'll
be going then." They clasped hands and looked into each other's eyes.
The
jeep started easily. Four hours earlier, or possibly two months earlier, he had
been worried about the battery. He chugged down the settlement road and knew
what would happen next. He wouldn't wait until morning; a meteorite might kill
him, or a scorpion in his bed. He would go directly to Rotschmidt in his
apartment, defy Vrouw Rotschmidt and wake her man up to tell him about 56c,
tell him we have the Bomb.
We
have a symbol to offer the Japanese now, something to which they can surrender,
and will surrender.
Rotschmidt
would be philosophical. He would probably sigh about the Bomb: "Ah, do we
ever act responsibly? Do we ever know what the consequences of our decisions
will be?"
And
Royland would have to try to avoid answering him very sharply: "Yes. This
once we damn well do."
About the Author
Once,
when one of C. M. Kornbluth's short story collections was published, he was
asked to write a short autobiographical sketch to include in it. This is it.
I
was born in New York City in 1923, and was educated hi the city schools as far
as freshman year at C. C. N. Y., when I was dropped for the usual reasons. I
had already begun to contribute to the science-fiction magazines and became a
full-time writer after leaving college, though most people regarded me as an
unemployed bum. I weakened once to the extent of getting a job as a
hand-screw-machine operator, but quit after a few months to enlist in the army.
In three years of service I acquired a wife, a combat infantry badge, two ETO
campaign stars, a PFC stripe, and a constant ringing in the ears. After my
discharge I settled in Chicago, where I combined writing blood-and-guts
detective stories with acquiring an education according to the precepts of the University
of Chicago. A friend managing the local bureau of a moribund news agency got me
a job on its desk, and it was goodbye, Chancellor Hutchins. I rose to bureau
chief eventually, paralleling the news job with contributions to the science-fiction
magazines and such fantastic chores as writing a syndicated review of
phonograph records for children. In 1951, at the urging of my wife, my agent,
and my doctor, I resigned my job to come east as a full-time free-lance writer
again. Since then I've sired two children and eleven books, including this one.
I live now in a Tioga County, New York, farmhouse, and visit New York City
infrequently. I drive a senile Ford timidly and not well; I like to cook,
specializing in Italian and Chinese dishes. I have been accused of being a
compulsive M33 reader. My writing habits have changed over the years from white-hot
all-night sessions to a-little-every-day and plenty of polishing. I have no
formal hobbies, but am interested in practically every human activity except
sports. I have no settled opinions about writing; currently I'm concerned most
over the invasion of science fiction by exponents of the so-called
"mandarin style."
The
"constant ringing in the ears" turned out to be essential malignant
hypertension, and a few years later it caused his death.
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